The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Table Four

Dani reaches the Gull Point Inn and finds the terrace from both photos, and a stranger with a scar on his arm who already knows her name.

I reached Port Hallam at twenty to seven in the morning, with no phone and a paper map from a gas station outside Portland.

The town was one street of shuttered shops that ended at a harbor full of lobster boats.

The Gull Point Inn sat at the end of the street, a long white building with green shutters, and its sign hung from a painted post.

It was the same post, the same lettering, the same flaking gull.

I parked across the road and stayed in the car for ten minutes with both hands on the wheel.

Then I walked around the side of the building, following the sound of metal scraping on wood.

The terrace was real.

It ran along the back of the inn on stilts above the water, with the sea slapping at the pilings underneath.

There were twelve small round tables out there, each with two chairs.

A man was dragging the chairs into place, one in each hand, and he had his back to me.

I stood at the corner of the building and looked at the table nearest the rail.

It had a little brass number four on a stand.

That was the table. I knew it from the shape of the rail behind it, and the way the boards ran toward the water.

My legs didn't want to move.

I made myself walk out onto the boards.

The man turned around when the planks creaked.

He was about thirty, tall, with dark blond hair that needed cutting and a chipped front tooth that showed when his mouth fell open.

He had a burn scar on his left forearm, a shiny pale patch from his wrist to his elbow.

I looked at the scar and then I looked at the hand it belonged to.

The hand in the photograph had a scar like that.

I had not seen it until that second, because I had not wanted to look.

He put the chairs down very carefully.

"We don't open for breakfast until eight," he said.

"I'm not here for breakfast."

"Okay." He wiped his palms on his jeans. "Then what can I do for you?"

I took the new print out of my jacket and held it so he could see the front.

It was the picture I had taken of myself in the car, with the sign behind my shoulder.

He looked at it for a long time.

He didn't touch it.

"That's our post," he said. "That's table four. That's you."

"I took it last night in Worcester. Massachusetts. Four hours from here."

"Then how is it...?"

"My mother's camera takes pictures of the future," I said. "I've never said that to a stranger out loud. I'm saying it now because I don't have anything left to lose."

I waited for him to laugh.

He didn't laugh.

He reached over to the table, pulled out chair number two, and sat down on it hard, because his knees had given out.

"Say that again," he said.

"The picture is dated the ninth of September. I'm supposed to be sitting here that day, and my sister says another photo of this table says I die in that chair."

I was shaking so hard the print rattled.

"Do you know anything about this?" I asked. "Because your hand's in it."

He turned his arm over and looked at the scar, and then at me.

The color was draining out of his face, slowly, from the forehead down.

"Hold on," he said. "Tell me one more thing. Your name. Is it Dani?"

My whole body went cold.

I took a step back, and the boards creaked behind me.

"How do you know my name?"

"Because somebody sent me a photograph of you in July," he said. "A woman with a very pleasant voice. She said her little sister had been unwell, and she wanted the staff to know your face."

He stood up and looked straight at me.

"She booked this table for the ninth, and paid in full. Table four, nowhere else." He held my eyes. "She said you were the only guest who mattered."

The wind came up off the water.

"You're early," he said. "Table four isn't until the ninth."

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