She’d stayed in Texas longer than she should have. Most birds nest for a few months, then return home, but Nora wasn’t a bird. She couldn’t push her child out of a tree and watch it fall, hoping that its fledgling wings would keep it aloft. She’d raised her kids for as long as she could before it was finally her, not her daughters, who was forced into flight.

When she’d arrived back in Earnest—even as she’d hugged her sister for the first time in almost twenty years—she’d felt something was missing. But it seemed the harder she tried to remember, the easier it was to forget.

Nora spent the next five years searching for anything that would make her feel whole. Many days she would wander off into the woods while Jenna was at work and weave branches together without thinking about why she was doing it or for whom. It was the only thing that distracted her from the alarming emptiness in her heart.

Nora said she could finally see how these two seemingly separate lives fit together. She could see the jagged lines where one ended and the other began, and the remaining holes in her memory began to fill in. What she saw made her want to cry.

When she was finished, Finn exhaled. Her mom’s fascination with birds had taken on a whole new significance. “You migrated?”

Nora appeared equally bemused by the revelation. “It’s the only way I know how to explain it. I felt this … pull. I’ve felt it my whole life. I just never knew what it was. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t understand it myself, and I didn’t want to scare you guys.”

Finn had felt the same pull. It had driven her into the wilderness barefoot and to the nest their mother had built on the ocean cliffs. She’d felt something like it as she sped down the highway on the back of a motorcycle. “Is that why you got in the accident?”

“The accident?” Nora’s face went blank for a moment. “Oh, yeah. The motorcycle. I was trying to get back to you guys.”

“So you did remember us?”

“Sometimes I would get these flashes.” Nora’s eyes glistened like melting ice. “Most of the time, I had no idea who you were, but that night, something clicked. I knew I had only a small window before I forgot you again.”

“So you tried to get home.”

“I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“Because it hurt too much.” Finn touched her ribs.

“You felt that?” Nora looked mildly stunned. “What else did you feel?”