“Well …” She drew a breath and her voice was stronger. “I can’t deny that the girl bears a remarkable resemblance to your wife when she was that age.”
“Which is something you seemed to anticipate in your warnings to me about my medication, am I right?”
She was struggling, a terrible liar. “I assure you, what we have here is a stunning coincidence.”
“You did tell me that I might see Mandy again, or think I saw her, correct? Well, I did, only she was real, as these photographs prove.”
“I am amazed,” she managed to say.
“But I suggest that you warned me about it because you knew it would happen.”
She wagged her head. “I didn’t know it would happen.”
What did he expect her to say? “No, of course you didn’t. But given the evidence, would you say I’m crazy if I think I saw a girl who exactly resembled my wife?” She fumbled at the question so he asked again, “Am I crazy?”
She indicated the photos. “Given this, I would have to say no, you’re not crazy. You’re the victim of an incredible coincidence I can’t possibly explain, but you’re not crazy. Is that all?”
Her shocked, blown-to-pieces reaction to the photos had already told him volumes. “Good. We’re clear on that.” He began gathering up the photos. “I know this was only a ten-minute appointment, so to get right to the point— thepoint—I believe there’s a reason for what appears to be a stunning coincidence, and now I believe more than ever that you know what that reason is. I’ll be staying in town for a while.” He gave her a slip of paper bearing his cell number and the phone number and address of Preston’s Las Vegas home, now at his complete disposal. “I’d like you to think things over, and if there’s anything you need to tell me, you can get in touch anytime. Also”—he produced Jerome Parmenter’s picture and bio from his briefcase—“I’m looking for this man and what he knows. If you know him, if you ever run into him, let him know I want to see him.” He left a photo of Eloise and a photo of Mandy on her desk. “I’ll leave you these. Of course there are duplicates.”
He snapped the briefcase shut and went to the door. “Give it some thought, will you?”
She said nothing more. She only looked down at the two photos as he closed the door behind him.
“Now, that’s cute, that’s really cute!”
Keisha Ellerman, veteran costume designer, was a grandmotherly type, warm and immediately likable, always ready with pins, chalk, and a measuring tape draped about her neck. She was so delighted, even awestruck with how Mandy’s new outfit looked one would think she hadn’t made it herself. “And you are so perfect for it!”
Mandy turned this way, then that, striking little poses and looking herself over in the full-length mirror in her dressing room. The costume was cute—a pink top with puffy sleeves and matching capris that hugged her hips, both lavishly embroidered and trimmed out in silver. The bare midriff took a momentary decision to like—not that it didn’t come across as teasing, playful, and fun, and not that she’d never dressed in short summer tops before, but just because, well, because she felt she was dressing this way for Mr. Vahidi and her navel was not her own. Something about that man took the fun out of everything.
But the reflection in the mirror captured and held her just as it had back in Idaho, as if the mirror were a window into a real world where that girl who was she, but in some mysterious way, not she, lived, dreamed, loved, and danced. Even the style and workmanship of this costume looked the same as the dresses and gowns she’d worn that day, as if the same person had made them all.
“I just have to ask you,” said Keisha, studying her from across the room. “Have you ever heard of Mandy Collins? She and her husband used to have a magic act, Dane and Mandy?”
Mandy’s heart thumped so hard she could feel it. Her next breath came with conscious effort. Were she and this nice lady living in the mirror’s reflection, or were they here in this room right now and had Keisha really said that? She couldn’t be sure. So much of her heart and memory still lay in that other time when she almost wasthe girl in the mirror, when she danced a waltz through a special world …
When she couldn’t find her voice to say good-bye.
She put on her professional, social interaction smile—or at least half of it. “I, I sure have.”
Keisha shook her head, looking at Mandy and marveling. “You look so much like Mandy Collins you could be her daughter, I swear!”
Her gasp came so slowly it could have been a drawn breath. Keisha’s words played and replayed through her mind as she stared, transfixed, first at Keisha, then at her own reflection.
I look so much like … I could be her daughter?
No one had ever told her that. Maybe Dane had tried in certain ways but she didn’t catch it. Now the girl in the mirror became more than a longing; she became a revelation.
He called me Mandy. He must have meantthat Mandy,his Mandy, the one I look like.
Not me.
She turned to Keisha and tried to answer. “Is that … really?”
“I did her costumes. I was Dane and Mandy’s designer for years.”
Mandy felt her jaw drop open. She turned away from Keisha and toward the girl she longed to be. So her costume had a family, all beautiful; she’d met them, worn them; she could see the resemblance, feel the kinship.
So this was what Mandy Collins looked like?
A knock on the door drew her back from the mirror, back into the room. “Come in.”
It was Seamus. “All set. Hey!”
She turned so he could admire her, and he did, and she might have appreciated his gaze up and down her frame, she wasn’t sure.
“Well … that should make Mr. Vahidi happy.”
Whatever smile she’d managed fell away.
“Be careful you don’t get it dirty.” He prodded her toward the door. “Great work, Keisha! Magnificent! We’ll do another one, something in the same style to complement this one, maybe in blue. Bring us by some ideas, some swatches, all right?”
Mandy gave Keisha an adoring hug and the sweet lady kissed her on the cheek. “Good luck, dear.”
Seamus draped her in an overcoat and they walked through the lobby of the Orpheus, past the jangling gambling machines—an adult could accompany a minor across the floor of the casino provided they kept moving—and out a side door.
“So how’s the room at Priscilla’s?” he asked.
I look like her. That’s why.
But Seamus had asked her a question about her lodging. Right, the room at the bed and breakfast. Priscilla was a sister of Seamus’s cousin’s friend—or something like that—who ran the place. With kind words and some dealing, Seamus had secured a room there for Mandy, something she could rent by the week.
“It’s very nice. I even have my own bathroom.”
“My invitation is still open, of course.”
She knew he was going there. “I appreciate the offer but I haven’t changed my mind.”
“If you saw my place, you might decide you like it.”
She yanked her own leash but her feelings slipped through. “Could we wait till I’m through risking my life to talk about this?”
He backed off.
Out in the parking lot, a gaudily decorated stage was set up, the silver bunting shimmering in the light breeze, and in the middle of the stage was a big, green, ugly-as-an-alley Dumpster. Canned music, obnoxious stuff, was playing over a portable PA system, and behind the stage was a banner: MANDY WHITACRE, A DIFFERENT KIND OF MAGIC. The stage and Dumpster had drawn a crowd of maybe fifty. A clown was busily making balloon animals for the kids—all four of them—and a keno runner, not to miss an opportunity, was taking tickets for the next game. Mandy and Seamus ducked behind a barrier and hurried to the rear of the stage, where she shed the overcoat and took her place just behind the Dumpster on a small platform charged with a thousand pounds of compressed air.