In Which a Day Goes Missing and No One Notices. No One Except Us

You want to steal something valuable from Americans? Don’t take money.

Take away attention. And time.

That was the lesson Thursday taught me. That’s the day Thursday disappeared from Des Moines, Iowa, without so much as an apology.

I stood outside DART Central, Des Moines Area Transit Center, at 8:17 a.m., holding a coffee tasting like burnt hope, staring at one of the digital departure boards.

WEDNESDAY. FRIDAY.

No Thursday.

I blinked. The board blinked back, confident. But dead wrong.

Next to me, Oliver Finch hummed.

Oliver only hummed when something mattered to him more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t a tune anyone could name or recognize. It was Emma’s song, the one about the moon and the boat. He sang to her every night for five years until that Thursday in March. That was the one that took Emma and Oliver’s wife away.

I didn’t comment. I chose to stay silent. You don’t comment on grief, especially when it’s standing and walking with you.

But I did notice. Oliver stared at the reader board, scanning it for the missing Thursday. His eyes moved over it, over and over again. Almost like he’d seen it happen before.

“The sign’s broken,” I pointed to the daily schedule.

“Possibly.”

“It skipped a day.”

Oliver’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Yes, it did.”

A commuter walked past us, glanced up at the transit schedule, and nodded to us, as if this were all perfectly normal.

“Friday already,” she muttered. “It’s been a long week.”

“But yesterday was.” I began. But Oliver touched me, laying his hand on my sleeve. “Careful, Thomas. That sentence of yours doesn’t land today.”

I stopped and closed my mouth.

The word ‘Thursday’ hovered in my mind like a helium balloon, its string cut, floating up out of sight. I could barely make out its shape. I just couldn’t grab it or hold onto it. In my mind, or at least it felt like, Thursday was gone.

That alone scared me. Much more than the sign. I’m a CPA. As an accountant, my whole life runs on calendars, billable hours, deadline trackers. Time. It’s the only currency I actually trust. And now? Now, an entire day, the whole thing. It had just vanished! Without a trace. And no one, except Oliver and me? Noticed.

I pulled out my iPhone. First, I checked one of my calendar applications. Then my email calendar. And finally, the stock calendar, preinstalled with every Apple smartphone. Not a single one listed Thursday as a day of the week. The days went in sequential order: Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. No Thursday. 

Even my electronic calendar, one I lived my life by, no longer showed Thursday.

Wednesday, January 8: Client meeting, 9 a.m.

Friday, January 10: Quarterly filing deadline, noon.

Nothing in between.

But I did remember, however vaguely, like a dream sliding away from my memory, or a cloud disappearing from sight. I knew I had something important scheduled. Something I couldn’t afford to miss.

Then, I remembered what it was: Katie’s winter concert. It was happening on Thursday night. 7 p.m.

But it was gone.

I turned to look at Oliver. “Why aren’t you panicking?”

He smiled. This was the smile he chose every morning when getting out of bed felt impossible. But his eyes stayed dark.

“Because, Thomas. Panic is what you do when something unexpected happens. This feels.” Oliver paused, scanning the board again. “Familiar.”

He tipped his hat to the digital board, grinning.

“And I recognize good planning, Thomas,” he added quietly. “Even when it steals everything from you.”

“Of course you do,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

But I knew what he meant. Three years ago, Oliver’s Thursday was stolen. He knew exactly what that looked like.

Oliver Finch Explains Nothing. And Everything

We walked, because Oliver believed thinking worked better in motion.

Des Moines behaved normally. Cars honked. A man jogged, his pained grimace showing grim determination. An older woman was arguing with a parking meter. And losing.

Normalcy pressed in on the two of us from all sides. That alone made the absence sharper.

“Say it,” Oliver said, still three steps ahead of me.

“Say what?”

He turned around, walking backward. “What you’re avoiding.”

I sighed. “I can’t remember anything about yesterday.”

Oliver nodded, satisfied. “Good. That means you’re paying attention.”

“That is not comforting.”

“Comfort, Thomas? It’s overrated,” he said. Then, softer: “And memory is all we have when the day is gone.”

That’s easy for you to say, especially when you don’t have quarterly taxes due and three clients who’ll fire you if their extensions are late!

I thought it, but I didn’t say it. Because I’d fired Oliver. Twice. For precisely this kind of intensity, and both times? It cost him thousands in penalties and late fees. The third time I took him back as a client, I’d promised myself I’d be patient. It was a tough promise to keep.

Grief earned patience. Even when it was exhausting.

Four blocks later, we stopped, right beneath the old pedestrian clock outside City Hall. The bus would’ve been faster. But this clock had been decorative for years. More a civic piece of jewelry than a tool.

Today, it showed one word in bright, opaque blue, obedient letters.

FRIDAY.

No hands. No numbers. No judgment.

Just agreement.

A man checked his phone, standing directly beneath it, frowning.

“What day is it?” Oliver asked.

The man didn’t look up. “Friday.” He was lost inside the screen of his smartphone.

“And yesterday?”

“Wednesday.” Now he looked up, puzzled at Oliver. 

“Thank you,” Oliver said, smiling.

Shaking his head, the man walked on, holding his phone up to his ear.

I hugged myself, thinking it might help. “Everyone says it. Like it all makes sense.”

“Because to them,” Oliver said gently, to Thomas, “it does.”

He stared up at the clock, and for a moment, Oliver’s face went somewhere else, somewhere with a five-year-old girl who’d never get another Thursday. Never get another anything.

“You can’t get it back,” I said quietly to myself.

Oliver, overhearing me, responded. “No.” His voice was barely audible. “But maybe someone else can.”

The First Rule of Unusual Crimes

Oliver kept up the brisk pace, me following on his heels, ducking into a coffee shop called Bean There Now, priding itself on local beans and moral superiority. Two things Oliver couldn’t get enough of. I could’ve done without the moral superiority. Especially coming from Oliver.

The chalkboard menu read:

FRIDAY SPECIAL

I stared at it, thinking it would confess. As if the board itself would admit to the crime.

The barista smiled. “Happy Friday!” she said to us both.

I opened my mouth to correct her.

Nothing came out.

Oliver observed my face.

“There,” he said softly, pointing at me. “That? That’s the moment.”

“The moment I forget?”

“The moment you realize forgetting isn’t passive. Someone is making you forget. Someone is taking away your memory, replacing it with nothing.”

Oliver’s hands tremble slightly, shaking his coffee cup.

Flipping open a small notebook he pulled out of his coat pocket, he scribbled the neatest hardwriting he could manage, all the way down the page.

Thursday. Meetings. Weather. Notes.

“You wrote it down?” I asked.

His look questioned me. “Thomas, I always do.”

“Why?”

He looked at me, really looked at me, and something in his expression made my chest hurt.

He shut the notebook. “Because, Thomas. They took away Thursday. My Thursday. I can never write it down again. I can never prove it happened. I can never show anyone what I lost.” He opened the notebook again, touching the page. “But this Thursday? This one? I can save this one.”

I understood Oliver. At least now I thought I did. His notebook wasn’t about the case. It was all about Emma. About keeping every day visible, tangible proof. Time existed, even if someone else was trying to erase it.

I pulled out my iPhone and opened one of my time-tracking applications. The numbers told a story my memory couldn’t.

Wednesday: 8.5 billable hours logged.

Thursday: 0 hours.

Friday: 0 hours (so far).

“The transit schedule skips 24 hours of fares,” I muttered. “That revenue is gone.” I blinked a few times. “Oliver? Someone’s going to notice missing money. ”

Oliver leaned forward. “Who?”

“Auditors. Budget analysts. Anyone reconciling daily receipts. Business owners. Retail shops.” I looked up. “This isn’t just stealing time, Oliver. It’s blatantly stealing money. And money leaves tracks.”

Oliver smiled, his first real one all morning.

He slapped me on the back. “And that, Thomas? That’s why I keep you around, my friend.”

I lowered my voice. “You think this is a crime?”

Oliver’s jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing at me. “I know it is. I’ve lived through one Thursday being stolen. I’m not going to let them take another.”

Where the Missing Day Leaves Tracks

We followed the trail the way Oliver always did, by asking where order mattered most.

The courthouse. It had no Thursday filings.

The newspaper. An entire issue was skipped.

Transit schedules leapt neatly from Wednesday to Friday.

“It’s uniform,” I said. “As if it never mattered.”

“Exactly,” Oliver replied. “Chaos never agrees with itself.”

“How does that work?”

“Thomas, if it’s not missing, it’s not really gone. Wednesday flows to Friday. No harm. No foul.”

Oliver found our first contradiction at the municipal records office. A woman named Janet Ruiz, specializing in “exceptions,” let Oliver ask his questions. But she frowned at Oliver’s notebook.

“That’s wrong,” she said slowly. “There was a Thursday.”

Oliver’s entire body relaxed. Relief flickered across his face. Finally. Someone else remembered there was a Thursday. We weren’t alone in this.

“Why is it you remember?” I asked. Oliver stared at the poor woman, like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse.

Janet swallowed. “Because. I flagged something odd.”

She pulled a folder out from under the counter.

SPECIAL SESSION: THURSDAY

City Council.

Rushed. Closed.

“Rushed. Closed session. Tell me, Janet, does that happen often?”

“It’s an exception. Not the rule.”

“Well then. Do you remember what the Council voted on?” Oliver asked, gently.

Janet shook her head. “No. I was here, not at the meeting. It’s just. Well. It’s just that it felt… important. Does that make sense?”

Oliver closed the folder carefully, as if it were holy, sacred, or very precious, then slid it back to Janet and nodded. “That’s enough,” Oliver said, voice thick. “Thank you, Janet. Thank you for remembering Thursday.”

“It’s an exception.” Janet tucked the file away, back under the counter.

I made a note on my phone: Council meeting off-books. No public minutes. Check expenditure reports.

Banter, Because Fear Needs Air

We walked over to City Hall, which was less than six blocks away. Oliver was again outpacing me. I had to almost run to keep up with him step for step. After all this walking, Oliver’s limp was much more pronounced. His right knee was shattered in the accident. It was the same one that had healed wrong because he’d spent three months barely moving, barely breathing, after that Thursday.

“Need to sit?” I asked, reaching out to help him. Not that he would accept it from me or anyone else.

“Not yet,” Oliver sighed, pushing my hand away from him.

“Oliver.”

He stopped walking, turned, and faced me. “Thomas. Someone stole Thursday. Thursday. And everyone just… agreed to forget?”

His voice cracked on the word. “Except me. I’m not letting go of this.”

He kept walking, limping more with each step. “If we don’t catch this,” he said, “what stops them from taking another arbitrary day? They already took mine. I can’t. No. I won’t. I won’t let them take someone else’s.”

I understood. This wasn’t about Des Moines. This wasn’t about the river.

This was about the Thursday in March that took his family, and every Thursday since that felt like stolen time.

“You ever regret taking me back as a client?” Oliver stopped midstride, asking me.

“Every day,” I said. Then, quieter: “But I couldn’t leave you alone with this.”

Oliver didn’t ask what I meant. I think he knew.

“Besides,” I added, trying to lighten it, “someone has to keep your books from becoming a federal case.”

He smiled. “I appreciate that, Thomas.”

“You don’t appreciate it enough. You owe me. You owe me for two years of reconstructing your disaster of a filing system.”

“I know.”

We continued to walk, this time in silence. Even if it was only for a few awkward seconds.

“So, what did they do on Thursday?” I asked.

Oliver didn’t answer me. Instead, he asked, “If you wanted to pass something no one would remember objecting to, what exactly would you erase?”

“Debate,” I said flatly. “Records. Delay.”

“Anything else?” he prompted.

I stopped walking.

“Thursday,” I said, questioning the word coming out of my mouth.

“Thursday,” he repeated. And that word came out, like a wound reopening or ripping a Band-Aid off a newly healed cut. It was painful.

The Shape of the Crime Emerges

The City Council? Denied everything.

The mayor smiled professionally at the two of us.

“A missing day?” he said. “Gentlemen, I must say. That’s imaginative.” He laughed.

Oliver leaned forward. His hands trembled slightly. Anger, grief, exhaustion. I couldn’t tell which one he was feeling.

“What did you vote on Thursday?” Oliver pried.

The mayor blinked. Once. Still smiling. “Thursday? What’s Thursday? We’ve never met Thursday. Wednesdays are when we meet.” He looked at us, like we might bite him. “Are you sure you both are okay?”

Oliver slammed his notebook on the mayor’s desk with more force than necessary.

“Thursday,” he said, voice tight. “Not just any day. Thursday. Do you know what happens on Thursdays? Children go to school. Parents go to work. Families have dinner together. People live their lives. And you.” His voice broke, shaking his notebook at the mayor. “You erased it. You took Thursday from everyone in this city like it was nothing.”

The office was silent, quieter than an empty library.

I desperately wanted to jump in, to intervene. Wanted to pull Oliver back before he broke something or got burned by the case, himself, both.

But I didn’t. Because, like or not, this time Oliver was right. And because I knew whose Thursday he was really talking about.

The mayor’s smile cracked, but only at the edges.

“We’re done here,” he said, standing up, motioning for security to see us out.

Oliver stood slowly, favoring his bad knee, leaning on his umbrella. “Not quite, Mr. Mayor. You see, digital records? They can be erased. But bureaucracy, like your office, has older rules.”

The mayor’s face went very still, the smile disappearing completely.

“Rules about paper trails,” Oliver added softly. “Rules about proof. Rules about what you can’t just make disappear.”

I stood too, feeling two burly security officers breathing down our necks. “And rules about money. Thursday’s transit fares, for example. Parking meters. Municipal service fees. All that revenue has to be somewhere and accounted for. Either it’s missing, which is clearly theft, or it’s hidden, which is fraud.”

The mayor’s left eye twitched. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said curtly.

The Clock That Shouldn’t Exist

Outside, Oliver leaned against the building, tapping the umbrella on the concrete.

“That was stupid,” he said. “I lost my temper.”

“You were honest.”

“That’s the same thing. At least it is in politics.” He closed his eyes, sighing. “Emma loved Thursdays.” He looked up at me. “It was library day at her preschool. Thomas, she’d come home with a stack of books and make me read every single one before bedtime.” A small smile crossed his lips as he thought about those evenings.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. I just nodded.

“The accident happened on a Thursday morning, on her way to the library. And sometimes. I think.” He closed his eyes. “If I could just get that Thursday back. If I could just.”

He stopped, swinging the umbrella in a wide arc, aiming for the building. But he stopped inches before it hit the bricks.

The thought hit me, almost at the exact same time that Oliver was going to destroy his umbrella. “Maintenance logs, Oliver!” I touched his shoulder, smirking. A quick internet search found me staring at the public logs, the maintenance schedule for Des Moines. Public records. A searchable database. A normal person would find these records boring. But not me. It’s the kind of thing CPAs live for.

It only took me a few seconds to find what I was looking for. “Oliver,” I said slowly. “Who is it that maintains the decorative clock on Court Avenue?”

“I don’t know, Thomas. Maintenance department, I’d assume. Why? You think that matters?”

Now I was really excited, geeking out over something that Oliver missed. “Because,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, “maintenance requires scheduling. Work orders. Time sheets.” I scrolled through entries. “And if someone would need to hide physical documents somewhere off the digital grid, somewhere where those with routine access wouldn’t look twice. It wouldn’t raise any questions!”

Oliver straightened, tapping the umbrella hard on the ground. “The clock!”

“The clock.”

We walked, or at least I did. Oliver half-ran, half-limped two blocks over to Court Avenue.

There it was, the old civic clock standing exactly where it always had, ornamental and ignored. Oliver talked us into the building and located a custodian who let us in the back. I was still scouring the records, looking for any other evidence that would help us, so I didn’t hear what he said or told Ben. That’s what it said on his stitched name tag. I overheard the last bit of the conversation as Ben walked us to the door leading to the maintenance ladder. “Ain’t no one come up here. Not for quite a long time, so it ain’t gonna be no big deal.” He held out his hand, waiting for Oliver to give him something. I was puzzled. Then I saw Oliver reach into the left side pocket of his coat. He dug around for a few seconds, pulling out a few bills. Did I see a twenty, a fifty, and a one-hundred-dollar bill? I stared at him, then watched him stuff the bills into Ben’s open palm. “Thanks.” He pointed at the ladder. “When you’re all done? Let that little cabinet thingy there go,” Ben pointed at a flat piece of metal connected with hinges on one side. “It’ll lock behind you.” It locked the ladder to prevent unauthorized access. “I have the master key. Ain’t no other copies I know of.” He said, as an afterthought. “Anyways. Be careful. I ain’t been up there in years.”

“What about the maintenance logs?” I asked, holding up my phone.

“Oh, yeah. Those.” He shrugged. “I can only tell you what I’ve done and not done. And,” he pointed at me with a thin, bony finger, “I ain’t been up that ladder in years. No desire, neither, if you wanna know the truth.” He saluted us both, walking back down the corridor.   

Oliver stared up at the maintenance ladder.

He took a deep breath. “I can do this,” Oliver said.

I grabbed his hand that was holding the first rung. “No.” He pulled my hand off the rung. “Thomas. This is mine. I need to do this.”

I shook my head, acknowledging his determination. His limp was getting worse, and I was more than a little concerned Oliver would slip.  

But his ascent was slow. Each step? Deliberate. Watching him climb up was like watching an athlete finish a grueling race. Each step was an act of will, fighting against a body that remembered breaking on a Thursday morning three years ago.

I stood below waiting to catch him. If he fell, that is.

The top hatchlike door wasn’t locked. Only the bottom of the ladder. Opening the door atop the ladder must’ve created a draft somewhere. It sent paper flying out past Oliver, startling him. The pages looked like one of those parades through Times Square in New York after World War II. It looked like confetti.

Several pages floated down to me. Pages of notes. Votes. Decisions. Things recorded by the stenographer, rewritten for precise documentation.

Memory made physical.

The pages told their own story at least to an accountant like me. Now I had a stack of roughly fifty pages, more spilling out, landing all over the floor. “Oliver!” I shouted up to him, as he scrambled down the ladder, “They extracted the day. Digitally,” I whispered. “Every system. Every database. They scrubbed it clean.” I paused for a second. “Well, at least as clean as you can get.”

“Yes,” Oliver said, breathing hard. “Because you can’t erase everything. There’s always a trace left. But digital deletion? It leaves questions. Gaps someone might notice,” he pointed at me, making me smile, “audit trails someone might follow.” He held up some of the papers he found, his hands shaking. “This? This is what made it legal. Signatures. Authorization. The physical proof that Thursday’s erasure was an official act, not a hack.” He showed me the documents he held.

“So they hid the evidence that justified the crime.”

“Exactly. Without these? The electronic erasure becomes nothing more than a conspiracy. But, with these,” Oliver gestured to the bottom of a signed resolution I was holding, “it’s just bureaucracy. Why? Because no one remembers. And no one cares.”

He handed me another page with the following words in bold across the top.

Resolution 4417: Approved. Effective Immediately.

Following the language of the approval were seven signatures. Ink embedded on the page. Real. And more than a bit damning.

“They deleted it. They wiped out Thursday,” I said.

“On Thursday,” Oliver said quietly. “On someone’s Thursday. On everyone’s Thursday.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I can’t get my Thursday back. But maybe.” The determination was thick in his voice, “Just maybe I can save Des Moines.”

An Invitation to the Observant Reader

Standing there, next to the ladder, Oliver’s knee gave out. I caught him; his umbrella and quick reflexes also helped.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“Always,” I replied. Oliver’s frustration lay in his body giving out, not my catching him. At least that was what I told myself.

Oliver turned his face to me. He’s got this very peculiar expression. But it only shows itself when a case is balanced on its edge, ready to tip to the solved side. It’s half satisfaction, half something rawer.

“You know, Thomas,” he said, tapping his finger against his lips, “the truly elegant crimes leave signatures. Not because the criminals are careless, but because they simply can’t help themselves. Pride. It always writes its name somewhere.”

I glanced through the documents I was holding. “Wait. You already know who did it, don’t you?”

“I do.” The smugness in his voice aggravated me. Oliver wouldn’t be this far along without the maintenance records. And that was my doing, not his.

“And I suppose you’re going to make me guess.”

“Not you,” he said, smiling, gesturing vaguely at the air around us, as if addressing an invisible audience. “Anyone paying attention. Anyone who thinks Thursday matters.”

I walked, Oliver limped, to a nearby bench, spreading out his three pieces of evidence.

First, the City Council resolution, dated Thursday, had the signatures of all seven members.

Second, a municipal ordinance about “temporal record management” also passed six months earlier. And, third, the maintenance log for the Court Avenue clock. Weekly wind-ups were scheduled for every Wednesday, except this week. This week showed two entries: Wednesday and Friday. But Ben told us that no one, himself included, had been up the ladder to access the clock in years.

“The method is right here,” Oliver said, patting the pages. “The motive is obvious. But the mastermind,” he held up a finger, “is hiding in plain sight, and is one of these seven signatures.”

He looked up, eyes bright with unshed tears and fury, grinning.

“One councilmember planned this. The others? Sheep. All they did was agree and vote. The question is: which signature here doesn’t belong? Who is the mastermind behind the disappearance of Des Moines’ Thursday?”

He waited, humming Emma’s song softly. It was getting on my nerves.

“Take your time,” he added. “Thursday? It’s not going anywhere. Not anymore.”

Oliver Finch Explains Everything

Oliver continued to hum, waiting until sunset cast a reddish orange on the pages.

Des Moines felt wrong. It was too calm, too synchronized, like a held breath.

We stood beneath the clock, Oliver leaning on his umbrella for support. Oliver spoke clearly, not loudly, as if the explanation itself carried its own weight. I’m not sure why he decided to wait to talk here, but then again, I’ve learned over the years that questioning Oliver feels, well, wrong.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, to anyone within earshot. He didn’t have a crowd, just a few curious onlookers. “Every crime like this one requires three things: motive, method, and misdirection.”

I leaned against the lamppost, watching Oliver steady himself. He reminded me of a carnival barker hawking a balloon game. Three darts for a dollar. Sir, Madame, win a prize. Only one dollar. I must say, I was impressed by Oliver’s eloquence.

“First, motive. Did you, the good folks of Des Moines, realize that your own City Council wishes to privatize the Des Moines River? A decision guaranteed to provoke outrage, delay, and legal resistance!”

A young coed slowed down, readjusting her backpack. A businessman, maybe an attorney, also stopped, intently listening to Oliver, who was now getting into the theatrics of proving why he was right, and this case was solved.

“Second. Method! Your own Council members invoke an unpublicized emergency provision that allows for chronological omission of anything. In this case, it means removing a single civic day from public record. All of Des Moines digital systems were scrubbed clean! Calendars, databases, news archives, all adjusted just to skip from Wednesday straight to Friday.”

More people stopped, intently listening to the limping man with the umbrella.

“But Iowa state law requires physical documentation for votes transferring public assets. And the Council needed signed proof that the vote had occurred. Legally. So they met on Thursday, voted, signed, and then hid the only physical evidence where no one would look.”

He tapped the clock building with his umbrella.

“Inside our very own decorative timepiece. Publicly visible. Functionally ignored. And most importantly, off every single digital inventory!”

Now the phones came out, some snapping pictures, others recording video. Still others went live, showing in real time what Oliver was sharing.

“Notice the uniformity of forgetting. Without physical records to contradict the digital erasure, personal memory had nothing to anchor to. The mind agreed to forget. It’s something we’re really good at,” Oliver said to the coed, who smiled back at him.

His voice intensified, but I heard a slight tremor underneath his confidence.

“Third. Misdirection! The Council picks Thursday. Not Monday. Not Friday. Thursday. A day people rush through. A day no one defends. Just another weekday. Unremarkable. Replaceable. But why?”

He paused.

“Because no Thursday is replaceable. Not to the child who’ll never get another one. Not to the parent who loses the only Thursday they had left. Not to anyone who understands that time, once it’s stolen, never comes back.”

A tense murmur rippled through the growing crowd.

“What bugged me for the longest time was who the hell orchestrated it? That required looking at the maintenance log,” Oliver winked at me. It was the most recognition I would get for this case. “Six councilmembers signed the resolution on Thursday. But one signature appeared on Wednesday, right before the temporal omission took effect. That councilmember needed to sign early because they knew Thursday wouldn’t exist in official records. They had to prepare the framework in advance.”

Holding up one of the pages we recovered from the clock, Oliver showed the crowd. “Councilmember Patricia Voss! Chair of Administrative Services. The only person with access to both the temporal ordinance AND the clock’s maintenance schedule!”

Several people in the crowd gasped.

Oliver struck a single match. His hand was steady now, the flaming match in one hand, the page in the other.

“And now,” Oliver said, “we return what was stolen!”

He burned the papers.

The clock shuddered.

The city exhaled a deep breath.

Aftermath, with Warmth

Thursday slammed back into place like a door kicked wide open.

People stopped mid-stride, hands flying to their temples. A woman dropped her grocery bag. Oranges rolled across the sidewalk, suddenly inexplicable. Car horns erupted in a discordant symphony as drivers remembered appointments they’d missed, arguments they’d abandoned mid-sentence, promises evaporating like fog.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Thursday. It was Thursday!”

Phones lit up across downtown Des Moines. Calendars glitched, messages arrived late, and the digital world was catching up to analog memory. Confusion spread out in waves, both visible and audible, as a city of people woke up after being unconsciously robbed. I checked my phone, just to make sure everything was back to normal.

It was Thursday, January 9: Katie’s winter concert? 7 p.m. tonight. I had an hour to get there.

There. It was back. Real. Thursday belonged in Des Moines again. It was mine. Again.

The next day, the City Council rescinded its vote.

The river stayed public.

Patricia Voss? She resigned, effective immediately. There were rumors that Patricia fled the country before Saturday.

Oliver and I? We sat on a bench by the river, Monday morning, watching the water move like it always had.

His knee was propped up, and he was complaining about getting old while he popped a few ibuprofen. Normal things. Human things. Normal for us, I guess.

“You okay?” I asked Oliver.

He was quiet for a few minutes, the river lapping at the shoreline as a barge passed by.

“I got their Thursday back,” he said finally. His voice. Soft. But steady. “Not mine. Never mine. But theirs.” Oliver sighed, tapping his umbrella on the concrete, humming Emma’s song. The one about the moon and the boat.

“Is that the same tune?” I asked quietly.

“Always,” he said, smiling. “Always Emma’s tune. And on Thursday.” He winked at me.

I never asked Oliver why this case mattered so much to him. I already knew. His Thursday was stolen three years ago on the way to the library, and no amount of detective work could bring it back. But this Thursday? He saved this one. He gave Thursday back to a whole city of people who’d never know what they almost lost.

Thursday had slipped away.

But Oliver and I? We caught it. Working together, like two fishermen, we caught the uncatchable fish. One that most would’ve never seen or wanted to catch. But we did.

And for Oliver, for whom every Thursday was both a gift and a wound, that was the only magic that mattered.

He looked at me, smiling, almost laughing. Oliver’s genuine smile. It’s the one that cost him something but meant even more.

“Thank you,” he said. “For remembering with me.”

“Always,” I told him, smiling back.

We sat there as the sun set over the river, two men who understood time was the only thing worth fighting for. That some Thursdays could be saved. That even when you can’t get yours back, you can make sure someone else keeps theirs.

Oliver continued humming.

And the river kept moving.

And Thursday stayed exactly where it belonged.