“Watergate.” That was all she said, and then she waited.

Mandy was puzzled.

“You don’t remember that?”

“No.”

“What about Karen Carpenter?”

Mandy sang a line of “Close to You.”

Joanie wagged her head. It seemed being amazed was becoming a steady state for her. “So … you only remember things up until 1970.”

“That’s all the older I was, uh, am.”

Now Joanie rubbed her face as if trying to clear her brain. “All right, let’s pretend. How did you get here?”

“How … you mean—”

“How did you get from 1970 to 2011? You must have a story.”

“Uhh … yeah …” Mandy steeled herself and went into it, recounting that sunny day in September 1970 at the Spokane County Fair. She listed the rides the three girls went on, the anklet she bought, their plans for lunch and seeing the Great Marvellini, the last time they saw each other: in line at the Spokane Junior League Chicken Basket concession.

At each and every step, Joanie reacted with increasing astonishment until her fingers were over her mouth and she was gawking, as if Mandy were Samuel or Elijah.

“And then,” Mandy completed the story, “I woke up, I guess, and everything was different. I’d skipped ahead forty years, just like that, and I don’t have the foggiest idea how or why, and I’ve been trying to find out ever since. Now, remember, we’re pretending this is all true, okay? You don’t have to believe it, just let me know if it checks out, tell me anything you can, I want to know. Were you with me at the fair that day?”

It was a stupefied, even fearful Joanie who answered “Yes.”

“Do you remember—”

“Everything you said, yes. Some of it I’d forgotten until you told me about it, but now, yes, I remember it.”

“So”—Mandy could feel a tinge of life and hope—“it happened, didn’t it?”

Joanie nodded. “It happened. But you can’t … how could you possibly be here?”

“I don’t know.”

Joanie thought a moment, her eyes watching the memories of that day. “So you never saw the Great Marvellini?”

“No. I never got there. I never saw you and Angie again.”

Joanie looked at her. “But you were there.”

Mandy didn’t get that. “I was … ?”

“You were there with me and Angie when we saw the Great Marvellini.”

It just didn’t connect in Mandy’s mind. How could … ? “But …”

“And he did a routine with doves. You don’t remember that?”

Not in the slightest, though she tried. “No.”

Joanie looked incredulous. “How could you not remember that?”

“I don’t know! I wasn’t there.”

“But you werethere!”

Mandy was getting flustered. “Well, let’s just keep pretending … or something.”

“All right, I’ll play along, but listen, this is the truth. I was there, I saw it happen—and you’d better hang on for this one.

“Marvellini did a routine with doves. He’d throw out his arms and make some fire flash and there’d be a dove out of nowhere, and you were right there with him, really into it because you used to do the same trick with your doves. And then”—her eyes got a dreamy look—“one of the doves didn’t fly back to Marvellini. It flew down to you. We were sitting right in the front row, and that dove just flew right down to you”—emotion choked her voice—“and you put out your hand and it landed on your finger like it knew you; it just perched right there.”

Mandy knew doves, knew how it felt when such a fragile creature came to trust her. “You’re not making this up?”

“Hey, I’ve gone along with you on this whole thing …”

“Right. Sorry. It’s just so—”

“I know. But it happened. I was sitting right next to you. So then, Marvellini called you up onstage, and”—she broke into a smile, a silent laugh—“and you never did anything halfway. You did a dance step—it was a grapevine, I remember it—right across the stage and went up to him like you were some kind of paid, shapely assistant. The whole crowd went nuts. Angie and I about fell out of our seats we were laughing so hard. But then, you knew the moves. You just tossed that bird in the air like you knew what it would do, and it flew back to Marvellini like it was supposed to, and he was so impressed he told you to stick around, he wanted to talk to you after the show.”

Then Joanie leaned over the table and delivered the rest of the story in hushed, tender tones. “And Marvellini had a stage assistant, stage manager, whatever you want to call it. And you don’t remember, do you?”

Mandy shook her head sadly. “I don’t remember anything after the tree in the North Lawn.”

Joanie nodded, working with that. “There was this guy acting as Marvellini’s assistant and it looked a little weird, a magician being assisted by another guy like they were, you know, gay or something. But he had that guy offer you his arm and escort you back to your seat, and that’s how you and that guy met.” She was holding out, teasing.

The longest time passed until Mandy had to ask, “What guy?”

“Have you ever heard of Dane Collins? He’s a big-name magician now, or at least he was.”

Mandy didn’t hear the sentence after “Dane Collins.” The name hit her like a blow to her chest, stole away her breath, carried away her thoughts. “Dane … ?” Even so, though Joanie’s answer shocked her, it was the right answer. She couldn’t have borne the sound of another name.

“That’s how you met Dane Collins. Now tell me you don’t remember that.”

“I … met … Dane Collins?”

Joanie leaned back in her chair and just gave her a moment.

Mandy tried to imagine Dane as a young man but could see only the sixty-year-old escorting her back to her seat, getting her name, smiling at her, thanking her for coming, saying whatever it was he said, her fantasy of a reality that only Joanie was there to see. But if that was the day they met … “What are you saying?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“No.”

“This is heavy.”

“Did I—”

“Marvellini offered you a job as his stage assistant and you took it, right there on the spot. We thought it was kind of a lame move, I mean, you were dropping out of college to go on the road with a nickel-and-dime magic act, but … we could see the little sparks between you and Dane and you know, he was one hunk of a guy. He was only nineteen, no older than we were, but he was cute, real cute!

“Anyway, you were Marvellini’s stage assistant until he retired—or quit, just depends on which story you believe. He handed the whole show over to Dane and you, and by then you two were inseparable, so you got married”—she threw in a pause to let that sink in—“on June 19, 1971 … and you started up your act and you called it Dane and Mandy, and the rest is history.”

Dane and Mandy. She remembered seeing, touching those names on all those crates in Dane’s barn. All the dreams, all the years, all in the past. “I know Dane Collins!”

Joanie looked at her quizzically. “You know him? You mean, now?”

Mandy nodded.

“And how did this happen?”

“I worked for him! He coached me!”

“When? I thought you never met him.”

“I did, but not back then!” Mandy tried to explain how the Gypsy Girl and then the Hobett met up with Dane Collins and became his protégée and worked on his place and learned how to put on a show, and how he never talked about his wife unless she asked him and didn’t have any pictures of her in the house and how she just had to be around him and how she didn’t know why she had to try on Mandy’s costumes and dresses, she just had to, and by the time she got to that part she was in tears. She didn’t say anything about their parting; she just couldn’t.

Joanie dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “And let me guess: you’re in love with him.”

That was a question Mandy feared more than anything. She deflected it. “What did my dad think?”

“About?”

“About Dane and me …”

Joanie smiled. “He gave you away at the wedding. You know how the minister asks, ‘Who gives this woman to be married to this man?’ Your dad said, ‘Her mother and I do,’ and he put your hand into Dane’s and just held it there for a while. He liked Dane. He told me, and I heard him say to other people, too, ‘Eloise would have liked him.’ I don’t think he was ever worried about you.” She laughed at another memory. “He helped you fix up the first house you rented, the one near Seattle. It was a rebuilt chicken coop. It didn’t have any insulation and the water came from a spring up the hill.” She shook her head at the memory. “I came by to see it once. Holy cow!”