Three Wishes (13 page)

As relationships went, it was the most unusual one she had ever had. They didn't talk about his books. They didn't talk about her tears. Many a time they sat silently, each of them reading, sharing the occasional look and smile. She knew little about him, save what she had read. She had no idea what he wanted from her or where he was headed. Still, she felt closer to him for the silence, and for all the other nonverbal things that he did. He calmed her, like the being of light she still saw in her dreams. He made her feel cared for, even loved.

Talk around town, passed on to her like little get-well gifts, with varying degrees of delight, was that he was dangerous, but she had never felt that. To the contrary. He was so perfect for her that he seemed unreal. And that was okay. Something had happened that night on the operating table, something that said life was too short to analyze things too much, something that relaxed her and made her see and do and feel things that weren't entirely sensible.

So what if Tom had a whole other life waiting for him in New York? So what if his feelings started and stopped at guilt? So
what?

Falling for Tom wasn't sensible. But it sure felt good.

6

T
om made a point of eating at the diner every night before going to Bree's. He wanted to be seen as a regular there, wanted to be accepted, wanted to feel he was part of the town.

Funny. Belonging hadn't been something he had thought much about when he chose Panama. He had sought a place to hide in while he figured out what to do with the rest of his life. Panama had fit the bill, first and foremost, because it wasn't New York. If someone had suggested that he was actively seeking small-town flavor, he would have denied it. He had grown up in a small town and left at the first opportunity, thinking bigger was better.

He had to rethink that now. Panamanians seemed perfectly happy, perfectly content, perfectly intelligent and enterprising, even sophisticated in a modern, media-driven way. The town wasn't poverty-stricken. Anyone who wanted to get out could get out. That so few did said something.

He thought about it as he sat in his booth day after day, while the townsfolk mingled comfortably among themselves.

He also thought about the surprising relief he felt now that his identity was known. It was nice not to have to avert his eyes or hide behind a three-day stubble, nice not to have to fear discovery. Not that anyone here seemed impressed by who he was. Glances his way were few and far between.

He thought his ego would mind, even just a little. That it didn't was a sign of how far he had come. But then, being ignored in as close-knit a town as Panama was deliberate. It told him that people were fully aware of what he was doing, and were watching and waiting.

By the time he was into his second week of spending nights at Bree's, the waiting ended. He began having visitors to his booth.

 

It started simply enough, with Sam, Dave, Andy, and Jack—all local boys, Bree's contemporaries and friend's—shuffling over on their way out the door. They loomed over him, four solid men made more solid by layers of November clothing and more imposing by the earnestness of their expressions.

“We hear you've been at Bree's a lot,” said Andy, whose experience in sales at his family's tackle store apparently made him the designated speaker. “She's a friend of ours. We'll be checking up on her to make sure she's all right. We thought you oughta know that.”

Before Tom could react, they shuffled off.

 

Eliot Bonner stayed longer. The following day, after eating with Emma and Earl, he slid in with his coffee cup, facing Tom. “Saw your car at Bree's again last night,” he said. “Is somethin' going on that I should know about?”

No beating around the bush, Tom thought, and he said, “That depends. We played backgammon and watched TV. Are there town ordinances against either of those?”

“No. Can't say there are. So are you gonna keep going over there?”

Tom waited only long enough to make a show of giving his answer some thought. “For a while. She doesn't seem to mind.”

“Maybe she's star struck.”

He smiled at that. “I doubt it.” Bree never mentioned his work.

“Are you planning to stay in town?”

He had given himself a year. Now he sensed he might need longer. “I have a house here. I'm registered to vote here.”

“Doesn't mean a thing,” Eliot said. “What keeps you going to Bree's? Is it guilt?”

“No.” It might have been at first, but that was gone.

“Then what?”

He thought about the comfort he felt when he was with her. It was honest, pure, even uplifting, if he wanted to be lyrical about it. It was also addictive. He was coming to depend on seeing Bree each day.

To Eliot, he simply said, “I like Bree.”

“So where's it headed?”

He was beginning to ask himself the same question. “No-where for now. She's a long way from being recovered.”

“Nah. Knowing Bree, she'll be back here in two weeks, tops. So I'm warning you. Be careful.”

“Careful?”

“What you do with Bree. She's a nice girl. Know what I mean? I don't want anything happening to her now that things are finally looking up. Boy.” He shook his head. “Her father was a long time dying.” He sniffed in a breath, leaned forward, confided, “He was a tough one, Haywood Miller was. Not abusive. Nothing physical. But one cold son of a bitch. The one who could have made all the difference to Bree was the mother, but she didn't want any part of either of them. If I'd had
my
way, I'd have gone after her for abandonment. Course, I wasn't the chief then. I was still working at the lumber mill, right there alongside Haywood, except for the year he was gone. It was a month after he came back before any of us knew he'd brought a baby with him. He hadn't been much of a talker before he left, but after, he was even worse. We only learned about the baby because he had to take it to the hospital when it got sick.”

“Why the secret?”

“Go ask him. He was a strange bird. The miracle of it is that Bree's so normal. She's got a strength in her most people don't.” He raised a warning finger. “So don't mess with it, you hear?” He sat back. As an afterthought, he took a drink of his coffee.

“How did her father die?” Tom asked.

Still holding his coffee cup, Eliot slid out of the booth. “Terminal ill humor,” he said and stalked off.

 

Tom was finishing his own coffee when Martin Sprague took Eliot's place. The tired look that Martin always wore was even more so than usual. With his face drawn and his eyebrows lowered, he was all business.

“I think you should know that I handle Bree's legal affairs,” he said, without prelude.

Tom was taken aback. Not sure how to respond, he settled for a polite “Yes?”

“So if you're broke because you spent it all,” Martin warned, “don't go looking for money from her. She doesn't have any.”

“I'm not broke.”

“You wouldn't be the first to think she's loaded, coming from that family, but I handled Haywood's legal affairs and his father's before him, so I know. There's no money left. None.”

“Was there once?”

“Once. Osgood Miller owned some of the best hardwood forest for miles around. He was good with the trees, but he didn't have an ounce of business sense. When he should've been building his own lumberyard so that he could make the most of what he cut, he was putting his money into foolish things. Most of it was gone before Bree was born. The rest went after. Haywood wasn't any better with money than Ozzie. Between them, they lost the land, the trucks, the name. The house was all Bree got, and it's a sad old pile of wood.”

Tom had stopped seeing the frayed parts. Bree divided her time between the bedroom and the den, so he did, too. Both of those rooms were brighter.

“It looks okay to me,” he said.

“Look closer,” Martin advised, pushing himself out of the booth. “Walls are rotting, furnace is dying. She's going to have to put big money into the place before long.” With a final look, he said, “So you'd best stay where you are.”

 

If that meant staying at the bungalow and away from Bree, Tom couldn't comply. The time he spent with her was more rewarding than anything he had done in years. When she smiled, or laughed, or looked up at him with a face full of warmth, he felt like a million bucks, so much so that he started staying longer. Rather than leaving after breakfast, he lingered into the morning. Rather than waiting until nine at night to return, he began going straight from the diner. He took her for drives when she was feeling shut in, took her for walks through the backyard leaves when she wanted exercise, took her to the general store for soft-serve Oreo fudge frozen yogurt when she had a sudden sharp craving. Eliot was right. She was recovering fast.

At the end of her second week at home, he took her to the diner. Visiting royalty couldn't have received a more rousing welcome. She was escorted from booth to booth, from one seat of honor to the next. Superfluous, Tom fell into the background.

Emma found him there. “Could I have a minute, please?” she asked, and gestured toward the empty booth at the far end of the row. As soon as they were seated, she faced him straight out and said, “I'm worried about Bree.”

“She's healing well.”

“That's not what worries me. People are starting to talk.”

“About . . .?”

“Bree. And you.”

Surprise, surprise. “Ah.”

“You spend too much time with her. Her friends are feeling left out. I can't tell you how many come up to me to ask if I know what's going on.”

Tom was curious. “What do you say?”

“What
can
I say?
I
don't know what's going on. What
is
going on?”

He was trying to figure it out himself. All he felt safe saying was, “Nothing sinister.”

“Maybe not, but your presence is putting a wedge between Bree and her friends, and that's an awful thing to happen. One day you'll be gone, and then where will Bree be? She needs her friends. They're her family, now that poor Haywood is gone.” Her eyes grew distant. She fingered her pearls in dismay. “Poor Haywood. All those years, and he never recovered.” She refocused on Tom. “She was a free spirit, Bree's mother was, and he fell for her hard. When he came back without her, he was the shadow of a man.”

“I was under the impression he was the shadow of a man before.”

Emma frowned. “Who told you that? That's not true at all. Haywood might have been quiet, but he stood on his own two feet. He was always proper and polite. He never missed a town meeting. He went to church every Sunday.”

Some of the worst scoundrels did, Tom mused.

“Poor Haywood,” Emma went on, lost in it now. “He didn't have an easy time, with a mother like that. Hannah Miller was a rigid woman. She gave new meaning to the words
proper
and
polite.
Long after the rest of the women eased up, she was still wearing dresses that buttoned up to her chin. Everything around her was neat as a pin. Everything was regimented. She was the kind of woman who made the rest of us grateful for our own mothers.”

“Did she help raise Bree?”

“She had to. Poor Haywood couldn't have done it on his own, what with needing to work to earn money for food. There wasn't any day care center in the basement of the church in those days. Ozzie was dead, or just as good as dead, so the burden of it all was on poor Haywood.” She shook her head. “What that woman did to him . . .”

Tom was about to ask whether she was talking about Hannah Miller or Bree's mother, when Dotty materialized at the booth. As sisters went, there was little physical resemblance between the two women. Though the younger of the two, Dotty was taller, thinner, and grayer than Emma, who never failed to look the part of town leader with her stylish suit, her light makeup, her hair that was a tad too auburn.