When (26 page)

Mrs. Duncan moved her chair to hug me tightly while Donny squeezed my hand. This time, my tears were cleansing. When I was done I felt lighter. And prouder of my dad than I could say.

Donny stayed the night, sleeping in Ma’s room. The next morning he had to get back to the city, but before he left, he was nice enough to call and get me out of school
for the day. I still felt shaky and emotional from the day before, and I couldn’t face the accusing stares and comments from the kids and teachers. He promised to call me later in the evening
to check on me, and I knew that Mrs. Duncan would be over at some point, too.

I sat around for a couple of hours, restless and anxious while I channel surfed, but I couldn’t seem to get into anything on TV.

I kept thinking about what Donny had said about my dad. He never turned his back on his brothers in blue, and he had the heart of a hero. I sat for a while in his recliner, staring at his photo.
He hadn’t ignored the call for help when it came. He’d taken action. He’d made the hardest of choices. And I didn’t think he’d approve of the fact that I was sitting
here doing nothing when I could take action, too.

With new resolve, I went upstairs to shower and change, and I even did my hair. Then I went back downstairs, left a note on the back door for Mrs. Duncan in case she came by to check on me, and
headed out.

I rode to the bus stop and took the 110 bus to downtown Grand Haven. After the driver helped me get my bike down from the rack in the front of the bus, I rode to the bureau offices. Locking my
bike to a small tree, I walked inside, but I had to pause on the first floor to collect myself. My heart was hammering, and I was shaking with nerves. I had to take a couple of deep breaths before
I could go up the stairs and into the offices. The receptionist behind the desk was very nice, and after I told her who I wanted to see, she pointed me to a chair and I waited.

After about two minutes, Agent Faraday came to the front, wearing a curious expression. “Madelyn?” he said, looking around the lobby. “Where’s your uncle?”

“He’s not here.”

Faraday frowned. “I can’t talk to you without your uncle present.”

I squared my shoulders. “Yes, you can.”

He squinted at me. “Oh? Are you waiving your right to counsel?”

I shook my head. “I’m not here to talk about the case, Agent Faraday. I’m here to talk about something else.”

Faraday studied me, and I could feel the receptionist sneaking surreptitious glances at us over the top of her computer monitor. “Okay,” he agreed. “Come on back.”

I followed behind him and reminded myself to breathe. I’d asked to speak to Agent Faraday because, between him and Wallace, I thought Faraday might be the more open-minded.

I knew that Donny would be furious with me for coming here, and I also knew that I might be risking my own freedom by entering the lion’s den, but Stubby needed me, and I knew I had to
convince Faraday that I was telling the truth about seeing deathdates. If I could get him to believe me about that, then maybe I could get him to believe me about Stubby. It was a long shot, I
knew, but it was the only thing I could think of that might help my best friend.

Faraday led the way to his office, and we took our seats—him on one side of the desk, me on the other. “You feeling better?” he asked, and I could detect a note of guilt. It
made me feel a little more secure about deciding to ask for him instead of Wallace.

“I’m okay.”

Faraday nodded and leaned back in his chair. I could tell I’d sort of thrown him by coming here. “So what brings you by, Madelyn?”

“Will you do me a favor, Agent Faraday?”

“Depends on what the favor is.”

I sighed wearily. Why were adults so exhausting? “Can you please call me Maddie?”

His eyes narrowed, his guard never really coming down. “I think I can grant that favor,” he said after a moment. “So, what brings you by, Maddie?”

I looked at the mug shots on his wall. The ones I’d written on were still there. “I want you to test me.”

Faraday stopped rocking in his chair, and those eyes narrowed again. “Test you?”

“You don’t believe that I can see what I can see, right?”

Faraday tapped the arm of the chair. “You mean about the deathdates?”

I nodded.

“No,” he said bluntly. “I think you’re full of it.” Glancing over his shoulder to the wall behind him he added, “I think that was a neat trick, though. What I
can’t figure out is if your uncle put you up to it, or if you came up with it on your own.”

I smiled. It was good to have that out in the open. “Okay. You don’t trust me or believe me. Then how about if
you
design the test? That way you’d see I’m telling
the truth.”

“Test you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Faraday snorted. “And how can I test you, Maddie? Until someone dies, there’s no way to prove you see what you say you can.”

“Sure there is. Show me any photograph of any person you know who’s died, and I’ll tell you the exact day they passed away. And make sure the photos don’t come from
anybody famous or that you think I could access online. Make me look at only those photos of people you’re sure I couldn’t know. And time me.”

Faraday pursed his lips. I could tell he was intrigued. “Time you?”

“Yeah. Give me a nice, thick stack of photos, and only, like…five minutes to get through them all.”

Faraday seemed to think on that for a bit. “I’d want to watch you while you went through them,” he said, as if that was something I’d balk at.

I made sure to look him in the eye. “No problem.”

“And you’d have to give me all your electronics,” he added.

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the new cell phone Donny had gotten for me. Placing that on his desk in a silent challenge, I sat back in the chair and waited for him to decide.

“I’ll want to film it, too, and if you get one date wrong, Maddie, you lose and I get to use this little demo in court.”

I held his gaze. “Deal.”

Faraday sat forward. “Okay,” he said, and I could see that he thought he finally had me exactly where he wanted me. It made me a little nervous, because I didn’t know what
tricks the feds could pull to make me look guilty, but I was in it now, and no way was I backing out. “Give me until this afternoon to pull it all together. Let’s say around
three.”

I reached out for my phone to check the time. It was ten
A
.
M
. “See you at three o’clock, Agent Faraday.” And then I left him to
his task.

I HUNG OUT AT THE
Grand Haven Library for a few hours, then at a coffee shop down the street from the bureau offices, my knee bouncing the whole time. I
was anxious to get the test over with, and as customers came in, I found myself staring at their foreheads, making sure I could see every single deathdate. I could, of course, but it still
reassured me in spite of the macabre nature of it all.

At two forty-five I left the coffee shop and headed back to the bureau. The receptionist told me that Faraday had told her to walk me back when I arrived, so I followed behind, even though by
now I knew the way. Faraday was on the phone, his back to us, and from his posture, I could tell he was angry. “Jenny,” he growled, “if he wants to live with me, then he can live
with me!”

The receptionist came up short and looked around uncomfortably. She cleared her throat, but Faraday didn’t seem to hear her. “Then I’ll get a bigger place,” he barked.
“The custody agreement says we have
joint
physical custody, and if he no longer finds living with you to be the
pleasurable
experience I remember, then of course he can move in
with me!”

I glanced around. From what I saw, everyone within twenty feet of us could hear Faraday going off on what appeared to be his ex-wife, and they were all carefully keeping their gazes averted,
pretending not to hear. It was a joke.

The receptionist cleared her throat very loudly once more, and Faraday’s posture stiffened. He peeked over his shoulder at us and said, “I gotta go. We’ll talk about this
later.” As he was setting the phone down in the cradle I could hear the high-pitched voice of his ex yelling at him through the receiver. I felt sorry for their kid caught in the middle.

“You’re back,” he said as if he hadn’t been expecting me to be on time.

The receptionist smiled awkwardly and said, “Agent Faraday will take it from here.” She then made a hasty retreat back down the corridor.

“If you’re not ready…” I said.

“It’s fine. Come in.” Faraday motioned me forward, and I walked into his office, noticing that most of the items on his desk had been removed. What had been a surface cluttered
with paper and files and picture frames was now clear of everything except the computer monitor and a stack of papers about a quarter-inch thick. On the top sheet of paper was a color copy of an
old man, surrounded by balloons. He seemed to have a slight resemblance to Faraday.

On the far side of the room were several photo albums, some looked quite old, and on a tripod was a camera aimed right at the desk. I ignored the camera and started for the chair but Faraday
held up his hand. “Your phone, Maddie?”

I pulled it out of my back pocket and handed it to him. Then I stood with raised eyebrows until he motioned for me to sit down. Once I took my seat I looked around the desk. “I need
something to write on. And something to write with.”

Faraday turned his computer screen all the way around so that the back was facing me before he reached into his desk and pulled out a set of sticky notes and a pen. “Write the date on the
sticky note and put it on the photo,” he instructed. He then held up his phone and said, “Do you want me to count it down?”

Taking up the pen and setting the pad of stickies in front of me, I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Sure.”

“Three…two…one.”

I got to work.

The stack was interesting. Most of the pages were color copies of what I assumed were family photos. Some of them contained more than one person, but within that group there was always at least
one person circled, and I knew that was who Faraday wanted me to focus on. I didn’t spend more than five seconds per photo—that’s all it took. I simply looked and wrote down the
date. Toward the middle, I saw that Faraday had tried to trip me up by circling the photo of a mature woman—taken at least several decades before—who was still alive. And would be for
three more years. I wrote down her date, and next to it I also scribbled
Nice try.

Other than that, only one photo really stood out. It was the image of a boy around ten or eleven with a big gap between his two front teeth. He was grinning ear to ear and wore a shirt with an
oversized collar. His deathdate was 1-21-1974. There was something eerily familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and as I was worried about the time, I forced myself to move
on.

After clearing through the deck I set the pen down and stood up. Faraday seemed surprised. He looked down at his phone. “You still have two minutes.”

I shrugged. “Don’t need them.”

He eyed the stack of photos with sticky notes neatly attached, like he didn’t quite know what to do next.

“I’ll wait in the lobby while you grade the photos.” And without another word I moved out of his office and headed to reception.

Faraday left me to sit there for a very long time; nearly an hour and fifteen minutes went by before he came down the hall looking for me, and when he did, he seemed stunned. I had to be very
careful to hide the satisfied smirk that wanted to work its way onto my lips.

He crooked his finger at me, and I followed him once more to his office. There he shut the door and sat down. I noticed at the top of the stack of photos was the picture of the young boy with
the gap in his teeth. “How’re you doing it?” Faraday asked after a long pause.

I shrugged. “It’s something I’ve always been able to see.”

He squinted at me, those eyes so focused, like he wanted to figure out the magic trick.

“It’s not a trick,” I told him. “It’s real.”

Faraday sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve been over it and over it, and there’s no way you could know these dates,” he said. “I mean,
some of these family members died eighty years ago in Ireland.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Faraday picked up the photo of the young boy. “Know who this is?”

I shook my head.

“He’s my little brother.”

That shocked me.

“He drowned when I was thirteen. We didn’t even know he’d gone to the pond that day. He wanted to play hockey like me. He got onto some thin ice and fell through. I was the one
who found him.”

I squirmed in my chair. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded absently and set that photo aside only to pick up the next, which was the photo I’d called him out for—the one of the woman who hadn’t died yet. “This is my
great-aunt Ginny. She lives in Dublin. She’s ninety-seven, and she’s always said she wants to live to see a hundred. You have her dying on the eighteenth of March, twenty seventeen.
That’s the day after her one hundredth birthday, and it’d be exactly like Aunt Gin to check out the second she’s made an appearance. She does that at parties, too.”