Three Wishes (23 page)

“Just how fast does the grapevine work?” he asked Eliot Bonner after he returned to the diner to wait out the last of Bree's shift. They sat on adjacent stools, nursing beers.

Eliot chuckled. “When there's a diamond involved? Lightning fast. It's a nice ring.”

Tom caught it glinting on Bree's finger as she worked around the diner. It wasn't the biggest diamond he had seen in Tiffany's that day, but bigger wasn't better. He had learned that the hard way and wasn't making the same mistake twice. He had spent hours picking just the right ring for Bree. This one had her brilliance, her simplicity, her grace. It was as beautiful on her hand as he had imagined it would be, and she looked beautiful with it there. Glowing from within. Radiant. They were clichés, but they fit.

“So now that you're marrying into the town,” Eliot broke in, “I guess you're staying?”

Tom smiled. “I guess I am.” It hadn't been a conscious decision. But the only pleasure he had found in New York had been in shopping for Bree, and once that was done, he couldn't leave fast enough. Heading back to Panama, he was heading home. He loved Bree and he liked her friends. He liked the fresh air and the slower life. He even liked the physical exertion of shoveling snow twice a week. Okay, so gossip was a staple and he'd had enough of gossip to last a lifetime. But that was a small minus against lots of pluses. The town was like a large extended family, which wasn't a bad thing to have if one was estranged from one's own. Tom thought he couldn't find a better place to raise kids.

“What'll you do here?” Eliot asked.

“Finish unpacking. Paint a few rooms. Maybe build a garage.” It wasn't productive in the way his father meant, but it satisfied him for now.

“Make it nice for Bree,” Eliot ordered. “She deserves nice things.” He shook his head. “Too bad about the house. It was old, but it wasn't bad. What'll you do? Rebuild and sell?”

Tom tipped the Sleepy Creek Pale to his mouth. He even liked the
beer
here. “That's up to Bree. It's hers.”

“She'll get insurance money. She could keep that and just bulldoze what's left of the house and sell the land.” He swiveled toward Tom, looking puzzled. “It's the damnedest thing. The fire inspector couldn't figure out what caused the fire. Couldn't find a thing. We all know she had a bad furnace, but she said the pilot light wasn't doing a thing when she left for work. So what happened? There could have been a spark. Only there wasn't much around the furnace but concrete. So what was it that caught so bad? The inspector couldn't find one thing burned more than another. It was all pretty even. He figures there was some kind of flukey explosion, you know”—he used his hands—
“pffff,
with flames hitting the ceiling rafters. That would have done it.”

“I suppose,” Tom said. He could picture an explosion, a sudden wild burst of light not unlike the luminous being Bree swore she had seen. He wasn't saying that he believed her wish had caused the fire, but he wasn't ruling it out. Bizarre things happened sometimes. Take his life. Five years ago, ten years ago—hell, twenty years ago—he would never have imagined finding happiness in a small town with a local girl. Even when he had been at the height of his fame he had never felt as good,
as full,
as he did now—even with the knowledge of what the accident had done to Bree. He would spend his life making that up to her, and what a nice, rich life it would be.

“Hi, guys,” said Bree, but her eyes were all for Tom, which made him feel even fuller than before, which should have been impossible but apparently wasn't.

The weirdest thing was that he hadn't even noticed her the first time he had come to the diner. He had been too deeply mired in his own pain to be admiring a butt and legs. But Bree had nice ones. He had come to realize that in the months after his arrival, when the rawness of his situation began to ease and he started looking around him, but even then he wasn't consciously aware of being drawn to her. He just knew he liked her. He liked her hair, which was dark and thick and slightly disobedient, and her eyes, which were hazel and warm. He liked the way a smile lit her face, as though her pleasure was thorough. And yeah, he liked her butt and her legs.

Come late summer, he had begun looking forward to seeing her at the diner, but it wasn't until after the accident, when he watched her for hours on end, when he touched her and let her lean on him, that he felt the force of physical attraction. By then, the emotional attraction was established and strong. He supposed that was what had made the physical one so powerful.

And powerful it was, but not in the typical way. He didn't need to look at her mouth or her breasts or her belly to feel it. All he had to do was look into her eyes.

Eliot loudly cleared his throat. “Ah, kids, excuse me.”

Tom jumped. He hadn't realized Eliot was still there.

Bree blushed. Sending Eliot an embarrassed grin and Tom a last look, she headed for the booths.

Tom took a steadying breath.

“You're hit bad,” Eliot remarked.

Slowly, Tom raised his head. His eyes found the stainless-steel wall panel and, in the reflection of the diner, found Bree. The image was vaguely distorted and pretty even then. He took another breath. “Tell me about it.”

“Nah-uh. Got something else to tell you. Martin says you helped him on a case.”

Tom looked at him in surprise.

“Some business with the Littles,” Eliot went on. “They'll be coming into some money that they didn't think they'd get.”

“Hey, Tom,” said LeeAnn in passing, “what an
awesome
ring.”

Tom smiled his thanks but was glad she didn't linger. “Martin told you I helped?” he asked Eliot.

“Yup. Surprised me, too. I don't know if Martin took your suggestions because he thought they were good, or if he was afraid that if he didn't you'd do the work yourself, but the important thing is that the Littles are getting what's due them.” He frowned at his coffee cup, tapped the rim with his thumbs. “Can I ask you something?”

Tom steeled himself for a warning about butting in on Martin's business.

“I got a phone call the other day,” Eliot said, in a voice that was low and private. “Don't quite know what to do about it.”

Tom didn't, either, if it was what he thought. “Media?” he asked, wondering if his praise of the discretion of the townsfolk of Panama had been premature.

“No. It was a call from the family of one of the people who recently moved to this town.” Eliot ran his tongue over his lower lip, shot Tom a warning look. “Can I trust you won't talk?”

Tom was so relieved that he would have promised most anything. Confidentiality was a cinch. “Yes.”

Eliot's back curved around his secret. His voice went even lower. “It was from Julia Dean's son. He said he thought she was in trouble. Thought someone was holding her hostage.”

“Holding her hostage? I doubt that. I see her coming and going.”

“I told him the same thing. He said he meant mentally. He thinks the woman's been brainwashed or is somehow else being controlled by another person. He asked me to investigate. So I made a point of dropping by the flower shop to talk with Julia, and she seemed perfectly fine to me. When I called the son back and told him, I thought he'd be pleased.” Eliot shook his head no. “He wants me to charge her with theft.”

“Theft of what?”

Eliot's eyes flew past Tom. Even before Tom could turn, his shoulder was clasped. “Hey, Chief, is this the guy?”

Four large men stood there. Tom recognized them as truckers who had been at the diner before.

“Sure is,” Eliot said. “Tom Gates, meet John Hagan, Kip Tucker, Gene Mackey, T. J. Kearns.”

Four beefy hands shook Tom's in turn, each one accompanied by a comment.

“You got a great girl. Bree's the best.”

“One look at her face and we could see something was up.”

“I'd' a gone after her myself, if I wasn't already married.”

“Take care of her, man.”

Tom watched them trail off. As he swiveled forward again, he felt the same fullness he had earlier. Celebrity status had never been so good.

“Money,” Eliot said by his ear. “From the trust left by her husband. Seems she was supposed to use the interest only, but she went ahead and helped herself to more. When I told him she had the flower shop and a small house, he was surprised. He thought she was just working for a florist and renting a place. I thought it'd calm him to know where the money went. Just the opposite. He got more angry.”

“How could he not know what she was doing?” Tom asked, but the minute the question was out, he realized its absurdity.
His
family didn't know much more about his current life than his address and phone number, which was all he had shared with them, and that by letter. He had hoped they might write back and ask. When they hadn't done so he blamed them for not wanting to know, which was probably a cop-out on his part.

Probably? Definitely.

For the second time in as many minutes, Eliot dragged him back to the subject at hand. “The son and a daughter live in Des Moines. Julia visits them twice a year, but she doesn't talk about them much around here, so I'd guess she doesn't talk about us much when she's there. It's like she's got two separate lives.”

“There's no crime in that.”

“That's what I told him. He said it'd be okay if it weren't for the money.”

Tom didn't know much more about wills and estates than he knew about intellectual property law, but certain things were basic law school fare. “If there's a trust, there's a trustee.”

“She's it.”

“Then her husband must have trusted her.”

“That's what I told the son. He said she changed after he died. The thing is,” Eliot said, shifting awkwardly on his stool, “I could tell Julia about the calls, but I don't much care to. She's a nice lady, y'know?”

Tom did. She was quiet and pleasant, she worked hard, and she was talented. She had sent Bree four flower arrangements in all, one at the hospital, three others during her recuperation at home. He often saw her arranging fresh flowers in the small table vases here at the diner. Flash had told him that her prices were dirt cheap.

So she wasn't a businesswoman. So she needed to take money from the trust fund to survive. That wasn't a crime, either.

“Does the son have a case?” Eliot asked.

“You can't know that without reading the trust instrument. Many trust instruments allow for emergency disbursement of money. If this one does, it may be a question of the son differing with his mother's definition of emergency. In any event, there's nothing you can do. If charges are brought, they have to be brought in Des Moines, if that's where the trust was drawn up and executed. The son has to go to authorities there.”

Eliot nodded. “I pretty much told him that. I just wasn't sure if I should be doing anything more on this end. I wouldn't want to be accused of shirking my responsibility.”

“Will you look at her?” Flash interrupted to ask. Bree was serving an early-evening breakfast to the local boys Sam, Dave, Andy, and Jack. “She's on cloud nine. Didn't make a peep when another gallon of milk turned up bad.” He moved on.

Tom watched Bree until she winked at him on her way back to the kitchen. Strengthened, he told Eliot, “I wouldn't worry about shirking your responsibility. There isn't much you can do in a case like this without violating Julia's civil rights.” That was a field of law about which he did know a lot. Some of his most celebrated cases involved civil rights issues.

Eliot took a deep breath that uncurled his spine. “Good. I like the woman.” He snorted. “If you ask me, I'd rather have Julia in my town than her greedy son, any day.”

 

What stuck with Tom about the discussion wasn't Julia or her son; it was the fact that their lack of communication was so common a problem. Things happened in families. Angry words were spoken, hurt was inflicted. Oh, those things happened among friends, too, but that was different. People were more vulnerable where family was concerned. The angry words were hotter, the hurt was more painful. Silences grew to become as obtrusive as the most bother-some of family members.

Breaking the silence was the problem. It took strength, and in his instance it meant dealing with pride and with fear. He had been grappling with both for months. What made the difference now were his feelings for Bree.

She was sleeping soundly when he left the bedroom and picked up the phone in his office. It was eleven at night. With any luck, his father would be asleep.

He punched out the number and waited nervously, holding his finger over the disconnect button, wavering right up until the moment he heard Alice's voice rather than his father's.

“Hi, Lissa. It's Tom.”

There was a stunned pause, then a soft “I know who it is. No one else calls me that anymore. No one else has your voice.”

Compliment or complaint, he wasn't sure. “It's been a while.”

“A long one,” she said. She had never been one to beat around the bush. Spunky, was what she was called.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Okay. And you?”

“Not bad. Actually, I'm pretty good.”

“Are you back in New York?”

“No. I'll be staying here in Vermont.”

There was another pause, then a skeptical “Staying, as in permanently?”

“Funny, isn't it? I was in such a rush to see the world. Now here I am in another small town.”

“They're good for some things.” She sounded expectant, as if she was waiting for the second shoe to fall.

He let it. “I've met a woman here. Her name's Bree. We're engaged.”

“Engaged to be
married?”