Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult Page B

want to tell his side of the story. The man was seventy, and had served thirty years in the state penitentiary. He held up a bank fifteen minutes after his release, then explained to the teller that he'd be waiting out front on the curb for the police. All he'd wanted was to get back to an environment he understood, which is what makes Andrew's comments even stranger. For all intents and purposes, a man who once resorted to crime in order to have a life with his daughter should want to continue to spend it in her company.
“Once you enter a guilty plea, Andrew, it's over. You can always switch your plea from 'not guilty' to 'guilty,' but you can't go the other way around. And after twenty-eight years, their evidence has to be sketchy; their witnesses might not even be alive anymore–there's a good chance you'll be acquitted.” Andrew looks at me. “Eric, are you my lawyer?”
I am completely unequipped to be Andrew's attorney; I don't have the experience or the wits or the confidence. But I think of Delia, begging; believing that someone who was once a failure might still be a candidate for a hero. “Yes,” I say.
“Then don't you have to do what I ask?”
I don't answer that.
“I knew what I was doing twenty-eight years ago, Eric. And I know what I'm doing now.” He exhales heavily. “Plead guilty.”
I stare at him. “Did you bother to think how this might affect Delia?” Andrew looks over my shoulder at something for a long moment. “That's all I ever think about,” he replies.
Once, when we were seventeen, Delia cheated on me. I was supposed to meet her at a bend in the Connecticut River where we liked to go swimming-there was a swatch of cattails and reeds that hid you from the eyes of anyone on the road, should you feel like making out with your girlfriend. I rode my bike down there, a half hour late, and heard Delia talking to Fitz.
I couldn't see them through the grasses, but they were arguing about the origin of the O. Henry bar. “It's named after Hank Aaron,” she insisted. 'That's what everyone used to say when he hit another home run."
“Wrong. It's the writer,” Fitz said.
“No one names a candy bar after a writer. They're all baseball players. O. Henry, Baby Ruth . . .”
“That was named after Grover Cleveland's daughter.” I heard a shriek. “Fitz, don't... don't you dare ...” A splash, as he tossed her into the river and fell in himself. I pushed through the screen of reeds to jump in along with them. But when I had almost reached the bank, I saw Fitz and Delia in the water, wrapped around each other and kissing.
I don't know who started it, but I do know that Delia was the one who stopped. She pushed Fitz away and ran out to grab her towel, then stood shivering three feet away from my hiding spot. “Delia,” Fitz said, coming out of the river, too. “Wait.” I didn't want to stay and listen to what she had to say; I was afraid to hear it. So I retreated in silence, and then ran back to my bike. I rode home in record time, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room with the lights off, lying on my bed and pretending that I hadn't spotted what I had.
Delia never confessed to kissing Fitz, and I didn't bring it up. In fact, I never mentioned it to anyone. But a witness is defined through what he sees, not what he says. And just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.
I find Delia watching a flock of kids alighting on a jungle gym. “You know how I hate to swing?” she says.
'Yeah," I say, wondering where this is going.
“Do you know why?”
Delia broke her arm once on a swing set when she was eight; I always figured it had something to do with that. But when I tell her so, she shakes her head. “It's that moment when you've gone too high, and the chains go slack for a half-second,” Delia says. “I was always afraid I was going to fall.”
“And then you did,” I point out.
“My father promised