The Wishing Tree (11 page)

Of course, then she’d landed Michael and things started moving faster and faster until she hadn’t even known what
she wanted. The one thing she had known was she didn’t want to end up like her mother, heartbroken and alone.
So much for that life goal
.

She kept reading the tweets until she got to the last one. It said, “Drove by the ski lifts. Remembered our nighttime ride.”

She smiled reflexively over that one. Almost as if she’d watched it in some romantic movie instead of lived it. Was it only five years ago she’d taken that ski trip alone?

She shut the laptop and looked around the room that was hers but not hers. She’d gone a long way only to end up back where she started. She crossed the room and picked up an old framed photo of her and Michael, Shea and Owen, the four of them together. They were all wearing T-shirts and sunglasses, their faces tan, their smiles white and wide. They all looked so happy. She peered closer at the picture. “Were you happy?” she asked her younger self. “And if you were, why didn’t you know it?”

The next morning Ivy
was up and out early, dropping the bundle
of envelopes at the post office before heading to the bakery to help Leah. She watched the man carry the bag away, sending the tags off to their destinations, hopefully to return bearing wishes for Shea and Owen. Wishes for the life—the marriage—Ivy herself had once wished for. It was all too ironic for words. But she didn’t dare deny her sister a chance at happiness just because she’d missed out. Making this wishing tree happen was one small way to say she was sorry for the mistakes of her past.

She caught herself looking for the yellow Jeep again as she pulled into the bakery parking lot, then shook her head at how silly she was being. She might as well get into a time machine and travel back to her teenage years for how she was acting. She grabbed the bag of assorted things Margot
had thrust into her hands as she left, and headed inside to find Lester at the counter.

“Hi, Lester, good to see you again,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah, you too.”

She held up the bag. “Leah back there? I’ve got some stuff for her from Margot.”

“How is Margot?” Lester asked.

“Um, fine?”

“That’s good, that’s good. Please tell her I said hello when you see her, if you would.”

“Um, sure. I will.” She headed into the kitchen, where she could hear the radio playing and Leah, as always, humming along softly.

“Why was Lester asking after Mom?” Ivy asked without preamble, dropping the bag on the work area Leah was using. She pointed at it. “That’s from Mom.”

“Good morning to you too, Ivy.” Leah made a face at her. “And if you must know, Lester is a nice person. Just because he asks after someone does not imply anything. Why? Are you trying to pair him off with your mother now? And move that bag out of my way, please.” She shooed the bag off the table, and Ivy, frowning, moved it over to a crowded countertop.

Ignoring her insinuations about Lester, Leah instructed her to roll out the dough for a batch of cinnamon rolls. Ivy was rusty at first, but the feel of the rolling pin working against the elastic dough came back to her quickly. Leah stopped long enough to watch and comment. “Good job. I knew you’d get back in the swing of things.”

Ivy wished that a few minutes working with dough was all she needed to get back in the swing of things. Instead
she kept her attention focused on what she was doing, finding the physical activity good for stress relief. She could feel the tensions about Elliott start to ease, moving out of her body via her shoulder and arm muscles. She imagined the burning sensation she felt from the exertion was the stress, burning away. She listened to the radio along with Leah, and they worked in companionable silence for a time.

“So, I was wondering the other night about you and Elliott,” Leah said, interrupting Ivy’s reverie.

With her head down so Leah couldn’t see, Ivy closed her eyes for a brief moment and took a deep breath. “Oh? What about?”

“I couldn’t remember how you met him. I mean, I know it was on that ski trip you went on, but I was hoping you’d tell me the rest while we work.” Leah laughed. “Ain’t got nothing else to do.”

Inside Ivy was panicking. She used to love the story of how she and Elliott met, used to tell it to anyone who would listen. But now of all times? That was the last thing she wanted to talk about, and she certainly didn’t want Leah or anyone else to see the shame she carried over what Elliott had done. April wasn’t the only one with a broken picker.

She knew Leah was just trying to be nice, trying to take an interest when the rest of the family never had, maybe trying to shed some light on her romance since everyone was making a big deal over Shea’s. But her timing couldn’t have been worse. She exhaled and looked up to see Leah’s expectant face, watching her.

“It’ll make the time go faster, you’ll see,” Leah said, nodding.

“I’m sure it will,” Ivy responded. She thought about it for a moment, allowing the memory to come back full force instead of shooing it to the corners of her mind like she usually did. As her relationship with Elliott had started to deteriorate, she’d all but stopped thinking of their love story, focusing instead on fueling her anger. If she thought about what they’d had, she’d have to think about what she’d lost.

She glanced over at Leah, who had turned her attention back to the intricate lace pattern she was creating on a wedding cake that would go out later that week. White on white, it was quite possibly the most beautiful cake Ivy had ever seen.

“You’re right,” she began. “I did meet him on that ski trip.” She decided she would tell it like the story was about two other people, people she used to know a long time ago who had faded away over time.

She took a deep breath and began. “If you remember, Shea and I were supposed to go with Dad. But then he had to cancel because he had some business thing come up.”

“It’s always business with your father,” Leah observed.

“You’re right about that,” Ivy agreed, though she felt bad for her father, who had always worked so hard. She’d never understood that until she started working for him. “So when Dad cancelled, we thought the trip would get cancelled. But then Shea came up with this brilliant plan that we’d just go on our own. I was just out of college and she was in college, so we figured, why not just go together?” Sometimes she wondered if things would’ve turned out like they did if Shea had gone with her.

“And then Shea got sick.” Aunt Leah seemed to be reading her mind.

She rolled her eyes. “And then Shea got the chicken pox. Who gets chicken pox at twenty years old?” She could still see Shea, red-spotted and clawing at her skin like a madwoman, crying over missing the trip. Her mom had made her wear gloves so she didn’t scar her skin. But Ivy could still see that one little scar beside her nose, a reminder of the way things don’t turn out as planned.

“I bet you thought the trip was over for sure then,” Aunt Leah said.

“Of course. Who goes skiing alone? So I called Dad to tell him. And he said, ‘Now why would you let that stop you?’ And he proceeded to talk me into going on the trip alone.”

She thought for a moment about that day, how she’d called Michael and run the idea by him. He’d actually agreed with her dad. He’d said she should see it as a personal adventure. “It’ll be like climbing Everest. Only you won’t have to leave the state,” he’d joked. Funny how nearly everyone in her life at that time had been all for it. Except for Margot, of course. She’d thought it was risky for a young woman to travel alone and lectured Ivy about precautions all the way out to the car the day she left.

But she hadn’t warned her about what to do when a handsome stranger talked to her in the lodge restaurant.

“So you went.” Leah’s comment interrupted her reverie.

“Yeah, sorry.” She smiled ruefully. “I went. Drove by myself. Checked in by myself. Skied by myself. And I was proud of myself. But lonely. I was going to just get room service that first night, but I wanted to be around people. So I had dinner in the lodge, sitting by myself, naturally.”

Leah looked up from the cake, sensing what came next.
She loved a good love story as much as the next person. “And you met Elliott.”

She nodded, unable to keep the smile from filling her face as she remembered seeing him that first time. “He was working there, helping set up their computer reservation system. He’d been there awhile at that point, gotten to know the employees. He was having his dinner at the bar, cutting up with the bartender. But he kept looking over at me.” She remembered how she’d tried to do things with her left hand, so he would see her engagement ring. Still, that hadn’t stopped him from coming over to her table when she finished eating. She hadn’t known if that made him a snake or just a determined suitor.

Leah snorted with laughter. “I’ve seen him. You’d have had to have been blind not to look back.”

She smiled. He was good-looking. But more than that. He had been unfamiliar. Intriguing. For the record, it would’ve never gone further if he hadn’t initiated things. But then he walked over, pulled out the chair opposite her, and said, “I believe this seat is taken.” And for some reason, it hadn’t seemed like a line. It had seemed like that seat was taken, had always been meant for him. And as they talked that night, she’d felt less and less like he was a stranger and more and more like he was someone she’d known forever.

They’d covered emotional ground in the course of that night that she hadn’t known was possible, Ivy telling him things she’d never told a soul. Later she would tell Shea that Michael knew her history, but Elliott knew her heart. Shea, angry by then, had scoffed at that, dismissed it as the silly ramblings of someone with a bad case of infatuation. But
how else could she explain it to someone who didn’t understand what happened between them that night? It was like … magic, to quote Tom Hanks in
Sleepless in Seattle
. She continued her story, breezing through the details of him approaching her in the restaurant. There were some things she didn’t want to get into with her aunt. There were some things that hurt so much to remember, she couldn’t speak them aloud. One of the things that disappointed her the most was the height from which they had fallen. For a time, they had flown.

“So did you know he was different right away?” Leah asked.

“Of course. But it took me a long time to admit that to myself—much less anyone else. I kept telling myself this was completely
other
from my real life. That none of it counted because it wasn’t reality.”

“And did you think of Michael?”

Her eyes filled with unexpected tears at the thought of how much she hurt Michael. “All the time,” she managed. So much for maintaining an emotional distance from the story.

“Done!” Leah pronounced suddenly, stepping aside so Ivy could admire her handiwork.

Ivy walked closer so she could get a good look. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. Leah couldn’t make an ugly cake if she tried, but this one was particularly spectacular. As Ivy studied it, she couldn’t help but think that it looked just like a cake she might’ve chosen for her and Michael’s wedding, had it happened.

Leah called Lester in to snap photos of it for the bakery website. (Elliott had designed the site in a failed effort
to get in good with the family, back when he still tried.) Somewhere in all the excitement over the cake and packaging it up for delivery, her story ended. She left off with her and Elliott still sitting at that table in the lodge restaurant, talking long after the restaurant closed, the staff making little jokes as they left them there and Elliott promised he’d lock up. In the wee hours he’d made them coffee so they could keep talking. But she didn’t tell Leah any of that. She just thought about it as she finished her shift and drove back to 40th Street, her thoughts a mixture of the beginning of her and Elliott and the ending of her and Michael.

But she was getting ahead of herself. And the story was over. That was, if she could stop thinking about it.

After work she stopped at a garden center to buy a new pot for the wishing tree. Back home, she was standing over the pot, trying to make the branches stand up, when her phone rang. April. “I was just thinking about you earlier,” she said to her best friend, who felt very far away at that moment.

“Look, I know I said I wouldn’t bother you,” April said. “But have you looked at his tweets today? I checked and I see you’re still not following him.”

“Nor will I ever follow him. Feel free to tell him that.” She poured in some more marbles to try to shore up one side. She would neither affirm nor deny that she had looked at his tweets.

“Well, you ought to go check out what’s happening over there. People are starting to respond. Like, a lot of people.”

She sat down at the table and put her head down with a sigh, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. She either needed to nap or take one of Shea’s power walks. “Okay,” she mumbled.

“What are you doing?”

“Working on the wishing tree.”

April laughed. “Feel qualified to be in charge of wishes yet?”

Ivy looked over at the tree, which had listed to one side again. “I’m feeling less and less qualified with each passing day.”

“Talk to your ex yet?”

“Briefly.”

“And?”

“And … it’s complicated. He’s my childhood, my past. We share a lot.”

“Does he see it that way?”

“He’s … understandably guarded.”

This time it was April’s turn to sigh. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to talk him out of being guarded?”

She laughed. “Because you know me.”

“You’re my best friend. Elliott’s my cousin. He screwed up. You left. Understand I love you both and I’m torn. He’s sorry, though, Ivy. You’re really going to turn away from someone who wants forgiveness?”

“I can forgive him without letting him back into my life.” She said it, but even as she looked around the house she had run back to, she thought about the way she’d needed to make things right with her family. She wasn’t sure the two could be mutually exclusive like she said. Sometimes to forgive is to let someone back into your life. She’d not
started feeling forgiven by her family—or feeling like forgiving them—until she’d been in their midst these past few days. But she didn’t say any of that to April.

“Just read his tweets. At least then I know you’re listening somehow. I mean, what he’s doing for you? I’d give anything to have someone stick his neck out for me like that.”

“Okay,” Ivy said again. She knew that April was still hurting over the pastor’s speedy departure to Michigan, how easily he’d given up. And for just a moment, she wondered if Elliott’s tenacity was saying more than she was hearing.

“And one more thing,” April added. “Just remember what you used to say: Michael’s your past, but Elliott’s your future.”

She had no comeback for that, except that that might’ve been true once. But she wasn’t sure it was true anymore. She hung up the phone and thought about going to check his account like April wanted. But then Margot and Shea walked in arguing over the “hideous flowers” Shea had picked out for the wedding, and Ivy got caught up in the argument. She had to admit it was easier to listen to them than to deal with her own stuff. As long as wedding plans were swirling around her, she could stay distracted. She could ignore Elliott and his plan to get her back, leaving her more time to focus on Michael. Going back to where she started to determine how she got to where she was.