He sat next to her and pulled her hand onto his knee. She linked her fingers with his. He rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand. Whether it was to comfort her or him, she wasn’t sure.
“Me too.” He dropped his head and stared at their joined hands. “I used to have dreams of things that happened during my childhood, and everything was the same as what really happened, down to what I was wearing and what the place smelled like or felt like and what I was thinking. Everything was exactly as I remembered, except Scott wasn’t there. Not for any of it. I’d wake up and, for just a second, I’d forget I had a brother. But now it seems that those dreams were real, so it’s been a little hard to wrap my head around.”
“How do you think it’s been for me? I finally found my brother, after years of being told he wasn’t real, and he doesn’t even remember me,” Rachel said, struggling to keep the desperation out of her voice. “And I can’t tell him because it sounds crazy.”
“You’d also be turning his whole life upside down.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
Ashe pressed his lips together, taking a moment. “We need to think about all of the consequences before either of us does anything,” he said.
Rachel yanked back her hand. “What do you know about consequences?” Her throat ached from the tears she held at bay, but she forced the words out. “You weren’t the one who lost him. The one who’s had to live with the guilt of ruining everyone’s lives.”
Ashe leaned toward her, holding her so she couldn’t retreat from him again, and cupped her cheeks in his hands. Then he rested his forehead against hers, his breath hot and sweet on her face. “Not everyone’s,” he said.
“You don’t know what I went through. What I put my family through.”
“So tell me. Help me understand.” He brushed his thumb over her cheek before pulling back and giving her some space.
“I wished Michael would get lost when I was little. I didn’t mean it, but that didn’t seem to matter. After wishing him away, I spent years in and out of hospitals—in therapy, where they tried to tell me he never existed though everything inside of me screamed that he was real. I’d fall asleep most nights replaying some memory of him and begging the universe to bring him back. When that didn’t work, I tried to use the wishing as a bargaining chip. I swore if he didn’t come back I’d stop making wishes come true. So I stopped. And after a while, what everyone said about him being my imaginary brother made more sense than what had really happened.”
Her confession hung between them, thick and palpable like heavy smoke. She swallowed to ease the pressure that tightened her throat. He shifted next to her and hunched his shoulders. The tension pulsed from him, battering against her already weakened defenses. In that moment, if he had asked her to keep the secret of her brother forever, she would have agreed. Just knowing Michael was okay felt like more than she deserved.
“Have you tried to leave town again? Do you know if you can now that you’ve found what you were looking for?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Does that mean you’re staying?”
“Yeah, I think so. I hope so. But I guess that depends on what happens with Scott.”
“Is he the reason you haven’t tried to leave?”
“Not the only reason,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet his. “Even when I didn’t think I should stay because of what I might accidentally do to someone because of a wish, I wanted to. And now that I don’t have to go, I’m not as worried about being stuck here.”
A faint smile played on Ashe’s lips, then disappeared before it could fully form. “What are you gonna do about him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you want to tell him.”
“And you don’t want me to,” Rachel said.
There was nothing else to say, and they both knew it.
When she stood to leave, Ashe followed her a few steps. His hand grazed her shoulder and trailed down her back as she turned. “I know I keep asking you for time and it’s not really fair. But we’ll figure it all out, okay?” He caressed her jaw, his touch gentle and warm.
Rachel leaned into him, letting the steady beat of his heart against her cheek convince her everything would be all right. She finally had a place to call home and people she loved like family. That was motivation enough to find a way to make things work.
36
“You and I need to have a little chat,” Catch said, jabbing her finger into Rachel’s shoulder the next day when Rachel walked into the kitchen for dinner.
“About what?” Rachel said, feeling defensive. Her nerves were frayed and she was barely holding it together. She wasn’t up for one of Catch’s “talks.” “I didn’t tell Scott, if that’s what you want to talk about.”
“We’ll get to what to do about that in a minute. But first you’re gonna sit your meddling butt down and tell me what you did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel said, but sat after Catch pointed threateningly at the stool with a wooden spoon.
“Don’t play dumb with me. You know damn well what you did.”
Rachel ran through what she’d said or done in the past few days to piss Catch off this much and came up empty. “Care to give me a hint?”
“I got a call from the doctor today with my latest test results.”
“Oh? What did he say?”
“So, you were behind it?” Catch asked.
“Depends on what the results were,” Rachel said, suddenly nervous. Oh, God. What if I made the cancer spread? She pushed the panic down and tried to slow her breathing.
“The scans came back clean. Not one tiny speck of cancer anywhere in my abdomen. Probably not anywhere else either, but that’s the only part they checked.” Rachel couldn’t help the smile that settled across her face, but she tried to hide it from Catch, who was clearly still pissed off despite the good news. “Now I’ve gotta go back in for more damn tests since obviously someone screwed up the scan. ’Cause according to my doctor, and all logical schools of thought, there’s no possible way I could be cured. Not like that.” Catch opened her fisted hand and waved her thin fingers like she’d made something disappear. Her mouth pinched tight as her eyes narrowed on Rachel. “So, now I’m gonna be subjected to more prodding and poking and damn MRIs and questions and days of observations just because you couldn’t let an old woman die. And I can’t very well go in there telling them you wished me well, now can I? They’d think the cancer had gone to my brain and put me down like a rabid fox.”
“I’m not sorry,” Rachel said after a moment. She crossed her arms over her chest and met Catch’s glare. “You can be mad all you want, but it won’t make me regret anything.”
“You’ve got some nerve, girlie.”
“So do you, thinking you could keep this from everyone,” Rachel said, jumping off the stool and facing Catch. “Did you really think I wasn’t going to do something about it? That I’d just sit back and watch you die?”
“It wasn’t your choice to make,” Catch shouted. “I’d made my peace with the world, with the things I’ve done and haven’t done. I was ready for it.”
Ashe shoved through the back door hard enough for it to bang against the side of the house. “What the hell is going on? I could hear y’all halfway to my place.”
“We’re having an argument,” Catch said. “What the hell does it look like?”
“Did you tell him?” he asked, looking first at Rachel, then at Catch.
Rachel’s hands ached from fisting them so tightly. She opened them and flexed her fingers. She wanted to scream at both of them. Instead she calmly said, “No. I told you I’d talk to you about it first.”
“Then what are y’all fighting about?”
“It’s none of your business,” Catch said, shaking the spoon at him.
“Too bad,” he said. He took the spoon from her and tossed it onto the counter. He stopped halfway between them, hands up like a boxing referee. �
��Rachel?”
Rachel pulled her shoulders back and fisted her hands on her hips. “I did something that she didn’t like. And I’d do it again, no questions asked.”
Smacking her hand on the counter, Catch said, “It wasn’t your place to do anything.”
“So says you. I’d bet Ashe would feel differently,” Rachel said.
Ashe crossed his arms over his chest and took a deep breath. “Would one of you just tell me what the hell happened?”
“Since it’s no longer an issue, it shouldn’t be a problem to tell him, right?” Rachel asked with a sharp look at Catch.
“Fine.” Catch pushed away from the counter, then started rolling back the plastic covering on whatever pie she’d made that day. “If you even think about yelling at me about this, you won’t get pie for a month.”
The corner of his mouth turned up in relief. “That bad, huh?”
Catch made four long cuts through the crust. The knife came out gooey and dark red. “I had cancer. And not the nice kind that goes into remission.”
“It was killing her, Ashe,” Rachel cut in.
“I’m sorry, what? Cancer? You have cancer?” Ashe asked.
“You shush. You told me to tell him, so let me tell him,” Catch said to Rachel with a snarl of her lips. She turned back to Ashe, saying, “Had. Past tense. And Little-Miss-Wish-Everything-Away here made it disappear. Poof. Just like that. It’s all gone.”
“Oh, my God,” Ashe whispered. He braced a hand on the counter beside Catch. He reached for her, but she pulled away before he could touch her. “But you’re okay now? You’re not dying?”
“No, I’m not dying,” Catch said, annoyed despite the reassuring words.
Rachel moved back to the stool so she was in Catch’s direct line of sight. But the stubborn woman refused to look at her. “Try not to sound so happy about it.”
Catch dumped pie onto plates and shoved one into Ashe’s hand. Then she slid a plate to Rachel.
No one ate a bite.
“Okay, so what did Rachel do to piss you off?” Ashe asked after it was clear Catch wasn’t going to say more.
“I told you. She made it all go away.”
He tapped his fork on the plate. “I’m failing to see how that’s a bad thing.”
“She made a wish without asking me how I’d feel about it.” Catch shook her empty fork at Ashe for emphasis. “I never baked for anyone that didn’t want it. That’s just not how these kinds of things are done.”
Rachel shoved her plate away, not completely trusting that the pie didn’t hold a secret Catch wanted kept quiet. “You weren’t doing anything about it, so someone had to.”
“What about the people on the other end of those secrets? The ones who were kept in the dark? They didn’t ask to be lied to, to have their lives manipulated on someone else’s whim,” Ashe said. His jaw clenched as if he’d stopped himself from saying something more.
“I’ve always done what was right, Ashe. You know that,” Catch said.
“So did Rachel,” he said, his tone softer. “She saved your life. I’m not gonna let you be mad at her for that.”
Catch jabbed her fork into the top of her pie once, twice. She continued until she had hacked it to pieces. “Do you know how difficult it is to prepare yourself to die and leave everything and everyone you know and love? And now I’m gonna have to go through all that mess again when my time comes back around.”
“Maybe if you had told someone, asked for help, it wouldn’t have been so hard,” Rachel said.
“Maybe,” Catch said, her shoulders relaxing as she set down the fork. “Just don’t go getting a savior complex, Miss-Likes-to-Stick-Her-Nose-in-Other-People’s-Business.”
“I make no promises when it comes to those I love.” Reaching across the counter, Rachel held Catch’s hand. Then she slipped her other hand into Ashe’s, telling herself she’d find a way to keep what she had with both of them, no matter what.
* * *
Rachel awoke to the scent of cinnamon and baking peaches. She breathed it in deeply, the smell making her hungry. The sky was still the hazy blue that preceded sunrise before the twinkling light of the stars was drowned out by the sun. She made her way downstairs in the dark. It wasn’t until she reached the main floor that she remembered Catch was still mad at her. She tiptoed through the foyer and into the dining room. “Have you forgiven me yet?” she asked from the kitchen doorway.
“Enough to let you help me bake,” Catch said without bothering to look up. She scraped a ball of dough from the mixing bowl and dropped it on the counter.
“I’ll take it.”
She settled in next to Catch and smoothed the dough with quick, short strokes of the rolling pin. The wooden shaft rattled with every back and forth. She peeled up the dough, gave it a quarter turn, and rolled some more while Catch created the filling by adding pinches and handfuls of ingredients.
“Catch, do you have any ideas about why none of my wishing to get Michael back ever worked?” she asked, her voice wavering. She pressed the pie crust into the dish, smoothing the sides down with the tips of her fingers. She used her thumb to create a wave around the top edge. “I mean, I’ve been trying to wish him back since the moment I realized he was gone.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say you weren’t ready. Like I’ve said before, you didn’t trust yourself or this gift of yours. And if you don’t believe in it, it’s not gonna work right.” Catch put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder and squeezed. Then she moved to the microwave to melt the butter. “What if I told you that now that you have him back, you could probably wish for everything to be back the way it was?”
Rachel knocked the handle of the rolling pin. It rolled off the island and dropped to the floor with a thud. She stared at the puff of flour that danced in the air above it. Catch bent down to retrieve it. “Would that work? Is that my loophole?” Rachel asked.
“It’s the only thing that I can think of that might do it,” Catch said.
“If I did that, he wouldn’t know Ashe. Or you.”
“That’s probably true. I guess he could find his way to us one day, but it would be different. He wouldn’t be ours anymore, that’s for sure.”
Rachel traced her finger through the flour on the counter and swiped her hand across it, erasing all traces of the name she had been writing. “I don’t know that I can do that to Ashe.”
“Well, he wouldn’t know any better, would he? If he never had a brother he wouldn’t know that he missed him.” Catch removed the cup of bubbling butter from the microwave. She stirred in the white bubbles that floated on top with a fork.
“That feels … awful.”
“That’s life. Either way, somebody loses. Whether they know it or not. Ashe would lose his brother, you’d lose Mary Beth. You would never come to Nowhere to meet me or Ashe. Everything you’ve been building here would disappear. Now, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I just want to make sure you don’t discount the things you might regret if you reset everything.”
Brush in hand, Rachel hesitated. Her fingers ached from gripping the rubber handle so tightly. It shook and dripped butter onto the counter. She wiped at it with her other hand. “Maybe I can word the wish so that we all still find each other?” she asked.
“Maybe you could, but it wouldn’t be the same. For any of us. I’ve been around a while, and I’ve seen enough of life to know that you can’t change one thing without everything else it touched being affected.”
“So, I have to choose.”
Catch patted her back. “Yes, you have to choose. But nobody said it’s got to be right now.” She pivoted to grab the bowl of peaches and raspberries she’d set aside to soak in a dry sugar bath and left them on the counter by Rachel’s hand.
Please forgive me.
Rachel splashed a hasty wish onto the crust. She took the fruit mixture and covered her yellow words before Catch could see what she’d done.
* * *
The bottom of the p
ie dish was still warm when Rachel carried it through the backyard in her bare feet. Her footsteps were light on the grass, which was long enough to tickle her ankles. The dew made it wet, slippery. She concentrated on each step, one in front of the other, until she cleared the shadows of the trees. Streaks of red and pink peeked between the limbs. She kept both hands on the pie to keep them from shaking.
Ashe’s lights were on, but she didn’t knock. Her hands were sweaty under the pan. She set it on the railing where he’d be sure to see it when he looked out the door. Tucking the folds of the cloth underneath it, she whispered her wish for her brother.
I wish Scott lives a happy life.
The air swirled around her in a warm rush. It smelled like fruit and sugar and home.
She glanced back at the house when she heard laughter drift out the open window. Smiling, she tiptoed down the stairs.
A few steps from the trees, Lucy’s quick, excited bark stopped her. Rachel turned as Ashe pushed through the door, nudging the dog with his leg to keep her inside the house. His eyes landed on the pie, then swiveled up to find Rachel as he walked farther onto the deck. Any lingering doubts she had about keeping Scott’s identity a secret vanished when Ashe smiled at her.
Ashe deserved to be happy too. And she wanted to be the one to make it happen.
“You know,” he said, lifting the corner of the cloth and inhaling deeply, “when you bring someone a pie, the polite thing to do is stick around long enough for him to thank you.”
She laughed, enjoying the way her skin warmed at the sound of his voice. “I’ll see you when you come over for breakfast. You can thank me then.” Without waiting for a response, she threw a wave over her shoulder and started back toward Catch’s house.
“Yeah, but then I’d have to wait,” he said.
“Wait for what?” she called.
His footsteps sounded on the wood deck and then went quiet. A moment later, he wrapped his fingers around hers, spinning her back to face him. Rachel braced her other hand on his chest and pushed up on her toes to meet his lips. The kiss was long and sweet. A promise of everything yet to come.
The Secret Ingredient of Wishes Page 27