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audience. It might be the last time I ever stood before them, at the intersection of stage magic and real magic.
    “You have been …” My eyes filled again, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. The audience erupted, clapping and cheering, throwing their white roses at my feet. I picked one up, held it to my cheek, its petals cool against my burning skin. I signaled for quiet.
    “You have been so good to us. You didn’t just buy tickets to our shows. You gave us your attention, your wonder, your amazement. It is with a full heart that I say thank you, and good-bye. For we will
not
obey that cardinal rule of magic.” I raised the rose high above my head. “We will never be seen again, myself or my girls … until my husband’s killer is found!” I lowered the rose, and as I did, the images of the girls shimmered, then faded away.
    Instead of applauding, the audience held its collective breath, waiting for my next move. I saluted them with that one rose, one last time. I walked down the steps, up the center aisle, among them. They reached out to touch me, they called my name. When I could feel their fingers brush the fabric of my clothes, smell their perfume, their sweat, their belief, I performed my last and finest trick. I vanished.

Hawley Five Corners—October 10, 2013
1
    Our plane landed in Boston midday. The city was languid, hushed in the heat of Indian summer. The cabdriver’s pace was slow as a dream. The office workers walking to lunch downtown slung jackets over their shoulders, loosened ties. An old ivory haze hung over the city.
    We rested at the Park Plaza, our haunt from the days Jeremy and I played Boston, when my Maskelyne and I made orange trees grow before our audience, then picked the perfect golden fruit and tossed it to the crowd. An illusion of both production and of time control. I wished again that I had the gift of true time control, that I could travel back to those days before I smelled the lilacs in the desert, and keep us all safe somehow. Keep my husband alive, walking on the earth next to me.
    Time travel was not my forte, though.
    The girls were passed out on smooth, cool white sheets after three flights—from Las Vegas to New York to Iceland, then to Boston. The crazy flight pattern had been part of our escape. After the girls had gone through Harry Houdini’s trapdoor in the Bijoux, Dan had smuggled us out of the theater during all the uproar over my vanish. Nathan was waiting with a car to drive us all to the airport. I’d wanted to get the girls out of the country, hoping it was less likely the Fetch would follow. Not that I put much faith in airport security, but flying out of the country and back in added another hurdle, and I needed to put as many as I could between him and my girls.
    But at the hotel, I was restless. Nathan stayed in the suite with the girls while I went down to the restaurant in the Park Plaza lobby. Boston is nota city of magic, not like Las Vegas, where it reigns supreme, or even L.A. No one came up to my table to murmur, “Your Metamorphosis was the best illusion I’ve ever seen” while presenting me with a limp napkin to autograph. Although Jeremy and I had appeared on Leno and Letterman, had our own few television specials, performed nightly for months at a time to packed houses, we were not usually recognized outside Las Vegas.
    And now no one stared at me because they’d seen me splashed all over the nightly gossip shows and the tabloids after Jeremy died. No one remembered the face of the lady magician who had killed her husband. So I sipped my tea in peace, while a man with a crew cut played Cole Porter songs and sweated onto the piano keys. No one watched me, no one at all. What a difference three thousand miles makes. No police, no magic fans. And no Fetch. I just hoped it would last.
    We set out for our new home in the afternoon. Before we’d left, I bought an SUV online, had it delivered to the hotel. I drove it toward the westering sun.