Zadie was moments away from leaving the party before the cake was even served when the premonition finally lifted, one word at a time:birds… of… full… is… sky… the…Each one evaporating like mist into the blue sky.
Finn tried to move but discovered that she was frozen in place. The only muscle she could feel was her heart thumping against the wall of her chest, and the familiar feeling that had comforted her only moments before had taken on a wistfulness that made her want to cry. She searched the faces of her guests. Did the memory belong to one of them? If so, she saw no sign of it in their smiling faces.
One by one, the sounds of the party began to peel away until all that was left was the rhythm of Finn’s own breath. Then a voice cut through the silence. A woman’s voice. Humming a song she recognized.
A song about a bird.
No one else saw it when it happened, but Zadie did: Finn’s unfixed gaze, the subtle clenching of her jaw, the twitch in her right index finger. She’d seen her sister like this before, but not since she was a kid, back when she had less control over her gift. Zadie had to get to her sister before someone noticed and decided she was having a seizure.
“Excuse me,” she said to no one in particular as she squeezed through the crowd. Jostled strangers flashed her dirty looks as their lemonades sloshed over the lips of their plastic cups, but Zadie plowed ahead. Her progress was stalled, however, when she ran into the railing that separated the upper and lower levels of the deck. Zadie looked down and realized there was no way of getting down to the first level from where she was without climbing on someone’s shoulders.
She turned her attention back to Finn and saw her sway on her feet. But rather than fall, her sister pivoted sharply on her heels and broke into a sprint that sent her flying down the deck stairs and along the brick path that led to the rhododendron garden. While Kathy and the guests stared after her in stunned silence, Zadie wasted no time in squeezing back through the crowd toward the pavilion. When she came out the other side, she started running. It had been years since she’d last been to the zoological gardens with her mom and sister, but she still knew the place by heart. And she was pretty sure she knew where Finn was headed.
THREETWELVE MONTHS
(UNTILNORAWILDER’S DISAPPEARANCE)
“That’s because I have eyes in the back of my head.” Nora had her back turned to the girls, her hands submerged in soapy water, blindly feeling the bottom of the apron sink for forks like a diver searching for sunken treasure. Being careful not to move her head too much, she sneaked a peek at Finn’s skeptical reflection in the kitchen window. Her daughter was so cute when she was suspicious.
“You haven’t touched your potatoes,” Nora said without turning around.
Finn looked down at her plate. It was true. She had eaten her chicken and broccoli, but the lump of mashed potatoes still sat there like a half-melted snowman.
“She’s messing with us,” Zadie said, stealing a bite of Finn’s potatoes. “If she really had eyes in the back of her head, she’d see this.” Zadie strategically held up her middle finger in what she guessed was her mom’s blind spot.
“I don’t need to see behind me to know what you’re doing right now,” Nora said, resisting the urge to flip a bird back at Zadie. Finn was still too young to see that side of her yet, but she was looking forward to the day when her almost-teenager dropped her first f-bomb. When a seven-year-old Zadie came home from school one day and told her that baths were “bullshit,” she’d laughed so hard she’d cried.
“If you have eyes back there, then why don’t your hats have holes in them?” Finn smiled smugly and crossed her arms.
“That’s a great point, Noodle. Ishouldcut holes in them. Now, are you going to eat those potatoes or not?”
“Do I have to?” Finn asked.
This was the first Nora had heard of Finn’s not liking potatoes. It was the first she’d heard ofanyonenot liking potatoes. “No, you don’t have to, but if you’re not going to eat them, will you scrape them into the trash?”
Finn hopped to her feet and carried her plate to the trash can, but instead of throwing away her potatoes, she held her body stiff the way people do right before they sneeze. Nora took note of her stillness and asked, “What is it this time?”
“Coyotes.”
Zadie piped up. “Again?”
A second later, Finn’s body relaxed and she pushed potato into the trash can with her knife. “Yeah. It’s okay, though. I like coyotes.”
There was a pack of coyotes that lived in their neighborhood. Nora would sometimes hear them yipping in the evenings, but tonight all she could hear were crickets. Nora was grateful that Finn’s echoes—as they’d come to call them—didn’t seem to bother her. She was already an exceptionally empathetic person, so Nora worried that taking on the burden of other peoples’ memories would be too much for her, but so far her daughter had handled it with grace.
“Finn, hand me your plate and go brush your teeth, please.” As usual, Finn did as she was told and padded down the hallway to the bathroom. While Nora was wiping her wet hands on a dish towel, she felt her seventeen-year-old staring at her. She turned around and saw the same leery expression on Zadie’s face that she’d caught glimpses of all week. Tonight, however, Zadie didn’t try to sneak it away. She wanted Nora to see it.
“What is it, Zadie? I know something’s up.”
Zadie paused, the bated breath before a cork is popped. “Why won’t you tell us what your gift is?”
“I just did,” Nora replied glibly.
Zadie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a kid. You can’t fool me.”
She was right. Her daughter was no fool. She was sharp and cunning and rigged with booby traps.
“We’ve been over this. I don’t have a gift.” It felt like the truth. At least, from what she could remember, and there was a lot about her life that she did not remember.