Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

  “Hey, hey, LBJ,” I say under my breath. “How many kids have you killed today?”

  She doesn’t glance up.

  “Make love, not war,” I add.

  The techie looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Do you have Tourette’s?”

  “I’m a psychic. I know who you used to be.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “No, not him,” I correct.

  Chances are, if she was killed in Vietnam in her past life, she was male. Spirit is genderless. (In fact, some of the best mediums I’ve ever met are gay, and I think it’s because they have that balance of masculine and feminine in them. But I digress.) I once had a very famous client—a female R & B singer—who had died in a concentration camp in a previous existence. Her current ex was the SS soldier who had shot her back then, and her job in this life was to survive him. Unfortunately, in this existence, he was beating her up every time he got drunk—and I will bet you anything that, after she dies, she’ll return in some other incarnation that crosses with his. That’s all a human life is, really—a do-over, a chance to get it right … or you’ll be brought back to try again.

  The techie opens a new menu with a few keystrokes. “You have a backlog of print jobs,” she says, and I wonder if she will judge me for printing out the Entertainment Weekly recap of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. “That could be the problem.” She pushes some buttons, and suddenly the screen goes black. “Huh,” she murmurs, frowning.

  Even I know it is not good when your computer technician frowns.

  Suddenly the store printer, on a table adjacent to us, hums to life. It starts spitting out pages at breakneck speed, covered from top to bottom with Xs. The papers pile up, overflowing onto the floor, as I rush to pick them up. I scan them, but they are gibberish, unintelligible. I count ten pages, twenty, fifty.

  The techie’s supervisor approaches her as she tries furiously to stop my computer from printing. “What’s the problem?”

  One of the pages flies right from the paper feed into my hands. This page is covered with nonsense, too, except for one small rectangle in the center, where the Xs give way to hearts.

  The techie looks like she is going to burst into tears. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  In the middle of the string of hearts is the only recognizable word on the page: JENNA.

  Holy Hell.

  “I do,” I say.

  There is nothing more frustrating than being given a sign and not knowing which way it points. That’s how it feels when I go home, open myself up to the universe, and get served up a steaming hot bowl of Nothing. In the past, Desmond or Lucinda or both of my spirit guides would have helped me interpret how the name of that kid glitching up my computer is connected to the spirit world. Paranormal experiences are just energy manifesting itself in some way: a flashlight flickering on when you haven’t pressed the button; a vision during an electrical storm; your cell phone ringing, and no one on the other end of the line. A surge of energy pulsed through networks to give me a message—I just can’t tell who’s sent it.

  I’m not too thrilled about contacting Jenna, since I’m pretty sure she hasn’t forgiven me for leaving her at the steps of the police department. But I can’t deny that there’s something about that kid that makes me feel more genuinely psychic than I’ve felt in seven years. What if Desmond and Lucinda sent me this as a test, to see how I’d react, before they committed to being my spirit guides again?

  At any rate, I can’t risk pissing off whoever’s sent me this sign, just in case my whole future depends on it.

  Fortunately, I have Jenna’s contact information. That ledger I make new clients fill out when they come for a reading? I tell them it’s in case a spirit comes to me with an urgent message, but in reality, it’s so I can invite them to like my Facebook page.

  She has written down a cell phone number, so I call her.

  “If this is supposed to be some kind of customer service survey with one being total crap and five being the Ritz-Carlton of psychic experiences, I’ll give you a two, but only because you managed to find my mother’s wallet. Without that, it’s a negative four. What kind of person abandons a thirteen-year-old alone in front of a police department?”

  “Honestly, if you think about it,” I say, “what better place to leave a thirteen-year-old? But then again, you’re not the average thirteen-year-old, are you?”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” Jenna says. “What do you want, anyway?”

  “Someone on the other side seems to think I’m not done helping you.”

  She is quiet for a second, letting this sink in. “Who?”

  “Well,” I admit. “That part’s a little fuzzy.”

  “You lied to me,” Jenna accuses. “My mother’s dead?”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I don’t know that it’s your mother. I don’t even know that it’s a woman. I just feel like I’m supposed to get in touch with you.”

  “How?”

  I could tell her about the printer, but I don’t want her to freak out. “When a spirit wants to talk, it’s like a hiccup. You can’t not hiccup, even if you try. You can get rid of the hiccups, but that doesn’t prevent them in the first place. You understand?” What I don’t tell her is that I used to get these messages so often, I got jaded. Bored. I didn’t know why people made a big deal out of it; it was just part of me, the same way I had pink hair and all my wisdom teeth. But that’s the attitude you have when you don’t realize that at any moment, you might lose it. I’d kill for those psychic hiccups now.

  “Okay,” Jenna says. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking that maybe we should go back to that place where we found the wallet.”

  “You think there’s more evidence?”

  All of a sudden in the background I hear another voice. A male voice. “Evidence?” he repeats. “Who is that?”

  “Serenity,” Jenna says to me, “there’s someone I think you should meet.”

  I may have lost my mojo, but that doesn’t keep me from seeing, in a single glance, that Virgil Stanhope is going to be as useful to Jenna as screen doors on a submarine. He is distracted and dissipated, like a former high school football star who’s spent the past twenty years pickling his organs. “Serenity,” Jenna says. “This is Virgil. He was the detective on duty the day my mother disappeared.”

  He looks at my hand, extended, and shakes it perfunctorily. “Jenna,” he says, “c’mon. This is a waste of time—”

  “No stone left unturned,” she insists.

  I plant myself squarely in front of Virgil. “Mr. Stanhope, in my career I’ve been called in to dozens of crime scenes. I’ve been in places where I had to wear booties because there was brain matter on the floor. I’ve gone to homes where kids were abducted and led law enforcement officers to the woods where they were found.”

  He raises a brow. “Ever testified in court?”

  My cheeks pinken. “No.”

  “Big surprise.”

  Jenna steps in front of him. “If you two can’t play together, there’s going to be a time-out,” she says, and she turns to me. “So what’s the plan?”

  Plan? I don’t have a plan. I am hoping that if I walk around this wasteland long enough, I’ll have a flash of recognition. My first in seven years.

  Suddenly a man walks by, holding a cell phone. “Did you see him?” I whisper.

  Jenna and Virgil lock eyes and then look at me. “Yes.”

  “Oh.” I watch the guy get into his Honda and drive away, still talking on his cell. I’m a little deflated to find out he’s a living person. In a crowded hotel lobby, I used to see maybe fifty people, and half of them would be spirits. They weren’t rattling chains or holding their severed heads but rather talking on their cell phones, or trying to hail a cab, or taking a mint from the jar at the front of the restaurant. Ordinary stuff.

  Virgil rolls his eyes, and Jenna elbows him in the gut.

  “Are spirits her
e right now?” she asks.

  I glance around, as if I might still see them. “Probably. They can attach themselves to people, places, things. And they can move around, too. Free range.”

  “Like chickens,” Virgil says. “Don’t you think it’s weird that with all the homicides I saw as a cop, never once did I see a ghost hanging around a dead body?”

  “Not at all,” I say. “Why would they want to reveal themselves to you, when you were fighting so hard not to see them? That would be like going into a gay bar if you’re straight, and hoping to get lucky.”

  “What? I’m not gay.”

  “I didn’t say—Oh, never mind.”

  In spite of the fact that this man is a Neanderthal, Jenna herself seems fascinated. “So let’s say there’s a ghost attached to me. Would it watch me when I shower?”

  “I doubt it. They were alive once; they understand privacy.”

  “Then what’s the fun in being a ghost?” Virgil says under his breath. We step over the chain at the gate, moving with unspoken agreement into the sanctuary.

  “I didn’t say it was fun. Most of the ghosts I’ve met haven’t been too happy. They feel like they’ve left something unfinished. Or they were so busy looking into glory holes in their last life they have to get their act together before they move on to whatever comes next.”

  “You’re telling me the Peeping Tom I arrested in the gas station bathroom automatically develops a conscience in the afterlife? Seems a little convenient.”

  I look back over my shoulder. “There’s a conflict between body and soul, sometimes. That friction is free will. Your guy probably didn’t come to earth to spy on folks in a gas station bathroom, but somehow ego or narcissism or some other garbage happened to him in his life while he was here. So even though his soul might have been telling him not to look through that hole, his body was saying Tough luck.” I push through some tall grass, untangling a reed that has gotten snared in the fringe of my poncho. “It’s like that for drug addicts, too. Or alcoholics.”

  Virgil abruptly turns. “I’m going this way.”

  “Actually,” I say, pointing in the opposite direction, “I’m getting the feeling we should go this way.” I am not really getting that feeling at all. It’s just that Virgil seems like such an ass that if he says black I’m determined to say white right now. He’s already judged and hanged me, which leads me to believe he knows exactly who I am and can remember Senator McCoy’s boy. In fact, if I weren’t so completely convinced that there is a reason I have to be with Jenna at this moment, I would bushwhack back to my car and drive the hell home.

  “Serenity?” Jenna asks, because she’s had the good sense to follow me. “What you said about the body and the soul back there? Is that true for anyone who does bad things?”

  I glance at Jenna. “Something tells me that isn’t a philosophical question.”

  “Virgil thinks the reason my mother disappeared was because she was the one who killed the caregiver at the sanctuary.”

  “I thought it was an accident.”

  “That’s what the police said back then, anyway. But I guess there were some questions Virgil never got answered—and my mother up and left before he got the chance to ask them.” Jenna shakes her head. “The medical report said blunt force trauma from trampling was the cause of death, but, I mean, what if it was just blunt force trauma caused by a person? And then the elephant trampled the body once it was dead? Can you even tell the difference?”

  I didn’t know; that was a question for Virgil, if we ever found each other in the woods again. But it didn’t surprise me that a woman who loved elephants as much as Jenna’s mother had might have one of her animals trying to cover up for her. That Rainbow Bridge pet lovers always talk about? It’s there. I’d occasionally been told by those who’d crossed over that the person waiting for them on the other side was not a person at all but a dog, a horse, once even a pet tarantula.

  Assuming that the death of the caregiver at this sanctuary wasn’t an accident—that Alice might still be alive and on the run—it would explain why I hadn’t gotten the clear sense that she was a spirit trying to contact her daughter. On the other hand, that wasn’t the only reason why.

  “You still want to find your mother if it means learning she committed murder?”

  “Yeah. Because then at least I’d know that she’s still alive.” Jenna sinks down into the grass; it’s nearly as high as the crown of her head. “You said you’d tell me if you knew she had passed. And you still haven’t said she’s dead.”

  “Well, I certainly haven’t heard from her spirit yet,” I agree. I don’t clarify that the reason might be not because she’s alive but rather because I’m a hack.

  Jenna starts plucking tufts of grass and sprinkling them over her bare knees. “Does it get to you?” she asks. “People like Virgil thinking you’re crazy?”

  “I’ve been called worse. And besides, neither one of us is going to know who’s right until we’re both dead.”

  She considers this. “I have this math teacher, Mr. Allen. He said that when you’re a point, all you see is the point. When you’re a line, all you see is the line and the point. When you’re in three dimensions, you see three dimensions and lines and points. Just because we can’t see a fourth dimension doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means we haven’t reached it yet.”

  “You,” I say, “are wise beyond your years, girl.”

  Jenna ducks her head. “Those ghosts you met, before. How long do they stick around?”

  “It varies. Once they get their closure, they usually move on.”

  I know what she’s asking, and why. It’s the one myth about the afterlife that I hate debunking. People always think they’re going to be reunited with their loved ones for eternity, once they die. Let me tell you: It doesn’t work that way. The afterlife isn’t just a continuation of this one. You and your beloved dead husband don’t pick up where you left off, doing the crossword at the kitchen table or arguing over who finished the milk. Maybe in some cases, it’s possible. But just as often as not, your husband might have moved on, graduating to a different level of soul. Or maybe you’re the one who’s more spiritually evolved, and you’ll bypass him while he’s still figuring out how to leave this life behind.

  When my clients used to come to me, all they wanted to hear from a loved one who had passed was I will be waiting when you get here.

  Nine times out of ten, what they got instead was You won’t be seeing me again.

  The girl looks sunken, small. “Jenna,” I lie, “if your mother was dead, I would know.”

  I had thought I was going to Hell because I was making a living by scamming clients who thought I still had a Gift. But clearly today I am guaranteeing myself a front-row seat at Lucifer’s one-man show, by making this child believe in me when I cannot even believe in myself.

  “Oh hey, are you two done with your picnic, or should I keep traipsing around here looking for a needle in a haystack? No, correction,” Virgil says. “Not a needle. A needle’s useful.”

  He towers over us with his hands on his hips, scowling.

  Maybe I’m not supposed to just be here for Jenna. Maybe I’m supposed to be here for Virgil Stanhope, too.

  I get to my feet and try to push away the tsunami of negativity rolling off him. “Maybe if you opened yourself up to the possibility, you’d find something unexpected.”

  “Thanks, Gandhi, but I prefer to deal in legitimate facts, not woo-woo mumbo jumbo.”

  “That woo-woo mumbo jumbo won me three Emmys,” I point out. “And don’t you think we’re all a little psychic? Haven’t you ever thought about a friend you haven’t seen in forever, and then he calls? Out of the blue?”

  “No,” Virgil says flatly.

  “Of course. You don’t have any friends. What about when you’re driving down the road with your GPS on and you think, I’m gonna take a left, and sure enough, that’s what the GPS tells you to do next.”

  He l
aughs. “So being psychic is a matter of probability. You have a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

  “You’ve never had an inner voice? A gut reaction? Intuition?”

  Virgil grins. “Want to guess what my intuition’s telling me right now?”

  I throw up my hands. “I quit,” I say to Jenna. “I don’t know why you thought I’d be the right person to—”

  “I recognize this.” Virgil starts striking through the reeds with purpose, and Jenna and I both follow. “There used to be a really big tree, but see how it got split by lightning? And there’s a pond over there,” he says, gesturing. He tries to orient himself by pivoting a few times, before walking about a hundred yards to the north. There, he moves in concentric widening circles, stepping gingerly until the ground sinks beneath his shoe. Triumphantly, Virgil leans down and starts pulling away fallen branches and spongy moss, revealing a deep hole. “This is where we found the body.”

  “Who was trampled,” Jenna says pointedly.

  I take a step back, not wanting to get in the middle of this drama, and that’s when I see something winking at me, half buried in the thicket of moss that Virgil overturned. I lean down and pull out a chain, its clasp intact, with a tiny pendant still dangling: a pebble, polished to the highest gloss.

  Another sign. I hear you, I think, to whoever is beyond that wall of silence, and let the necklace pool in the valley of my palm. “Look at this. Maybe it belonged to the victim?”

  Jenna’s face drains of color. “That was my mom’s. And she never, ever took it off.”

  When I meet a nonbeliever—and, sugar, let me tell you, they seem to be attracted to me like bees to nectar—I bring up Thomas Edison. There isn’t a person on this planet who wouldn’t say he was the epitome of a scientist; that his mathematical mind allowed him to create the phonograph, the lightbulb, the motion picture camera and projector. We know he was a freethinker who said there was no supreme being. We know he held 1,093 patents. We also know that before he passed, he was in the process of inventing a machine to talk to the dead.

  The height of the Industrial Revolution was also the height of the Spiritualist movement. The fact that Edison was a supporter of the mechanical breakthroughs in the physical world doesn’t mean he wasn’t equally entranced by the metaphysical. If mediums could do it via séance, he reasoned, surely a machine calibrated with great care could communicate with those on the other side.