“The tree the girls were climbing yesterday… where is it?”
Myron tensed and closed the door behind him. “Not far. About a third of a mile up the hill. Why?”
“I think that might be where Finn went. I hate to ask, but with the storm—”
Myron waved her off. “I’ll grab us some rain gear.”
The trail was slick. Even in hiking boots, Zadie could feel her feet slipping on the mossy rocks. Glassy pearls of water collected on her jacket sleeve, something between rain and mist that both fell and floated like the air behind a waterfall. Despite the conditions, it took Myron, Joel, and Zadie only ten minutes to reach the pine tree Finn had described. But Finn was nowhere in sight.
Zadie turned to Myron with a look of contrition. “Sorry. I thought for sure she’d be here.”
“That’s okay,” he answered, distracted by the dozens of holes that encircled a giant maple tree. Zadie noticed them, too. They were similar to the holes she’d seen the girls standing in when they’d first arrived. Then Zadie spotted a pair of boots sitting at the foot of the same tree. “Shit.” She ran over to them. “These are hers.” Inside one of the boots, Zadie found her sister’s phone.
“Why would she leave her boots behind?” Joel asked. Zadie had seen Finn running around on grass and sand and pavement in her bare feet, but even she would never trek through the deep woods without proper foot protection. It had to be an echo.
Myron pushed back the hood of his jacket and crouched down to look at one of the holes. The rain had started to turn them into puddles. He flicked the muddy water, and as he did, his fingers brushed up against something hard.
“Do you recognize this?” Myron held up something for Zadie to see. It was the painted rock her sister had been carrying everywhere.
“Yeah,” she said, taking it from him. “She must have dropped it.”
Something else caught Myron’s eye. He stood and walked to the edge of the clearing. “I see a couple of prints here. Looks like she wandered into the woods. Why do you think she’d do that?”
The question was directed at Zadie. If she told Myron that she was almost certain that an echo was the cause of Finn’s disappearance, that would mean admitting to both him and Joel that her sister had run off before. Thankfully, it was Joel who responded first. “Do you think it has to do with her… thing?”
“Her echoes? I guess it’s possible.” Zadie could feel her heartpounding through her jacket. Rain droplets began collecting in the folds, creating rivulets down her sleeves that looked like lightning bolts. “We have to find her.”
Myron stood up abruptly. “My satellite GPS is in my car. Let’s head back to the house and grab it along with anything else we might need. I doubt she got far, but we should be prepared in case.”
Zadie felt both fear and relief simultaneously. Fear that her sister was possibly lost, and relief that someone else was taking charge of the situation. Joel placed a reassuring hand on her back. “We’ll find her, okay?” Myron looked less certain but nodded in agreement.
When they arrived back at the house, Rowan was waiting for them on the front porch. She jumped off the swing as soon as she saw them approaching. “You didn’t find her?”
Myron shook his head and opened the door to his truck. “She wandered off the trail. We’re going to search the woods.”
“I’m coming,” she said without hesitation.
He didn’t hesitate, either. “No, you’re not.”
“Please? This is my fault. I’m the reason she went up there in the first place.”
He leaned into the cab of the truck and opened the glove compartment. “You need to stay here and watch your sisters.”
“They don’t need me to—”
Myron turned and said directly, “I’m not asking.”
Rowan gave her dad a hard stare, then marched back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Myron rejoined Zadie and Joel, GPS in hand. “Let’s get moving. She can’t have wandered far. We just have to put ourselves in her shoes.”
Zadie hoped he was right, but her instincts were telling her otherwise. If an echo was responsible for her disappearance, then the thing they were looking for wasn’t really Finn. It was a memory.
TWENTY-TWONOT THE SAME ZADIE
Finn was running.Norawas running.
She had no car. No bike. Just legs. She ran like her ancestors did before the invention of the wheel.