Free Tribute by Nora Roberts

here, we’re just ghosts, ghosts and dreams,” she continued as a jitney full of actors in evening dresses and tuxes passed right through them. “But in there, it’s real. While the camera’s on, it’s all there is.”
    “It’s not real, Janet. It’s a job.”
    The blue eyes filled with warmth. “Maybe for you, but for me, it was my true love, and my salvation.”
    “It killed you.”
    “It made me first. I wanted this. That’s what you have to understand to figure out the rest. I wanted this more than anything I wanted before, or anything I wanted ever again, until it was nearly over. Those few moments when I do the scene, sing the song, and even the director’s eyes blur with tears. When, after he yells ‘Cut,’ the crew, the cast all break into applause and I feel their love for me. That’s all I wanted in the world, and what I’d try to find again and again and again. Sometimes I did. I was happy here, when I was seven especially.”
    She sighed, smiled. “I would’ve lived here if they’d let me, wandering from New York to ancient Rome, from the old West to small-town USA. What could be a better playground for a child? This was home, more than I’d had. And I was pathetically grateful.”
    “They used you up.”
    “Not today, not today.” Frowning in annoyance, Janet waved the thought away. “Today everything’s perfect. I have everything I ever wanted today.”
    “You bought the Little Farm, thousands of miles from here. A world away from this.”
    “That was later, wasn’t it? And besides, I always came back. I needed this. I couldn’t live without love.”
    “Is that why you killed yourself?”
    “There are so many reasons for so many things. It’s hard to pick one. That’s what you want to do. That’s what you’ll need to do.”
    “But if you were pregnant—”
    “If, if, if.” Laughing, Janet danced over the sidewalk, up the steps of a dignified brownstone façade, then back down. “ If is for tomorrow, for next year. People will play if about my whole life after I’m dead. I’ll be immortal, but I won’t be around to enjoy it.” She laughed again, then swung Gene Kelly style on a lamppost. “Except when you’re dreaming about me. Don’t stop, Cilla. You can bring me back just like the Little Farm. You’re the only one who can.”
    She jumped off. “I have to go. It’s time for my scene. Time to make magic. It’s really the beginning for me.” She blew Cilla a kiss, then ran off down the sidewalk.
    As the illusions of New York faded, as Cilla slowly surfaced from the dream, she heard Janet’s rich, heartbreaking voice soaring.
    I’ll get by, As long As I have you.
    But you didn’t, Cilla thought as she stared at the soft sunlight sliding through the windows. You didn’t get by.
    Sighing, she crawled out of the sleeping bag and, scrubbing sleep from her face, walked to the window to stare out at the hills and mountains. And thought about a world, a life, three thousand miles west.
    “If that was home, that was what you needed, why did you come all the way here to die?”
    Was it for him? she wondered. Were you pregnant, and they covered that up? Or was that just a lie to stop your lover from ending your affair?
    Who was he? Was he still alive, still in Virginia? And how did you keep the affair off the microscope slide? Why did you? was a keener question, Cilla decided.
    Was he the reason you unplugged the phone that night, then chased the pills with vodka, the vodka with more pills until you went away? Not because of Johnnie then, Cilla mused. Not, as so many theorized, over the guilt and grief of losing your indulged eighteen-year-old son. Or not only because of that.
    But a pregnancy so close to a death? Was that overwhelming or a beam of light in the dark?
    It mattered, Cilla realized. All of it mattered, not only because Janet Hardy was her grandmother, but because she’d held the child’s hand in the dream. The lovely little girl on the towering edge of