Three Wishes (31 page)

“Why didn't you
tell
me? What did he say?”

“I have an appointment two weeks from now. By then, he can decide it with a physical exam, and I didn't tell you because I don't want us getting our hopes up. He said it'd be a real fluke.” She had clung to that thought. A fluke was something that was improbable, that happened rarely but happened nonetheless. It was something that defied the odds but might indeed have happened on its own, without any wish at all.

Tom took her arms. His eyes were wide and bright. “The test said you are. That's incredible.”

She nodded again, grinning widely now.

He put a hand on her stomach and said in a hushed voice, “Do you feel it?”

The look on his face was precious, not to mention the awe in his voice. He looked as though he had been given the most precious gift possible, and in that instant, third wish or not, she was so,
so
glad she had done what she had.

She covered his hand. “It's too small to feel yet, but I swear I do. It's a little warm spot in the middle of everything else down there. I've been feeling it since it happened.”

“You
have?
And you
didn't tell me?”

“I thought it was just happiness. Love.”

He made a sound deep in his throat, ever so gently took her face in his hands, and, moving his thumbs against her cheeks, said, “You've turned my life around, Bree. Whether you're pregnant or not, you've saved me from a whole other fate. How do I thank you for that?”

 

By way of answering his own question, he spent those two weeks making Bree the center of his life. He brought her breakfast in bed every morning, gave her flowers, spent his free time at the diner, told her many times a day just how beautiful she looked. When they were in bed, he was hungry, if solicitous, but she had no cause for caution on that score. Her baby had taken root and wasn't being dislodged, and she wanted Tom. There wasn't a time when he turned to her that she wasn't ready. Even when she emerged from a deep sleep to find him hard against her, she was quickly aroused. Her body was extrasensitive, her breasts fuller, her insides moist. She climaxed often and well.

He was spoiling her. She loved every second of it.

 

Mud season ended with April's lengthening daylight and a gradual hardening of the ground. Tom and Bree spent hours on the bench by the brook, listening to the rush of the water, smelling the promise of spring in the damp ground, watching the return of migrating birds.

Bree had been happy before, but those two weeks gave new meaning to the word. She shared a joy with Tom that was innocent and complete. If, indeed, God had put man on earth for the purpose of procreation, He was smiling on them now. Their life together was rich in satisfaction and love. Bree was back to pinching herself, wondering if it all was real.

 

Tom didn't question the pregnancy for a minute. Everything that had happened since that October night had been unexpected. This was just one more thing.

But what a wondrous thing it was! He thought he had been the happiest man in the world when Bree set a date for their wedding, but that happiness had been topped on their wedding day, when she appeared at the church looking like a dream, walked down the aisle only to him, and smiled up through tears when he slipped his ring on her finger. They had been married for barely two months, had known each other for barely six, but she was as much a part of his life as his heart.

And now this. A child. Bree's child. Bree's and his.

 

Paul Sealy was stunned. Returning to his desk after Bree's examination, he looked from one of them to the other, shook his head, blew out a breath. “How to explain it? I've specialized in gynecology for twenty years. Infertility is an increasing problem, often for very new reasons, but this wasn't a situation like that. It was an age-old case of an injury causing scar tissue that would interfere with conception. I've seen dozens of cases like it. In some, surgery solved the problem. Simon and I discussed it. We didn't think that would help here, or we'd have suggested it.” He focused on Bree. “We never would have put you through the agony of thinking you couldn't have children if we hadn't thought the chance of it was better than ninety-nine percent.” He frowned, puzzled. “I'm usually pretty good at prognoses.”

“Is that what it was?” Bree asked. “Ninety-nine percent?”

“I'd have said ninety-nine point five, odds against”

“So I'm the one in two hundred people who got pregnant in spite of the scarring?”

“Looks that way.”

“And you're sure she's pregnant?” Tom asked. He knew
she
was sure, could see the conviction in her eyes and her smile, could feel it in her hand, which he held so tight that her fingers would have choked had they been her neck. But he wanted to hear it again.

“Oh, I'm sure,” the doctor said, still amazed. “The signs are all there. She's six weeks along. Whew. I'm sorry for the heartache we caused. We messed up.”

Damn straight!
Tom thought. Bree had come close to not marrying him, because her doctors had messed up. He could strangle them for that, either strangle them or sue them, though he doubted Bree would allow either. Sitting beside him, she was benevolence incarnate.

“No heartache now that a baby's coming,” she said in a serene voice.

Tom would share that serenity once he knew a little more. “Is there no scar tissue, then?” he asked the doctor.

“Apparently not as much as I expected.”

“Will it affect the pregnancy in any way?”

“It shouldn't. But I think we can plan on taking the baby by cesarean section.”

“Why?”

“Her uterus has been cut and repaired. It hasn't had much time to recover. I wouldn't want to risk a rupture during hard labor. A cesarean is no problem, though. We won't even use general anesthesia. A spinal block will do it. Many a woman who delivers vaginally has that.” He frowned, tapped a fist in the air, murmured, “I was so sure.” With a final head shake, he brought himself back. “I don't foresee any complications with the pregnancy itself. You're perfectly healthy, Bree. You've had an amazing recovery from the accident.”

She shot Tom a look that said he was partly responsible. His chest swelled.

Sealy reached for a prescription pad and a pen. “You'll take vitamins daily. Eat a balanced diet. I'll see you monthly until the seventh month and more often after that.” He glanced at her record and pulled up a calendar. “As I figure it, you're due . . .” The tip of his pen counted out the weeks. “Too much,” he said, with a chuckle, and raised his eyes. “As I figure it, you're due on or about Christmas. I'd say there's magic in that.”

 

I'd say there's magic in that.

Tom heard those words over and over during the ride back from Ashmont, and with growing concern. If Bree shared that concern, she didn't let on. She was exuberant the whole way. The only thing to upset her was when he refused to let her sit close and belted her in on the passenger side, but she held his hand in both of hers, as though she would float away if she didn't, and she didn't stop beaming.

It was almost enough to make him forget. When she turned her smile on him, he felt the force of it deep inside. He lived to make her happy.

But he kept hearing those words.
I'd say there's magic in
that.
And he had to know.

“Bree?”

“What if it's a boy?” she asked in a dreamy voice.

Helplessly, he smiled. “What if it is?”

“He'll look like you.”

“He could look like you.”

“No-o,” she wailed, shaking his hand. “I want a little Tom.”

A little Tom. The thought of it made him so proud that he thought he would burst. But there was still the other. “Bree?”

“We'd name him Tom, wouldn't we? Tom, junior?”

“Maybe he should have a name all his own. My mother's family name was Wyatt.”

“Wyatt,” Bree repeated. “That's a
great
name. If it's a girl, she can be Chloe.”

“Chloe. Where did that come from?”

“Nowhere. I just like it. Chloe Gates. It flows. I used to dream of changing my name to Chloe, but I couldn't let go of Bree. It's one of the few things I have of my mother.”

Tom knew that she thought about her mother a lot, more so since the incident at the diner. He had actually talked with the private investigator who had helped him on many a case in the past, but they had precious little to work with to decide whether the second wish had come true or not. “Her name wasn't Bree.”

“No, but she chose it for me. My grandparents always hated it. Keeping it was one of the few things my father ever did against their wishes. That and going to Boston in the first place. I've always thought Bree was short for something. Brianna, or Brittany. Or Bridget. Can you imagine me as a Bridget?”

He couldn't. Shifting gears, he pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road.

She twisted to look out the rear window. “What's wrong?”

He parked and faced her. “I need to know something, Bree. Did you wish for the baby?”

She started to blink, caught herself. “Of course I did. I wished ten times over. It's what I want more than anything else in the world.”

“But did you
wish?
You know, do the ritual? Did you use your last wish for this?”

“You heard Dr. Sealy. He said my conceiving wasn't an impossibility.”

“Bree.”

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. The look on her face said it all.

“Oh, baby,” he breathed, feeling a deep, tingling fear. He hooked his arm around her neck, brought her face to his shoulder, and closed his eyes. “Why, Bree?
Why?”

She clasped a fistful of his flannel shirt. Her voice came from his collar, words spilling fast in argument, as though she was trying to convince herself, too. “Because you'll be the very best father, and because I want your baby, and because if I was given three wishes, I was meant to use them. I don't know where I got the notion that the world would end once I used the last wish. We don't know that at all, and anyway, the more I think about it, the more I say that we're crazy to believe in three wishes. Life doesn't happen like that. When you pull a quarter out of Joey Little's ear, it's sleight of hand. That's all magic is, an illusion, but there's a rational explanation for it. So yes, I made a wish, but that's not why I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant because I love you, and because we wanted it so much, and because we'll be good parents, and because you turn me on so much that my body is entirely open when we make love. Scar tissue didn't have a chance against that.”

Tom couldn't help it. He laughed. “Christ, what's medical school in the face of logic like that?”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I.” His laughter ended. Fear was suddenly a living, breathing thing inside him. “What if you're wrong? What if the wishes
are
real? What if the thing about the third wish is true? What if that really
does
mean . . .” He couldn't finish.

In a quiet voice, she said, “I'm not going to die.”

Hearing the word loosed his fear. Wrapping both arms around her, he buried his face in her hair. “If something happened, I'd never forgive myself. I don't want to live without you. I
can't.
You're everything good that's come into my life, everything good that I've become.” She was shaking her head no against him, but he believed what he said. “You are. You're my heart and soul. You're my conscience. When I'm with you, I feel more at peace than at any other time in my life. I don't feel driven. I don't feel competitive. I'm a decent person when I'm with you. A
caring
person. A
happy
person. I fell in love with
you,
not with the idea of having a baby. I don't need a baby. If we could go on living just the way we have for the last few months, I'd be happy. The baby's no good without you.”

She pushed at him so suddenly that he couldn't hold her. The next thing he knew, her eyes were flashing. “Don't say that. Don't
think
it. That's pretty much what my father thought. I don't
ever
want a child of mine raised that way.” She softened, grew pleading, touched his face. “Don't you see? This is what our love is about. It's what lives after
both
of us are gone. We all die, Tom. Sooner or later we do.”

He saw her tears and was lost It was like that every time. When she cried, her emotion became his. “Oh, Bree,” he whispered.

“We do.”

“But I want it to be later.”

“It will be.”

“I wish you'd talked with me first.” He might have talked her out of it. He might have suggested they try to get pregnant without wishing for it. Of course, they had made love many dozens of times since November. He hadn't once worn a condom. Her body had been entirely open then, too. And she hadn't conceived.

That realization made him all the more fearful.

“You'd have said no,” she said.

“Probably.”

“So we'd have argued. I thought this all out, Tom. Really I did. I went over every argument, and the ones about
wanting
to have our baby were the best, but then there were the ones about not trying. About not trying and always wondering. About letting ten years go by and still wondering, and regretting, and then finding it was too late to try.” She tipped up her chin in defiance. “Besides, it's my body.”

Tom cursed liberated women then, but he felt the same little catch inside that he always felt when the bottom line was clear. He wanted to be angry with her, but he loved her too much for that. So he sighed. “Well, it's done. You are pregnant.”