The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

“Look.” I pointed at the quilt I’d draped over the worktable.

Olivia straightened up. “What is it?”

“A quilt.”

She bent over the mysterious patchwork. “Where did it come from?”

“I made it.”

Olivia gave me a look. “When?”

“Today.” I rubbed my sewing hand. “Or maybe it made itself.”

“These are Erik’s fabrics. How?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“It’s wonderful. There’s some rhythm to these patches that I don’t get. I know it’s there, like a song you can’t quite remember. When the melody is just out of reach.”

I took the quilt from Olivia and spread it on the floor. I motioned for her to sit next to me on the ground. I wrapped my hand through hers and led her fingers to the first square of the quilt. “It’s my story, my time line,” I said. “The only thing missing is Toby.” I squinted at the quilt and wondered when Toby would appear. In none of the squares that described my desert life could I find a trace of the magician. His actions, his desert magic, were visible, but Toby himself was absent. “But the story is there anyway.”

“Story?”

I opened my fingers. Olivia did the same. Keeping my hand on top of hers, I began to trace the patches of the quilt. “I married Tobias Warring at the Silver Bells All-Nite Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas,” I began. Then the story flowed from my lips as seamlessly as the quilt had emerged from my fingers.

When I was finished, Olivia curled up on the patchwork. “What comes next?” she asked in a distant voice that seemed to be nearly lost in a dream.

“I don’t know,” I said as the quilt carried us off to sleep.

Thirteen

I returned to Piet’s just after breakfast. The house was silent with an air of abandonment, like school corridors during the summer. I noticed that Piet’s walking stick was missing. I was not surprised to see Toby’s coat. Something told me that the magician was both home and away.

I was curled up in bed with the quilt that I had taken with me from Nevada, wondering how these patches would connect to those I’d left behind at Leo’s, when Toby appeared.

“Still sleeping?” he asked.

I was dressed in yesterday’s clothes with raindrops threaded in my untidy hair, but Toby seemed unaware that neither of us had slept in the attic yet. I nodded, not wanting to explain that he was not the only one who didn’t make it into our attic last night.

“Come,” Toby said, extending his hand.

I hesitated.

“You said I had one more day to make it work.” Toby paused. His face relaxed, and I saw relief rise to the surface, overtaking exhaustion. “I did.”

We stood at the entrance to the Dissolving World. I looked at him uncertainly as he opened the door. Toby smiled and urged me forward. We took two steps into the box, which stretched out before us as before. Soon I felt that same inward suction, followed by a massive release, as if all my cells were being packed together and then redistributed. Inside my eyes, I saw the snow-blind blur of TV static, and my ears rang with dozens of weak radio frequencies all fighting for stability. I lurched to one side.

Toby caught me. “Open your eyes,” he said.

I braced myself against his arm and did as I was told.

We are standing on the banks of the Delaware River. Not the part behind my parents’ house. Somewhere farther upstream. It’s cold out. A spiderweb of ice is starting to form over the river.

“Go on,” Toby says, “You can touch the water.”

I shake my head. I never go near the river until it’s frozen over. Not even inside a magic trick.

The magician hands me a coat. “It’s your favorite time of year.”

“It is,” I say with a shiver. But there’s something strange about the river. As I watch the current slip underneath the thin ice, I realize that it makes no sound. In fact, there isn’t any sound at all. I breathe deeply, exhale loudly, to shatter the quiet.

“I don’t know where you live,” Toby says as we begin to walk along the riverbank.

I squint downstream. “Ten miles from here, I guess. I’m not sure.” “I can’t believe it,” I say. “How did you do this?”

“It was easy. I just needed a little practice.”

As we walk, our steps are the only noise. No cars rumble across the rusted bridges. There’s not even the shatter of fresh ice colliding on its way downstream.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“Who did you expect?”

“Where is everything?”

“It’s all here. What I remember of it.”

The silent river makes me shiver again. Toby thinks it’s the weather that’s making me cold. He wraps an arm around me.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

Toby and I tuck our hands into his jacket pocket. Eventually we turn away from the river and walk across a small backyard to a one-story house. An enclosed porch, twice the size of the house, extends from the left of the building. As we draw near, I see that the porch is crowded with four baby grand pianos.

“Your home?” I ask Toby.

The magician nods.

He slides back one of the screen doors and the glass door behind it, and we are in Toby’s childhood home.

Like the river outside, the house is not just silent, but emptied of sound. Toby leads me past the pianos, three black and one white. I want to stop and examine them, but it’s clear that the magician wants to move on. We climb three steps covered in mustard shag and are in the main house.

“This is the day I left,” Toby says, peering into the kitchen. Orange ceramic canisters in the shape of pumpkins line a shelf. “Ernest had already died. And Pia was making stew. It was cold for March.”

On the stove is an orange pot. Next to it on the counter, a cutting board with vegetables and a knife. But there is no smell of cooking. I