Free Leaving Time: A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page B

spirit, trying to tell you something. They’re energy, so the easiest way for them to try to get your attention is by manipulating energy. Phone lines, computer glitches, turning lights on and off.”
    “Is that how they communicate with you?”
    She hesitates. “For me, it’s more like when I first tried contact lenses. I could never adjust, because I could tell there was something foreign in my eye that didn’t belong. It wasn’t uncomfortable—it just wasn’t part of me. That’s how it feels when I get information from the other side. Like an afterthought, except I’m not the one who’s thought it.”
    “Kind of like you can’t help but hear it?” I ask. “Like a song you can’t stop humming?”
    “I guess so.”
    “I used to think I saw my mom all the time,” I say softly. “I’d be in a crowded place and I’d let go of my grandma’s hand and start running toward her, but I was never able to catch up.”
    Serenity is staring at me with a strange look on her face. “Maybe you
are
psychic.”
    “Or maybe missing someone and finding someone have the same symptoms,” I say.
    Suddenly, she stops walking. “I’m feeling something,” she says dramatically.
    I look around, but all I see is a small hummock of tall grass, a few trees, and a delicate mobile of monarch butterflies turning slowly overhead. “We’re nowhere near a sugar maple,” I point out.
    “Visions are like metaphors,” Serenity explains.
    “Which is pretty ironic, because that’s a simile,” I say.
    “What?”
    “Never mind.” I pull the blue scarf off my neck. “Wouldn’t it help if you held this?”
    I pass it to her, but she rears away like it’s going to give her the plague. The thing is, I’ve already let go of it, and a gust of wind carries it skyward, a tiny tornado spiraling further and further away.
    “No!” I scream, and like a shot, I run after it. It dips and rises, teasing me, caught on air currents, but never coming close enough for me to catch. After a few minutes, the scarf gets tangled in the branches of a tree, about twenty feet up. I find a foothold and try to shimmy up the tree, but there are no knots on the bark for toeholds. Frustrated, I fall down hard on the ground, tears stinging my eyes.
    There’s so little I have of her.
    “Here.”
    I find Serenity crouched beside me, her hands laced together to give me a leg up.
    I scratch my cheek and my arms as I climb; my fingernails break as I dig them into the bark. But I manage to get high enough to reachthe first notch made by a branch. I scrabble around with my hand and feel dirt and twigs, the abandoned nest of an enterprising bird.
    The scarf is caught on something. I pull, finally tugging it free. Leaves and sticks rain down on me, on Serenity. And something more substantial smacks me on the forehead as it falls to the ground.
    “What the hell is that?” I ask, as I wrap my mother’s scarf around my neck again, and tie it tightly.
    Serenity stares down at her palms, astounded. She hands me the thing that fell.
    It’s a cracked black leather wallet with its contents still intact: thirty-three dollars. An old-style MasterCard with those Venn diagram circles. And a New Hampshire driver’s license, issued to Alice K. Metcalf.
    It is evidence, real, honest to God evidence, and it’s burning a hole in the pocket of my shorts. With this, I can prove that my mother’s disappearance might not have been of her own free will. How far could she have gone without any money or credit cards?
    “Do you know what this means?” I ask Serenity, who has gotten very quiet now that we’ve hiked back to her car and started driving into town. “The police can try to find her.”
    Serenity glances at me. “It’s been ten years. It’s not as easy as that.”
    “Yes, it is. New evidence equals a reopened case. Bam.”
    “You think that’s what you want,” she says. “But you may be surprised.”
    “Are you kidding me? This is what I’ve dreamed of