What can I say, what can I say?“I … I might know you, I mean, kind of like a trick and kind of for real. It’s hard to explain.”

They looked at each other.

“Could you tell me … what was her father’s name?”

Joanie tilted her head. “You don’t know that?”

Terry said, “So … what? We’re doing mentalism in reverse? How’s this work?”

Oh, please, just tell me!She was desperate but wanted with all of her being not to look crazy. “Uh, okay, let’s do this: let me try a little mentalism on Mandy and we’ll see how I do.”

They perked up, Terry ready to be amazed, Joanie still nervous about it.

“Uh … she … she …”

Lisa brought the pies. “Apple for you, apple for you, and cherry for you. Can I bring you anything else?”

Terry thought he might like some cream for his coffee. Lisa then recalled she had a cousin in Spokane but hadn’t been up there to visit since high school. Was the weather still cold up there? Yes, that was why Terry and Joanie thought to spend some time in California and then Vegas. So, could she bring them anything else? No, they were fine.

“I know!” said Mandy. “Why don’t you ask me some questions?”

“Ask you … ?” Joanie faltered.

“About Mandy, anything you want.”

“Who’d she marry?”

Ohhh … Her mind froze. She didn’t know the answer to that. She didn’t want to know, she just couldn’t bear it. “Sh-she got married?”

Lisa popped by again. “Oh, I forgot to ask: is this on separate tickets?”

Separate, they told her, Mandy on one, Joanie and Terry on the other.

Terry asked, “What was her favorite animal?”

Mandy was still working on the fact—was it a fact?—that she got married. “Uh, animal?”

Terry helped her out, “She had some pets.”

“Doves?”

They affirmed that but didn’t seem too impressed. Joanie countered, “She was a magician. Easy guess.”

Mandy groped for the right suggestion, the right way. She finally tried, “Now, what if I asked you some questions?”

Terry said, “Well, how are we going to know whether you know our answers are right?”

Joanie offered, “Well, if we give a wrong answer and she says we’re right, then we’ll know she doesn’t know.”

He crinkled his face.

“Uh, back and forth, back and forth,” said Mandy. “I’ll ask one, you ask one. Let’s try that.”

“Okay,” said Terry, “you asked what her father’s name was. It was Arthur.”

“Where did Mandy live?”

“No, you tell us,” said Joanie.

“Hayden, on a ranch. What was the name of the ranch?”

“Wooly Acres. What did they raise there?”

“Llamas and some horses. What were the names of Mandy’s doves?”

Joanie scrunched her face. “Um … Bonkers was one. What were the names of the others?”

“Lily, Maybelle, and Carson. What big, significant thing happened to Mandy in the ninth grade?”

Joanie balked a moment, then answered, “Her mother, Eloise, died of breast cancer. What was Mandy’s favorite card trick in junior high?”

“Flipping the Aces. Who was Mandy’s favorite Mouseketeer?”

Joanie was reeling from the question and from knowing the answer. “Cubby.” Then, mustering strength, she sang an advertising jingle they learned in their childhood, “If you need coal or oil …”

“Call Boyle,” Mandy sang back. “Fairfax eight-one-five-two-one.”

Joanie’s hands went to her face and she gazed over her fingers at Mandy. “My God!”

Yes,Mandy thought. Silence. It was her turn. “Um …” She didn’t want to ask. “Is … is Arthur, Mandy’s dad … is he … ?”

“You mean, is he alive?” asked Joanie.

“Yes.”

Joanie seemed to sense the game was getting serious. She spoke as if bringing bad news to a friend. “He died from a heart attack in 1992. I think he was about eighty-three.”

Mandy’s hand went over her mouth. She shouldn’t have asked. She should have known she would believe the answer, that an old sorrow-in-waiting would take its opportunity.

Daddy …

This was not a dream she could wake up from, a delusion she could excuse away. There were no other worlds she could run to, no other places or times in which to hide. There was only this corner booth in the Claim Jumper restaurant at twenty-two after eleven, and all of it, including the couple sitting there, was real. She looked away as the tears came. She couldn’t hold them back.

Game over.

Terry sighed. “Well, it’s been very interesting.” But Lisa had not brought their checks yet.

Mandy tried to recover, couldn’t shake it, signaled she’d be okay—it was a lie—put a napkin to her eyes.

Joanie reached and touched her. “Sweetie, I don’t know what just happened. Is there some way, any way I could understand this?”

What other way was there? “Joanie …”

Joanie stroked her shoulder to comfort her. “Just help me understand.”

“I’m … What if …” She stepped off the precipice. “What if I really was Mandy? What if I really was born January fifteenth, 1951, and I really did go to school with you and we were friends and … well, what if that could really happen?”

Joanie’s gaze lingered. Did she believe? Did she?

Terry fidgeted and looked for Lisa. Joanie …

Mandy could see her words had fallen to the ground. Joanie’s eyes, though sorrowful, were perplexed and disbelieving. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but that just can’t be. My friend Mandy … is dead.”

Dane was back at the ranch where he could wake up in a plain and simple life, think without distraction, believe most everything he saw or heard, and live in the world as it was, not as it was dressed up to be. From this vantage point he could handle things with a reasonable perspective—things like the letter he got in the old-fashioned U.S. Mail from Jerome Parmenter instructing him to call Parmenter at such and such a time at such and such a number and be sure he called from a public pay phone of his own random choosing.

He chose the pay phone outside the Conoco Quik Stop on Highway 95, and for an added touch, he wore his cowboy hat and kept his coat collar turned up to obscure his face.

Parmenter got right to it. “I’m going to ask you a question from out of the blue, all right? Please don’t ask me to explain it, it would take too long and I may be off my nut in the first place, all right?”

“All right.”

“You’ve obviously seen Mandy time and time again as the young girl, we know that.”

“Yes.”

“But she was always quite real, solid?”

“Yes. She worked for me. I saw her shovel and move and clean things …” I also kissed her.

“Right, right, right. Now, was she always the same age?”

“What do you mean? She had a birthday in January.” I missed it.

“No, no, uh, try a different age, a really different age, specifically … well, how old was she when she was in the accident?”

“Fifty-nine.”

“Ever see her at fifty-nine?”

“You mean, after I met her again, after she, after I thought she’d died?”

“Yes. Thank you for the clarification.”

“No, I …” Hold on.

“Hello?”

When it happened he thought it was a flashback or a drug reaction, but now his whole world was changing and another impossibility had to be reconsidered as possible. “I may have.”

Now there was a pause at Parmenter’s end. “You may have? Well, I need to know: did you or didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s been a pretty big question all along, hasn’t it?”

“No, Dane, no! Now you know you aren’t crazy, you aren’t seeing things, so please be honest with me. Did you see Mandy at the age of fifty-nine?”

“I don’t know what age she was. She was older. She looked pretty much the way she looked when I lost her.”

“But you saw her after the accident; that’s the first big fact I need to establish.”

“Yes, it was after the accident.”

“Where?”

“In my house.”

“In your house?!” Parmenter’s excitement-o-meter was actually beginning to register something. “When?”