Vanishing Acts Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of my own. I always stopped off at home first, though. I had a hundred ready excuses: I wanted to drop off my backpack; I had to grab a warmer sweatshirt; I needed my mother to sign a report card. Afterward, I would head next door.
One day, as usual, Dee and I split up at the fork in the sidewalk that divided my driveway from hers. “See you in a few,” she said.
My house was quiet, which wasn't a good sign. I wandered through it, calling for my mother, until I found her passed out on the kitchen floor. She was sprawled on her side this time, and there was a puddle of vomit under her cheek. When she blinked, the insides of her eyes were the color of cut rubies. I picked up the bottle and poured the bourbon down the sink drain. I rolled my mother out of the way so I could clean up her mess with paper towels. Then I got behind her and braced myself hard, trying to lever her weight so I could drag her to the living room couch.
“What can I do?”
It wasn't until I heard Delia's quiet voice that I realized she had been standing in the kitchen for a while. When she spoke, she couldn't meet my eyes, and that was a good thing. She helped me get my mother to the couch, onto her side, where if she got sick again she wouldn't choke. I turned on the TV, a soap I knew she liked.
“Eric, baby, would you get me . . .” my mother slurred, but she didn't finish her sentence before she passed out again. When I looked around, Delia was gone. Well, it didn't surprise me. It was, in fact, the reason I'd kept this secret from my two best friends; once they saw the truth, I was sure they'd turn tail and run. I walked back to the kitchen, each foot a lead weight. Delia stood there, holding a sponge and staring down at the linoleum. “Will carpet cleaner work even if it's not used on carpet?” she asked.
“You should go,” I told her. I looked down at the floor and pretended to be fascinated with the little blue dot pattern.
Delia came closer to me, seeing the freak I truly was. With one finger, she traced an X over her chest. “I won't tell.”
One traitor tear slicked its way down my cheek; I scrubbed it away with a fist.
“You should go,” I repeated, the last thing in the world that I wanted.
“Okay,” Delia agreed. But she didn't leave.
The Wexton police station is like a hundred other small-town law enforcement agencies: a squat cement building with a flagpole planted out front like a giant tulip stalk; a dispatcher so infrequently bothered that she keeps a portable TV at her desk; a nursery school class mural spread along the wall, thanking the chief for keeping everyone safe. I walk inside and ask to speak to Andrew Hopkins. I tell the dispatcher I am his attorney.
A door buzzes, and a sergeant comes into the hallway. “He's back here,” the officer says, leading me through the pretzeled hallways into the booking room. I ask to see the warrant for Andrew's arrest, pretending, like any defense attorney, to know far more than I actually do at this minute. When I scan the paper, I have to do my best to keep a straight face. Kidnapping?
Indicting Andrew Hopkins for kidnapping is like charging Mother Teresa with heresy. As far as I know he's never even gotten a traffic ticket, much less been implicated in criminal behavior. He's been a model father-attentive, devoted-the parent I would have killed to have when I was growing up. No wonder Delia's so rattled. To have your father accused of living a secret life, when, in fact, he's been about as public a figure as humanly possible-well, it's insane. There are two lockups in Wexton, used mostly for DUIs who need to sleep off a bender; I have been in the one on the left myself. Andrew sits on the steel bench in the other. When he sees me, he gets to his feet.
Until this moment, I haven't really considered him to be an old man. But Andrew is almost sixty, and looks every year of it in the shallow gray light of the holding cell. His hands curl around the bars. “Where's