When

by Victoria Laurie

  I was so moved that I didn’t know what to say.

  “Here we are!” I heard Mrs. Duncan call from her walkway. She and the other guy were loaded down with gauze, ointments, bandages, and medical tape. My kindly neighbor got right to work, and in no time I was patched up and feeling a little better.

  Then Rick got me to my feet, and while his partner put my bike into the garage, he helped me up the drive. “Thanks,” I told him once we’d reached the storm door. “For everything.”

  He offered me a big grin. “You gonna be okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It just stings a little right now.”

  “Take some Advil,” he advised. “And no more speed racer on that bike of yours, you hear?” He chuckled and I smiled. Then he and the other guy got back to Mrs. Duncan’s delivery, and I limped my way inside.

  I found Ma passed out on the couch. I checked the time. It was early for her to be so out of it. I could feel a knot beginning to form in my stomach. She was reacting to the visit from the feds. I didn’t like it.

  I hobbled over to her and tugged the afghan off the back of the couch, spreading it out over her the best I could. I felt stiff and sore all over, and the scrapes on my leg, elbow, and palm were starting to throb, so I limped up the stairs, and once in my room, eased out of the tight jeans and sweater I was wearing and into the lightest pair of sweats I owned. As I got redressed, I thought again about what Rick had said—that I’d helped him. Telling him his deathdate hadn’t changed his numbers, but at least I’d helped him and his family by giving him the news. His wife and kids were going to be sad to lose their dad—I knew that pain well—but his family would also be provided for. A bit like Ma and me had been provided for by the settlement from the lawsuit.

  I would’ve rather had my dad, but at least most of our bills were covered for the time being. That meant a whole lot, when I thought about it.

  Moving to my desk I pulled out my deathdates notebook and began to thumb through the pages. I found Rick’s entry and the deathdate next to his name: 12-6-2014. I sighed sadly, then looked at all the other names and dates I’d written on the many pages of the notebook.

  I always put a capitol C next to my clients, and as I scrolled through the names of the people I’d read for, I wondered if maybe some of them might be doing the same thing as Rick. Maybe some of them were also taking out extra life insurance, and telling their kids and their spouses every day that they loved them. Maybe reading for these people was a good thing after all?

  And then I went to Aiden’s page and ran my forefinger across his name. I could picture his face, those deep blue eyes, the curve of his jaw, the fullness of his lips.

  I’d have a chance to see him in only a week, and I felt my pulse quicken. I hadn’t seen him since the previous spring. I wondered if he’d gotten any taller, if his shoulders had gotten broader, if seeing him would still take my breath away.

  My smile widened. Of course it would. With a sigh I closed the notebook and tucked it away. Then I limped down the stairs and realized that I still had to go to the store to get some candy for the trick-or-treaters, but how I was going to manage that, I had no idea. In desperation, I texted Stubby—he called me immediately. “What happened?” he asked. I’d only told him in the text that I’d crashed on my bike.

  I gave him the quick version of what’d happened, and he offered to come over right away with a bunch of Hershey’s minis from his mom’s stash. “We always have extra,” he said.

  While I waited for Stubs, I fixed two grilled cheese sandwiches and some tomato soup. As I was ladling the soup into bowls, Stubby walked in.

  “Your timing is perfect,” I told him.

  He shrugged out of his coat, and I saw that he was only wearing a white T-shirt and jeans underneath. Then I realized he also had his hair slicked back. “James Dean?” I guessed. Stubs loves old movies.

  My best friend grinned and nodded at me. “Can I borrow a pack of your mom’s cigarettes?” he asked, his gaze traveling to the carton on the counter.

  “Why?” I asked sharply. I lived with a smoker, and it was a disgusting habit. I didn’t want Stubs to start up.

  He rolled his eyes, then he took up one of Ma’s half-empty packs, got out a cigarette, dangled it at the corner of his mouth, then rolled the pack up into his shirtsleeve. “Dean used to roll the pack up like this,” he explained. “Makes me look cool, right?”

  I offered him a skeptical frown. “Don’t you think meeting kids at the door with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth might tick off some parents?”

  Stubs smiled sheepishly and removed the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Good point.” Then he reached for his backpack and pulled out the candy he’d promised me, like a hunter bringing home a trophy. “Where do you want it?”

  “Can you dump it in this and put it on the front porch?” I asked him, handing him our big salad bowl.

  Stubs eyed the bowl doubtfully. “You sure, Mads? Usually the first kids at the door take all the candy and run for it.”

  I bent over to lift up the cuff of my sweats to demonstrate exactly why I wouldn’t be getting up and down to answer the door every five minutes. “Yikes,” Stubs said, dumping the candy in the bowl. “Got it covered.” When he came back to the table, he sat down with me and said, “I can’t stay long. Mom wants me to hand out candy while she takes Sam and Grace trick-or-treating.”

  “Okay.” I felt a little disappointed that Stubs couldn’t stay longer and keep me company. I hadn’t been able to shake my melancholy.

  While we sipped at our soup he asked, “Anything new about Tevon?”

  “No,” I told him. “At least there wasn’t a car parked in front of my house today when I got home from school. Not that I noticed much after I crashed.”

  Stubs offered me a sympathetic frown before brightening. “You gotta heal quick, Mads. Next Friday is the Jupiter game.”

  I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “Oh, I’ll be there,” I said. “No way am I missing it.”

  Stubby nodded. I could tell he was looking forward to going to the game, too. “Cheerleaders,” he said with a loopy grin, and that got me to laugh.

  A lot of the kids at school assume Stubs and I are a couple, but the truth is, we’re more like brother and sister than anything else

  “You gonna say hi to Aiden this year?” he asked me slyly. “Or are you gonna sit there and pretend you’re not seriously crushing on him?”

  I pushed him on the shoulder. “Don’t rush me,” I said. “I’m working up to it.”

  It was Stubby’s turn to laugh. “Working up to it? It’s been two years, Mads. At this rate you’ll graduate before you even smile at the guy.”

  I rolled my eyes before reaching over to dunk the rest of his sandwich in his soup. He shook his head, but he was chuckling. “Women!” he said.

  We hung out for a while more before Dad’s clock chimed six times and Stubs got up, taking his bowl and his plate to the sink. “Gotta go!” he said. “Thanks for dinner. Hope your leg feels better!” With that he banged out the back door with barely a wave good-bye.

  After finishing my own meal, I got up and limped over to the sink to rinse out my dishes. The TV was still on in the living room, but I couldn’t make out much more than white noise. As I turned off the faucet, however, I thought I heard a familiar name. Moving to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, I saw that the news was on, and there was a reporter standing in front of a large stately home that had to be in Parkwick. I could tell right away she was talking about Tevon Tibbolt. “…the body of the thirteen-year-old was discovered on the banks of the Waliki River, about six miles from his residence here in Parkwick, where Tevon was last seen walking home from the bus stop on Wednesday afternoon. Tevon is the son of prominent hedge fund manager Ryan Tibbolt and his wife, socialite Patricia Tibbolt. We have few details other than the boy’s body has been positively identified, and police and the FBI have ruled the death a homicide….”

&nb
sp; I leaned against the door frame; my knees were threatening to give out from underneath me. I stood there breathing hard as a mounting sense of panic began to overwhelm me. The news reporter rattled off that the FBI was now leading the investigation in the disturbing murder, stating that Tevon’s body had been found riddled with wounds, and there were preliminary signs that the boy had been tortured.

  When the news cut to commercial I reached a trembling hand toward the phone, but Uncle Donny’s line went straight to voice mail again. “Donny? It’s Maddie. Did you hear the news? It’s Tevon Tibbolt. They found him, and he’s been murdered. Please call me, okay? Right away. Please?

  Still gripping the phone, I hobbled over to Dad’s old leather chair and collapsed into it. I stared at the TV, but the newscaster had already moved on to a house fire in neighboring Willow Mill.

  The doorbell rang twice and shouts of “Trick or Treat!” echoed through the door, but I didn’t move out of Dad’s chair. Instead I sat there and wept for a long time, feeling so guilty I could barely keep my dinner down. If only I’d insisted that Mrs. Tibbolt listen to me. If only I’d run after her before she left our house and said, “Please don’t let him out of the house next Wednesday!” or if I hadn’t hung up on her later that night but had tried harder to get her to listen to me, Tevon might still be alive.

  At eight o’clock I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and stood gingerly. It’d gotten dark in the room, and in spite of Ma sleeping on the couch, I turned on a light, then I hobbled over to the door to check on the candy.

  After struggling to get the door open, I saw the plastic bowl smashed and broken at the bottom of the front walk, and a roll of toilet paper hanging from the branches of the small maple tree in our front yard.

  I’d been sitting inside and hadn’t heard a thing.

  My shoulders slumped, and I was about to pick up what remained of the bowl when I saw a dark sedan snake down the street to park a few houses away. The nearby streetlight gave off enough light for me to see two figures inside. I felt cold all over. I knew with certainty that they were looking my way, waiting and watching. It was now official. I was in serious trouble.

  UNCLE DONNY DROVE UP TO POPLAR HOLLOW the next day, right after the FBI called him to say that they wanted to talk to me again. He arrived in his shiny BMW, wearing a black suit and gold tie. Donny always looks good, but today I could tell he’d put a little bit extra into his appearance. The sight of him looking so sharp and confident made me feel better. He walked me to the car after taking one look at Ma, who’d hit the bottle kind of hard the day before; even though it was nearly noon, she was still pretty groggy. Uncle Donny told her she’d better stay home.

  Once we were in the car, Donny turned to me and said, “How you doin’, kiddo?”

  I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  “No, really,” he pressed, his brow all furrowed and concerned. “How are you?”

  I almost laughed. It was ridiculous. “I’m fine, Donny. Can we please go?”

  But Donny didn’t start the car. Instead he glanced toward the house, then back at me. “You can always come live with me, you know,” he said in a serious tone.

  I swallowed hard. I loved Donny, but ever since my dad died, I’d had trouble with the city. In fact, it’d been one of the reasons Ma had moved us all the way out here. I’d started having panic attacks and couldn’t seem to concentrate at school. Some days in class I would shake so hard I couldn’t hold a pencil. Other times I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, and I’d nearly pass out.

  The minute we moved out of Brooklyn, leaving behind all the noise and people, I’d settled down. But it was hard for me to go into the city to visit Donny for even a day without the shakes and shortness of breath coming back. I couldn’t imagine going there to live again.

  Then there was Ma to consider. We were an hour and forty minutes by car outside of New York City, two and a half hours by train. I couldn’t leave Ma, because who’d get to her quickly if something bad happened?

  “Thanks, Donny,” I said, “but I’m okay.”

  Donny sighed and started the car, heading west.

  Poplar Hollow, Jupiter, Willow Mill, and Parkwick are all villages technically within the city of Grand Haven, New York. Mostly, the villages circle Grand Haven like planets in a solar system, and the distinctions between the villages are measured more by the sizes of the houses than anything else. Willow Mill is a step down from Poplar Hollow, and Jupiter is a step up, but you’d need a ladder to get into Parkwick. The rest of Grand Haven isn’t so grand, though, and most of us kinda thumb our noses at it. We all have our own school system with about a thousand kids in each high school, except that Grand Haven itself has two high schools—North and South—and they have at least two thousand kids in each. Both of their football teams clobber our team every year, but we usually stand a fighting chance against the other schools. Still, it seems we’re always duking it out with Jupiter for second-to-last place.

  Downtown Grand Haven is on the small side when you compare it to any other major city, especially New York, but every year it gets another few tall office buildings added to it. Now it even has two malls.

  The bureau offices are downtown, about a block away from the police station in a building that’s new and trendy. Not the kind of place you’d expect to find the FBI.

  Donny took up two slots in the parking garage so no one could park too close to his BMW, and then led the way to the stairs—he always takes the stairs—and we finally came out on the third floor. Donny’s footfalls were steady and sure as we wound our way through the maze of hallways. I was back on tiptoe.

  At last we came out to a central catwalk that encircled the lobby below and wound around to a large staircase with a gleaming brass railing. Donny followed the railing up to a set of double glass doors with a stenciled sign that read, OFFICES OF THE FBI—GRAND HAVEN BRANCH. Before pulling the doors open Donny paused with his palm on the handle and said, “Remember, Maddie, don’t answer any question without looking to me to see if I approve; and if I do, just answer the question, okay? Nothing else. Don’t elaborate beyond the simplest answer.”

  My mouth had gone dry as we’d stepped onto the third floor, and I wanted a glass of water badly. My legs were trembling, and I found it hard to concentrate on what Donny was saying. Still, I managed to nod when he looked at me and opened the door.

  We walked in to find the place pretty busy for a Saturday. “They mostly monitor drug and weapons traffic coming in and out of New York City from here,” Donny whispered. That made sense when I thought about it, as Grand Haven sits right next to I-87, which heads straight to Canada.

  Donny pointed to a leather chair in the lobby and I sat while he checked in with the receptionist. After letting the feds know we were there, she came over to us. Her deathdate read 2-12-2061. “Agents Faraday and Wallace will be with you shortly. Can I get you something to drink while you wait?”

  “Coffee,” Donny said, flashing a smile. Donny’s a big flirt.

  “I’ll take water please,” I told her.

  After she came back with our drinks, Agent Faraday appeared and motioned for us to follow him.

  He led us to a glass-enclosed office with an open ceiling where he pointed to the two chairs that faced his desk, and as we took our seats Wallace entered the office, pushing a chair in front of him.

  Faraday shut the door behind Wallace before taking his seat, and I moved my gaze to his desk. It was cluttered with papers and files, but one corner was fairly neat. Several picture frames were arranged there with their backs to us. I assumed they were of his family, and I felt oddly curious about what his wife and kids looked like. Then I glanced at the wall behind Faraday and saw three rows of mug shots of dangerous-looking felons. All of them had the word CAPTURED in bright red stamped across the top of their mug shots. I couldn’t help noticing that a few were already dead.

  Belatedly, I realized that Wallace and Faraday were both staring silently at me as
if they were waiting for a full confession. I shifted in my seat and looked at Donny, who seemed impatient to get things going.

  “Do you guys have questions for us, or should we come back on a day without all this excitement?” Donny said.

  Both Faraday and Wallace didn’t seem to like his attitude. Wallace glared, and Faraday asked, “You in a hurry, counselor?”

  “Yeah, Agent Faraday. I am,” Donny replied, pulling at his shirt cuffs and tugging at his tie. He was playing up the hotshot lawyer.

  Faraday rolled his eyes a little but turned his attention back to me. “You claimed when we spoke to you a few days ago that you never met Tevon Tibbolt. Is that right, Madelyn?”

  I looked at Donny, and he nodded.

  “I never met him,” I said. I thought I should make it perfectly clear to Faraday, so I added, “I’ve never met Tevon or talked to him or texted him or e-mailed him. I’ve never met him in any way at all.”

  Faraday looked confused. “See, this is what I don’t get: if you never met, or talked or texted or e-mailed Tevon, then how exactly could you know that he’d been murdered when we didn’t even know that until yesterday?”

  I glanced at Donny, a little exasperated. If this was the way it was going to go, then we were going to be here a really long time. Donny put a hand on my arm and said, “My niece and my sister-in-law have both told you that Maddie has a special and unique talent. She has psychic abilities that allow her to accurately predict the deathdate of any individual. She didn’t know that Tevon would be murdered, only that he would die, and this information she attempted to share with his mother when she came to see my niece for a professional reading.”