“You know…” Finn put her fingers to her temples and scrunched up her face.
“What’s that supposed to be? A migraine?”
“No. A psychic.”
“On behalf of all psychics, I have to say that’s an offensive stereotype,” Zadie said dryly.
“Please?” Finn pleaded. “I’m getting nothing here. You can help.”
“I’m going to get in the car now and pretend you didn’t just suggest that.” Zadie ducked into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Finn followed her in through the passenger side.
“Come on. Do the thing!”
“Nope.”
“Why? Why won’t you use it?”
Because if I tell you, you’ll never speak to me again,Zadie thought.
She cleared her throat. “I have a box of Mom’s old cassettes in the back seat if you want to pick something out to listen to.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“If you don’t pick one, I’ll put on public radio.”
“And if you don’t answer me, then I’m going to play…” Finn leaned into the back seat and thumbed through the box of cassettes until she found one that made her bark with laughter. “This!” Before Zadie could see what it was, Finn stuffed the cassette into the car’s ancient tape deck. It made a labored whirring sound, then coughed out the first few bars of “Escape (the Piña Colada Song).”
Zadie grimaced and said, “I forgot that one was in there,” then pressed the stop button.
“Uh-uh-uh.” Finn shook her head. “Not until I’ve listened to it, oh… twenty more times.”
“Listen to it as many times as you want. I don’t care.”
“Fine. I will,” Finn said, then began to sing along at the top of her lungs.
Thirty miles and seven renditions of the song later, Finn was no longer singing along. “I can’t take it anymore.” She lurched forward and hit stop. Zadie heaved a sigh of relief. “If I had to hear that one more time, I was going to drive us both off a cliff,Thelma & Louisestyle.” She ejected the tape and tossed it unceremoniously over her shoulder onto the back seat. “Pick something else.”
Finn twisted around in her seat and leaned over the box once again. This time, she perused the tapes more carefully, her eyes lingering on the handwritten spines likeSUMMER MIX ’94andRAINY DAY MUSIC. One tape in particular caught her eye. It had no writing on the spine and a blank cover. She held it up for Zadie to see. “What’s this blank tape?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never opened it.”
Finn unlatched the case and saw, in her mother’s handwriting, a label that read: DO NOT RECORD OVER!!! Her curiosity was piqued. “I’m gonna play it. See what it is.”
“A wild card. I like it.” Zadie smiled. “Put it in.”
Finn tried to not look too eager as she fed the tape into the player. She held her breath as she waited for music to start, but what came out of the speakers was not music. It was their mother’s voice.
EIGHTSIX MONTHS
(UNTILNORAWILDER’S DISAPPEARANCE)
“My name is Nora Wilder.
I am forty years old.
I live at 828 Marigold Lane in Switchback, Texas.
My daughters’ names are Zadie and Finn.