Diane sat up, alert. “There was more than one?”
“Not the same as Norah, more like a bad dream, an annoying hallucination. A man in a fedora and camel hair coat used to appear to me over the years. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But a kind of presence to compensate for absence. Someone to talk to, so I wouldn't talk to myself.” She finished her wine, closed her eyes, and raised her chin toward the sun. Mirroring her gesture, the others turned their faces skyward. To any wayward pilgrim, they would have seemed penitent, at prayer, worshipping something felt but not seen.
“The bodhisattva,” Maya said, “a holy being about to enter nirvana, refrains from so doing out of compassion for others. In order to save others. There are angels everywhere, strange angels, and every faith accounts for intermediaries of the lost. A little girl, an old man, a stranger on the road, your friend. Best to be safe, always, and assume anyone may be.”
One by one they opened their eyes to the bright spring day. Lightheaded from the wine, they packed the empty bottle, stowed the trash, and headed back, leaving no sign of having passed this way. Except for a few photographs.
Mary finished coloring the last of them, her favorite; the hues brought out the currents circulating through them both. Just Mom and Me. Into a frame, then wrapped and beribboned. Switching off the studio lights, she left to surprise her mother.
EPILOGUE
June 2005
Heartbroken when the young woman he loved told him she was soon to be engaged to someone else, Sean asked his boss for two weeks’ time off and headed southwest. He longed to circle back to his childhood dreams when he had helped an extraordinary little girl re-create out of modern myths—books and postcards and bits of television shows—a place neither one had ever seen. A Land of Enchantment, with its cartoon canyons, wind-carved stone arches, and the mesas with anvil-shaped boulders balancing on precipices. New Mexico meant the insouciant roadrunner and the hapless coyote and schemes bought COD from ACME Co. He remembered the name of the ghost town—Madrid—that he and Norah had resurrected from a pinhole on a map and knew that once it had been home to a woman that he and the girl had restored from the past. Mary Gavin lived there.
He found her easily, unlike the searchers years before who lost her somewhere in America, unlike her mother's emissary who did not know which name to call out. The path was certain. In Albuquerque, he rented a car and drove into the hills, following the signs to the Turquoise Trail. The sun glowed like a blinding eye, and when he parked and got out of the car, he felt the brain-boiling heat of three in the afternoon. People kept to the dark and cool spots, and even the stray dogs would not budge from their patches of shade. A string of shops in a long adobe gallery afforded him the chance to query several clerks and owners, but he had no luck.
He went into a small café where two customers had laid out a winding path of dominoes. As if they had been at it forever, the men lingered over each placement, calculating the odds, their tiles arranged in front of their coffees like picket fences. The older of the two, a graying mustache hiding his mouth, noticed Sean at the door and with a nod invited him to their table.
“Sit down, brother. Have something.”
The younger man showed him a dazzling smile, bright as sunshine.
“I'm looking for someone.”
Pot in hand, a waitress appeared and poured him a cup of coffee. Sean offered to treat the gents to something, and the younger ordered a poppyseed cake.
“We're all looking for someone,” the mustachioed man said. “Tell me, if I'm not too forward, is it someone who's broken your heart?”
His friend leaned over his black fortress. “Forgive him. He's a romantic and thinks he can spot a fellow heart-on-your-sleeve.”
Sean thought of the girl he had left behind but shook his head. “This is someone I know from my childhood. Who lives in Madrid.”
Leaning back in his chair, the older man paused to consider his next move. “My mistake, though I'm a pretty good judge of the soul. A man's desires stir just below his words. Who are you looking for, amigo?”
“Do you know an artist named Mary Gavin?”
The poppyseed cake arrived and the younger man stuffed a bite in his mouth.
“Peregrino, “the man said to his young friend. “Busca la verdad sobre los ángeles.”
His teeth peppered with seeds, his friend answered. “Show him the way.”
They gave him directions and on the face of a napkin a hand-drawn map to her house. “Strangers kinda spook those monsters she's got up there,” the young one said. “Two wolfhounds, big as tigers, and they'll sniff out the difference between friend and foe.”
“I'm a friend,” Sean answered. “From way back when.”