Vanishing Acts Read online

  VANISHING ACTS

  ALSO BY JODI PICOULT

  My Sister's Keeper

  Second Glance

  Perfect Match

  Salem Falls

  Plain Truth

  Keeping Faith

  The Pact

  Mercy

  Picture Perfect

  Harvesting the Heart

  Songs of the Humpback Whale

  VANISHING ACTS

  JODI PICOULT

  First published in Australia in 2005

  First published in the United States in 2005 by Atria Books,

  a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Copyright (c) Jodi Picoult 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Picoult, Jodi, 1966- .

  Vanishing acts.

  ISBN 1 74114 560 0.

  1. Young women-Fiction. 2. Adult children of divorced parents-Fiction.

  3. Parental kidnapping-Fiction. 4. New Hampshire-Fiction.

  5. Arizona-Fiction. I. Title.

  813.54

  Printed by Griffin Press, South Australia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This one is for Katie Desmond,

  who fed me Oreos for breakfast on my wedding day,

  appreciates the fashion sense of blue suede shoes,

  and knows just how many people died that first night out on the QEII.

  Every once in a while, a person's lucky enough to

  make an unforgettable friend: you're it, for me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, I didn't do this alone. My first huge thank you is to Sergeant Janice Mallaburn of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, a dynamo who probably didn't realize what she was getting into when she volunteered to help me after meeting me during my visit to the Madison Street Jail, and who is the first (and last) research guru to ever call me Tastee Freak. Thanks to the helpers in other branches of the law: Chris and Kiki Keating, Allegra Lubrano, Kevin Baggs (and Jean Arnett), David Bash, Jen Sternick, Detective Trooper Claire Demarais, Chief Nick Giaccone, and Captain Frank Moran. Judge Jennifer Sobel gets her own special shout-out for accompanying me to jail for a day, if only so that someone would believe me when I came home with all those great stories. New Hampshire State Trooper James Steinmetz and his dogs Maggie and Greta, as well as Rhode Island State Trooper Matt Zarrella, showed me firsthand why search-and-rescue dogs are so impressive. Thanks to the medical and psychiatric professionals, for rendering advice on scorpions, tracheostomies, hysterectomies, and repressed memory: Doug Fagen, Jan Scheiner, Ralph Cahaly, David Toub, Roland Eavey, and Jim Umlas. For speedy transcription, as always, thanks to Sindy Follensbee. For letting me steal mercilessly from their lives: Jeff Hastings, JoAnn Mapson, and Steve Alspach. For being the best first reader ever: Jane Picoult. For their dedication to my writing: Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, Sarah Branham, Karen Mender, and everyone else at Atria who makes my head swell. For reminding everyone else to be dedicated to my writing: the indomitable Camille McDuffie. For our fifteen-year anniversary and more, Laura Gross. For being the best cheerleader and ringmaster an author could ask for, Emily Bestler. And for just being: Kyle, Jake, Samantha, and Tim.

  What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all times.

  --Henry David Thoreau,

  "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," 1849

  VANISHING ACTS

  Prologue

  I was six years old the first time I disappeared.

  My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the senior center, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be doing him a favor.

  Like I said, I was six, and I still believed that my father truly could pull coins out of my ear and find a bouquet of flowers in the folds of Mrs. Kleban's chenille housecoat and make Mr. van Looen's false teeth disappear. He did these little tricks all the time for the elderly folks who came to play bingo or do chair aerobics or watch old black-and-white movies with soundtracks that crackled like flame. I knew some parts of the act were fake--his fiddlehead mustache, for example, and the quarter with two heads--but I was one hundred percent sure that his magic wand had the ability to transport me into some limbo zone, until he saw fit to call me back.

  On the night of the Christmas show, the residents of three different assisted-living communities in our town braved the cold and the snow to be bused to the senior center. They sat in a semicircle watching my father while I waited backstage. When he announced me--the Amazing Cordelia!--I stepped out wearing the sequined leotard I usually kept in my dress-up bin.

  I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

  I

  I think it is a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

  --Vladimir Nabokov

  Delia

  You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind. There are concrete paths, like credit card receipts and appointment calendars and promises you've made to others. There are microscopic clues, like fingerprints, that stay invisible unless you know how to look for them. But even in the absence of any of this, there's scent. We live in a cloud that moves with us as we check e-mail and jog and carpool. The whole time, we shed skin cells--forty thousand per minute--that rise on currents up our legs and under our chins.

  Today, I'm running behind Greta, who picks up the pace just as we hit the twisted growth at the base of the mountain. I'm soaked to the thighs with muck and slush, although it doesn't seem to be bothering my bloodhound any. The awful conditions that make it so hard to navigate are the same conditions that have preserved this trail.

  The officer from the Carroll, New Hampshire, Police Department who is supposed to be accompanying me has fallen behind. He takes one look at the terrain Greta is bulldozing and shakes his head. "Forget it," he says. "There's no way a four-year-old would have made it through this mess."

  The truth is, he's probably right. At this time of the afternoon, as the ground cools down under a setting sun, air currents run downslope, which means that although the girl probably walked through flatter area some distance away, Greta is picking