Finn closed her eyes and another world opened. The memories here were older than any she’d felt before. They yielded like clay between her fingers; drummed like hoofbeats and smelled like smoke. They belonged to people who lived before she was born, before anyone she’d ever known was born. It seemed that the desert had preserved them somehow, kiln-fired them and put them behind glass just for her.

As fascinating as these memories were, none of them belonged to her mother. She drew a deep breath and tried again. Snakebites and sunburns. Hunger. Thirst. The desert had been unforgiving to many. Before this was a place for tourists, it was merely another stop on a long journey west. An old mutt slept in the shade of a wagon. Somewhere a gun fired.

Then a chime. Not a memory, but her phone. She fished it out of her pajama shorts pocket and found a text from Steve:

HOPE YOU’RE HAVING FUN!

Finn was instantly awash with guilt. She hated lying to Steve even more than she did Kathy. He was the more trusting of the two, the one more likely to hand over his car keys and believe Finn when she said she would be “home by ten.” His trust was precious to her, something she wore like a locket around her neck. The thought of his realizing that she had broken that trust—well, she tried not to think about it.

She swallowed her reservations, snapped a picture of her bare feet against the sand below—being careful to frame out the prickly pear to her right—and texted it to her foster dad with the caption: MY FEET ARE!

He texted back: PUT SOME SHOES ON, followed by a winking face emoji.

Finn smiled and replied, WHAT ARE SHOES? She realized then that she was actually a little homesick. She missed Kathy and Steve and Milly, even if the dog did steal her socks out of the laundry hamper and bury them in the yard. She missed them the way anyone would miss their family on a long trip.

She thought back to the month before when the three of them had sat in a TGI Fridays, sharing a basket of buffalo wings. “You’re already part of our family,” Kathy said, her eyes darting nervously to her husband. “But we want to make it official.” With bright orange sauce smeared all over her mouth and fingers, Finn stared back at her foster parents, speechless. She could see them squirm as they waited for her to respond. This must be what it feels like to be publicly proposed to, she thought. Eventually she stammered something like “Wow, you guys. That … that’s awesome.”

Kathy and Steve smiled at each other. “You don’t have to give us an answer now,” Steve continued, shifting restlessly in his seat. “Just … something to think about.”