The Secret Ingredient of Wishes

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “I know you and Catch think the town brought you here to find him, that it wouldn’t let you leave when you tried to bail after everyone found out about the wish thing. But I think you’re letting the magic of Nowhere go to your head, making you think things that can’t possibly be real. Making you see something in my brother that’s not there.” His voice turned as hard as his face, all traces of his earlier worry gone.

  “I’m not. For the first time since I was little—since I wished Michael would get lost and he did—I am one hundred percent sure about what is real. Just ask Catch about Scott. She’ll tell you the same things I have.”

  When Rachel met his eyes, denial stared back at her. A thick patch of goose bumps erupted on her arms and neck, and she rubbed at them with a shaky hand. The silence stretched between them, tingeing the room with doubt.

  Ashe stalked to the door, the hard set of his mouth saying that some part of him knew his brother wasn’t his at all. “You’re wrong, Rachel. I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong.” He didn’t look at her as he walked out and slammed the door behind him hard enough to shake the pies on the counter.

  34

  Catch still wasn’t back after lunch, so Rachel took the pies down to the coffee shop herself. She walked them in the front door and even received a few smiles and calls of “Hey, Rachel,” from the customers. She returned their greetings, grateful that they’d finally accepted her. Then she wandered around downtown and sat in the park under the shade of an old oak tree to avoid going back to the house and potentially fighting with Ashe again or running into Scott. Everley had given her a few days off to let her hands heal completely, but Rachel thought that she might have sensed Rachel’s emotional upheaval and wanted to keep her stress levels as low as possible so wishes didn’t go haywire again.

  While she appreciated the gesture, it gave her too much time to think. And all she could think about was her brother.

  But now Scott was walking toward her, Lucy tugging on the leash a few feet in front of him. He smiled when he saw Rachel. She jumped up from the bench. The desire to hug him battled with the need to run. She froze in the middle of the sidewalk and squinted against the sun. Lucy strained to reach Rachel as fast as she could, and Scott had to use both hands to restrain her.

  “Seems like somebody’s excited to see you,” he said as they got closer.

  Rachel’s mouth tasted like she’d licked an eraser. Swallowing did nothing but spread the feeling farther down her throat. “Yeah,” she croaked.

  He looked at her curiously. “You okay?”

  “I think the heat’s getting to me.”

  “Do you wanna grab something to drink? I’m sure Lucy wouldn’t mind a stop at Elixir. They usually keep dog bones and a bowl of water for the pooches.”

  Rachel wiped her hand along the back of her sweaty neck, trying to get ahold of herself. “I’ll be okay. Thanks.”

  “Oh, c’mon. I promise we don’t bite. Well, I don’t, at least.” He laughed and ruffled Lucy’s fur on her head.

  When Scott spoke, she could hear an echo of Michael begging her to play with him. When she nodded and accepted his invite, she prayed she was doing the right thing.

  Lucy nudged her muzzle under Rachel’s hand as they walked. She scratched her nails in the downy fur under the dog’s chin.

  “I didn’t believe Ashe when he told me at first,” he said.

  “Believe what?” Her fingers froze in the dog’s fur as she thought of all the things Ashe could have told him about her.

  “That Lucy liked you. I thought he was just saying it so I’d like you too.”

  “You’ll only like me if the dog does?” she asked. “Wow. Tough crowd.”

  Scott laughed. “Listen, dogs are pretty good judges of character. Lucy wouldn’t go near Lola even from the first day Ashe brought her home. Guess we should’ve known something was up then.”

  Scott walked past the entrance to the coffee shop and looped Lucy’s leash around the base of a wrought-iron table. He tugged a few times to make sure it was secure. Lucy turned her brown eyes up at Rachel and whined.

  Rachel gave Lucy another scratch under her chin and a promise they’d be right back before following Scott through the door. They were greeted by a blast of air conditioning and the hissing of the espresso machine as the barista frothed milk.

  “That’s a new flavor of pie,” Scott said when they reached the counter. The pie display case was already half-empty. He ordered two slices and two sweet teas. “But since it’s Catch’s, I’m sure it’ll be great.”

  “Actually, I made that one. But I’m not making any promises that it’s anything close to great,” Rachel said, taking the plates the girl behind the counter handed her.

  Scott grabbed the glasses of tea. “Catch lets you bake?”

  “Sometimes. Usually she just tells me what to do and stands there like a drill sergeant barking orders at me while I mix things together. But this one she let me do all on my own.”

  “She told me I had clumsy hands and won’t let me near the kitchen if she’s baking,” Scott said, taking a gulp of his iced tea.

  A memory of baking cookies with Michael when they were little flashed in her mind. He’d had more dough on his clothes and smeared across his round cheeks than on the cookie sheet. Rachel fought to suppress the smile—and the words that itched to come out. She couldn’t let even something that small slip.

  Lucy jumped up and rattled the table, pulling on her leash as they neared. Rachel’s hands shook when she set the plates down, and the ceramic clattered against the metal. Lucy bumped her head under Rachel’s hand when she sat.

  “You’re really good with her,” Scott said, nodding to the dog. “Did you have a lot of pets growing up?”

  “Mom was allergic, so we weren’t allowed to have them.” She scratched behind Lucy’s ears a few times, then clasped her hands on her lap.

  “Just a natural, then?”

  Seems to run in the family. “I guess so.”

  “Ashe said you’re the reason Mama sent Lucy home, but he was a little cagey about how exactly. Want to fill in the details for me?”

  “He wished for Lucy to come back,” Rachel said. She took a bite of her pie, the saltiness of the potato chip crust and the bittersweet flavor of the chocolate tart lingering on her tongue. Her heart rate spiked as the initial panic at telling someone what she could do tried to take over. She pushed it down with a deep, slow breath. “And like Catch is good at keeping secrets, I’m good at making wishes come true.”

  “That’s cool. No wonder Catch trusts you with her pies. This is really good, by the way,” Scott said, halfway through his pie already. “You should convince her to let you bake on your own more.”

  “I’ll try. But you know how stubborn she is,” Rachel said. “She won’t even let me do her laundry with mine because she says I put too much fabric softener in, even though I measure it with the same cap she does.”

  A laugh rumbled out of him. He squinted slightly, like their dad had when he laughed hard. “Maybe Ashe should ask for you. She pretends not to listen to him, but most of the time winds up doing what he wants.”

  “It’s good that she’s got him.”

  “It’s even better that we’ve got her,” he said.

  She thought about Catch’s doctor’s appointment, how it had run longer than expected, and wondered for the hundredth time if that meant her wish had come true and Catch was well. She wondered if she’d done the right thing by not telling Ashe about Catch’s cancer.

  She gulped sweet tea, forcing the guilt back down. “Were things not great at home?” Rachel asked, quickly adding, “I’m sorry. That’s pretty personal.”

  “It’s okay,” Scott said, shrugging. “Sometimes it was bad. But I was lucky. I always had Ashe to look out for me and take me over to Catch’s when it got to be too much. And she’d feed us pie and let me pretend to examine her cats for made-up diseases. They were persnickety little things, but they put up with me pretty we
ll. Mostly because I’d give them my corncobs to chew on after dinner, but I like to think it was because I was good with animals even back then.”

  Lucy pawed at the ground. Her nails scraped on the brick patio. The table wobbled as she paced back and forth and around their chairs.

  “Hold your horses,” Scott said to her. He worked on the knot she had pulled tight in her attempt to get free. “If you’d just sit still this would be a lot easier.”

  “Sit,” Rachel ordered. Looking Rachel in the eye, Lucy obeyed.

  “Thanks,” he said. He got the leash loose and nearly tripped over the dog when she darted in front of him. “We’ll be right back.”

  Rachel watched as he jogged after Lucy, then nearly jumped out of her seat when she realized she had company. Lola stood behind the vacated chair, wearing large dark sunglasses and a frown. Her hair was swept back from her face with crisscrossed bobby pins, and her silk tank top in a pale blush offset her milky skin.

  Glancing toward the cafe’s front door, Lola asked, “Is Ashe with you?”

  “No,” Rachel said. Turning away from Lola she scanned the park but couldn’t see Scott or Lucy circling the grass. “Scott. He just took the dog for a walk.”

  Lola shifted her weight and for a moment, Rachel thought she was about to leave. Instead, Lola plucked off her sunglasses and stared at Rachel, her golden eyes sparkling with a soft smile that cracked her usually hard demeanor.

  “I got an email from Mary Beth. She sent me pictures of the girls. They were dressed like really creepy angels,” Lola said.

  Rachel paused, trying to decide where Lola was going with this. “Yeah, Geoff’s a sci-fi fan. He dressed them up as Weeping Angels for Halloween last year.”

  Lola laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Rachel smiled thinking of Geoff, with his tech-speak and geek addictions, and Lola, with her impeccable fashion sense and old-fashioned beliefs, trying to get through a dinner conversation. But Lola had to have a fun, kind side if Ashe and Everley liked her. Hidden way, way down deep.

  “Neither did the girls. All Violet knew was that she got to be scary and that was good enough for her,” Rachel said.

  Lola gripped the back of Scott’s chair, her French-tipped nails curling against the black iron. “I hate that I don’t know them, that I’ve already missed out on so much,” Lola said. “I know I was horrible to you before, but I just—”

  Lucy’s growl was low and threatening. It was more warning than vicious, but Lola jumped regardless. She moved behind Rachel’s chair, her hands grazing Rachel’s back as she stumbled in her heels.

  Scott stood there, letting the dog scare Lola.

  “Lucy,” Rachel said in a soothing voice. “Be nice.”

  The dog eyed Lola suspiciously but stopped her growl. She sat and laid her head in Rachel’s lap.

  “Everything okay?” Scott asked, his harsh tone clearly directed at Lola. He pulled out his chair but didn’t sit.

  “Yep. Just talking,” Rachel said, patting Lucy’s head.

  Lola shifted to the left, toward Scott and farther away from the dog. Her lips twitched into a half smile. “Hi, Scotty.”

  His face was hard, his eyes dark and glaring. “My brother might be nice enough not to tell you to get lost, but I’m not. So, take your cheating ass someplace else and leave us alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She touched Rachel’s shoulder as she started to walk away. “I know I can never repay you for what you did, but if you ever need anything, you’ll let me know?”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” Rachel said, giving her a small smile.

  After Lola was gone, he retied Lucy’s leash and looked up at Rachel with an unreadable expression. “What did you do for her?”

  “I gave her the chance to make something up to someone she loves,” Rachel said.

  “Ashe?”

  Lucy lifted her head and looked around at the mention of his name. Her big brown eyes followed people on the street, and, coming up empty, she lay down on the ground with a dejected thump.

  “No,” Rachel said. “I don’t know if Ashe told you or not, but my best friend is Lola’s sister. They hadn’t spoken in years and I put them back in touch.” Rachel dropped a half-inch piece of her crust in front of Lucy’s nose. The dog’s tongue darted out and licked it up within seconds.

  “After everything she’s done to Ashe, I can’t believe you’d help her.” Scott’s voice was rough, just this side of angry. He wasn’t looking at her anymore when she glanced up.

  “This had nothing to do with him. Mary Beth deserved the chance to get her sister back if she wanted.”

  “If Lola treated her sister like she treated Ashe, your friend was probably better off without her. She doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

  Like Ashe, Scott knew how to hold a grudge. He would hate his father for betraying Ashe with Lola, and Rachel was grateful that he didn’t know—that he would never know if she could help it. But that thought was quickly replaced by another.

  Scott will never forgive me for what I did to him.

  Rachel swallowed a sip of tea, which did nothing to ease the lump in her throat. “But what if the other person deserves to be happy? Doesn’t that trump everything else?” she asked. Her voice cracked on the last word.

  “And what? Consequences be damned?” Scott asked.

  “If it’s not hurting anyone, I just can’t see how it’s a bad thing to make something right,” Rachel replied.

  “Think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.”

  Rachel set her fork down, abandoning the rest of her pie. Would she ever be able to tell Scott the truth without having him hate her for it?

  35

  Angry voices carried out the open windows at Catch’s house. Rachel slowed her pace, pausing at the base of the back steps. She peered in the window of the back door. In the kitchen, Ashe stood a few feet away from Catch, arms crossed over his chest, glaring down at her. A few strands of hair fell across his eyes when he shook his head. “You knew, didn’t you? About Rachel’s brother?”

  “She told me about him, yes,” Catch said.

  “You know that’s not what I meant. You knew Scott was her brother and you didn’t tell me.” The accusation was hard and sharp.

  Rachel stepped back into the shade of the overhang. She still had a view inside though she was no longer directly in either Catch’s or Ashe’s line of sight.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “What do you mean, you couldn’t? This isn’t something that’s up for discussion. How could you not tell me? How could you not tell her? She’s been looking for him for most of her life and you knew all this time where she could find him.”

  Fisting a hand on her hip, Catch tilted her head up and met his hard eyes. “It’s not that simple, Ashe. Your parents had me bind it. But hiding a secret as big as that has consequences, and they forgot the truth right along with everyone else.”

  “Why?” Ashe’s voice lowered so Rachel had to creep closer to the window to hear him. She stepped on one of the basil plants growing under the window, the thick stalk and fragrant leaves crushed under her shoe. He pressed, “Why wouldn’t they want anyone to know he wasn’t theirs?”

  “Who knows why your parents make the decisions they do. Seeing as how that was one of their better ones, I wasn’t going to pry.”

  “Rachel blames herself for him disappearing. Do you have any idea—”

  Catch pounded a hand on the counter, cutting off whatever else he had been about to say. “That girl was given something she wasn’t ready for and no one to teach her how to control it. It’s not her fault what happened.”

  “Well, she doesn’t believe that,” Ashe said.

  “Rachel’s stronger than she thinks. And she knows who he is now, knows that he’s had a good life with people who love him. I don’t know if that helps or hurts, but she knows. Give her some space, a little time to figure that out on her own. She’s almost there
. And when she is, I can help her.”

  “And what about Scott? Does he know?”

  Rachel steadied a hand on the side of the house and listened.

  “No, your brother doesn’t know any better than you did. He won’t remember her. All he’s ever known is being a Riley. That’s who he is.”

  Ashe dragged his hands through his hair, gripping it in his fists. “I can’t believe you did this, Catch.”

  “Don’t you dare put this on me. I only did what I was asked. And I did it for a sweet little boy who desperately needed someone to love him.”

  “But Scott had a family. Whatever you did with your pie might’ve kept him from going back to them,” he said.

  How had Rachel not thought of that? With all of the secrets that had been wished into the open without Rachel even knowing it was happening, it fit that Catch’s ability could also counteract hers. Maybe that’s why she landed in Nowhere in the first place. Why the town wouldn’t let her leave.

  “I wasn’t talking about Scott,” Catch said, pulling Rachel’s attention back to Ashe.

  Her heart ached for him, and for the girl she had been in the months after her brother disappeared.

  She fled around the corner and out of sight seconds before Ashe slammed though the back door. Her chest throbbed from holding her breath, but she waited against the side of the house until her hands stopped shaking.

  * * *

  The sky was a mass of clouds in irritable shades of gray. Dim shadows moved across the lawn as the thinner limbs on the fruit trees flailed in the wind. Rachel sat on the top step of Ashe’s back deck, elbows propped on her knees, unable to make it any closer to his door.

  Ashe’s footsteps, scuffing over the wood, stopped before he reached her. Her heart hammered in her chest. She just barely heard him over the pounding in her ears.

  “How did this happen?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry.” Rachel looked over her shoulder at him. He stood a few feet away with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, so she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. But his mouth, set in a hard line, gave her some idea.