Overhead, the starlings’ cries surged like professional mourners hired for a funeral. She’s not dead! Zadie screamed inside her head. Not yet.

Zadie cupped her sister’s cheeks in her trembling hands. “Finn, I know you’re in there.”

The birds in her eyes continued to circle.

“Finn, I’m sorry. All that shit I said … I was wrong.” Zadie could feel hot tears welling in her eyes. “You didn’t leave me. How could you? You were a kid. I never should have put that on you.” It suddenly occurred to Zadie that Finn was now the same age she was when their mom had vanished. If Finn had been in her position, she never would have made the same mistake. She would have been better than that.

“But listen to me, okay?” One of Zadie’s tears landed on Finn’s cheek, and it looked for a moment like they were crying together. “You may not have left me then, but you can’t leave now. Not when I just got you back. Not when we just got Mom back.”

Nora had been watching her daughters from the entrance of the nest dispassionately, as one would watch the last act of a play without having seen the first four. She knew none of the characters, had no idea as to what was at stake. She just knew that she was supposed to be feeling something, something she couldn’t see from the audience.

Nora stepped forward. It was the first step she had taken on her own in four months. The women kneeling on the ground were too engrossed in the scene to see her coming. It wasn’t until she was practically hovering over them that they noticed.

“Nora?” The oldest of the three women jumped to her feet and offered her a hand. The younger woman, the one who had been crying, gazed up at her with round wet eyes like a child’s. And in that moment, she felt something. What exactly, she wasn’t sure.

Then her gaze landed on the woman lying on the ground. She was barely more than a child herself, a crown of curls splayed out on the green grass. There was something familiar about her. There was something familiar about all of them.

Nora lowered slowly to her knees. The sad woman said something to her, then threaded Nora’s fingers through the injured girl’s. They were holding hands now, her and this stranger. The sad woman cried and the starlings wailed and Nora wondered what it all meant. That is, until one word pierced through the noise: “Mom?”

Mom. The something inside her made a sound like birdsong.

At first Finn thought she was looking into a mirror, but when she brought her hand to her cheek and the reflection did not, the reality of what she was seeing began to dawn on her. “Mom?”