Page 2 of The Wilderwomen

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With Clarence long out of the picture—he’d left when Finn was three and was rumored to be living in South Africa with his new wife and baby—Zadie was Finn’s next of kin. The case officer at Child Protective Services told Zadie that she needed to provide proof of stable full-time employment before they would even consider granting her legal guardianship. “But she’s my sister!” Zadie had protested.

“I know,” the woman said patiently—or patronizingly, as Zadie remembered it—“but we have to think about what’s best for Finn.”

If Zadie had been a year younger when their mom left, someone would have helped her decide what wasbestfor her, too, but because she was technically an adult, she had to figure that out on her own. Five years later, she was still working on it.

Zadie was on her way to the bedroom to get her phone when a wave of severe nausea overtook her. She sprinted to the bathroom and surrendered the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. This was just one of the many perks of her first trimester that Zadie wished she could predict on command. If only she could have premonitions that would allow her to slip away discreetly and arrive atthe bathroom with time to spare, not crash into a stall like a college student on a bar crawl. Sadly, the premonitions that managed to sneak by the wall she’d put up were rarely that accommodating.

Her phone dinged again. Zadie gargled some mouthwash, then went to the living room and picked it up. She was surprised to find that both texts were from Finn (she usually forgot to text Zadie back). The first one read:

SWIMSUIT SHOPPING NOW. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON SUN HATS?

LIKE, DO PEOPLE REALLY WEAR THEM OR ONLY IN MOVIES?

Then, three minutes later:

TOO LATE. I BOUGHT THE BIGGEST ONE IN THE STORE AND I LOVE IT.

Zadie had no strong feelings either way about sun hats, but she was looking forward to the trip Finn and she had planned. They were going to drive down to Galveston and spend a week drinking sweet tea and reading on the beach. Zadie had already gone to the library and checked out an embarrassingly large stack of romance novels.

For Zadie, it was a chance for her sister and her to reconnect. When Zadie still lived in their old neighborhood just north of San Antonio, she would take Finn out every Friday for frozen yogurt, but after she moved to Austin a year later, it wasn’t long before their weekly ritual became a monthly one. Now, if she was lucky, they saw each other a few times a year.

It’s not like either sister had overtly decided to cut ties with the other. Over time, they had just sort of drifted apart like unmanned canoes, or rather, Zadie had drifted while Finn stayed safely tied to the dock. Recently, Zadie had felt like she couldn’t even see the shore anymore. Her family was somewhere in the salty haze, so obscured that she sometimes doubted its very existence. It was during one of these moments of existential panic that she called up Finn and asked if she wanted to take a post-graduation trip with her.

In four days, she would have her family back (or what was left of it). They might not have been as close as they once were, but Finn belonged with her, not Steve or Kathy or anyone else.

Not even their mother.

Nora Wilder was a ghost to Zadie, and ghosts don’t exist.

Zadie unlocked her phone and texted Finn back:

HOW BIG ARE WE TALKING ON A SCALE OF FEDORA TO SOMBRERO?

Three typing bubbles came up on the screen, followed by a GIF of a shirtless, presumably inebriated man balancing a kiddie pool on his head.

CLASSY,she texted, then checked the time. It was almost five-thirty. Dustin would be home any minute. Zadie dragged her misshapen suitcase to the front door, then went back for her box of cassettes. As she picked it up, she felt a premonition rising in her gut. “Noooooo. Not now,” she groaned as the feeling intensified.

Zadie shut her eyes and hummed the first song that popped into her head: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. By the time she’d reached the second verse, the feeling had passed and she heaved a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted to know about right now was the future. She needed to get through the present first.

Look on the bright side.People were always peddling silver linings to her, ever since she was a kid. She’d said, “But I don’t have a dad.”

They’d said,At least you have a mom.

After her mom left, she’d said, “I don’t have a mom.”

They’d said,At least you have a sister.

And when she told Dustin that she felt like Finn was slipping away, he just shrugged and said, “At least you have me.” That wasthe moment she knew she had to end things with him: because his expression of commitment, albeit flippant, was not enough to console her, and never could be.

Dustin’s cat, Gus, rubbed up against her leg. She gave him one last scratch under the chin before pulling Dustin’s house key off her key ring and setting it on the novelty notepad on the foyer table. She paused for a moment and wondered if she should leave him a note. She could think of only one thing she wanted to say to him, but that was too important to scribble on a piece of paper shaped like a Space Invader. She would tell him in person, but not today. Today she had to disappear.

Finn Wilder donned her new sun hat as she stepped barefoot into the soft spring grass. She loved being barefoot so much that she regularly left the house without shoes, even in the blazing Texas summers that baked the concrete and turned lawns to straw. Her foster dad, Steve, joked that the soles of her feet were thicker than his beagle, Milly’s, paws. Finn tested this theory once by walking Milly barefoot down the gravel driveway that led from the house to the barn. When Finn limped back into the house five minutes later, Steve chuckled and said, “I stand corrected.”

Finn jogged across the backyard, keeping one hand on her head to prevent her hat from flying off. Milly followed closely on her heels, nearly running into Finn as she came to an abrupt stop next to the bird loft. She and Steve had spent an entire weekend building it out of scrap wood and chicken wire. As they worked, they drank Crystal Light and listened to music and stopped only long enough to wipe the sweat off their brows with the backs of their arms. It was the kind of project she would have done with her own dad had he stuck around long enough to teach her how to hold a hammer. No, her mom had taught her that. Everything she knew came from her mom.

Finn lifted a bag of birdseed out of a wooden storage bin andopened the miniature screen door. “Here you go, Chris Five. Don’t eat it all at once or you’ll spoil your dinner,” Finn said as she filled the bird’s dish with feed. The white pigeon gawked at her with a vacant expression befitting his brain size, then proceeded to peck away at the mound of multicolored seeds with every intention of cleaning its plate.

Finn had bought the first Chris from a lady who bred doves for wedding ceremonies and made her own yogurt. With her purchase, she also received a complimentary cup of yogurt that tasted like the birds had had some hand in making it. Only two days later, as Finn was cleaning the enclosure, the bird slipped past her and disappeared over the fence.


Tags: Ruth Emmie Lang Fantasy