Finn came to in a dark room. The first thing she felt was a throbbing sensation in her feet. Unable to wiggle her toes, she sat up in bed and looked down at the bandages that bound them together. She had no memory of hurting her feet. In fact, she had no memory at all of the past twelve hours. The last thing she remembered was sitting on Amy’s tree and looking into the mossy branches of the maple.

She’d spent every moment between then and now lost in her mother’s memories. Even now, as she looked down at the body that was ostensibly her own, something didn’t feel right. She felt like she was Nora assuming her daughter’s body, that this was the echo, not the other way around. All of a sudden, the room felt stifling. She needed fresh air.

Zadie lay next to her on the bed, softly snoring. Finn moved slowly, so as not to wake her, and tenderly placed her weight on her feet. She sucked in a quick breath as all the nerves in her feet fired at once. When the worst of the pain had passed, she limped out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the workshop.

There was a light on downstairs. As soon as Finn saw Myron bent over his workbench, she froze for fear that one more step would lead her into another of his heartbreaking memories. He looked up, glasses precariously clinging to the end of his nose. “Hey, there. How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” she said. “My feet hurt.”

“I bet.” Myron pushed his glasses further up his nose. An awkward pause followed as if he was waiting for her to ask him a question he didn’t want to answer.

Finn pointed to the piece of wood on his workbench. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, this?” Myron glanced down at the wood like it was the first time he was seeing it. “Just taking some measurements for a bookshelf I’m building.”

“To sell?”

“Hopefully.”

Finn nodded. She wasn’t really interested in the bookshelf. She was more interested in the man building it. “My mom built a chair once.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It was really wobbly.”

“Chairs are hard to build.”

“I used to sit in it so she wouldn’t feel bad.”

“That was nice of you.”

Finn shrugged and took the last few tentative steps down the staircase. Thankfully, no echoes were waiting for her at the bottom. “It was the least I could do. She was always complimenting every ugly piece of pottery I made in art class.”

Myron chuckled. “I have three homemade ashtrays, and I don’t even smoke. If only my wife had let me homeschool them…”

“Why did you want to homeschool?” It was a prying question, but Finn was genuinely curious.