The Star of New Mexico Read online

  "Mary died," said Alice, a note of triumph in her voice. "Mary comes to see me all the time. Is Mama with Mary now?"

  Enid, who had been hoping to avoid the subject of Mary Dunlavy today, winced. "No, sweetheart, I don't think so. When Mary died, she…"

  "I died on the road, Alice, and people who die on the road usually wind up restless," said Mary from the kitchen doorway. Enid turned. There was Alice's babysitter, still as young and pretty as she'd been on the day that she died. She was wearing a smart black dress, with clean black shoes and hose that didn't have any runs in it. Her hair, which had always been an improbable shade of white-blonde, was hidden under a little cloche hat and veil that might have been out of style, but did an excellent job of confusing Mary's identity. Those were the things you had to worry about, when you were a teenage girl who'd been dead for six years, visiting the township where you'd been born.

  "Mary!" Alice flung herself out of her chair and ran past her grandmother to sling her arms around her babysitter's knees. She pressed her face against Mary's leg and chanted, "Don't leave don't leave don't leave."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," said Mary. She looked at Enid as she said, "I thought you might like some help today."

  "You have no idea." Enid stood slowly. "Would you like some eggs?"

  "No, thank you. I stopped for breakfast before I came." Mary reached down to peel Alice's arms gently from around her legs before picking up the sniffling girl and balancing her against her hip. Alice responded by wrapping her arms around Mary's shoulders instead, hiding her face in Mary's shoulder. "Is there anything I need to know?"

  "Johnny isn't taking things very well. You may want to step carefully around him."

  Mary nodded solemnly. "All right. Did you know that you had a carnival in the backyard?"

  "Yes. It's Frannie's family. We wanted them to be here."

  "One of them's a routewitch. She has so many anti-possession charms around the place that I had to walk all the way down to Main before I could find a safe way to approach the house. It's probably a smart precaution, but if you need me to be available to babysit for the next few days, I should probably haunt the living room until then."

  "I'll talk to Alexander," said Enid. She stepped forward and put a hand on Mary's free shoulder. As always, the girl felt fully solid, just like she was one of the living. A pity it was a lie. "I'm glad you could be here."

  "Fran was there when you buried me," said Mary. "It seemed only fair that I return the favor."

  Enid laughed unsteadily. "Oh, Mary. I wish everyone felt like you."

  Mary just smiled, and pressed a kiss to the top of Alice's head. There didn't seem to be anything left for her to say.

  "Johnny? It's time." Alexander Healy stopped in the open door of the room his son and daughter-in-law had shared for the past thirteen years. Coming any further would have felt like sacrilege.

  Jonathan was sitting on the edge of the bed, an old circus poster in his hands. The paper was tattered around the edges, but the image was still clear: a blonde woman on a white horse, her hair in perfect curls, her clothing covered with spangles. "I wasn't supposed to bring her home," he said quietly.

  Alexander took another step into the room. He said nothing.

  He didn't have to. "She was a job," said Jonathan, running his thumb along the curve of Fran's painted cheek. It was a decent likeness; the poster painter had probably been sweet on her. Most people were, once they got the chance to know her. "I was going to find out what was killing people in Arizona, and kill it if I had to, and then come home alone. I wasn't supposed to bring her home. I wasn't supposed to keep her. And I wasn't supposed to fall in love."

  "Ah, John." Alexander shook his head wearily. "Son, if we'd ever had a choice about whether or not we fell in love, the human race would have died out centuries ago. It always hurts us in the end. That's what love is for."

  "Is it worth it?" Jonathan looked up from the poster, his hands clenching convulsively tight, so that they wrinkled the paper into a series of seams and valleys. "Wouldn't it be better not to have to feel this…this…this hopelessness? We could be so much happier if we never fell in love."

  "You don't mean that," said Alexander. "Or maybe you do, but it will pass. You have Alice. You have your memories of Fran. Those are worth everything."

  "You'll forgive me if I disagree." Jonathan stood. He was wearing his suit, at least, and if he hadn't shaved that morning, who could blame him? He was burying his wife. Even the most hide-bound souls could excuse a little impropriety. "I wasn't supposed to bring her home with me. I did, and now she's dead. There's nothing I can do that will take that back, or make it better."

  "You can raise your daughter, and make sure that she remembers what a wonderful woman her mother was," said Alexander.

  Jonathan looked at him levelly before finally, curtly, nodding. "Yes, I can. That's why, as soon as all this is settled, Alice and I will be leaving Buckley."

  He walked past his father without another word, leaving Alexander gaping in his wake.

  Most of the funeral guests—the Gucciards, the gorgons from the Carmichael Hotel, Lynn Gentling and Elaine Lindsay—had taken rooms at the bed and breakfast downtown, saying that it was easier than all of them trying to pile into the Healy house like it was some sort of architectural clown car. The director of the Buckley Township Funeral Home stood in front of the door and watched as vehicle after vehicle pulled into the parking lot and discharged their passengers.

  Some were normal, like the large Italian man with the weeping woman on his arm. Others, like the two kerchief-wearing women who followed them, were a little more unusual. Something about the way they held themselves made his skin crawl and his feet yearn to carry him backward, away from danger.

  Alexander Healy approached the door. He was followed by his wife, Enid, and by a young woman in black who was holding the granddaughter firmly in her arms. The director turned a plastic smile on the family. Alexander countered it by extending his hand, waiting for it to be shaken.

  "Mr. Hagar. Thank you for everything you've done for us," he said, while the people streamed past around them. Some weren't even wearing black. Some were dressed in what frankly looked like carnival clothing, all bright colors and sequins, and while Roy Hagar had been in the funeral business for a very long time, he had never seen anything like this.

  But he also knew how many funerals had been prevented by the presence of the Healys. All the Healys, including Fran, who was even now waiting for her last session with her adoring fans. Keeping her body fresh for two weeks had been a challenge, and one that he hoped never to face again. Still, never let it be said that Roy Hagar shied away from a legitimate request. "It was no trouble," he said, shaking Alexander's hand once before releasing it. "If you're sure my staff can't do anything further for you…"

  "No," said Alexander. "This is a private service. Fran would have wanted it that way."

  Roy, who knew when it was time to back away, nodded. "Very well. Just send someone to my office when it's time to head for the…" He paused, editing himself at the last moment. Bad enough the little girl had to bury her mother. She didn't need to hear the brutal details. "Send someone for me when it's time. I'm sorry for your loss."

  "Thank you," said Alexander, and stepped past him into the cool, lilac-scented air of the funeral home. Enid followed him, and the girl in black—who looked so dauntingly familiar, in an unfamiliar way—followed her. When he turned to follow their progress, he found Alice watching him over the girl's shoulder. He raised a hand in an almost unconscious wave, and after a brief pause, she waved back.

  Then the door swung shut behind her, and whatever came next, he was not privy to it.

  It was a strange gathering, only half human, attended by ghosts and talking mice, by mermaids in the beginning stages of their transformations and by gorgons whose snakes twisted and tasted the air as they listened to the eulogies. It was so perfectly Fran that it made Enid's heart ache. She sat frozen in
the stiff folding chair, her hands twisting together in her lap, and listened as person after person stepped forward to say what Fran had done for them, what she had done to transform their lives from something ordinary into something magnificent.

  "She introduced me to the people who introduced me to my wife," said Arturo Gucciard.

  "She made me understand that being dead didn't make me a bad person," said Mary Dunlavy.

  "She reminded me that we have an obligation to care for our town," said Lynn Gentling.

  "She left me," said Juniper Campbell. "She was my best friend, and she left me, because she met a man who looked at her like she was the evening star, and how could any woman resist the kind of life that he was offering her? So she left me, and I forgave her. That was just the kind of woman she was. She was always there until she wasn't, and you were better for her having been there at all."

  Finally, it was Jonathan's turn to step up to the front of the room and tell the assembled what his wife had meant to him. Slowly, he stood, setting Alice back in Mary Dunlavy's lap, where she snuggled close and pressed her face into the dead girl's shoulder, seemingly unaware of the brutal irony of her action. He looked at Mary. Mary looked back, nothing but sorrow in her crossroads eyes, and shook her head. There was no answer for him there.

  Jonathan Healy turned and walked up to the front of the room.

  It was almost a miracle how many people were there, how many pairs of eyes, how many tight-clasped hands. He would never have guessed that they had touched so many people over the course of their time together, which felt at once too long and too short, like a contradiction in every sense of the word.

  He took a deep breath. The room was silent, waiting to hear what he would say. And finally, he spoke.

  "Frances Healy was my best friend, and my wife, and the mother of my children," he said. "She was also my partner, the person I trusted above all others to have my back. When I needed her, she was always there. I am grateful for the time we had together—I am, God, I am—but I don't know what I'm going to do without her. I never thought I would have to do this without her. Aw, Fran." He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. It did nothing to slow his tears. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

  There were no more eulogies after that. In the end, there was nothing else left to say.

  They put her in the ground.

  Alice cried. Enid clutched Alexander's hand until his fingers ached.

  Jonathan didn't say anything at all.

  The wake, such as it was, was held at the Healy house, which hadn't seen that many people since Johnny and Fran were married, and might never see that many people again. It was still early enough in the year that there were patches of snow on the ground, but the members of the Campbell Family Carnival who hadn't known Fran well enough to attend her funeral had been busy with shovels and with tarps all day, and had pitched their largest tent square in the middle of the field behind the house. There was food, and drink, and plenty of places for people to sit. It seemed all but perfect, especially considering the narrow halls of the house, which seemed haunted in a way that had nothing at all to do with ghosts.

  Mary, who had been Alice's babysitter for as long as the girl had been alive, had Alice bundled on her hip when Juniper walked over to her, leading a child by the hand. It was a little girl, brown-haired and green eyed. She looked about the same age as Alice herself.

  "Mary, isn't it?" asked Juniper. "I've heard a lot about you."

  Mary had met a few routewitches since her death. The power baking off of Juniper was enough to make her take an involuntary step backward, her grip on Alice tightening. "I'm not here to cause any trouble," she said. "I'm a friend of the family. You can ask Enid if you don't believe me."

  Juniper shook her head. "I know who you are. You didn't come knocking on my trailer door demanding answers; I know you're here for the right reasons. I was just hoping that you could convince Alice she wanted to meet somebody."

  Mary frowned. "Who?"

  "My daughter, Laura." Juniper glanced to the little girl beside her. "Say hello, Laura."

  "Hello," said Laura obediently. Her eyes were only for Alice.

  "Alice? Sweetie, do you want to say hello to Laura?" Mary tried to shift her grip so that Alice could see the other girl. "She looks really excited to meet you."

  "It's all right, Alice," said Juniper. "I was a very good friend of your mother's. We grew up together."

  Now Alice uncurled, giving Juniper a suspicious look. "Like when you were little?"

  "Even littler than you are now." Juniper offered her a smile. "Come play with Laura. Let me tell you about your mother. We can have a nice time, for a little while. Wouldn't you like that?"

  Alice looked to Mary, half asking for reassurance and half asking for permission. Mary nodded.

  "It's all right," she said, and bent to put her down. "I'll come get you when it's time for dinner. Right now, you just have some fun with your new friends."

  "You won't go away before I come back?" asked Alice.

  The open concern in her face made Mary's unbeating heart ache. "I promise," said Mary. "I'll be right here for as long as you need me to be."

  "Come on, Alice," said Juniper. She took Alice's hand in her free one as she straightened before walking, with a little girl on either side, toward the trailers that were arrayed on the other side of the tent.

  Mary—who sometimes thought that being dead made her even worse at dealing with death—stayed where she was, shivering, and watched them go.

  Alexander found his son sitting in the kitchen, as far from the warmth and camaraderie of the tent outside as he could get without actually going back to the graveyard. He stopped in the doorway for a moment and just watching Jonathan, who was sitting at the table with his head bowed and his hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

  "You may as well come in, Father," he said. "I know you're there."

  "We need to talk."

  "Do we?" Jonathan raised his head. "Fran is dead. I don't see what else there is to talk about."

  "What you said to me before—"

  "I meant every word."

  Alexander shook his head. "You can't. You're the only family we have left. You'll kill your mother."

  "But I'll save my child. Isn't that worth it?"

  Alexander's laughter was harsh enough to make Jonathan sit up a little straighter, surprised out of his slouch. "Oh, is that what you think? That you can move away from here, and suddenly it'll be all white picket fences and normal afternoons? You'll still be a Healy, son. What you are is in your blood. You can't run away from your nature any more than the Gentling girl could turn herself human by moving to Ohio and never looking at the sea again. For better or for worse, you are what you are."

  "Alice doesn't have to be," said Jonathan stiffly.

  "Alice's first concern when Frannie didn't come home was that her mother had gone to shoot St. Valentine," countered Alexander. "Alice has never been happier than when she was in the care of a dead woman, or arguing theology with mice. She's a Healy, bred and born, and you're not going to change her."

  Jonathan stood up so abruptly that he chair he'd been sitting in fell over backward. "I promised her!" he shouted. "I sat in front of her and I promised that Daniel would be the only child we buried, that I would never, never let this happen again!"

  "And you haven't, son," said Alexander. "Alice is fine. She's healthy. She's as happy as a young girl who's just lost her mother can ever be expected to be. She needs you, and she needs her family."

  "How long will that last?" Jonathan demanded. "If we stay here in Buckley, where everyone knows how to find us…how long will it last? How long before someone with an axe to grind shows up at our doorstep?"

  "We've taken precautions since Daniel," said Alexander stiffly. "That won't happen again."

  "So say she lives long enough to grow up. What then, Father? Do I raise her to be a monster-hunter and a scholar? Do I put the gun in her hand and tell her that I cho
se this life for her because I knew best?"

  "I think it's the life she'd choose for herself," said Alexander. "Even if I didn't think that, I'd tell you she gets to choose. Not you. Not some promise you made before she was even born. We need you here, Johnny. You need to be with your family. Alice needs to be with her family."

  Jonathan looked at his father, tears pooling in his eyes. Finally, his shoulders sagged, and he whispered, "I don't know how to do this without her. I just…I don't know how."

  Alexander crossed the space between himself and his son, and put his arms around Jonathan's shoulders, and held him close. There wasn't anything else to do.

  The rest of the day passed in fits and starts: small stories, first meetings, a thousand tiny passion plays acted out over the course of an afternoon and evening. Finally, when the last respects had been paid and the last of the casseroles had been tasted, the visitors began making their last apologies and departing, either to begin their long journeys home, or to return to their rented rooms for one last night's restless sleep before they got on the road.

  Laura and Alice had fallen asleep together in a corner of the big tent, the little blonde's head down on her new friend's stomach, both of them limp and boneless as only small children ever seemed to be. Juniper dozed at a nearby table, keeping a half-open eye on the two. Enid had, after some consideration, gone back inside to sleep. Let Alice have a sleepover. The poor dear had earned it.

  One by one, the living slipped into the in-between dream state that was their birthright, until only the shade of Mary Dunlavy still walked. She stood near the sleeping children for a little while, watching them, and her mourning clothes unraveled, replaced by the letter jacket and jeans she'd been wearing on the night she died.

  "Rest well, Alice; I love you," she said quietly, and turned, and walked away.

  It was inevitable that her wandering would take her to the graveyard, where she had never been laid to rest, but so many others had. She walked to Fran's grave, kicking the fresh-dug earth with one toe, and said, "You can come out now."