Three Wishes (30 page)

“Because of the children?”

Verity's hands stilled, though her eyes remained on her work. “Why do you ask that?”

“Children make noise. They don't allow for peace and quiet. Or for privacy.”

“I never wanted the privacy. The peace and quiet is part of me. It has been so all my life. That was the only way I survived my marriage as long as I did. I used to withdraw into myself.” Her fingers returned to activity. “I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd had children.”

“Are you sorry?”

“That I didn't have children?” She didn't break the rhythm of her work. “Given the circumstances, no. I didn't want to have his children. With another man, maybe. In another life, maybe. But it's too late in this one. No herbal potion or alien encounter will bring it about. I'm well past my childbearing years. And yes,” she added, “I've come to like the privacy.”

The only other woman Bree knew who prized privacy as much as Verity was Julia. Indeed, she sensed that Julia told her as much about herself as she told anyone, and that wasn't much. But the wedding dress had created a bond between them. Bree enjoyed being with her. She had taken to stopping in at the flower shop to talk whenever she passed.

As fate had it, on this day Julia was tying a huge pink bow around the neck of a vase filled with pink and white tulips, a gift for the barber's son's wife, who had just given birth to a daughter. Bree watched for a minute, then asked, “When you do up arrangements like these, do you think back to when your own children were born?”

“Sometimes,” Julia said. She gave the ribbon a twist. “It was a special time.”

“Was it hard?”

“Childbirth?” She smiled. “No. The cause was good.”

“Labor can go on forever.”

Julia gave a negligent nose-scrunch. “The worst comes only at the end, and then there are drugs to help. Drugs hurt the baby, you say? Well, our kids didn't seem damaged any. In my day, mothers weren't as quick to martyr themselves. After the children were born, yes. Child rearing was our major occupation. We often put it before our own best interests. At the time of birth? No. Ignorance was bliss.”

“Kind of like a reward for surviving pregnancy?”

“Oh, I liked being pregnant. I liked it very much.” She held back the vase, looked at it, then turned it to Bree.

But Bree was trying to convince herself that she didn't want to be pregnant. “I've heard awful stories.”

“You're talking to the wrong people,” Julia said. She paused, raised hopeful brows, lowered her voice. “Are you pregnant?”

“Good Lord, no. I just got married. It's too soon to be having a baby. So much has happened to me so quickly that I need time to adjust. I like working, and I like being alone with Tom and anyway, he's still trying to decide what to do about
his
work, so it wouldn't be fair to impose kids on him yet.”

“I don't think children would be an imposition with that one,” Julia said.

Bree knew she was right, which didn't help things much. She trusted Julia's judgment. But she needed an ally. So she raised the subject with Jane, leaning in close across the counter after the lunchtime crowd had thinned. “Do you worry about getting older? Does that thing about the biological clock ever get you to wondering?”

Jane sighed. “All the time. But what can I do? I don't draw men like you do.”

“The right man just hasn't seen you. Someday he will.” Bree believed it. Jane was too good a person to go through life alone.

“Someday,” Jane said, and sighed. “I may be too old for kids by then.”

“You could adopt. Single mothers do. Michelle Pfeiffer did. So did Rosie O'Donnell. The way some men are, a woman's better doing it alone anyway.”

“Doing what alone?” Dotty asked, taking the stool beside Jane.

Jane gave Bree a look that said You should have warned me she was there, but Bree hadn't noticed it herself.

“Having kids,” LeeAnn put in, having caught the conversation in passing. “Look at me. I've done it alone, haven't I?” She left again before anyone could answer.

“Look at her,” Dotty muttered under her breath.
“Don't
look at her. She's no example of motherhood, doing that thing to her hair. Besides, it's just fine for a pretty little Hollywood face to adopt a child. Those women don't have to worry about paying the bills.”

“Neither do I,” Jane said quietly. She was looking at Bree. “I have a home. The oil is paid for. So's the electricity and the phone.”

Dotty drew back and stared at her. It was only when Bree looked at Dotty that Jane did, too. “Don't worry, Mother. I'm not having a child.”

“Having?
I
hope
not. Good God, Bree. Are you putting bugs in her ear now that you're married? Well, she isn't, for one thing, and for another, you shouldn't be having a child yourself. You just got married. You don't know if the marriage will last.”

“It will last,” Jane said.

“The voice of experience. She's an expert on marriage
and
on babies.”

“Adoption was the subject,” Jane corrected.

“Don't you dare do that, either. I'm not up for raising another child.”

“If it was my child, I'd be doing the raising.”

“Like you do the cooking?” Dotty asked.

Bree tried to defuse the situation. “Verity was saying—”

“Verity?” Dotty turned to her. “That woman has nothing worthwhile to say. You talk with her too much, Bree. You encourage her.”

“To do what?”

“To come into town. Fine. We can't keep her out of town meeting. But she doesn't have to be lurking around at the crafts fair. People won't buy what she crochets. She makes us all nervous. And showing up at your wedding?” Dotty reared back. “I wouldn't have liked that one bit, if it had been me.”

“Verity is harmless,” Jane said before Bree could stop her.

Dotty picked right up where she had left off. “That shows how much you know. You've been here when she's been talking nonsense. Don't you
know
it's nonsense?”

“She says things to shock us.”

“Oh, she does? Who told you that?”

“I did,” Bree said.

Dotty sighed. “Bree. Why do you tell Jane things like that? She believes them.”

Looking straight ahead, Jane said, “Verity makes sense when you talk with her alone.”

“Is that what you've been doing? Is
that
where the talk about adopting a child came from?” She pushed out a breath. “God save us from idiots.” She left the stool with an impatient “Are you coming?”

As she walked off, Bree touched Jane's arm.

In a shaky whisper, Jane said, “One day she'll push me so far that courage won't matter. I hate her.” She put a fingernail to her mouth.

Bree pulled it down. “You don't. She's your mother.”

Jane wrapped a remorseful arm around Bree's neck. “I'm sorry. I know you never had a mother. I am selfish, like she says.”

“If you were selfish, you'd have moved out long ago.” Bree set her back. “Apply to art school.”

“Art school?” Jane looked suddenly panicked. “It's a dream, that's all.”

“Make it come true. Apply. You'll get in.”

“You've never said this before.”

“I should have. It's
so possible.”

“I'm thirty-five. I'd be the oldest in the class.”

“I bet you wouldn't be. But even if you are, so what? Apply, Jane. You
will
get in.”

“And then what? How will I pay for it? How will I live?”

“Jane!”
Dotty called from the door of the diner.

Bree held Jane's arm when she would have fled. “Scholarship. Dorm. Job. You can get all of them. Then you'll be free.”

Jane looked torn.

“Think about it.”

Jane nodded quickly and ran after Dotty, only to stop halfway there and run back. Anger tightened her face. “Don't listen to what she said about having children. Have them now, Bree. You'll make the best mother in the whole wide world.”

 

So Flash didn't want children because he was part child himself. That didn't apply to Bree, who had never really been a child at all.

Verity hadn't had children because the circumstances were wrong. That didn't apply to Bree, either. She was married at the right time to the right man in the right place, with the right amount of love and desire and money.

Julia, bless her soul, had not only loved being pregnant but loved giving birth, which shot a great big hole through the complaints Bree had heard. And Julia was right about Tom. Being a father wouldn't be an imposition on him. He wanted family more than anything. He would thrive.

So would she, Bree knew. Jane was right. She would make a great mother. It didn't matter that she had never had one of her own to learn from. She loved children. She loved Tom. She would love his child. It made sense.

What didn't make sense was how to do it, because if the doctor was right and she couldn't conceive, the only way to achieve it was through a wish. But she still didn't know if the wishes were real. The fire was listed as accidental. The woman in the diner was long gone. Two wishes spent? Or none?

So, okay. She could wish, and nothing might happen. She would know for sure that the wishes weren't real, they could adopt a baby, and that would be that.

But if the wishes were real and this was her third, what then? She could live happily ever after with Tom and his child, and thank God every day that she'd had the courage to take the risk. Or she could die.

A bizarre thought, that one. And totally unfounded. She had no proof that she would die. She didn't even know where she'd gotten the idea.

But given the possibility of it, no matter how remote, was wishing for a child an irresponsible thing to do? A child without a mother—she knew how
that
was. Tom would have the burden of raising it alone.

But Panama was filled with people who loved them. Her wedding had shown her that. And Tom wasn't Haywood. He was strong and outgoing and able. If he was left to raise their child alone, he would have plenty of help.

She didn't want to die. She wanted to be with Tom. She wanted to be with their child. But if she didn't risk a wish, there might be no child at all.

What do I do?
she asked the being of light, but it didn't answer.
Are the wishes real? Do I dare?

In the end it came down to greed. Having Tom's baby was the one thing that could make her life more complete than it was. She tried to talk herself out of it: told herself that what she had with Tom was so much more than most women ever had that she should be satisfied, told herself that they could adopt a baby, told herself that making a third wish wasn't worth the risk.

Then she saw Tom at town meeting, standing to discuss the pros and cons of keeping town positions under the civil service system, and all the while he was talking, his hands were behind his back, doing funny little things to entertain two restless children in the row behind, and she knew. She knew she could debate forever, but the truth was that her heart had already made up her mind. She'd had enough of being sensible and cautious. Expecting the worst was no way to live. These days, she was banking on optimism and hope. These days, she was squeezing the best out of life.

More than anything else, she wanted to give Tom a child. She didn't have to close her eyes to imagine that child. She could see it clear as day, just as she could feel her own joy. That joy justified the risk.

So she did it. That night, after town meeting adjourned, when she was in the bathroom before joining Tom in bed, she laced her fingers together by her chin, closed her eyes tight, and whispered, “I . . . wish . . . to have Tom's child.” She pictured the being of light and repeated the words. “I . . . wish . . . to have Tom's child.”

For long minutes she stood there, with her heart pounding at the gravity of what she'd done. But the wish was sent. She couldn't take it back. Trembling, she imagined it rising on a starbeam and finding the being of light. As she homed in on that being, its luminescence was as strong as ever before, and soothing. Gradually, the pounding of her heart eased, and her trembling gave way to an overall calm. She drew in a slow, deep, satisfied breath and let it out. Smiling, she combed through her hair, smoothed the silk of her negligee, and went to join Tom.

 

It happened that night. She was convinced by the sense of fulfillment she experienced as she lay against him afterward. They were both bare and damp. From a microscopic near-nothing deep inside, her body glowed.

She didn't tell him, neither then nor the following week, when a home test confirmed what the tiny dot of heat that glowed more strongly inside her each day told her was true. Nor did she worry. She was committed. There was no turning back.

 

Between repairing winter's damage to the grounds, preparing the malleable ground for the garage he planned to build, and playing newlywed with Bree, a busy month passed before Tom asked about her period. She had figured he would ask in time. He was always attuned to those days when she was feeling bloated and crampy. “How did I miss it?”

“You didn't.” She kept her voice low, her excitement in check, but barely. “It's late.”

He was instantly on the alert. “How late?”

“Two weeks.” Bits of excitement escaped. “What do you think?”

“I think you should do a test.”

“I did. It says I am. But I'm not supposed to be.”

Tom made no effort to control his excitement, which was precisely what Bree wanted to hear. “Doctors can be wrong,” he said. “It won't be the first time. Did you call him?”

She nodded.