“But we were happy?”

“It was like that line from Fiddler on the Roof,‘They’re so happy they don’t know how miserable they are.’ You had all your money in that old moving van with your show gear in it, and, I tell you, you ran the wheels off that thing. You’d come through Spokane and Coeur d’Alene about twice a year, and every time your show was better. I knew you were going to outgrow the little county fairs and high school assemblies and I guess you did.” Joanie found her a box of tissues, and Mandy pulled out several. “Come on, let’s go on the Internet.”

They went into the den where heads of deer, elk, and one bull moose stared into space from the walls. Joanie had a computer sitting on a desk in the corner. She placed a chair beside her own for Mandy, flipped open her Mac, and showed Mandy the steps to get online.

“Now you just type ‘Dane and Mandy’ into the search box up here …”

What came up was more than Mandy would be able to read in that one visit, but Joanie’s mission for the moment was to find picture after picture of Mandy through the years, and the earliest ones … well, they were pictures of the Girl in the Mirror. Joanie hit the print command, and the printer zip-zip-zipped out hard copies.

“And let’s see, if we go to the Social Security death index … and enter Arthur Whitacre …”

Daddy’s name came up in the little boxes on the screen along with his Social Security number and the date of his death, March 12, 1992.

Tap tap. Zip-zip-zip.

“Can you bear to see more?”

By now Mandy felt numb, unable to fight or fathom it. She could only receive it, store it, let it season. “Please.”

Joanie did a little more searching and brought up an obituary from the Coeur d’Alene Press.There was a photograph of Daddy, so much older than she remembered him. Joanie scrolled down to the part that read, “He is survived by his daughter, Mandy Eloise Collins …”

“That’s you,” said Joanie. “Do the arithmetic and you were … forty-one when he died. And I remember you inherited the Wooly Acres Ranch, but there hadn’t been any cattle or horses or llamas on the place for quite a while. Your dad got so he couldn’t keep up with all that.” Tap tap. Zip-zip-zip. “How’re you doing? You okay?”

What could Mandy say? It was more than she could contain, and it all rang true. “What … what became of the ranch?”

“Uh, all I know is, you eventually sold it to a developer and now it’s stores and parking lots.”

Oh, that stung. How could I?

“You okay?”

Mandy couldn’t say yes—she couldn’t say anything—but she couldn’t stop, either. She wordlessly asked for Joanie to go on.

“Okay then. Here’s where the story ends. Here’s the part I have to be honest about, just put it in front of you and hope you figure it out. I’ve been to this site plenty of times, printing out copies.” She entered Mandy Collins, got a list of results, and scrolled directly to the one she wanted. It was a news story from the Las Vegas Sun:

FIERY WRECK KILLS MAGICIAN

Mandy Eloise Collins, best known as the witty and offbeat wife and partner of Dane Collins in the magical duo Dane and Mandy, was killed yesterday and her husband, Dane, injured when the Collins’s car was sidestruck by another motorist, also killed in the crash. Dane Collins, riding in the passenger seat, escaped and was subsequently injured trying to rescue his wife from the burning vehicle …

Joanie printed a hard copy so Mandy could take all the time she needed to read it. “It’s hard enough trying to explain how you weren’t at the fair when you were, and you didn’t see Marvellini when you did, and you didn’t meet Dane when you did and you even married him. Now we have to explain how you can be sitting here right now when you’re dead.”

Mandy’s head was spinning. When she met Dane he was a widower still mourning his wife, and now she was his wife? Were there two Mandys? Had one of the other Mandys she’d seen or become or even been, met Dane in 1970 while she, the Mandy sitting here, was wandering around the fairgrounds in a hospital gown …

Hospital gown.

She read more of the article and let out a gasp, then an audible whimper when she saw where Mandy Eloise Collins had died: “… rushed to the Clark County Medical Center, where she died of extensive burn injuries …”

Clark County Medical Center. She’d just recently visited those hallways, rooms, names, and faces she knew as if she’d been there a thousand times. Dr. Kessler knew her, too, that was plain to see.

“Mandy?” Joanie asked. “What is it?”

She scanned the copy looking for the date. “When did I die in the hospital? Is there a date anywhere?”

She found it at the top.

September 17, 2010.

She put her head down between her knees. Joanie ran for a glass of water.

She died in the Clark County Medical Center and awoke in a hospital gown at the Spokane County Fair on the same day.

chapter

44

Dane sometimes wondered if Parmenter would have been happier hiring a Pony Express rider to carry their messages back and forth. Four days—four days!—after their last phone conversation, Dane got another letter by U.S. Mail and made another call from a pay phone in Athol, Idaho, this time wearing a raincoat and a billed cap and feeling overtly melodramatic.

The phone call lasted half an hour, most of which Parmenter spent in backstory about a painter named Ernie and a hotel manager named Doris and preparatory remarks leading up to something dire that he never quite said but Dane could guess.

Dane finally cut him off. “All right, all right, you sold me twenty minutes ago, which is twenty minutes we just gave them.Give me specifics. I need locations, calendar dates, names of all the players, what kind of budget they’re talking about, who’s in charge …”

Parmenter responded, “How soon can you get down here?”

“I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Dane returned home, went straight up to his loft, and pulled some rolled-up drawings from a large round basket next to his drafting table. He hadn’t even finished these—there had been some interruptions—but now they’d become important. He rolled the sheets out flat on the table, weighting the ends, and looked them over, mind open and fishing for ideas, any ideas.

A tight cocoon, a pod, a capsule … hoisted on a crane … wood construction might be better … But how would she ever get out of it?

“Eloise Kramer, may I introduce Emile DeRondeau. He’s the best in the business.”

Mandy extended her hand to a red-haired, red-bearded gentleman in unpretentious work shirt and jeans. His hand was rough, indicating that he not only designed award-winning magical effects, he also was closely involved in building them. “You can call me Mandy.”

“That’s her stage name,” said Seamus, clarifying the obvious.

“Of course,” he said with a smile. “I’ve seen your work. I love it.”

“Thank you.” She wanted to be more conversational, but the chatty neurons in her brain just weren’t firing.

It was the first Wednesday in March. The sun was out, the temperature was getting comfy. Mandy, Seamus, and the Orpheus stage crew were having a concept meeting with Emile DeRondeau in the hotel’s back parking lot, now blocked off and void of cars. While they watched from a safe distance, Big Max hooked a cable to an appropriately sized shipping crate, and a huge crane began hoisting it aloft.

“You might stick with the name by which I introduce you,” Seamus whispered sideways to her.

“I prefer Mandy,” was all she cared to whisper back. She shifted her focus to the ascending crate, trying to concentrate on one solitary thing without her mind spinning off in a hundred directions, reviewing, reliving, sorting, fearing.These people were planning her life, and it was all she could do to park herself in this meeting and pay attention.