The Night Parade(103)

“I don’t mind,” Ellie said, drying a plate with a dish towel.

Tim snapped a dish towel at Ellie’s backside. “Yeah, well, you crass ladies are making me uncomfortable,” he said. “Why don’t you gals go play Monopoly or something?”

Gany stood up with her wineglass and reached out over the counter for Ellie with one hand. Ellie took her hand and Gany gave her a little twirl.

“Jesus Christ,” Tim grumbled, though not disapprovingly.

As Gany and Ellie danced out of the room, Tim tossed the dish towel onto the counter, then settled himself back in his chair at the table. He patted one of David’s knees. “You seem a little freaked out.”

“There’s a bad connotation to what you’ve said tonight and what they say about Worlders on the news,” David told him. “I guess I’m just a little surprised.”

“I’m not a terrorist, David. I’m just a man at peace with himself.”

“But you think the Folly shouldn’t be cured,” David said.

“No, that’s not what I think, not at all. If there’s a cure—if your daughter is the cure, man—then God bless us all. I’m just saying that, until you told me about Eleanor, I didn’t see any way things could get better, and I had to struggle to make my peace with that. Everybody’s got their own way of handling things, and this is mine. You know, it’s no coincidence that we lost touch over the past year and a half or so. It’s easier to convince yourself that you’re okay with the world dying when you don’t have constant contact with your loved ones who’ll just go ahead and die with it.”

David nodded, his gaze momentarily falling to examine the wood grain of the tabletop. “Am I doing the right thing here, Tim? Hiding her away like this?”

“I guess that depends on where your greatest moral obligation lies,” Tim said. “Is it to the well-being of everyone on the planet, or to your daughter?”

“She isn’t some sacrificial lamb,” he said. “She’s my little girl.”

“Then I guess you’ve already made up your mind on that score.”

“I guess I have.”

“What was that other thing you wanted to mention to me earlier?” Tim said.

David sighed. “I honestly don’t know where to begin,” he said. “And even after I tell you, I’m not so sure you’d believe me.”

“There are very few things in this world I find hard to believe anymore.”

David nodded. “It started the night we left Maryland. Well, I guess it started even before that, but I hadn’t noticed it until the night we hit the road. Kathy had just died, and I picked Ellie up from her babysitter’s house. I couldn’t tell her about her mom, not then, not at that moment. There were people at our house waiting for us,” he said, and told Tim about the white van. “Now that Kathy was dead, I knew they would come for Ellie. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. So we went on the run. And I was such a mess that night, so . . . so f*cked up . . . and I’m just driving, not knowing where the hell I’m going . . . and Ellie, she just reaches out and touches the back of my neck. And, man, it was like she sucked all the fear and sadness and grief right out of me.”

One of Tim’s eyebrows arched.

“I know, I know,” David said. “Just hear me out.”

He told Tim the rest of it from there—the shock she’d inadvertently given him after learning that her mother was dead and that he’d lied to her; the events that took place at Turk Powell’s house in Goodwin, and how she’d . . . done something. . . to Cooper, which had enabled them to escape; and finally, he told Tim about the scene on the highway, where Ellie had calmed a young girl in the last moments of her life, and then calmed the young girl’s mother, too, while several people, including Gany, looked on.

Tim listened to the whole story without an expression on his face. Once David had finished, Tim sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “Well, f*ck.”

“Exactly,” said David.

“I’m not sure what to make of all that.”

“Just please say that you believe me.”

“I do,” Tim said. “Of course I do.”

“What do you think it means?”

Tim shook his head. “Buddy, I have no idea.”

“Whatever it is,” David said, “it’s getting stronger.”

“Are there side effects?”

“She says no. But she got sick and threw up a little after the highway incident. She said it was a lot to take in.”

Tim startled David by laughing. “A lot to take in,” he repeated. “Christ, you’re telling me.” He pitched his head back, a look of consideration on his face now. The sandy bristles along his unshaven chin and neck sparkled like flecks of mica. “So either her immunity has also given her these abilities—”

“Or these abilities have granted her immunity,” David finished. “Like, whatever that mutated gene in her DNA is, it does more than ward off the Folly. Yeah, I’ve already considered the same thing myself.”

“In that case, what about Kathy? Did she ever exhibit any—”

“No, no, nothing like this. Ellie’s special.”