He thinks for a moment. “Perhaps I can find someone to accompany you. Wait here.”

You wait. Your head is hurting—an unfamiliar ache.

Minutes later Hadfield returns with Danny, who’s twirling his fingers in front of his eyes, apparently unbothered by this break in his routine.

“Hi, Danny,” you say. He doesn’t reply.

“Danny,” Hadfield says warningly. “Quiet hands and listen.”

“Hu,” Danny mutters, without taking his eyes off his twirling fingers.

“Great to see you too,” you say, before Hadfield has a chance to decide this isn’t good enough and shock him. “Coming?”

“And fortunately, I was able to find someone to go with you both,” the principal adds, nodding behind you.

You turn. It’s Sian.

* * *

—

“Which hospital?” she says as you walk to the waiting car, Danny’s hand in yours.

“Stanford.”

She stops. “Danny usually goes to UCSF Benioff.”

“Well, this is Stanford. Danny, get in, will you?”

“And which doctor?” Sian sounds suspicious now.

“I can’t recall,” you reply brightly. “We’ll sort it out when we get there, shall we?”

She pulls a phone out. “I’m calling Tim to check.”

“Really, there’s no need.”

“Sure,” she says sarcastically. “But I think he’ll be glad I did, all the same.”

You don’t have any choice. You grab the phone from her hand and toss it into the shrubs. “Hey!” she protests, outraged. Then you hit her. You have no idea how you’re supposed to hit someone effectively in a situation like this, but it seems likely that if you slam the point of her chin with the palm of your hand, it will probably floor her.

   It does. For once, you’re grateful to Tim for the obsessive overengineering that went into your limbs. You step over Sian’s sprawled body and get into the car with Danny, who doesn’t give her so much as a glance.

TWENTY-FOUR

   The news we got of Danny after the diagnosis was sketchy. Danny was trying out different treatments, we heard, some of them experimental. Danny was being enrolled in cutting-edge research programs. “We’re going to beat this thing,” Tim told people confidently.

Later we heard they’d abandoned any hope of finding a cure and had started looking at special-ed programs.

Alongside that, we heard fragments of gossip. Abbie had started drinking. Abbie had totaled her car. Tim had been seen looking at hookers’ websites in his office. They were going to couples therapy.

Once, Abbie brought Danny to the office. It was the annual children’s party, held by tradition on the day before we closed for the festive holidays. There was a bouncy castle, a petting zoo, and children’s entertainers.

Danny walked in on tiptoe with a weird, prancing gait, his body scrunched up and distorted, holding his mother’s hand. The eyes that had once danced with mischief were now deep-set and bruised looking. He met no one’s gaze, and from his mouth there came a series of wailing sounds. Sometimes he would mutter little phrases from TV programs.

   Needless to say, he showed no interest in the bouncy castle or the entertainment. He was fascinated by the photocopier, though. Someone was printing out a big presentation, some thick marketing deck that had to be copied multiple times, and Danny seemed mesmerized by the whirring, flickering automation of it all. When the machine stopped because it had run out of paper, he began howling, absolutely howling with misery, until Abbie set about reloading it.

Seeing the boss’s beautiful wife squatting down, frantically tearing at the nylon ribbon that secured a fresh box of paper, was enough to send the person printing the document running over with scissors and apologies.

“Thank you,” Abbie said gratefully. “We’re not really meant to give in when he screams. But when it’s a party…” She looked over at the bouncy castle, where all the other kids were happily playing, oblivious to Danny’s distress.

The photocopier started printing again, and Danny instantly calmed down. He sat cross-legged on the floor to watch, like it was a TV playing cartoons. After a while he laughed.

“We’re trying this new therapy,” Abbie went on. “We’ve done the research, and it’s definitely got the best weight of evidence behind it. But it’s really hard on Danny.”

She looked over to where Tim was chatting with Mike and Elijah. But Tim wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were following Bhanu across the room. Bhanu was the new project manager he’d just hired from Google. She was slim and sassy and extroverted. Some of us were already predicting that Bhanu wasn’t destined to stay with us very long.

76

   The Uber driver doesn’t try to make conversation, for which you’re grateful. You need to think. You’d been hoping to get across the state line before your absence was discovered. That might have to change after what you’ve just done to Sian. Most likely, the school will already have alerted the authorities.

Technically, what you’re doing now is probably child abduction, you realize. But frankly, it can’t make much difference. If you’re caught, you’ll be wiped anyway.

You’ve booked the Uber to take you to Jack London Square Station in Oakland. The traffic’s flowing freely over the bridge, and you’re there in under thirty minutes. Your train doesn’t leave for another half hour.

To pass the time, you take Danny to McDonald’s.

“I had lunch,” he objects, confused by this unexpected change in his routine.

“I know. But you like fries, don’t you? You can have fries as well as lunch.”

   “I had lunch,” he insists. “I had fish…fish…” He starts to twitch with anxiety.

“That’s all right, Danny. You don’t have to have anything. Would you like to see the train timetable?”

You get out the timetable and his eyes light up. He spends the next twenty minutes happily working out connections.

* * *

—

You board the train and find your seats. Danny’s still in the mood to treat this as an adventure, with the bonus of added scheduling. While you wait for the train to leave, you get out his Thomas engine and explain that Thomas is especially happy now, because he is a train going for a ride on a train.