The Secret Ingredient of Wishes

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “I think I get the point,” Rachel said.

  “Good. Now before you start picking ’em, make sure they’re ripe. But don’t squeeze too hard or you’ll bruise ’em.”

  Rachel reached for one. The skin was grainy, but slick. Her fingers sank into the pear’s flesh with minimal pressure and brown juice oozed out. It trickled down her fingers, stinging and turning her skin a blistering red as it went. Jerking her hand away she said, “I don’t think your tree likes me.” She shook her hand, and the juice dripped off.

  “Good Lord,” Catch said. She threw out her arm to block Rachel from the tree. “Just stay back a minute.” She took a small spray bottle from her apron pocket and began misting the tree with a milky white liquid that clung to the leaves. Within seconds it evaporated in the heat.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I told you the trees sometimes have a mind of their own. And one of them is trying to spread its poison to the rest. This’ll stop it for now and we can move on about our day. Give me your hands. We need to get that cleaned off.”

  Catch sprayed the liquid onto Rachel’s hands. Some of the mist landed on her shirt, leaving dark specks on the cotton. Despite the oppressive heat, the liquid was chilly. It tingled as it ate through the juice on her hands. It smelled like licorice and lemon. She held her hands out, fingers splayed, as the mixture turned runny and dripped off.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll rinse you off with the hose before we go in,” Catch said.

  “I’m more worried that my skin is going to melt off.”

  “I ain’t gonna put something corrosive on you or my trees. Now just keep holding ’em like that until I’m done.” She squeezed and plucked, squeezed and plucked until the basket was laden. She hefted it with both hands so it rested against her thighs, as if she could move it along with the sheer force of her body.

  “Come hose me down and I’ll carry it,” Rachel said.

  “And how are you gonna do that? This basket probably weighs as much as you.”

  You’re one to talk. “Then I’ll take one side and you take the other. I can’t just stand around while you break your back carrying that.”

  Rachel followed her around the side of the house where the hose was curled up, sleeping in the sun. She scrubbed her hands in the warm water. They felt like the underside of a rabbit pelt and were the pink of fresh skin after a scab falls off. She rubbed them back and forth trying to decide if she still had feeling in them.

  “Oh, you’ll be fine,” Catch said.

  Dropping them to her sides, Rachel went back to fetch the basket. They carried it together. Their steps were jerky, lopsided, the basket bobbing between them.

  “I think I’m going to have a bruise,” Rachel said after hoisting the fruit onto the counter.

  “I’ve got something for that too, if it comes to that.”

  “Did you make it?”

  “God, no. Your boss and I have an arrangement. I give her fruit. She makes me ointment, lotion, salve, what have you.”

  “Did she make whatever it was you sprayed on me?”

  “That one’s a personal concoction. I had to come up with something to keep the plum tree at bay. This isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with so far.” Catch pulled the spray bottle from her apron pocket and stashed it under the sink next to a bottle of dark liquid.

  Rachel picked a pear from the top of the pile. It was firm and lumpy. When Catch handed her a peeler, she started to slice small strips of skin from it. Without something to put them in, they littered the counter like wood shavings.

  “Who the hell taught you to peel something like that?” Catch scolded.

  She took the pear from Rachel and set it on the counter. Selecting another one from the basket, she took a second peeler and, holding it sideways, wound around the pear so that the skin came off in one long trail. She set the naked fruit in a colander on the counter.

  “Are you going to kick me out of the kitchen if I butcher it?”

  “Maybe,” Catch said, cackling. Her laugh echoed around the room. She thumped Rachel on the back. “Go on, then. We don’t have all day.”

  Rachel’s first attempt resulted in six strips of skin. Her second, seven. She scraped a knuckle on her right hand raw and had to stick it in her mouth to staunch the bleeding before Catch could see.

  She peeled one for every three of Catch’s. When she started on the last one, she’d managed to get down to two or three longish strips.

  Catch shrugged, unimpressed. She uncovered a tart pan with six scallop-edged wells already pressed with dough.

  Rachel took the paring knife from the block and started slicing the pears lengthwise in thin strips. As the pieces started to pile up, she asked, “How many tarts are we making?”

  “So, it’s ‘we’ now, is it?”

  “Well, you are letting me live in your house free of charge. I figured the least I can do is help you bake so you don’t look like you could keel over at any minute.”

  “Look that bad, do I, Miss-Pretty-Young-Thing?” Catch asked. Her raspy laugh rolled into a deep, hacking cough. With one hand pressed to her stomach, she extended the other to keep Rachel back. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.”

  Rachel wanted to press her for an explanation, but the tight set of Catch’s mouth, which caused the wrinkles around her lips to straighten out, said she had no right to whatever secrets Catch was keeping. Like with whatever was going on with the trees. It would only become her business if Catch decided to tell her.

  12

  The sky was still hazy and purplish pink when Catch backed the car up to one of the booths at the farmers’ market the next morning. For once, Rachel understood why someone would have a car that more closely resembled a boat. She couldn’t see the fabric or carpeting of the backseat, floorboards, or trunk through the stacks of cardboard boxes and baskets filled with sweets they had stuffed inside.

  Ashe looked up from underneath a half-erected tent. His hand slipped on the rope and the white vinyl sagged on one side.

  “Quit gawking before you bring the whole damn thing down on our heads,” Catch said. She nudged Rachel in the back with her knobby elbow to get her to move out of the way.

  He tightened his grip and flashed a smile at Rachel.

  Rachel unloaded boxes of tarts, pies, and fried pocket pies while Ashe secured the tent ropes to paint buckets he’d hauled over from Everley’s shop. Rachel had helped Catch wrap the individual-sized pies in plastic wrap the night before. The tips of her fingers were bruised from scraping over the tiny metal spikes on the lip of the box as she tore off sheet after sheet of plastic. They covered the table with as many as they could fit and then lined up the remaining supply behind the canvas chairs they’d brought.

  Ashe set the cooler between them, toed it with the end of his boot. “It’s gonna be hot today. Make sure you drink a lot,” he said.

  “Doubt we’ll be here that long,” Catch told him.

  Rachel scanned the square. There were two dozen or so tents set up along the perimeter. Some had signs promoting their wares. Others, like Catch’s, relied on the goods themselves to snag the attention of passersby. There were baskets of fruits and vegetables, bouquets of pink and yellow and purple flowers, loaves of bread, rows of herbs and other small potted plants, paintings and woodwork, organic soaps and lotions from Everley’s store, jars of honey ranging from pale gold to almost black, and one tent that had jugs of moonshine stacked on the ground half-hidden by a table hocking flavored sweet tea.

  Before Catch had retrieved the cash box from the car, a line had formed in front of their booth.

  “What do I do?” Rachel asked.

  “Tell ’em what we have and sell until we’re out,” Catch said. She helped the first person in line, shooing them away as soon as they’d swapped money for pie. “And if they’re looking for something special, remind them my back door’s always open.”

  “Got it.”

  Ashe ling
ered by the tent, eyes focused on Rachel. Heat crept into her cheeks. Her shirt stuck to her shoulder blades, exposing a strip of her skin above the band of her shorts each time she reached over the table to hand someone back their change. She felt his eyes still on her and tugged it back down. When she looked at him over her shoulder, ready to stare him into retreat, he sent her a lazy smile that sent a rush of heat across her skin. Her lips betrayed her by smiling back. She forced herself to turn around, to ignore the thrill of electricity that coursed along her skin. She focused on the twenty-something who couldn’t make up her mind between the pear tart and a slice of the bourbon pecan pie. With a conspiratorial whisper of “If it were me, I’d have to get both. Calories be damned,” Rachel convinced her to do just that.

  For the next hour, she and Catch shifted around each other, handing off pies and making change with barely a word. It was easy. Comfortable. Like it was exactly what Rachel was supposed to be doing on a summer Saturday morning. They had depleted their stock on the table and were most of the way though the remaining inventory in boxes behind them before the crowd let up enough to breathe. Most customers just wanted pie, not what Catch could do for their secrets. But here and there someone would whisper in Catch’s ear something Rachel couldn’t hear, and her heart would kick up speed for a few beats as she scanned the air for a wish. But the morning remained blissfully wish-free.

  A thick layer of clouds helped keep the heat to a bearable level. The breeze, however, stopped at the edge of the tent, blocked by the wall of people. Rachel wiped a layer of sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.

  “You need water,” Ashe said as he waded back under the tent. When neither woman stopped long enough to get a bottle from the cooler, he did it for them. Uncapping the water, he shoved a bottle into each of their hands and didn’t move until they had taken a few sips. “I can’t stand here all day making sure you don’t dehydrate, so please promise me you’ll keep drinking. Both of you.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Gets-to-Work-in-Air-Conditioning,” Catch said. But she took another drink to appease him.

  Rachel tipped her bottle back as well, but something about the smile on one of the men’s faces a few stalls over caught her attention, and she lowered it without drinking. It was familiar, but she couldn’t figure out why or from where. He looked up, caught her staring, and ran a hand through his thick, salt-and-pepper hair.

  “I’d steer clear of him if I were you,” Ashe said.

  “What?” she asked, dropping her gaze to the few remaining pies on the table.

  “If you give him even the slightest hint that you’ll talk to him, he’ll come over here and then you won’t be able to shake him until you’ve agreed to go to dinner with him.”

  “The town ladies’ man?”

  “Something like that,” Catch said. Her lips tugged down in annoyance, then she took a long swig of water as if trying to drown whatever else she wanted to say about him.

  “His ability to charm people is a little more super than natural,” Ashe said. “Like Catch, but with decidedly less morals. And he uses it to his advantage whenever possible. Business, pleasure, just because he can. So just watch yourself.”

  “If people know he’s like that, why do they put up with it?” Rachel asked, keeping her eyes off the man, though part of her yearned to get a better look. She wondered how many more people were like her and Catch.

  “It’s not like he can force anyone to do something they don’t want to. He just makes ideas seem so damn good people find themselves going along with him without even thinking. And nobody blames him when he moves on to the next person in line, leaving a mess of broken hearts and bad decisions in his wake.”

  “Nobody but you?”

  “He’s my dad.” Ashe raked a hand through his hair and said, “I got to learn the hard way.”

  Rachel nodded, knowing all too well how it felt to have a father who turned lives upside down, though hers had done it by disappearing.

  “You’ve got a bad habit of doing that,” Catch said to him. She stared over his shoulder, her frown melting into a grimace. “She could at least have the decency to not flaunt her cheating ass in public.”

  Ashe’s face hardened, his mouth curling down. Rachel didn’t have to look to know she was talking about Lola. But she followed Catch’s glare so she didn’t have to see the pain on Ashe’s face.

  Lola sidestepped Ashe’s dad, turning her attention to a guy who was all cheekbones and thick wavy hair. Despite the noise of the crowd, she was well within hearing distance. Her dark hair danced around her face as she tilted her head back, laughing. She tucked it behind her ear and rested her hand on the arm of the guy she was talking to. There was something familiar about her underneath all of the polish and forced Southern charm. It pricked at the edges of Rachel’s mind like a childhood memory long forgotten.

  She cut her eyes to Ashe, whose grip on one of the tent’s support poles turned his knuckles white. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Of course he’s okay,” Catch answered for him. She clucked her tongue and shoved a pocket pie at the next customer in line. “What that girl does now is of no consequence to him. Or to the rest of us. Now both of you look away before she sees you and has the satisfaction of knowing she can still get under your skin.”

  But it was too late. Lola locked eyes with Ashe, letting her hand slip from the other guy’s arm. The confusion clouding the guy’s eyes evaporated when he noticed Ashe, and he nodded hastily to Lola before walking away.

  Anger pulsed off Ashe in hot waves. Rachel retreated farther into the tent to keep her own anger at how Lola openly flirted with another man not twenty feet from her husband from fueling his more.

  Not having the same qualms about keeping Ashe’s anger in check, Catch mumbled, “Damn boy never listens to me when it comes to her.”

  Eyes still on Lola, his shoulders stiffened, but that was the only acknowledgment that he’d heard her. When Lola walked toward him, he met her halfway. He cupped a hand around her elbow when she tried to reach for him.

  “Is that him?” he asked, nodding to the guy as he disappeared down the street. His voice traveled over the short distance, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. The hard edge in his tone said he didn’t care.

  “Who?” Lola asked.

  “You know who.”

  “God, Ashe.” She shook him loose. Arms crossed over her chest, the engagement ring she still wore sparkling in the sun. “Just because I talk to a guy doesn’t mean I’ve slept with him.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” he snarled.

  “I know I screwed up, but that does not give you the right to talk to me like this.”

  When she whirled around, the skirt of her dress twirling around like an umbrella, he followed her. Rachel, along with half the crowd, watched them. The others pretended to be interested in whatever tent they were closest to. He waited until they were on the sidewalk before he stepped in front of her, forcing her to slam against his chest. She shoved at him before looking over her shoulder to see how many people were watching. She narrowed her eyes at Rachel and Catch like the confrontation was their fault.

  “Just tell me who it was, Lola. I’m not going to do anything to him. I just want to know.”

  “We’ve been over this,” she said. Her voice was low but Rachel could just make out the words. “I’m not telling you.”

  “He ruined our marriage. Why are you protecting him?” Ashe ran a hand through his hair, not looking at her.

  “I’m not.”

  “Then just tell me his name,” he insisted.

  “Let it go, Ashe.”

  He turned away from her and caught Rachel’s eye. She looked down at the tart in her hand, embarrassment from watching his anger and heartache play out in front of everyone staining her cheeks pink. She understood the need for answers—she’d been there more than once with her parents and therapists where the wishes and Michael were concerned—but sometimes trying to force an iss
ue just made it that much harder to prove. She’d never figured out why no one else remembered her brother when she still did, and she doubted Ashe would ever get a name out of Lola.

  * * *

  When Rachel found Ashe an hour later in the construction half of Everley’s shop, he was scribbling something on the checklist he kept taped to the far wall.

  “You okay?” Rachel asked. She stepped into the room but stopped before she got too close to him.

  “I will be. It’s not like arguing with Lola about who she slept with is anything new.” The truth of it hung on him, dragging down his shoulders and making his blue eyes dull. He sat on a large paint bucket in the center of the room.

  “Still sucks, though,” Rachel said. She’d never allowed herself to love a guy enough to be hurt that way by him, but she could imagine how it could haunt a person. How it could drive them mad and steal their grip on reality, even if only temporarily. She shifted her weight back toward the door. “If you want to be alone, I can go.”

  He tapped a second bucket of paint with his boot for her to join him. “Nah. It’s cool. I’m not getting much done anyway. As it is, I might accidentally shoot someone with a nail gun,” he said.

  She walked farther into the room, extending a pie dish toward him. “Catch thought you could use this,” she said, handing it to him. “There weren’t any forks.”

  “Thanks. You gonna help me eat this?”

  “I should—”

  “No, what you should do is stay. I don’t need to eat this whole thing, but I will if you’re not here to stop me.” Ashe walked to a tackle box on a shelf and pulled out a plastic fork and spoon. He sat back on his bucket and handed her the fork when she sat on the other one.

  “I’m not sure how I can say no to that,” Rachel said, twisting the fork in her hands. “Especially if I don’t want Catch to kick me out for allowing you to wallow in self-pity.”

  “I do not wallow.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  He dug into the pie, cutting a slice with the edge of the spoon. Strawberry glaze clung to the plastic. He paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. “After I lick this, I’m going to put it back in the pie. Just thought you should know before I did it.”