Rowan examined the stone in her cupped hand. “You went to the coast?”
“It’s not the coast. It’s a volcano.”
Rowan turned the rock a hundred and eighty degrees. “Ohhhh. Right. I see it now,” she said, then passed it back up to Finn.
Finn rotated the rock until it was upside down. Sure enough, it looked like a bird’s-eye view of a craggy coastline. Finn studied the wisp of white paint that had once looked like smoke and now looked like the frothy curl of a wave. Then, before she had time to properly brace herself, she heard a telltale ringing in her ears…
It was her favorite spot. A knobby old pine.
Its bark scratched her bare thighs.
Like saying grace, her fingers threaded together, resting on top of a pumpkin-round belly.
In the branches of a giant maple, two young girls were climbing.Hergirls.
“Too high!” Her voice seemed to echo.
The oldest stopped and said something to the youngest. The youngest clung sloth-like to a branch, hair hanging like Spanish moss.
The sky was so bright and clear it seemed to chime.
Sun. Water. Air. Love.
Everything Amy needed to live.
A tap on her arm like a butterfly landing. A woman, face green with bruises, sat beside her.
She said the wordsbeautifulandfamily.She was talking about hers.
The woman called herself Wren. Amy didn’t think it was her real name.
I could sit here forever,Amy said.Watching them.
Her girls. Her audacious, smart, wild girls.
When Finn opened her eyes, she was facedown. Shehadbeen in the tree, and now she was on the ground.
“Finn!” Someone was shouting. Finn rolled onto her back and looked up to see Rowan, Hazel, and Juniper hovering over her. Juniper gave her a light slap on the cheek, a move she’d probably learned from cartoons. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Finn groaned, sitting upright. “Just another echo.”
Rowan helped her to her feet. “What was this one about?”
Finn looked to her left. Thirty feet away, in the middle of the clearing, stood a crooked old pine. Its trunk was squat and gnarled and stooped to one side; its limbs bowed chivalrously low to the ground, bristly clumps of needles clinging to their tips. It wasn’t a pretty tree, but it looked to Finn like the perfect tree to sit on and watch your children play. “Try that one,” she said, nodding in the pine’s direction.
Rowan followed Finn’s gaze to the twisted pine. “Really? It looks half-dead.”
“Just try it.”
Juniper offered the spade to her older sister, who took it with a shrug. She stopped a few feet from the crooked tree and began to dig while the others watched. When the hole was deep enough, she gave a cursory glance over her shoulder, then stepped into the soil and slid into a trance.
Seconds passed. Then minutes. After five or so, Juniper started to squirm. “She’s been in there a long time.” While they debated whether to wake her, Rowan abruptly stumbled backward, nearly losing her balance. When she turned around, she appeared to be in shock. “What happened?” Juniper blurted.
Rowan gazed out at the pock-holed clearing, her words faltering. “She—she said I made a mess of the grass.” Her sisters gaped back at her, speechless, then Juniper let out a part gasp, part sob, ran to the trunk of the pine tree, and pulled it into a bear hug. Hazel was slower to react, but even she started to tear up. “You’re serious?” she asked.
A smile broke over Rowan’s face like a wave. “I’m serious.”
“What… How…”