Chapter 47

47

On August 8th, nothing happens.

Lightning does not strike the Earth. No old woman shows up at the door with a warning. Finny doesn't see a black dog staring at him as he gets out of his red car. No one says anything prophetic or ironic. I do not awake in darkness to hear the clock strike thirteen.

Did Finny feel something? Was there something nameless that shifted within him? Did that last year feel to him like late afternoon, the sunlight creeping across the floorboards of his room, slowly fading until there is but a thin veil of gray between day and night?

Did I feel something? Did I know?

Like all things that have become history, I now feel as if I always knew it, as if all through this story, it had been lurking in the shadows. The story underneath the story.