“There she is! Finn, come here,” Kathy flagged Finn down as she stepped out onto the deck. Her senses were suddenly flooded: coffee-singed tongues, static cling, itches that could not be scratched because they weren’t really hers. Most of her echoes were mundane like this. Finn guessed that it was because those memories existed on the surface of peoples’ consciousness. They were looser, more likely to flake off and catch wind. The memories that really mattered, they lived somewhere deeper, somewhere that had to be mined to get to them. That’s where the good stuff was: the diamonds and the coal.

Finn shooed away the echoes as though they were a cloud of gnats and smiled back at Kathy. “If I come over there, do I get cake?”

“Better,” Kathy replied. “You get a heartfelt speech.”

Finn performed an exaggerated eye roll for the crowd, then crossed the deck, flip-flops slapping against her heels as she walked. She joined Kathy and Steve by the cake table and braced herself for an embarrassing display of parental affection.

“Finn. It seems like only yesterday—” Kathy’s voice croaked. Finn was surprised. She usually got at least three or four sentences out before the tears started. Kathy took a deep breath and continued, “It seems like only yesterday that you came to live with us. Over these past five years, we’ve seen you grow from a little girl into a woman.”

Kathy’s speech was starting to sound like the puberty talk she’d given Finn in the seventh grade. She shifted uncomfortably and looked away so that she didn’t meet the gaze of any of her friends. Then she felt something inside her shift, like a dip in barometric pressure before a storm.

This echo wasn’t like the ones she was used to. What she was experiencing wasn’t a specific sound or smell or taste. It was a feeling, a feeling of familiarity, like she was remembering something from her own life. Finn needed to know more. As discreetly as she could, she pulled at the thread of the memory. She felt it start to unravel, felt the stitches drop one by one, row by row.

The tractor hadn’t yet come to a complete stop when Zadie jumped out of the hayride. “Somebody’s excited for cake!” Daniel joked.

Zadie laughed halfheartedly. “Yep. Can’t get enough of the stuff.” She didn’t even like cake, but Daniel had given her an out and she wasn’t going to waste it. “See ya later, Dan.”