They’d said, At least you have a sister.

And when she told Dustin that she felt like Finn was slipping away, he just shrugged and said, “At least you have me.” That was the moment she knew she had to end things with him: because his expression of commitment, albeit flippant, was not enough to console her, and never could be.

Dustin’s cat, Gus, rubbed up against her leg. She gave him one last scratch under the chin before pulling Dustin’s house key off her key ring and setting it on the novelty notepad on the foyer table. She paused for a moment and wondered if she should leave him a note. She could think of only one thing she wanted to say to him, but that was too important to scribble on a piece of paper shaped like a Space Invader. She would tell him in person, but not today. Today she had to disappear.

Finn Wilder donned her new sun hat as she stepped barefoot into the soft spring grass. She loved being barefoot so much that she regularly left the house without shoes, even in the blazing Texas summers that baked the concrete and turned lawns to straw. Her foster dad, Steve, joked that the soles of her feet were thicker than his beagle, Milly’s, paws. Finn tested this theory once by walking Milly barefoot down the gravel driveway that led from the house to the barn. When Finn limped back into the house five minutes later, Steve chuckled and said, “I stand corrected.”

Finn jogged across the backyard, keeping one hand on her head to prevent her hat from flying off. Milly followed closely on her heels, nearly running into Finn as she came to an abrupt stop next to the bird loft. She and Steve had spent an entire weekend building it out of scrap wood and chicken wire. As they worked, they drank Crystal Light and listened to music and stopped only long enough to wipe the sweat off their brows with the backs of their arms. It was the kind of project she would have done with her own dad had he stuck around long enough to teach her how to hold a hammer. No, her mom had taught her that. Everything she knew came from her mom.

Finn lifted a bag of birdseed out of a wooden storage bin and opened the miniature screen door. “Here you go, Chris Five. Don’t eat it all at once or you’ll spoil your dinner,” Finn said as she filled the bird’s dish with feed. The white pigeon gawked at her with a vacant expression befitting his brain size, then proceeded to peck away at the mound of multicolored seeds with every intention of cleaning its plate.