Zadie pushed the red button and the recorder began to softly whir. Then, as if on cue, the coyote lifted its chin toward the sky and a series of yips and howls echoed throughout the valley. Zadie shivered. It was the first time she remembered hearing something beautiful that also made her feel like crying.

Moments later, the coyote bowed to its audience and slipped behind the rocks. “Whoa,” Zadie whispered. “That was awesome.” She looked for the lady who had pointed the coyote out to them, but all she saw was an empty chair.

When Zadie and Finn arrived back at their campsite, they had expected to find their mom tending a roaring fire and, in deference to their noisy bellies, cooking something over said fire. However, what they found was just the opposite. The camp was dark and Nora was nowhere to be found.

“Mom?” Finn called. There was no answer.

Zadie felt her heart plummet into her stomach as Finn unzipped the tent and stuck her head inside. “She’s not in here,” she said, then backed out on her hands and knees and added, “There’s duct tape on the floor.”

Zadie looked inside the tent. Sure enough, there was an X of duct tape in the middle of the tent floor. “Mom must have fixed a hole.”

“Where do you think she went?” There was an uneasiness in her little sister’s voice that Zadie wasn’t used to hearing.

“She’s gotta be around here somewhere.” Thankfully, the car was still where their mom had parked it hours earlier, so she couldn’t have gone far. Zadie had to decide if they should go looking for her and risk getting lost in the desert at night or stay put and hope she came back. She wasn’t particularly wild about either option, but the thought of stumbling through a moonless desert, unable to see any scorpions and snakes that might be hiding in the dark, made her blood run cold. “She’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”

“I want to play her the coyote,” Finn said, clutching the recorder to her chest like a security blanket.

“Do you want to listen to it now?” It was the only thing Zadie could think to do that might distract her.

“Okay.” The girls sat down on the log bench next to the firepit.

But before they could rewind the tape, a voice behind them said, “Get anything good?”

“Mom!” Finn spun around to face Nora. She was wearing a headlamp and her arms were heavy with firewood. “Where were you?”

Nora dumped the logs out of her arms and into the firepit. “Can’t eat hot dogs without a fire.”

Zadie’s shoulders relaxed as the scorpions in her mind retreated back into their holes. False alarm, she thought, although something in her gut still wasn’t sitting right.