“But what about your mom?” he asked as he bent over to pick up the change he’d dropped. “You said you thought she might be here.”
“She’s not,” Finn said, then turned and started back down the trail from which they’d come.If not here, then where?She still had the painted rock in her hand. It was probably useless now. They couldn’t visit every volcano in the country in hopes that their mom had once been there. That could take months. There was no way Steve and Kathy would let her be gone for that long. Finn considered tossing the rock into the volcanic wasteland to be consumed by the next lava flow, but she didn’t. She dropped it into the pocket of her hiking pants and zipped it closed. It was still a piece of her mom’s story, one she couldn’t let go of just yet.
If Mount Ire was a memory desert, then the American Robin Diner was a rainforest. The moment they stepped through the door, Finn could hardly think as her brain cleaned up decades-old coffee spills, thumbed through sticky menus, and picked up crayons that had been tossed on the floor by bored toddlers. Gravy that was too runny, eggs that had been overcooked, ketchup that needed to be bludgeoned before it could be dispensed onto a basket of fries: allthese things had been experienced within the walls of this greasy spoon.
Finn, Zadie, and Joel were seated in a booth in the former smoking section of the restaurant. Finn deduced this from a particularly aggressive echo that smelled like a cigarette had been put out inside her nostril. She kept all of this to herself, of course, until Joel left the table to use the restroom and she finally let herself sneeze.
“Smoking section?” Zadie said, not looking up from her menu.
“Yup.”
“Do you want to move tables?”
“Nah. It’s going away already.” She smiled distractedly.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Today was a bust. I figured you’d be disappointed.”
“I am disappointed.”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m not giving up.”
“Okay.”
The sisters watched each other, unblinking, for a few moments.
“Do you know what you’re getting?” Finn said finally.
“Chicken-fried steak. You?”
“I’m gonna see what’s good here.”
Zadie flashed her a warning look. “Joel’s gonna be back any second.”
“I’m having a crappy day. The last thing I want is a bad lunch, too.”
“Ugh. Fine. But be quick.”
Finn relaxed her body and followed a memory that smelled like maple syrup.
Zadie was now alone at the table. She held her breath, hoping no one would notice her sister’s glassy expression.
Unfortunately for her, Joel did. “What’s wrong with Finn?”
Zadie jumped and looked over her shoulder to find him standing behind her. “Uh. Nothing. She’s fine,” she stammered. “Just meditating, again. It’s weird-looking, I know. She gets really into it.”
Joel wasn’t buying it. “I don’t think meditation means what you think it means.” He sat down next to Zadie and waved a hand in front of Finn’s face, but she didn’t so much as blink. Joel’s face turned suddenly serious. It was an expression Zadie had seen on him on only two, maybe three occasions in all the time she’d known him. “I think she’s having a seizure.”
“It’s not a seizure.”
“Yes, it is. My cousin used to have these all the time. He didn’t shake or anything. He just looked like a zombie.”
“It’s not that.”