“I’m not sure. I just saw bits and pieces. There was a car. The headlight on Mom’s bike wasn’t working, so I don’t think they saw her.”
“Was she hurt?”
“I don’t know, maybe… She was conscious, at least.” Finn felt less assured saying the words out loud. Her mom had been conscious, yes, but for how long? She could have passed out only to wake up days later in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of her arms and nose. But it wasn’t just the accident that was making her uneasy; it was the dull ache in her sternum, the aftershock of the bone-quaking pain that had driven her mother in front of oncoming traffic. It felt like someone had strapped a bomb to her chest, and all that was left to do was count down the minutes until it went off.
“Remember how I said I thought her gift was making her lose time?” Finn began. Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, but her tongue felt like sandpaper. “Well, that wasn’t the only thing happening to her. She was in pain. It was horrible. It felt like I was being ripped in half.”
“Her gift was causing her pain?”
“That’s just it. I don’t think it was. I think she was fighting against it. She had to be somewhere. Whatever it was, it couldn’t wait.”
Zadie looked out at the road riddled with poorly patched potholes. “Is that where it happened? The accident?”
Finn imagined her mother in slow motion, soaring through the air as her bike skittered into the grassy ditch. “I think so, yeah.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“I saw a license plate. I think it was the car’s.”
“Do you remember what it said?”
“I think so. Give me a pen.”
Zadie pulled a pen and a crumpled napkin out of her purse and handed them to Finn. When she had finished writing, she handed them back to her sister and said, “Washington plates.” Had they been detectives, this would have been a clue, but as neither of them had any law enforcement experience or connections, it was just a meaningless assortment of letters and numbers.
“What’s that?” Joel appeared beside them, chewing on a biscuit.
“License plate,” Zadie answered.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know.”
Joel didn’t ask how they got it or why. “Do youwantto know?”
Finn perked up. “Why? Do you know someone?”
“One of my buddies works for the DMV. I bet he’d help you out.”
“Really?”
Zadie looked nervous. “I don’t know…”
“He owes me a favor,” Joel continued. “It would probably only take him a few seconds to look it up.”
“Sure, but we’d probably be breaking a shit-ton of laws.”
“Then we break the law,” said Finn matter-of-factly.
Zadie was taken aback by her sister’s nonchalance. “We could go to prison!”
“We have to find her, Zadie,” Finn said, urgency creeping into her voice. “She could be hurt, or—” She let the end of her thought hang, fearing that finishing it would make it true. Her ribs still ached. She wondered fleetingly if she had fractured a bone when she’d fallen but even as she considered if she should see a doctor, she knew nothing would show up on the X-ray. Some aches were deeper than bone.
Zadie finally capitulated. “All right. Joel, call your friend.”
Ten minutes later, they had a name and an address:
VAN HOUTEN, MYRON