“I didn’t know,” Eddie said. “I was reading the proposal and I didn’t know.”
“Did anyone else come?”
“Susan, her best friend from childhood, who had died when she was having her first baby, and her father, who had died ten years before, and Jeffrey.”
“Did they come one at a time, or did they all come together?”
“One at a time,” Eddie said. Who was this child? How had she figured this out? “So she got some time with each of them alone at first. They must have had a lot to say to one another. It had been a while since she’d seen any of them.”
“What order?”
“It was Marty, then Susan, then her father, and then Jeffrey. I’m pretty sure Marty was there the whole time.”
“And she had enough time with each of them?”
“She had a lot of time. She was up there for three days.”
“And did the dead people all know each other? Did they like each other?”
“Her father knew Susan when she was growing up,” Eddie said. “She lived down the road. And of course he knew Jeffrey because Jeffrey was his grandson. Susan and Jeffrey wouldn’t have known one another, but they all got along.”
“And they were all nice to Marty?”
Eddie nodded. “Oh, sure, everybody loved Marty. Mary’s father had found Marty on the side of the road when he was a puppy. Someone had thrown him out in the snow. He wouldn’t have lasted an hour if Mary’s father hadn’t seen him. He pulled the truck over and put the puppy in the inside pocket of his coat, brought him straight home to Mary. ‘Mary, what are you doing leaving your dog out in the cold?’ he said to her when he came home, then he gave her the puppy. There had never been a happier girl or a happier dog.”
Daphne made a mental note to tell her mother this part when she saw her again.
“So what happened?”
“What do you think happened?” Eddie said, still shaken by how quickly she’d gotten ahead of him.
“Tell me.”
Jeffrey and his grandfather were trying to start a fire. The wood was wet and they kept apologizing for the smoke. They couldn’t get it to catch, and Mary and Susan laughed and said they had nothing but time. Everyone was happy. Susan got Mary’s head in her lap and she combed out her hair with her fingers, and Marty went to sleep on Mary’s chest. Mary asked them how it was, and they all said it was different, but it wasn’t bad. “You know,” her father said. “It’s the way things go.”
“Sure is nice to be here, though,” Susan said, and she ran her hand down Marty’s back. “I wish I had a dog.”
Marty stayed close to Mary the entire time. One of them was always with her. She would go to sleep for a while, and sometimes when she woke up they would all be there, then other times it would only be Susan or her father. Once when she woke up, Jeffrey was lying beside her, his arm across her waist. She couldn’t imagine how she could have had such a luminous son. “I love you, Mama,” he said. “I love you, baby,” she said, and she was glad she got to say it because after he died, she wasn’t sure if she had told him. She told him when he was young but maybe not after he’d grown up.
“Once they finally got the fire started, they kept it going,” Eddie said. “They talked about their memories. They didn’t ask Mary many questions because they more or less knew what was goingon with her. Mary loved them all so much, and the weaker she got, the more she thought it would be fine to be with them all the time.”
The others weren’t so sure.
“You’ve got your whole life to be dead,” her father said to her.
“Well,” Mary said, “I don’t know what kind of choice I have. I can’t get up. Either they find me or they don’t.” Was it easier to think about death when you lived on a ranch? Animals always getting killed, people you knew died in one sort of horrendous accident or another. Maybe she wouldn’t mind, or maybe she was very tired?
Then Jeffrey leaned right over her face and Marty looked up. “Whistle,” he said.
“Oh,” Daphne said. She hadn’t thought of that.
Mary’s mouth was dry. There had been nothing to drink since the rain stopped. She did not say that surely Whistler was too far away to hear her, that surely she and Nutmeg were home by now and her husband had fixed the lock on the gate. No, he wouldn’t have fixed the lock. He would still be looking for her. Did she have a fever? Even if he thought she was dead by now, he would still be looking. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and pursed her lips. She made a breathy sound, a pale imitation of a whistle. Marty barked. They waited.
“It isn’t going to happen right away,” Susan said. “You have to be patient.”
Mary Carter was made of patience. Her whole life was patience.She didn’t mind waiting because she was with the people she loved, the people she had missed for such a long time. They went back to telling stories and laughing, and Mary drifted in and out. Such a comfort to hear them talking. Marty’s head was on her shoulder now. Whenever she thought of it, she’d try to whistle again. Then she fell back to sleep.
She whistled. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been trying, but then the horse was there, entering their circle through the pine trees to stand near the fire. She seemed almost shy at first, like maybe she knew she shouldn’t have reared, shouldn’t have run away. Mary didn’t know where Whistler had been all this time, but clearly, it wasn’t home. She hadn’t been brushed. That saddle and blanket had been on for three days, the reins and the bit. Mary felt terrible to think her horse had spent three days with a bit in her mouth.
