Vanishing Acts

by Jodi Picoult

  I stare at him, speechless. He starts to repeat his confession, but I stop him before I have to hear it again. "Don't tell me," I interrupt. "Don't say anything else, all right?"

  Part of me has shifted into automatic defense attorney mode. If your client confesses--and they almost always want to--you put in earplugs and go about doing your job. Whatever the vice--felony or misdemeanor, murder or, Jesus Christ, kidnapping--you can still find a way to make a jury see the shades of gray involved.

  But part of me is not an attorney, just Delia's fiance. A man who needs to hear the truth, so that he can tell it to her. What kind of person steals a child? What would I do to the son of a bitch who took Sophie?

  I look down at the arrest warrant again. "Bethany Matthews," I read out loud.

  "That ... used to be her name."

  He doesn't have to explain the rest; I know in that instant we're talking about Delia. That she is the little girl who was stolen a lifetime ago.

  I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a big brand on his forehead to warn us away. Criminals sit next to us on the bus. They pack our groceries and cash our paychecks for us and teach our children. They look no different from you or me. And that's why they get away with it.

  The lawyer in me urges caution, remembers that there are mitigating circumstances I don't yet know. The rest of me wonders if Delia cried when he took her. If she was scared. If her mother spent years searching for her.

  If she still is.

  "Eric, listen ..."

  "You'll be arraigned tomorrow in New Hampshire on the fugitive charges," I interrupt. "But you've been indicted by an Arizona grand jury. We'll have to go there to enter a plea."

  "Eric--"

  "Andrew"--I turn my back on him--"I can't. I just can't, right now." I am about to exit the lockup, but at the last moment, I walk back toward the cell. "Is she yours?"

  "Of course she's mine!"

  "Of course?" I snap. "For God's sake, Andrew, I just found out that you're a kidnapper. I have to tell Delia you're a kidnapper. I don't exactly think it's an unreasonable question." I take a deep breath. "How old was she?"

  "Four."

  "And in twenty-eight years you never told her?"

  "She loves me." Andrew looks down at the floor. "Would you risk losing that?"

  Without answering, I turn and walk away.

  When I was eleven, I realized that Delia Hopkins was female. She wasn't like ordinary girls: she didn't have the dreamy, loopy handwriting that reminded us of soap bubbles lined up in a row; she didn't giggle behind her hand in a way that made us wonder what we'd done wrong; she didn't come to school with neat braids twisted like French crullers. Instead, she spoke to frogs. She could make a slap shot from the blue line. She was the first one to cut her palm with Fitz's Swiss army knife when we three made a blood vow, and she didn't even flinch.

  The summer after fifth grade, everything changed. Without even trying, I smelled Delia's hair when she sat near me. I noticed how her brown summer skin stretched tight over the muscles of her shoulders. I watched her tilt her face to the sun and felt an answer in my own body.

  I kept these thoughts a secret through the first half of sixth grade, until Valentine's Day. It was the first time in school that we weren't forced to bring in a card for everyone in the class, including the kid who picked his nose and the Missing Link, who had so much hair on her arms and back you could practically braid it. Girls flitted around the cafeteria like butterflies, alighting long enough to plant kisses on the bright cheeks of boys they liked. When it happened, you'd pretend to be disgusted, but there would be a coal burning inside you.

  Fitz got a card from Abigail Lewis, who had just gotten glow-in-the-dark braces and, it was rumored, invited select boys into the custodian's closet to watch them light up. In my own back pocket was a folded pink heart that I'd glued to a square of red construction paper. When I'm with you, bells go off in my head, I had written, and then added: Like a moving truck that's backing up.

  I was going to give it to Delia, but a thousand times that day, the moment hadn't been right--Fitz was with us, or she was too busy rummaging in her locker, or the teacher came by before I could pass it across the aisle. I slipped it out of my pocket just in time to have Fitz grab it out of my hand. "You got a card, too, didn't you?" He read it aloud, and he and Delia started to laugh.

  Angry, I snatched it back. "I didn't get it from someone, you jerk. I'm giving it." And because Delia was still sort of laughing, I marched right past her and up to the first girl I saw, Itzy Fisher, carrying a hot lunch tray. "Here," I said, and I shoved the card between her napkin and her slab of pizza.

  There was absolutely nothing special about Itzy Fisher. She had long frizzy hair that nearly touched her behind, and she wore gold-rimmed glasses that sometimes caught the light in class and made little reflections dance on the blackboard. I had barely said three words to her all year.

  "Itzy Fisher?" Delia accused when I sat back down. "You like her?" And then she got up and ran out of the cafeteria.

  Groaning, I flopped my head down on my arms. "I didn't make that card for Itzy. It was for Delia."

  "Delia?" Fitz said.

  "You wouldn't understand."

  Fitz stared right at me. "What makes you think that?"

  In the thousands of times I have replayed this moment over the years, I realize that what happened next could have gone a different way. That had Fitz been less of a best friend, or more competitive, or even more honest with himself, my life might have turned out very different. But instead, he asked me for a dollar.

  "Why?"

  "Because she's pissed at you," he said, as I fished into my lunch money. "And I can fix that."

  He took a Sharpie from his binder and wrote something across George Washington's face. Then he creased the bill the long way. He brought up the bottom edge and then the halves, turned it over, and tucked in both sides. A few more maneuvers and then he handed me a dollar folded into the shape of a heart.

  When I found Delia, she was sitting underneath the water fountain near the gym. I handed her Fitz's heart. I watched her open it, read the message along with her: If all I could ever have is you, I'd be a billionaire.

  "Itzy might get jealous," Delia said.

  "Itzy and I broke up."

  She burst out laughing. "That's the shortest relationship in history."

  I glanced over at her. "You're not still mad at me, are you?"

  "That depends. Did you write this?"

  "Yes," I lied.

  "Can I keep the dollar?"

  I blinked. "I guess."

  "Then no," she said. "I'm not mad."

  I waited for years to see Delia spend that dollar on something--every time she pulled out money to buy candy or ice cream or a Coke, I'd scan it for Fitz's words. But as far as I know she never spent it. As far as I know, she has it, still.

  When I go into Andrew's house, it's quiet. I call for Delia, but there's no answer. Wandering around, I check the bathroom and the living room and the kitchen, and then I hear noise coming from upstairs. The door to Sophie's room is closed; when I open it she is on the floor, playing with the Crime Scene Dollhouse. Delia and I got to calling it that when Sophie would leave the rooms with the contents overturned, a Barbie or two spread-eagled on the floor of the kitchen or bathroom. "Daddy," she says, "did you bring Grandpa home?"

  "I'm working on it," I tell her, ruffling her hair. "Where's Mommy?"

  "Out back with Greta." Sophie holds a Ken doll up to the front door. "Open up. It's the police," she says.

  When I look at Sophie, I see Delia. Not just in the physical features--Delia's dark hair and rosy cheeks are duplicated in our daughter--but their expressions are identical. Like how a smile unfurls across both their faces, a sail caught in a rip of wind. And the habit they have of separating the food on their plates into similar colors. Or the way, when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.
>
  I watch Sophie for another moment, thinking about what I would do if someone took her away from me, how I'd upend the earth to find her. And then I hesitate, and wonder what might make me be the one to run away with her in tow.

  Downstairs, I find Delia deep in thought on the outside deck. Her legs are propped up on Greta, a lightly snoring ottoman. When she sees me she startles. "Did you--"

  "I can't get him out until the arraignment tomorrow."

  "He has to spend the night at the police station?"

  I weigh the cost of admitting that, actually, her father will spend the night in the Grafton County Jail, and decide against it. "First thing in the morning, we can go to the courthouse."

  She glances up at me. "But they'll let him go, won't they? They're looking for someone named Bethany Matthews. That's not me. That was never me. And I wasn't kidnapped. Don't you think I'd remember something like that?"

  Taking a deep breath, I ask, "Do you remember your mother dying?"

  "Eric, I was practically a baby--"

  "Do you remember it?"

  She shakes her head.

  "Your father told you your mother was dead, Delia," I say bluntly. "And then he brought you to New Hampshire."

  Her chin comes up. "You're lying."

  "No, Dee. He was."

  Just then Fitz bursts onto the deck. "Why aren't you answering the phone? I've been trying to get in touch with you for an hour!"

  "I've been a little busy trying to get my father out of police custody."

  "You found out," Fitz says, his jaw dropping. "About the kidnapping."

  "How the hell do you know about it?" I ask.

  Fitz sits down across from Delia. "That's why I've been trying to call you. You remember how we were talking about past lives the other day? Well, I started to think about how people reinvent themselves all the time. And that maybe there was a more logical explanation to the whole lemon tree memory than the fact that you used to be a citrus farmer in eighteenth-century Tuscany. So I jumped online and Googled your name. Come on inside; I'll show you."

  We follow Fitz to Delia's computer, buried under topographical maps of New Hampshire and Vermont and catalogs from K-9 supply companies. Fitz starts to type, and a minute later, a screen is filled with stripes of search results. The first few links are Gazette stories about Delia and Greta, making a missing-person rescue. But Fitz clicks on a different link, and a page from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch fills the screen. "CORDELIA LYNN HOPKINS," it reads. "Daughter of Margaret Ketcham Hopkins and the late Andrew Hopkins, was born in Maryland Heights on March 16, 1973 ..."

  "That's my birthday," Delia says.

  "...in Clarkton and died March 8, 1977, at the age of four as a result of complications from an automobile accident that also claimed the life of her father. Survivors include her mother; her grandparents, Joe and Aleda Ketcham; and a brother, Lloyd. Funeral services will be conducted at 11 AM on Saturday, at the Malden Baptist Church with Reverend Thomas Monroe officiating. Interment will follow at Memorial Park Cemetery in Malden."

  "She had the same name, the same birthday. Her father died in the same car crash. And the accident happened the same year that you showed up with your father in Wexton."

  "Type in Bethany Matthews," I tell Fitz.

  The screen glows green with a new list of articles, all from the Arizona Republic. "CHILD ABDUCTED DURING CUSTODY VISIT. MOTHER VOWS TO FIND MISSING DAUGHTER. NO NEW LEADS IN SCOTTSDALE KIDNAPPING CASE." Fitz clicks on one link.

  June 20, 1977--Investigators continue to search for clues in the disappearance of Bethany Matthews, 4, of Scottsdale, who was last seen in the company of her father, Charles Matthews, 33, during a routine custody visit. Police in Albuquerque, acting on a tip, raided a hotel room that had been paid for with Mr. Matthews's credit card, but turned up no positive results. Meanwhile, the girl's mother, Elise Matthews, has not given up hope that her daughter will be found and returned safely. "There is nothing in this world," Mrs. Matthews vowed yesterday at a televised press conference, "that can keep me away from her."

  Mr. and Mrs. Matthews divorced in March, and shared custody. Matthews was last seen picking up his daughter from the home of his ex-wife at 9 AM on Saturday, where he indicated that he would return before 6 PM on Sunday. When he didn't bring Bethany back, and Mrs. Matthews was unable to reach him via telephone, she involved the police. An initial search of Mr Matthews's apartment suggested that the subject had permanently vacated the premises.

  Volunteers who would like to contribute time or materials to the search effort should report to the Saguaro High School gymnasium. Any tips regarding the whereabouts of Bethany Matthews or Charles Matthews should be directed to the Scottsdale police, at 555-3333.

  Delia puts her hand over Fitz's, where it rests on the mouse. She clicks a single word at the end of the article: photo. Twin head shots fill the computer screen--one of a little girl who looks frighteningly like Sophie; the other of a younger, grinning Andrew Hopkins.

  A minute later she runs out the door and into the woods, Greta bounding off at her heels. We both know enough to let her go.

  "This is all my fault," Fitz says.

  "I think Andrew might be a little more to blame."

  He shakes his head. "I didn't know her name ... her real name. After I saw the obituary on Cordelia Hopkins, I started thinking of who might steal an identity, and why. Delia mentioned some weird memory about a lemon tree ... so I narrowed down my search by figuring out where they'd grow." Fitz starts counting off on his fingers. "Florida. Southern California. Arizona. Only one of them had a well-publicized kidnapping case in 1977. I called the number in the article for the Scottsdale Police, and asked about Bethany Matthews. It took a while to find someone who knew what I was talking about--all of the officers who'd worked on the case had retired. They asked me where I was calling from."

  "And you told them?"

  Fitz grimaces. "I had to say I was a journalist, didn't I? The thing is, Eric, I never told them Delia's new name." He gets up from the chair and faces the window, scanning the woods as if he might be able to see her. "My guess is that someone from Scottsdale heard the words New Hampshire Gazette, did a little digging on the Internet. Andrew's a town councilman, you know how many times his picture's been in the paper? Not to mention Delia's?"

  "He hid in plain sight," I murmur. It seems remarkably fast for a law enforcement agency to have connected the dots--and yet, I know that it's an illusion. A warrant for Andrew's arrest has been sworn out for nearly thirty years; the police just didn't know where he was so they could serve it.

  Fitz turns away, his hands in his pockets. "You have to go find her."

  "You go. You're the one who brought in the cops."

  "I know," Fitz admits. "But I'm not the one she wants."

  By the time the end of sixth grade rolled around, boys had mustered up the nerve to ask girls out. This meant absolutely nothing, except that the duo would sit next to each other at lunch in the cafeteria, and occasionally talk on the phone. By this criterion, Delia and I were practically married--we spent far more time together than any couple in the Wexton Middle School--that is, until Fitz officially asked Delia to go out with him.

  I knew it meant nothing--rumors about who liked whom flew around like gypsy moths in August--but all the same, I spent too much time wishing that I was Fitz, holding on to Delia's hand when we balanced on the railroad tracks or lying next to her on the damp grass when we tried to look at the solar eclipse through a pinhole in a shoebox. After a while, Fitz stopped calling me, and then Delia; and I tried to convince myself that I'd never needed either of them.

  I went stag to the end-of-school dance. I was listening to the boasts of Donnie DeMaurio, a twelve-year-old who had a mustache and a pack of bootleg cigarettes, when Delia appeared, crying. "Fitz broke up with me," she said.

  I couldn't imagine why; later he told me the truth. I'd rather have both of you, he said, in that easy way of his, than just one. But at that moment,
Fitz was absent and Delia was so close that the hair on my arms was reaching toward the heat of her. "I guess I could go out with you," I said.

  "You guess you could go out with me?" she repeated. "Gee, thanks for making the sacrifice. Don't do me any favors."

  I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first. I grabbed her arm before she could run away. "I would very much like to go out with you," I said more carefully. "Is that better?"

  "Maybe."

  "So what do we do?" I asked.

  She chewed her bottom lip. "We could dance. If you want."

  I had never danced with a girl before, and even though Delia and I had grown up skinny-dipping in ponds and sleeping so close in a pitched tent that we had to share each other's air, it felt unreasonably new. My hands skimmed over Delia's spine to settle on her hips. She smelled like peaches, and beneath her knit dress I could feel the thin elastic of her underwear.

  She talked for both of us. She talked about how, on the phone one night, Fitz had asked her out, and how she didn't know whether to say yes or no and yes had just slipped out. She talked about how she fully intended to get back her Dwight Evans baseball card, which she had given to Fitz as a way of saying she really liked him.

  When the song ended, Delia didn't pull away. She stayed there, maybe even moved a tiny bit closer. "You want to keep talking?" I asked.

  "No," she said, smiling into my eyes. "I think I'm done."

  When I find her, she is ten feet above my head, in the scarred elbow of an oak tree. Greta sits at the bottom, whining. "Hey," I say, pushing aside some of the smaller branches and leaves. "You okay?"

  Above me, the stars are coming out, a bright-eyed audience. "What if this was all my fault?" Delia asks.

  "How could it be?" I reply. "You don't even remember it happening."

  "Maybe I do and I've blocked it out. Maybe my father hid that from me, too."

  I hesitate. "I'm sure he's got an explanation for what happened."

  Delia drops down from the tree, landing like a cat beside me. "Then why didn't he give it to me?" she says, her voice striped with scars. "He had twenty-eight years. Don't you think that's long enough to mention, maybe, that Delia Hopkins is a dead girl from Missouri? You know, 'Delia, honey, can you pass the Cheerios, and did I ever tell you that when you were four I stole you away from your mother?'" Suddenly, Delia's face goes white. "Eric," she asks, "do you think I still have a mother?"