“Do you want to listen to it now?” It was the only thing Zadie could think to do that might distract her.
“Okay.” The girls sat down on the log bench next to the firepit.
But before they could rewind the tape, a voice behind them said, “Get anything good?”
“Mom!” Finn spun around to face Nora. She was wearing a headlamp and her arms were heavy with firewood. “Where were you?”
Nora dumped the logs out of her arms and into the firepit. “Can’t eat hot dogs without a fire.”
Zadie’s shoulders relaxed as the scorpions in her mind retreated back into their holes.False alarm,she thought, although something in her gut still wasn’t sitting right.
“You guys hungry?” Nora asked as she knelt down next to the pit and started snapping dried-out pine branches to use as kindling.
“I am!” Finn practically shouted. “I bet the coyote is hungry, too.”
“What coyote?”
When the fire was lit and the campsite flickered with amber light, the Wilder women roasted hot dogs over the open flame and listened to the end of Finn’s recording. Finn held her breath as the lone coyote cried. He sounded farther away than she remembered, smaller. She rewinded the tape back thirty seconds and played it again, then five more times.Maybe he’ll hear it,she thought, scanning the manzanita bushes for pairs of glowing eyes. But the coyote did not visit their camp that night. The only proof he existed at all was on that tape.
NINEFOLLOW THE MUSIC
“What did she mean? ‘This feeling will pass’?” The tape had gone silent many seconds ago, but Finn was still holding out hope that her mother’s voice would bring it back to life.
“I don’t know,” Zadie answered. She also appeared to be waiting for something.
“There aren’t any other tapes like this, are there?”
“Not that I know of.”
Finn waited several more seconds before finally pressing stop. “Do you remember that campground? What was it called?”
“Constellation.”
That trip must have been important to her,Finn thought. Why else would her mom not want anyone recording over the tape? It wasn’t an echo, but it was a memory, one her mom wanted to preserve.
She pulled out her phone and typed “Constellation Campground” into the search bar. The first result was a campground in central Arizona, not far from Sedona. “I think I found it,” she said, clicking on the map.
Zadie took her eyes off the road briefly to look at Finn’s phone screen. “Yeah, that’s the one. Wait… you’re not suggesting…”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Her sister sighed. “This means we’re going to have to camp, doesn’t it?”
It should have taken the girls only a little under seven hours to get to the Constellation Campground. With bathroom breaks and a stop to look at the World’s Biggest Mousetrap, it took them over eight. “Imagine how big a mouse would have to be for that to work,” Finn wondered out loud (roughly the size of a cow, they decided).
It was almost sevenP.M.by the time they rolled up to the camp office, a tiny log cabin whose front porch danced with an array of wind chimes, dream catchers, and whirligigs. The hand-paintedOFFICEsign above the door was written in connect-the-dots style lettering that resembled constellations.
The girls walked up the stairs to the porch. Finn pulled open the door and a tiny wind chime hanging on the inside of the handle tinkled as they walked inside. A bony middle-aged woman hiding her graying hair behind a vibrant silk scarf smiled at them from the check-in desk. “Hi, girls. What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to reserve a site for tonight,” Zadie replied.
“Excellent!” The woman slapped the desk with her palm and stood up from her stool. “If you wouldn’t mind signing the guest book. I’ll also need a credit card and your signs.”
“Signs?”
“Your zodiac signs.”
Zadie raised her eyebrows at her sister, who shrugged in response. “I’m a Leo,” Finn said, then picked up the pen tethered to the guest book and wrote her name on the next free line.