“I tried some before you got up.”
“And?”
“I hated it.”
“To each his own.” Zadie inhaled deeply while pretending to sip her coffee. Wisps of steam swirled over her cheekbones. “You were really out last night.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Finn held up the book. “I took a break to acquaint myself with the enigmatic Captain Neptune, and I must have passed out. I had a really weird dream about fish, though.”
“I hate to break it to you, but the book isn’t really about fishing.”
“Yes, I gathered that from the first sentence.” Finn flipped the book to the first page and read aloud, “‘Captain Neptune was not a god, yet he commanded the sea.’”
“That’s not the only thing he commands,” Zadie said, wiggling her eyebrows.
Finn snorted and closed the novel around a receipt she was using as a bookmark. “I’m glad you’re up,” she said, smiling coyly. “I have something to share.”
“Okay… What is it?”
“It’s better if I just show you.”
Uh-oh.“Can you at least give me a hint?”
Her sister shook her head as the kettle over the fire began to whistle. She pulled it from the heat and poured some of the boiling water into a bowl filled with instant oats. “Eat up,” she said, handing the oatmeal to her sister. Zadie stared down at the gloopy substancethe color of uncooked dough and weighed her hunger against her sudden aversion to all things mealy. She usually liked oatmeal, but apparently, the Ladybug was not a fan.
Zadie dutifully took a bite. Her sister smiled and said, “Today’s gonna be a good day.” Then she took a large gulp from the coffee thermos in her hand. Her face scrunched up in disgust. “Nope. Still bad.”
“Mom went this way.” As they left the Aries campsite, Finn broke into a jog, leaving Zadie literally biting her dust as her sister’s steps threw sand in her direction.
Zadie’s platform sneakers weren’t designed for speed, but she attempted to run anyway. “Whoa. Slow down!”
Finn waited for her sister to catch up. “Sorry. I got excited. Anyway… so, she headed this way…” She continued at a walk over a decorative footbridge flanked by mesquite trees. “She heard music, so she followed it.”
“Music?” Zadie thought back to the piano tune she’d followed herself the night before. Had her mother heard the same?
“Yeah.” Finn bounced a little with each step. She clearly wished they were moving faster, but she kept to Zadie’s pace. “Something was wrong. She seemed… lost.”
It appeared that Finn might have witnessed secondhand what Zadie had experienced firsthand years ago. It made her sad to see the concern in her sister’s eyes. She had tried to shield her from it, but Finn was almost an adult now. Maybe it was better that she knew. “Yeah, I remember Mom being kind of out of it sometimes.”
“Out of it? How?”
As Zadie remembered her mother teetering on the cliff’s edge like a tightrope walker about to step onto the wire, she had a sudden change of heart. She didn’t want to be the one to tell her sister. If Finn found out on her own, fine. She would deal with it then, butif she confessed now, Finn would know she’d kept this from her for the past six years.
“Oh, umm… she would just kind of stare off into nowhere, that kind of thing.”
“Like she forgot where she was?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Finn’s sun hat cast webbed shadows on her face, making her expression all the more inscrutable. “I wish you could feel it, too,” she said. “I’m not just remembering something that happened to her. It’s like I’m living it right there in that moment. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
“Is it scary? To be someone else?”
“Not scary, just… weird. In a good way.” Finn turned to her sister and smiled. “We’re going to find her, Z. Mom’s lost, and we’re going to find her.”
Lost…Zadie thought that was a charitable characterization of their mother’s absence. Even if that was true, even if she had momentarily forgotten where she was as she had that night on the cliff, why didn’t she return the moment she came to? Why didn’t she ask for help? Something didn’t add up.
“I hope you’re right,” Zadie said finally.