Then finally, “Throw your shit in the car.”
“But—”
“Mycar,” she corrected. “I’m driving.”
Barely suppressing a squeal, Finn dove out of her seat and pulled her sister in for a tight hug. “Thank you! Thank you!Thank you!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Zadie said as Finn pulled away and air rushed back into her lungs. “I have conditions.”
“Shoot.”
“We’ll drop off the SUV. Then you have to text Kathy and tell her we left early for Galveston.”
“I already left a note.”
“Okay, fine,” Zadie said impatiently. “Second: don’t wander off. I need to know where you are at all times.”
“I have just the thing.” Finn reached into the SUV, pulled out her giant sun hat, and placed it on her head. “How’s that for conspicuous?”
Zadie ignored the attempt at a joke. “Finally: be prepared for the possibility that we don’t find her.”
Finn’s smile waned a little, as if the thought hadn’t actually occurred to her until just now. “I am.”
“You might be disappointed.”
“I know.”
Zadie gave a nod, then opened the back door of the SUV and pulled out an orange nylon bag. She turned to Finn. “Mom’s tent? Really?”
Finn grinned. “I brought a second sleeping bag, just in case.”
Zadie groaned, walked the tent to the back of her thirdhand Subaru station wagon, and tossed it next to the inflatable watermelon lounger she’d bought for the beach-house pool. She hadn’t been camping since she was seventeen, and she hadn’t liked it then, either.
Finn gathered the rest of her belongings and carried them to Zadie’s car. “Are yousureyou want to do this?” Zadie asked.
Finn’s smile answered for her.
SIXSIX MONTHS
(UNTILNORAWILDER’S DISAPPEARANCE)
They had been on the road for eight hours, although the bleakness of the desert highway made it feel like they’d been driving for as many days. The arid landscape looked like a beach at low tide, an expanse of sand dotted with wiry black sea-urchin shrubs and not much else. Nora had barely said anything since they’d left. Zadie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was unnerved by her mother’s silence. Normally, Nora would be singing along with the radio or goading her daughters into playing I Spy or some other inane game conceived for the sole purpose of tricking children into thinking that road trips are actually fun, but today she held her body with a military stillness, elbows locked, hands clamped at ten and two on the steering wheel.
“Where are we going?” Zadie asked for what was probably the tenth time.
Nora’s eyes barely flicked in her daughter’s direction. “Man, you really don’t like surprises, do you?”
Zadie crossed her arms. Shedidlike surprises, just not this one. She’d spent the last three hours wishing a premonition would come along and ruin it.
She turned to look at her sister in the back seat. Finn had barely uttered a peep, thanks to a book of crosswords she’d found in the seat-back pocket. If Zadie had had time to pack, she would havebrought her iPod or a magazine, something to pass the time other than reading bumper stickers, but Nora had shaken the girls awake at sevenA.M., tossed each of them a banana, and practically shoved them out the door with no explanation.
“Seriously, Mom. Do you even know where we’re going?”
“Cool it, Zadie! Jeez… what has gotten into you lately?”
Six months had passed since Zadie had followed her mom to the edge of the cliff. Ever since that night, she’d been keeping a close eye on Nora, spying on her through the front window as she wheeled the trash can to the edge of the road; offering to drop her off and pick her up from work. She even hung a bell on the back door that she’d listen for at night when she was supposed to be sleeping. But Nora didn’t go anywhere, and she appeared to have no memory of the incident that had been haunting Zadie for months. The burden of that night should have belonged to both of them, but it became apparent that Zadie was going to have to carry it alone.
“It’s nothing.”