Odd Thomas

said. "A green polo shirt."
        I thought of the guy behind the shoe-rental counter at Green Moon Lanes, the blonde drawing beer behind the bar - both in their new work uniforms.
        Her voice growing even quieter, Viola said, "Tell me the truth, Odd. Look at my face. Do you see death in me?"
        I said, "Yes."
        

CHAPTER 25
        
        ALTHOUGH I'M UNABLE TO READ FACES TO discover either a person's future or the secrets of her heart, I could not look a moment longer at Viola Peabody's face, for I imagined what I couldn't truly read, and in my mind's eye saw her motherless daughters standing at her grave.
        I went to one of the open windows. Beyond lay a side yard overhung by pepper trees. Out of the warm darkness came the sweet fragrance of jasmine that had been planted and tended by Viola's caring hands.
        Ordinarily, I have no fear of the night. I feared this one, however, because the change from August 14 to August 15 was coming express-train fast, as if the rotation of the earth had drastically gained speed by the flicking of a godly finger.
        I turned to Viola, who still sat on the edge of her armchair. Her eyes, always large, were owlish now, and her brown face seemed to have a gray undertone. I said, "Isn't tomorrow your day off?"
        She nodded.
        Because she had a sister who could baby-sit her daughters, Viola worked at the Grille six days a week.
        Stormy said, "Do you have plans? What are you doing tomorrow?"
        "I figured I'd work around the house in the morning. Always things to do here. In the afternoon… that's for the girls."
        "You mean Nicolina and Levanna?" I asked, naming her daughters.
        "Saturday - that's Levanna's birthday. She'll be seven. But the Grille is busy Saturdays, good tips. I can't miss work. So we were going to celebrate early."
        "Celebrate how?"
        "That new movie, it's a big hit with all the kids, the one with the dog. We were going to the four-o'clock show."
        Before Stormy spoke, I knew the essence of what she would say. "Might be more of a crowd in a cool theater on a summer afternoon than at a Little League game."
        I asked Viola, "What did you plan after the movie?"
        "Terri said bring them to the Grille, dinner on her."
        The Grille could be noisy when all the tables were filled, but I didn't think that the enthusiastic conversation of the patrons in our little restaurant could be mistaken for the roar of a crowd. In dreams, of course, everything can be distorted, including sounds.
        With the open window at my back, I suddenly felt vulnerable to an extent that made the skin pucker on the nape of my neck.
        I looked out into the side yard again. All appeared to be as it had been a minute ago.
        The graceful branches of the peppers hung in the breathless, jasmine-scented night air. Shadows and shrubs plaited their different darknesses, but as far as I could tell, they didn't give cover to Bob Robertson or anyone else.
        Nevertheless, I stepped away from the window, to the side of it, when I turned once more to Viola. "I think you ought to change your plans for tomorrow."
        By saving Viola from this destiny, I might be sentencing someone else to die horribly in her place, just as might have been the case if I had warned off the blond bartender at the bowling alley. The only difference was that I didn't know the blonde… and Viola was a friend.
        Sometimes complex and difficult moral choices are decided less by reason and by right than by sentiment. Perhaps such decisions are the paving stones on the road to Hell; if so, my route is well paved, and the welcoming committee already knows my name.
        In my defense, I can only say that I sensed, even then, that saving Viola meant saving her daughters, too. Three lives, not one.
        "Is there any hope…" Viola touched her face with the trembling fingers of one hand, tracing the bones of jaw and cheek and brow, as if discovering not her skull but instead Death's countenance in the process of replacing her own. "…any hope this can pass from me?"
        "Fate isn't one straight road," I said, becoming the oracle that earlier in the day I had declined to be for her. "There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path."
        "Do whatever Oddie says," Stormy advised, "and you'll be all