Frances Healy

**Frances "Fran" Brown Healy** is a major character in the Jonathan and Frances shorts. She is mother to Alice Healy.

## About

### Appearance

Fran is small, blonde, and curvy despite not carrying Carew blood. She frequently wears standard rodeo garb of jeans and boots. Given a choice and away from the eyes of civilization, she is happy to wear cutoff shorts and her husband's t-shirts.

### Personality

Fran is brash and brave. Little scares her, and she is most happy when running headlong into danger. When faced with loss, she grieves deeply.

She tends to take her good luck for granted, though she knows she has better fortune than most people. She struggles to deal with ill fortune because she is so used to things going her way.

### Abilities

Fran is a skilled marksman with throwing knives. She is also an excellent horsewoman and able to throw knives at targets from horseback.

She is impervious to cuckoo mind control, a trait believed to be inherited from Kairos blood in her heritage. She passes some resistance against cuckoos down through her family line.

She is beloved by the forest and passes this trait down to Alice.

### Professional Life

Early in life, Fran develops a reputation as a circus trick rider. She self-claims that she could get a job at any circus in the country by name recognition alone. She gives it up when she moves to Buckley, although she still loves riding. In Buckley, she joins the Healy's cryptozoological calling and works to conserve and protect the cryptid world.

## Biography

Fran is a half-human, half-Kairos. While Frances was a baby, her Kairos father was murdered in Sacramento by cuckoos who considered the Kairos a threat against their assimilation into this dimension. Her human mother, who didn't have enough relevant skills to keep her child safe tried to run. She made it as far as Tempe, Arizona, before she dropped the baby in a box where she thought someone kind might find it and disappeared into the desert. The cuckoos tracked her down, but not before Frances was found by the Campbell Family Circus, who then raised her.

## In the Series

### Jonathan and Frances Shorts

She meets Jonathan while trick-riding for the circus. After helping him solve a spate of murders, the mice declare her a priestess and she chooses to follow him home to Buckley. Their relationship develops over several years, and Fran is pregnant with their first child before they finally get married.

Several years later, Fran takes Daniel's death especially hard. The mice go out of their way to stay out of her sight from fear that she will order them away.

She finds joy again in her daughter Alice, and the two have a particular bond. Fran also adopts Mary Dunlavy as the family babysitter even after learning Mary is a ghost.

Fran dies relatively young, around age thirty. One night, she walks into the forest and does not walk out. Jonathan finds her dead the next day with a broken neck. After her funeral, Fran's spirit speaks to Mary before departing for the afterlife.

## Relationships

### Jonathan Healy

Jonathan and Frances meet while he is hunting a murderous cryptid. After solving the case, she decides to follow him home to Buckley Township, Michigan where she settles in with his family. The two have a gradual, quiet courtship that becomes sexual despite society's distaste at extramarital relations. Fran becomes pregnant, but waits to declare that she loves him until the middle of a life-or-death situation. He responds by proposing. The wedding is delayed several times and Fran is eight months pregnant by the time they wed.

The two experience significant hardships as a couple, including the loss of their firstborn Daniel Healy, as well as multiple miscarriages. They have a daughter, Alice.

When Fran dies, Jonathan is shattered. He blames the town's cryptid dangers for her death and nearly leaves town to escape his grief. Fran, as a ghost, knows they will be reunited someday.

### Juniper Campbell

Juniper is Fran's oldest and dearest friend from the Campbell Family Circus/Carnival. Jonathan makes sure Juniper and the carnival are present for their wedding, and Fran seeks Juniper's advice about ghost hauntings and her own future.

### Enid Healy and Alexander Healy

The elder Healys adore Fran for her relationship with Jonathan. They are delighted when he brings Fran home to Buckley Township and they immediately embrace her as family. They develop a close relationship with one another and Fran is treated like a daughter. Enid and Alex may occasionally be too interested in Fran and Jonathan's sex life, insomuch that they want their son to be happy in his marriage.

### Rabbit

Fran adores her trick-riding horse Rabbit, whom she brings with her when she leaves the circus. When Fran dies, she mentions looking forward to seeing Rabbit in the afterlife.

## Trivia

* Fran was named after the favorite python of the Campbell Family Circus's snake handler.
* Fran named her daughter "Alice" as a Lewis Carroll reference, and with dreams of seeing Alice ride her white horse Rabbit. "Alice" also sounds similar to "Alex", as a way to honor Alexander Healy.

## Quotes

### Epigraphs

**Main Article: Epigraphs**

Fran's epigraphs have a common theme of "Do violence, look pretty doing it, and be the last one standing."

## References

1. ↑ Broken Paper Hearts
2. ↑ The Flower of Arizona
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Loch and Key
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Flower of Arizona
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Calculated Risks Ch. 2
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Married in Green
7. ↑ The First Fall
8. ↑ Snakes and Ladders
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 The Star of New Mexico
10. ↑ No Place Like Home
11. ↑ Sweet Poison Wine
12. ↑ One Hell of a Ride
13. ↑ Halfway Through the Wood Ch. 6
14. ↑ We Both Go Down Together