The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

You could find just about anybody if you were good at lying, he told her. Half of hunting was pretending to be somebody else, an old friend searching for his buddy’s address, a long-lost nephew trying to find his uncle’s new phone number, a father inquiring about the whereabouts of his son. There was always someone close to the mark that you could manipulate. Always a window in if you couldn’t find a door. “Ain’t that exciting,” he told her, chewing on a toothpick. “Most of it just sweet-talkin old ladies on the phone.” He made finding the lost sound so easy that once, she’d asked if he could search for her daddy. He didn’t look up at her, swabbing his brush inside the gun barrel. “You don’t want me to go lookin for him,” he said. “Why not?” “Because,” he said. “He’s not a nice man.” He was right, of course, but she hated how certain he was. How could he possibly know? He’d never even met her daddy. She’d always imagined her father driving up in his shiny Buick to rescue her. She’d step out of school one day and find him waiting. Her father, tall and handsome, smiling at her, arms open. The other kids would gawk. Then he’d bring her back to D.C., and she’d go to school and make friends and date boys and run track and go off to college in a place so unlike Mallard that she would hardly believe that Mallard even existed, that she hadn’t just imagined it. But ten years passed, no phone calls or letters. In the end, she rescued herself.