The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

She was the last stop for all of the accumulations and memorabilia, all the achievements and sentimentality of two lives, and one of those lives should not have come to her in the first place.

Closing her eyes, she imagined her parents’ deaths. She imagined her loneliness taking the shape of boxes and boxes of other people’s possessions, a terminal moraine that would keep all she had lost in front of her. She was nailed to this spot, to the exact

The snow was snapped down over the field like an ironed bedsheet. It was a clean, orderly world.

Most people can’t be magicians for the same reason they can’t be criminals. They have guilty souls. Deception doesn’t come naturally. They want to be caught.

void

Voila

Dot Fetters and the three Plates.