Page 27 of Sunflower

“I didn’t.”

I gave him a sharp look, not believing him for a second.

He held up a hand to stop my unspoken argument. “I didn’t, but my boss did.”

My brow furrowed as I tilted my head to the side.

“You know how Mam works? Her powers?”

“Yeah. She can read minds, as long as she’s touching you.”

“And you know mine work the same way, except I have a bit of an add-on, right?”

I nodded again. “You can see the future.”

Callum grimaced a little before he shifted his focus away from me. “Kind of. There are limitations to what I can see.”

“Because you have to be touching the person?”

“Yes and no,” he said, still staring off into the distance. “George, my boss? He has powers, too.”

I frowned at the change in direction, but I didn’t say anything, figuring he’d get to the point eventually. I just needed to be patient.

He looked down and toed at the ground in front of him. “He’s not related to us, so his powers work differently. Where Mam and I can only use our powers via touch, he doesn’t have that limitation. He can see snippets of the future without needing to have physical contact with the item or person.”

I felt myself blink rapidly as I took in that information. “Like a seer?”

“Pretty much.” He tilted his head to the side, still staring at the bark he was shifting around. “The thing with future sight though… It can change based on the choices people make, environmental factors, stuff like that. I don’t know how George sees things, but for me? It’s like watching a TV tuned to static. The more something can change, the fuzzier the static is. The more concrete the future is, the clearer the image.”

“So,” I began, letting my mind process. “What you’re telling me is that George had a vision of Matthew having an allergic reaction? And… what? Sent you there to help?”

Callum nodded. “Something like that.” He lifted his eyes to the sky and let out a long breath. “George has limitations on hispower too, just in a different way. He sees things, but often what he sees doesn’t match up to what happens in reality.” He pushed himself off the ground to swing a little more. “People like me get sent on missions to help when his sight is hamstrung.”

I dug my shoe in to stop my movement. “What gives him the right to do that? To act as God?”

He dropped his head to peer at me. “The US government.”

“Oh, come on. Seriously?” I shook my head at what he was saying, dismissing it immediately.

“You can either believe me now or later. It doesn’t matter. George tells me you’ll be getting a visit from a government official before you finish this year at college.” He shrugged. “You’ll be recruited to our team soon enough.”

I felt my teeth clench as I rubbed my palms against my cheeks, my stubble scratching my skin. First Callum tells me he and I are going to get married someday, next he’s telling me I’ll be recruited to the US government? I’m studying business management, not that I really want to anymore. What could the US government possibly want with someone like me? “Why? Why me? Why did your boss send you to save Matthew? Just… why?”

His head bobbled from side to side while he pondered how to answer my questions. “We saved Matthew tonight because he’s a doctor. If we’d let him die tonight, and hewouldhave died if we hadn’t intervened, the cancer research he’s working on would have stalled. It would have taken decades for another doctor to replicate his findings and further the results.” He nodded at me. “Go on, look him up on your phone. His name is Matthew Andrew Carmichael.”

With a frown, I dug my phone out of my pocket and started a search on the name he’d given me, getting him to spell out Matthew’s last name for me.

“He works at the Eckersley’s Institute. You should be able to find a pic of him on their staff bio page.”

I ran the search again with the new information. Sure enough, there on the institute’s website, Matthew stared back at me, a wide smile on his face. I quickly cast my eyes over his short bio and, just like Callum had said, he was in uterine cancer research with a small team of five. There were a couple of lines about advances that they had made over the past decade, along with a plea for more funding so they could further their research.

I had been with Callum the entire time we were with Matthew and his wife. Christine had been the one that had talked, while Matthew had not said a single word.

Of course, Callum could have gleaned all that information from when he’d touched Matthew, but that couldn’t explain how he’d known to be there in the restaurant in the first place or why he’d known something would happen to Matthew.

I let my hands drop into my lap, my phone forgotten. “You knew.”

“No,” Callum said adamantly, shaking his head. “Georgeknew. I was just the one George sent.”

---