A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(77)

That name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it immediately.

“Did your grandfather have an unusual accent?” asked a younger man sitting beside Elmer.

“Polish,” I said.

“Mm.” He nodded. “And did he sometimes travel with another man or a young lady?”

“A young lady?” said Enoch, raising his eyebrows at Emma.

“That couldn’t have been him,” Emma said, suddenly tense.

June sped away from the table and returned a minute later with a photo album. “I believe we have a picture of him in here.” She flipped through the album’s pages. “We keep this to remember the folks who come and go, and so we know who to trust when someone comes back after a long time gone. We’ve had enemies come posing as friends.”

“The wights are masters of disguise, you know,” said Elmer.

“Oh, we know,” I said.

“Then you should double-check Paul’s photo,” said Alene. “Make sure he is who he says he is.”

Paul looked hurt. “I don’t look the same as I used to?”

“I think he looks better,” said Fern.

“Here.” June wedged between my seat and Emma’s and leaned over the table with the album. “This is Gandy.” She tapped a small black-and-white photo of a man relaxing under a tree. He was speaking to someone out of frame, and I wondered who it was, and what he’d been saying. His face was unlined, his hair black, and he had a sweet-looking dog with him. The dog was wearing a cap. It was my grandfather as I had rarely seen him: approaching middle age but still young, still in his prime. I wished I could have known him then.

Our friends got up from their seats and crowded around to look. Emma’s face was paper-white, haunted. “That’s him,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “That’s Abe.”

“You’re Gandy’s grandson?” Paul said, surprised. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Partly it was because I hadn’t known Abe used a false identity while working, not just on his car registration (which I now realized was where I’d seen the name Gandy before). But mostly it was H’s rule. “Someone I trust told me not to talk about the hollow-hunters,” I said.





“Not even with other peculiars?” said June.

“Nobody.”

“Can’t imagine why,” said Elmer. “They’re heroes to all of us.”

Now that I saw how people reacted to his name, I thought maybe I’d loosen up on that rule a bit.

“How can we be sure they’re telling the truth about who they are?” said Alene. “I don’t mean offense, but we don’t know these people.”

“I can vouch for them,” said Paul.

“And you’ve known them for, what, a day?”

“They killed two highwaymen and ran another one off!” said Paul. “Helped out the Flamingo Manor peculiars down in Starke.”

Elmer pointed again at my grandfather’s photo. “Can’t you see the resemblance?” he said. “This boy’s the spitting image of Gandy.”

Alene’s eyes darted from me to the photo and back, and by the look on her face, I could tell she agreed. “You say his real name was Abraham?”

I nodded.

“How’s he doing?” said Elmer. “He must be getting on in years. We haven’t seen him in quite a while now.”

“Ah,” said Millard. “He passed away several months ago, unfortunately.”

There was a collective murmur of sorrow.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Joseph.

“What got him?” asked Reggie.

Fern scowled at him. “What a thing to ask!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It was a hollowgast.”

“A fighter to the end,” Elmer said, and raised his glass of tea. “To Abraham.”

The table raised their glasses and chorused, “To Abraham!”

Emma did not join in. “What about the people he traveled with?” she said.

June began to flip pages in the album again. “The fellow with the suits and cigars, that was his associate. He’d been coming through here and helping us for nearly as long as Gandy.” She turned another page and slid her finger across until it came to rest on a portrait of a young H from many years ago. “It’s an old picture,” she said. “But that’s him.”

June was right. The photo was quite old, but it was unmistakably H—he had the same face, the same eyes that seemed to digest you in an instant. He was holding an unlit cigar between his lips. He was a man who had more important things to do than stop for a photo, and was impatient to get back to doing them.

“He was Gandy’s partner,” said Joseph. “Real funny guy. You know what he said to me one time? I had just gotten back from Vietnam, and he came through driving this big old car—”

“What about the girl?” Emma said flatly.

Joseph stopped mid-sentence and suppressed a laugh.

“Uh-oh,” Enoch said, grinning wickedly. “Someone’s on the warpath.”

“The girl,” said Alene. “I remember they called her V. She was a might strange.”