The Road to You (24 page)

It was wrong no matter how I looked at it. They were not there in May, but in July. And not there on the eighteenth, but on the fourth or later.

Then, in a flash of recognition, I saw it. The pattern I’d been missing.

It was so simple, so obvious…once I had the key. And, just as I’d suspected, it had been right in front of my eyes the whole time.

“Oh, my God, Donovan,” I whispered. “We just needed to read the equation.”

He sent me a quizzical look. “Where?”

“At the bottom of every page.”

I grabbed a pen from my purse and a piece of scratch paper from Donovan’s glove compartment. On it, I wrote:

Normal, Illinois = 5/18/76 (date written in journal)

M + 2, D - 12

M = month, D = day

M = 5 + 2 = 7 (month = July)

D = 18 - 12 = 6 (day = 6th)

7/6/76 (real date of visit)

I read this to Donovan. “See? The M and D stand for Month and Day. We just need to make adjustments for that and we’ll have the correct date that they were in each city!” I was kind of shouting, but I was excited. I showed him how it worked on the
Chicago
page:

Chicago = 5/13/76 (date written)

M + 2, D - 9

5 + 2 = 7 (month = July)

13 - 9 = 4 (day = 4th)

7/4/76 (real date)

And then, for good measure, I decoded the Flagstaff date:

Flagstaff = 6/22/76

M + 3, D - 14

6 + 3 = 9 (month = September)

22 - 14 = 8 (day = 8th)

9/8/76 (real date)

“Wow,” he murmured. “That’s really…clever. Good, um, code breaking. It’ll be easy for you to figure all the dates out now.” He looked impressed with my detective skills but, thankfully, he knew better than to call me Nancy Drew again.

I nodded happily and set to work on decoding each date in the journal. That unsettling feeling was gone, thank God. At least for the time being. And I was able to finally concentrate again on the still-unsolved mysteries within the journal—as well as those outside of it. Not the least of which was why my brother had gone to so much trouble to disguise where he went and when.

However, even as I was wondering this, my mind was spinning with possible reasons. Let’s say someone else were to have found the journal before I did—or if, by chance, it was either lost or stolen later—
all
of the listed dates would be from
before
the “disappearance.” It would be an odd object of Gideon’s to find…but, if by chance he
wanted
people to think he was dead, the dates in the journal kept that possibility intact.

In fact, there was only one page where the current year, 1978, was written at all, just in the corner, and—to almost anyone else but me—it would be far too insignificant to dwell on:

I turned back to that section, rereading the entire page for the nine-hundredth time in the past two weeks, my mind focusing on all of the lines with numbers in them:

I used the equation at the bottom of the sheet and applied it to the date:

Crescent Cove = 4/19/76

M + 1 + 0, D + 10 + 0

4 + 1 +0 = 5 (month = May)

19 + 10 + 0 = 29 (day = 29th)

5/29/76 (real date)

Only, this time the month/day pattern didn’t work.

May 29, 1976 had been a Saturday. Specifically, the Saturday before Gideon and Jeremy’s high-school graduation. It was the first day of a crazy week-long set of activities, both at the school and around town, thanks to the Chameleon Fest. I’d run through that social obstacle course myself just a few weeks ago. No way were they goofing off in Wisconsin then.

Plus, I remembered seeing them every single day of that Memorial Day weekend and each weekday leading up to their big graduation bash in St. Cloud on June fifth of that year.

So, no.

Donovan and I had always thought April nineteenth made sense as the real date our brothers went to Crescent Cove for the first time. On the next page, May tenth, it said they went there again, which also fit with what Jeremy had told Donovan in June 1976. I reread the lines with numbers on that page:

The month and day lines in the equation were both + 0, so there was nothing to add to the date, and the only other number on the page involved that chemical—whatever
“Zirconium powdery”
was—but that, too, was + 0.

I’d seen that chemical on the
Start here
page as well, but the number added was different. I flipped back and read it again:

Ah. Now I saw the tricky thing Gideon had done. The ink change started just above the date. It wasn’t
“powdery + 2 (+ 0),”
like I’d thought for so long. It was
“powder y + 2 (+ 0).”
With the y + 2 (+ 0) part written in that subtly different shade of ink.

Y = year.

M + 1 (+ 0), D + 10 (+ 0), Y + 2 (+ 0)
was the equation for
both
dates on the page, not just one. I just had to split them up—almost like the reverse distributive property in math—and factor them in with the correct dates:

4/19/76 (M + 0) (D + 0) (Y + 0) = 4/19/76

4/19/76 (M + 1) (D + 10) (Y + 2) = 5/29/78

Granted, this was the hardest page to crack, but my brother not only knew I wouldn’t rest until I’d solved every single part of a puzzle, he also knew I’d always done well in algebra. It was a subject that rewarded a few intuitive leaps.

“You’re kinda quiet over there,” Donovan said. “Everything still okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, explaining what I’d figured out about the
Start here
page. “Gideon put a lot of thought into this.”

He nodded. “Seems like it. But so did you as you’ve tried to solve it. I wouldn’t have made half of the guesses you did along the way. I’m pretty sure no one else would have either. And—” He sent me a look that had only a hint of his usual mockery. “After everything we learned from Amy Lynn about our brothers and their visits to Crescent Cove and to Chicago, it showed you haven’t been wrong about much. Well, at least not about the journal.”

It was the way he’d phrased this almost-compliment that made me laugh aloud. “What? You’re saying I
have
been wrong about other things?” I poked him in the side of his ribs with my fingers.

He responded by shoving my hand away—none too gently—and grinning.

“Tell me, Donovan, what, exactly, have
you
been right about?”

His grin broadened. It made my heart flutter with joy to see him smile again.

“Been right about a couple of things,” he said.

“Such as?”

He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and made a “V” with his index and middle finger. “Two big important things,” he said. “And I’m not telling you.”

“Oh, sure. Like you can just say that and have it be true,” I told him in my most sarcastic voice.

“Believe me or don’t. Doesn’t bother me.”

And I knew it really
didn’t
bother him. That was one of the most maddening things about Donovan. Almost every experience affected me in some way, whether I admitted it aloud or not. But he—he was unfazed by most things. Aside from his responsibility to the few people closest to him, his commitment to his country and his sense of honor, he really couldn’t be swayed by much. I wouldn’t be able to goad him into revealing to me anything he didn’t want to share.

So, I just shrugged. I closed the atlas and the journal. Stared out the window at the transforming landscape, which had been slowly mutating from city to countryside with each passing mile. But Donovan, in the driver’s seat, looked too smug for his own good, and I couldn’t let him get away with that.

When I opened my mouth next, the lyrics to “Jive Talkin’” just happened to come out. I thought I did a pretty decent imitation of the first verse.

Donovan didn’t share my sentiments.

“
Stop
that horrible noise,” he cried.

“I think this song is real catchy, and I’m gonna just keep sing—”

“No! No. But…if you stop, I’ll tell you one of my two things.”

I giggled like a little kid. See how powerful the Bee Gees were?

“Okay.” I crossed my arms, closed my mouth and waited for the big reveal.

“The first thing I know I’m right about is that
disco sucks
. Trust me, it’s a fad and the end is coming.” He shot me a wicked glance. “Though not soon enough.”