Finn looked down at her plate. It was true. She had eaten her chicken and broccoli, but the lump of mashed potatoes still sat there like a half-melted snowman.

“She’s messing with us,” Zadie said, stealing a bite of Finn’s potatoes. “If she really had eyes in the back of her head, she’d see this.” Zadie strategically held up her middle finger in what she guessed was her mom’s blind spot.

“I don’t need to see behind me to know what you’re doing right now,” Nora said, resisting the urge to flip a bird back at Zadie. Finn was still too young to see that side of her yet, but she was looking forward to the day when her almost-teenager dropped her first f-bomb. When a seven-year-old Zadie came home from school one day and told her that baths were “bullshit,” she’d laughed so hard she’d cried.

“If you have eyes back there, then why don’t your hats have holes in them?” Finn smiled smugly and crossed her arms.

“That’s a great point, Noodle. I should cut holes in them. Now, are you going to eat those potatoes or not?”

“Do I have to?” Finn asked.

This was the first Nora had heard of Finn’s not liking potatoes. It was the first she’d heard of anyone not liking potatoes. “No, you don’t have to, but if you’re not going to eat them, will you scrape them into the trash?”

Finn hopped to her feet and carried her plate to the trash can, but instead of throwing away her potatoes, she held her body stiff the way people do right before they sneeze. Nora took note of her stillness and asked, “What is it this time?”

“Coyotes.”

Zadie piped up. “Again?”

A second later, Finn’s body relaxed and she pushed potato into the trash can with her knife. “Yeah. It’s okay, though. I like coyotes.”

There was a pack of coyotes that lived in their neighborhood. Nora would sometimes hear them yipping in the evenings, but tonight all she could hear were crickets. Nora was grateful that Finn’s echoes—as they’d come to call them—didn’t seem to bother her. She was already an exceptionally empathetic person, so Nora worried that taking on the burden of other peoples’ memories would be too much for her, but so far her daughter had handled it with grace.

“Finn, hand me your plate and go brush your teeth, please.” As usual, Finn did as she was told and padded down the hallway to the bathroom. While Nora was wiping her wet hands on a dish towel, she felt her seventeen-year-old staring at her. She turned around and saw the same leery expression on Zadie’s face that she’d caught glimpses of all week. Tonight, however, Zadie didn’t try to sneak it away. She wanted Nora to see it.