Finn wasn’t sure where to begin. This particular memory of her mother’s was different from the others. It had a sense of urgency to it. Her heart was still racing from the moment she—or rather, Nora—had stolen that motorcycle.
The echo had begun in the very parking lot they were standing in. The bass from the music playing inside the bar thrummed like a beehive. Finn/Nora had a set of keys in her hand that didn’t belong to her, keys she’d sweet-talked a deliriously drunk man into giving her so he wouldn’t try to drive home. She may have been stealing his bike, but she might have also saved his life. At least that’s what she told herself when she climbed on and revved up the engine.
Desperate times…She knew there was a second half to the saying, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Her mind was spotty. One second she was there and the next—well, she wasn’t sure where she went in between. The only thing that grounded her was an unflinching instinct telling her togo, go, go.Go where? Finn/Nora couldn’t remember what had happened to her car. This bike was the only thing that could get her back on the highway, and sheneededto be back on the highway before it was too late.It’s getting worse.
When she was finished recounting the echo, Finn looked up at her sister. “Then I heard you calling my name.” She could still feel the phantom tremor of the bike’s engine coursing through hermuscles. She looked back at the motorcycle. In the side-view mirror, Nora peered back at her. Finn blinked and her mom’s face was replaced with her own reflection. “I—Momwas scared. Like she was running from something.”
“What would she be running from?” Nora wasn’t perfect, but as far as Zadie knew, she hadn’t been involved in anything particularly nefarious.
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, she had to get out of there quick.”
Zadie sighed heavily. “You scared the crap out of me, Finn. Sneaking out, jumping on a stranger’s motorcycle… You could have gotten hurt. Maybe you should try to cool it on the echoes for a while.”
Finn shook her head defiantly. “No way. It’s the best chance we have of finding—”
Just then two bikers exited the bar. Zadie and Finn halted their conversation and moved aside to let them pass. Finn held her breath, hoping that the one whose bike she’d sat on didn’t notice the smudges she’d left on the handlebars.
Once the bikers had peeled out onto the highway, Finn continued, “I’ll be more careful, okay? I promise.”
“No more running away?”
Finn almost corrected her but decided against it. She hadn’t been aware that she’d left the bar. But if she admitted to Zadie how little control she’d had in that moment, her sister would probably try to pull the plug on the whole operation. “No more running away.” It was a promise Finn knew in her heart she was likely to break.
FOURTEENONE MONTH
(UNTILNORAWILDER’S DISAPPEARANCE)
“If anyone tries to hassle you, you just tell them you’re with Nora Wilder. And if they still hassle you”—Nora snapped her right knee toward her chest like a drum major—“kick ’em in the balls.”
“Mom, I’ll be fine,” Zadie insisted, although her gaze drifted nervously across the room of strange men with their full beards and half-full pint glasses. This was the first time Zadie had been to see her mom perform at Hound Dog’s open mic night. Finn was at a sleepover, and rather than make Zadie sit at home alone, Nora had offered to take her along. She was friends with the doorman, so he had let Zadie through on Nora’s word that she was twenty-one, even though that particular milestone was still three years away—three years that felt like a hundred in the dim bar that smelled like cigarettes and simmered with intoxicated laughter.
“I know you’ll be fine,” Nora said. “You always are.” There was a tinge of melancholy in her voice.
Zadie flashed the stamp on the back of her hand. “If I’m supposed to be twenty-one, does that mean I get to drink?”
“Nice try,” Nora said, playfully pinching her daughter’s nose between her thumb and forefinger. She flagged down the bartender and pointed to Zadie. “She’ll have a Coke.” The bartender nodded and Nora placed two dollar bills on the counter.
“I’m on next,” she said, waving toward the stage, where a wiryyoung man with an incongruous mustache was playing guitar. “Stay here. I’ll come find you after.”
“Good luck,” Zadie said.
Nora winked at her daughter and disappeared into the crowd.
A few minutes later, the emcee took the stage. “Most of you know our next act. She’s the down-home rocker who lives up to her last name.” Several whistles pierced Zadie’s ears. She knew her mom was popular, but at Hound Dog’s she was practically a celebrity. “Performing ‘Edge of Seventeen,’ please, give a big round of applause for Nora Wilder!”
As prompted, the crowd erupted in cheers and applause. The emcee returned the mic to its stand and walked off stage left. Zadie looked stage right at the glittering emerald curtain that her mom would ostensibly emerge from in her four-inch leather boots and Van Halen T-shirt that she had artfully torn and safety-pinned back together.
Ten seconds went by and the curtain still hadn’t stirred. The cheers were slowly replaced with people murmuring,Where is she?Zadie wondered the same thing. She slid halfway off her stool, planting one foot on the floor, debating whether to go back behind the curtain herself and look for her. She spotted the emcee. Someone was whispering in his ear. He nodded and climbed back onto the stage. “Looks like Nora has stepped out for a sec.” The crowd groaned in disappointment. “While we wait for her, let’s welcome our next act…”
Zadie stopped listening as a seed of worry sprouted inside her. Had her mom’s friends ever witnessed her disappearing act? Had they covered for her before? Based on the emcee’s reaction, she guessed not.It’s probably nothing,Zadie told herself. And again,It’s probably nothing.She repeated the phrase in her head throughout the entire next act, the words marching to the rhythm of “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles.
When the song was over, another performer who was not her mother took the stage. Then another. Twenty minutes went by. Zadie nervously stirred the ice in her empty glass with a straw, looking for her mom in the throng of neon-irradiated faces. She opened herphone to the ten unanswered texts she’d sent Nora and considered sending another. Instead, she shoved the phone into her pocket, climbed off the stool, and weaved through the crowd to the edge of the stage, where the emcee was standing, smoking a cigarette.
“Hi,” Zadie started nervously. The emcee looked down at her without smiling. “Umm, I was wondering… Do you know where Nora went?”
“She bailed,” he said gruffly. “One of our guys saw her sneak out the back.”
“Oh.”