Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

  “People don’t realize how hard it is,” she says. “When my clients used to come to me, asking to talk to Uncle Sol or their beloved grandma, all they were focusing on was the hello, the chance to say what they didn’t say when the person was alive. But when you open a door, you have to close it behind you. You might say hello, but you also wind up saying good-bye.”

  I face her. “I wasn’t asleep. When you and Virgil were talking, in the car? I heard everything you said.”

  Serenity freezes. “Well, then,” she says. “I guess you know I’m a fraud.”

  “You aren’t, though. You found that necklace. And the wallet.”

  She shakes her head. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  I think about this for a moment. “But isn’t that what being psychic is?”

  I can tell that she never thought about it that way. One man’s coincidence is another’s connection. Does it matter if it’s gut feeling, like Virgil says, or psychic intuition, if you still get what you’re searching for?

  She pulls a blanket up from the floor to cover her feet, and casts it wide so it will cover me, too. “Maybe,” she concedes. “Still, it’s nothing like what it used to be. Other people’s thoughts—they just were suddenly there in my head. Sometimes the connection was crystal clear, and sometimes it was like being on a cell phone in the mountains, where you only catch every third word. But it was more than stumbling over something shiny in the grass.”

  We are cuddled under a blanket that smells like Tide and Indian food, and rain is striking the windows from outside. I realize this is very close to the image I’d conjured earlier, of what my life would have been like if my mother had survived.

  I glance at Serenity. “Do you miss it? Hearing from people who are gone?”

  “Yes,” she admits.

  I lean my head on her shoulder. “Me, too,” I say.

  ALICE

  Gideon’s arms were the safest place in the world. When I was with him, I forgot: how Thomas’s highs and his lows scared the hell out of me; how every morning started with an argument and every night ended with my husband locked in his office with his secrets and the shadows of his mind. When I was with Gideon I could pretend that the three of us were the family I had hoped to be.

  Then I found out we would be four.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he’d promised when I told him the news, although I did not believe him. He couldn’t tell the future. He could just, I hoped, be mine.

  “Don’t you see?” Gideon had said, lit from within. “We were meant to be together.”

  Maybe we were, but what a price to pay. His marriage. Mine. Grace’s life.

  Still, we dreamed out loud in Technicolor. I wanted to take Gideon back to Africa with me, so he could see these incredible animals before they had been broken by humans. Gideon wanted to move south, where he’d come from. I resurrected my dream of running away with Jenna, but this time, I imagined that he would come with us. We pretended to be racing forward, but we didn’t move an inch, because of the trapdoors that threatened to swallow us: He had to tell his mother-in-law; I had to tell my husband.

  But we had a deadline, because it was getting very hard to hide the changes to my body.

  One day, Gideon found me working at the Asian barn. “I told Nevvie about the baby,” he said.

  I froze. “What did she say?”

  “She told me I should have everything I deserve. Then she walked away from me.”

  Just like that, this wasn’t a fantasy anymore. It was real, and it meant that if he had been brave enough to confront Nevvie, I had to be brave enough to confront Thomas.

  I did not see Nevvie all day, or Gideon, either, for that matter. I tracked Thomas’s whereabouts and followed him around from enclosure to enclosure; I cooked him dinner. I asked him to help me do a foot soak on Lilly, when normally I would have asked Gideon or Nevvie for assistance. Instead of avoiding him, as I’d been doing for months, I talked to him about the applications he’d received for a new caregiver and asked him if he’d made a decision yet to hire anyone. I lay down with Jenna until she fell asleep and then went to his office and started to read an abstract, as if it was normal for us to share the space.

  I thought he might tell me to get lost, but Thomas smiled at me, an olive branch. “I forgot how nice it used to be,” he said. “You and me working side by side.”

  Resolve is like porcelain, isn’t it? You can have the best intentions, but the moment there’s a hairline crack, it is only a matter of time before you go to pieces. Thomas poured himself a tumbler of scotch, and another one for me. I left mine sitting on the desk.

  “I’m in love with Gideon,” I said bluntly.

  His hands went still on the decanter. Then he picked up his glass and finished the shot. “You think I’m blind?”

  “We’re leaving,” I told him. “I’m pregnant.”

  Thomas sat down. He buried his face in his hands and started to weep.

  I stared for a moment, torn between comforting him and hating myself for being the one to reduce him to this, a broken man with a failing sanctuary, a cheating wife, and a mental illness.

  “Thomas,” I begged. “Say something.”

  His voice hitched. “What did I do wrong?”

  I knelt in front of him. I saw, in that instant, the man whose glasses had fogged in the steamy heat of Botswana, the man who had met me at the airport clutching the roots of a plant. The man who had a dream and had invited me to take part in it. I had not seen that man for a very long time. But was it because he’d disappeared? Or because I’d stopped looking?

  “You did nothing,” I replied. “It was me.”

  He reached out, grasping my shoulder with one hand. With the other, he smacked me so hard across the face that I tasted blood.

  “Whore,” he said.

  Clutching my cheek, I fell backward. I backed away from him as he advanced toward me, scrambling to get out of the room.

  Jenna was still asleep on the couch. I raced toward her, determined to take her with me as I walked out the door this last time. I could buy clothes and toys and anything else she needed later. But Thomas grabbed my wrist, wrenching it behind me, so that I fell again and he reached our child first. He picked up her small body, and she curled into him. “Daddy?” she sighed, still caught in the web between dreams and truth.

  He wrapped his arms around her, turning so that Jenna was no longer facing me. “You want to go?” Thomas said. “Be my guest. But you want to take my daughter with you? Over my dead body.”

  He smiled at me then, a terrible, terrible smile. “Or better yet,” he said. “Over yours.”

  She would wake up, and I would be gone. Her worst fear, come true. I’m sorry, baby, I said silently to Jenna. Then I ran for help, leaving her behind.

  VIRGIL

  Even if I’d been able to find the body that was buried ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get a court order. I don’t know what I was thinking I’d resort to, shy of sneaking into a graveyard, Frankenstein-style, to dig up a corpse that I had assumed was Nevvie Ruehl. But before a body is released to a funeral home, the medical examiner does the autopsy. And the autopsy would have had a DNA sample taken by the state lab, stored somewhere in FTA card files for posterity.

  No way in hell am I going to be able to get the state lab to cough up evidence to me, now that I’m a civilian. Which means I have to find someone they would give it to. So a half hour later, I’m leaning on the ledge of the evidence room at the Boone PD, sweet-talking Ralph again. “You’re back?” He sighs.

  “What can I say? I missed you desperately. You haunt my dreams.”

  “I already took a chance letting you in last time, Virgil. I’m not risking my job for you.”

  “Ralph, you and I both know that the chief wouldn’t give this job to anyone else. You’re like the Hobbit guarding the ring, man.”

  “What?”

  “You’re the Dee Brown of the departm
ent. Without him, nobody would have even known the Celtics existed in the nineties, right?”

  Ralph’s wrinkles deepen as he grins. “Well, now you’re talking,” he says. “It’s true. These young guys don’t know their ass from their elbow. I come down here every morning and someone’s moved crap around, trying to classify it some newfangled computerized way, and you know what happens? Shit gets lost. So I move it back where it belongs. You know what I say—if it ain’t broke …”

  I nod like I’m hanging on his every word. “This is what I’m talking about. You’re the central nervous system of this outfit, Ralph. Without you, everything would fall apart. That’s why I knew you were the right guy to turn to for help.”

  He shrugs, trying to look humble. I wonder if he realizes I’m good-copping him, buttering him up so that I can get something out of him in return. Up in the break room, officers are probably still talking about how he’s senile and so slow-moving that he could drop dead in the evidence room and no one would notice for a week.

  “You remember how I was reviewing an old case, right?” I say, leaning closer, so that he’s in on the secret. “I’m trying to get a DNA sample from the blood that was taken by the state lab. Any chance you could place a few calls, make that happen?”

  “I would if I could, Virgil. But the state lab’s pipes burst five years ago. They lost eight whole years’ worth of evidence when the FTA cards were destroyed. It’s like 1999 through 2007 never happened.” The smile on my face stiffens. “Thanks anyway,” I tell him, and I slip out of the PD before anyone can see me.

  I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to break this news to Jenna when I pull up to my office building and see Serenity’s VW Bug parked out front. As soon as I get out of my truck, Jenna is in my face, peppering me with questions. “What did you find out? Is there a way to figure out who was buried? What about the fact that it’s been ten years, is that going to be a problem?”

  I glance at her. “Did you bring me coffee?”

  “What?” she says. “No.”

  “Then get me some and come back. It’s too early for the third degree.”

  I climb the stairs to my office, aware that Jenna and Serenity are trailing behind. I unlock the door, stepping over the hills of evidence to get to my desk chair, where I collapse. “It’s going to be more challenging than I thought to find a DNA sample from whoever we identified as Nevvie Ruehl ten years ago.”

  Serenity looks around the office, which is marginally more disarrayed than a bomb site. “It’s a wonder you can find anything at all in here, sugar.”

  “I wasn’t looking here,” I argue, wondering why I am even bothering to explain the flowchart of police evidence preservation to someone who probably believes in magic, and then my eye falls on the small envelope tossed on top of the other detritus on my desk.

  Inside is the fingernail I’d found in the seam of the victim’s uniform shirt.

  The same uniform shirt that had freaked Jenna out, because it was stiff with blood.

  Tallulah takes one look at Serenity and throws her arms around me. “Victor, this is so sweet of you. We never get to hear how the stuff we do in the lab plays out in the real world.” She beams at Jenna. “You must be so happy to have your mom back.”

  “Oh, I’m not—” Serenity says, at the same time Jenna goes, “Um, not quite.”

  “Actually,” I explain, “we haven’t found Jenna’s mother yet. Serenity’s helping me out with the case. She’s a … psychic.”

  Tallulah makes a beeline for Serenity. “I had this aunt? She told me her whole life she was going to leave me her diamond earrings. But she dropped dead without a will, and wouldn’t you know it, those earrings never turned up. I’d love to know which one of my sleazy cousins stole them.”

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” Serenity murmurs.

  I lift up the paper bag I have brought to the lab. “I need another favor, Lulu.”

  She raises a brow. “By my count you haven’t paid me back for the last one.”

  I flash my dimples. “I promise. As soon as this case is solved.”

  “Is that a bribe to push your test to the front of the line?”

  “Depends,” I flirt. “Do you like bribes?”

  “You know what I like …,” Tallulah breathes.

  It takes me a moment to untangle myself from her and shake the contents of the paper bag onto a sterile table. “What I’d like is for you to take a look at this.” The shirt is dirty, shredded, nearly black.

  Tallulah takes a swab from a cabinet, moistens it, and rubs it over the shirt. The cotton tip comes away pinkish brown.

  “It’s ten years old,” I tell her. “I don’t know how badly it’s been compromised. But I’m hoping like hell you can tell me if it looks at all like the mtDNA you took from Jenna.” From my pocket, I pull the envelope with the fingernail inside. “And this one, too. If my hunch is right, one is going to be a match, and one isn’t.”

  Jenna stands on the other side of the metal table. The fingers of one hand just graze the edge of the shirt fabric. The fingers of the other hand are pressed into her own carotid artery, feeling the pulse. “I’m going to throw up,” she mutters, and she bolts from the room.

  “I’ll go,” Serenity says.

  “No,” I tell her. “Let me.”

  I find Jenna at the brick wall behind the building where we laughed ourselves silly once. Except now she’s dry-heaving, her hair in her face and her cheeks flushed. I put my hand on the small of her back.

  She wipes her mouth on her sleeve. “Did you ever get the flu when you were my age?”

  “I guess. Yeah.”

  “Me, too. I stayed home from school. But my grandma, she had to go to work. So there was no one to pull my hair out of my face or to hand me a washcloth or get me ginger ale or anything.” She looks at me. “It would have been nice, you know? But instead I get a mom who’s probably dead and a father who killed her.”

  She collapses against the wall, and I sit down beside her. “I don’t know about that,” I admit.

  Jenna turns to me. “What do you mean?”

  “You were the one who first said that your mom wasn’t a murderer. That the hair on the body proved that she had some contact with Nevvie at the site where she was trampled.”

  “But you said you saw Nevvie in Tennessee.”

  “I did. And I do think that there was a mix-up, and that the body identified as Nevvie Ruehl wasn’t Nevvie Ruehl. But that doesn’t mean Nevvie wasn’t involved in some way. That’s why I asked Lulu to test the fingernail. Say the blood comes back matching your mom’s and the fingernail doesn’t—that tells me someone was fighting with her before she died. Maybe that fight got out of control,” I explain.

  “Why would Nevvie want to hurt my mom?”

  “Because,” I say, “your dad isn’t the only one who would have been upset to hear she was having Gideon’s baby.”

  “It is a fact universally acknowledged,” Serenity says, “there is no greater force on earth than a mother’s revenge.”

  The waitress who comes to refill her coffee cup gives her a strange look.

  “You should embroider that on a pillow,” I tell Serenity.

  We are at the diner down the street from my office. I didn’t think Jenna would want to eat after being sick, but to my surprise, she is ravenous. She’s consumed an entire plate of pancakes, and half of mine.

  “How long will it take the lab to get the results?” Serenity asks.

  “I don’t know. Lulu knows I want it done yesterday.”

  “I still don’t get why Gideon would have lied about the body,” Serenity says. “He must have known it was Alice when he found her.”

  “That’s easy. He’s a suspect if the body is Alice’s. He’s a victim if the body is Nevvie’s. And when she wakes up in the hospital, and remembers what went down, she bolts because she’s afraid she’s going to be arrested for murder.”

  Serenity shakes her head. �
�You know, if you get tired of being an investigator, you’d make a fantastic swamp witch. You could make a fortune doing cold readings.”

  By now other people in the diner are giving us strange looks. I guess it’s legitimate to talk about the weather and the Red Sox, but not murder investigations, or the paranormal.

  The same waitress walks over. “If you’re nearly done, we could use the table.”

  This is bullshit, because the diner is half empty. I start to argue, but Serenity waves her hand. “The hell with them,” she says. She takes a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket—enough to cover the bill with a three-cent tip—and slaps it on the table before hoisting herself out of the booth and walking outside.

  “Serenity?”

  Jenna’s been so quiet that I’ve almost forgotten about her. “What you said about Virgil being a good swamp witch. What about me?”

  Serenity smiles. “Honey, I’ve told you before that you probably have more actual psychic talent than you think. You’ve got an old soul.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  Serenity looks at me, and then back at Jenna. “Teach you what?”

  “How to be psychic?”

  “Sugar, it doesn’t work that way—”

  “Well, how does it work?” Jenna presses. “You don’t actually know, do you? You haven’t had it work, in fact, for a really long time. So maybe trying something different isn’t a bad idea.”

  She faces me. “I know you’re all about facts and figures and evidence you can touch. But you’re the one who said that sometimes when you look at the same thing a dozen times, it takes try number thirteen before what you’re looking for jumps out at you. The wallet, and the necklace, and even the shirt with the blood on it—all that stuff’s been waiting for a decade, and no one managed to find it.” Then she turns to Serenity. “You know I said last night that you were in the right place at the right time whenever we found those things? Well, I was there, too. What if those signs weren’t meant for you, but for me? What if the reason you can’t hear my mom is because I’m the one she wants to talk to?”