Suddenly she wasn’t so sure that she’d done the right thing. She could have waited until morning, told her foster parents to their faces, not skip out of town in the middle of the night. Don’t worry. I didn’t run away! she’d written in her note. Finn just now realized how flippant those words were, as if she’d anticipated Steve’s pain and had crudely placed an exclamation point beside it.

She unlocked her phone and opened the text app. SORRY ABOUT THE NOTE, she typed. I’LL CALL YOU WHEN WE ARRIVE. It was a soft lie. She and Zadie would arrive, just not at the destination she had given Kathy “in case of emergencies.” She would call them from her fictional room overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, and they would believe her because she had never given them a reason not to trust her word. I’ll just tell them I have my toes in the sand, she decided as she gazed out at the burnished landscape. For all she knew, she could be looking at the same sand that—hundreds of miles southeast—was tangled with seaweed and gull feathers. Maybe, the beach was simply one edge of the desert, and she was standing on the other end.

To assuage her guilt, Finn reminded herself why she was there. Mom is missing, and I can find her. It was then that the weight of the commitment she’d made truly hit her. Their success—or failure—hinged on her. She would have to harness her ability in a way she never had before, not simply waiting for memories to come to her, but seeking them out. She would have to learn to hunt with a spear, not a trap.

Finn inhaled until her lungs trembled with fullness, closed her eyes, and cast her mind out like a net. She could feel memories all around her, floating like pollen; memories about flat tires and jumped batteries, counting change on a car hood, and collect calls that said “come home” on the other end of the line. They were all stories about people on a journey, just like hers.

Then she sensed one memory that seemed to have a stronger presence than the others. She could feel it, like a vibration in her chest. Mom, is that you? Finn’s question hung in the air, unanswered. She tethered her mind to the memory, just as she had done all those times at the Fro-Yodel, and tried to reel it in. After several seconds of intense concentration, she could feel the memory start to yield to her. A moment later, it docked.

Finn’s ears filled with a dull roar. It sounds mechanical, she thought. Like an engine. She concentrated harder. The sound sharpened.