“Yeah.” Finn bounced a little with each step. She clearly wished they were moving faster, but she kept to Zadie’s pace. “Something was wrong. She seemed … lost.”

It appeared that Finn might have witnessed secondhand what Zadie had experienced firsthand years ago. It made her sad to see the concern in her sister’s eyes. She had tried to shield her from it, but Finn was almost an adult now. Maybe it was better that she knew. “Yeah, I remember Mom being kind of out of it sometimes.”

“Out of it? How?”

As Zadie remembered her mother teetering on the cliff’s edge like a tightrope walker about to step onto the wire, she had a sudden change of heart. She didn’t want to be the one to tell her sister. If Finn found out on her own, fine. She would deal with it then, but if she confessed now, Finn would know she’d kept this from her for the past six years.

“Oh, umm … she would just kind of stare off into nowhere, that kind of thing.”

“Like she forgot where she was?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Finn’s sun hat cast webbed shadows on her face, making her expression all the more inscrutable. “I wish you could feel it, too,” she said. “I’m not just remembering something that happened to her. It’s like I’m living it right there in that moment. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

“Is it scary? To be someone else?”

“Not scary, just … weird. In a good way.” Finn turned to her sister and smiled. “We’re going to find her, Z. Mom’s lost, and we’re going to find her.”

Lost … Zadie thought that was a charitable characterization of their mother’s absence. Even if that was true, even if she had momentarily forgotten where she was as she had that night on the cliff, why didn’t she return the moment she came to? Why didn’t she ask for help? Something didn’t add up.

“I hope you’re right,” Zadie said finally.

For several minutes they walked in silence past campsites populated by squealing kids and adults too tired to chase them. A short-haired dog lying in the shade lifted its head to watch them pass and thumped its tail once in greeting.

“We’re almost there.” Finn grabbed her sister’s hand. “Come on. I want to introduce you to my friends.”

How long had Zadie slept for? Finn had always made friends easily, but this was a record, even for her.

“You’ll like them. They’re just like us.”

“Like us how?”

Finn let the question dangle as she led them around a corner and toward the service road Zadie had explored the night before. Zadie stopped.

Her sister looked at her curiously. “Something wrong?”