They never climbed high enough to escape the unsettled pockets of air.

“This sucks,” Maggie told her.

“We’ll be there soon.” Serena changed the subject. “What’s the word on adopting a kid?”

Maggie exhaled loudly through her nose. “No one is very encouraging. Single Chinese chick cops need not apply.”

“You won’t know until you try.”

Maggie peeled her fingers off the armrest long enough to push her black bangs out of her eyes. “It’s not just that. I’m not sure I’m up to the job of raising a kid by myself. I don’t know if it would be fair to a kid. Plus, this thing with Mary Biggs really shook me up. Her parents threw everything into that girl. I don’t know if I’m ready to love anyone that much. I’m not ready to risk what it would do to me if something happened.”

“You can ‘what if’ yourself out of anything,” Serena said.

“Yeah, I know. Do you and Stride ever talk about it?”

“I can’t have kids.”

“I mean adoption.”

“I think the window has closed,” Serena said. “I grew up knowing my insides were messed up, so I never really developed the kid gene. Jonny says he’s too old. I don’t see it happening.”

“Do you think you’re missing something?”

“Sometimes.”

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Maggie said.

“Then you should do it.”

The plane lurched as they descended into Fargo. On the ground, they rented a car and headed south out of the airport, past the university and through the straight, tree-lined neighborhood streets toward downtown. They parked near the main library, which was located within a block of the curvy ribbon of the Red River, which served as the border between North Dakota and Minnesota and separated Fargo from its Minnesota twin, the city of Moorhead.

Inside the library, Serena asked at the help desk for Fargo phone books from the early 1970s. Soon after, the librarian deposited a stack of AT&T directories at the desk where the two women were waiting. The books smelled faintly of mildew. Maggie grabbed the volume for 1972 and groaned when she turned to the M pages.

“There are dozens of Mathisens in here,” she said. “This place is like Little Norway.”

“Do we know the first names of Finn’s parents?” Serena asked.

“Ole and Lena?”

“Yah sure. Dat’s funny. God, I’m actually becoming a Minnesotan.” Serena peered over Maggie’s shoulder at the list. “Most of these people are probably dead or gone.”

“I’ll call the Wisconsin DMV,” Maggie said. “If we can get Finn’s birth date from his driver’s license, then we can look up his birth announcement in the local paper. That way we can get his parents’ names.”

“Clever.”

Maggie pulled out her cell phone and dialed the DMV number from her directory. “I’m on hold,” she said. She hummed for a moment and then added, “So Ole brings home a vibrator for Lena on her birthday. And Lena goes, Vat’s dis for? So Ole says, Vell, you stick dis between yer legs and use it to tickle your puddin’. And Lena goes, Oh, dat’s great, I already have somethin’ like dat. Is dis thing called Sven, too?”