“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing some of what you were saying. Are you a lawyer?” She was about to say that her fiancé” was, too, which would give them a small bit of common ground, when the woman shot her a quelling look.
“No, I’m not a lawyer. Look, I’ve come a long way today, and I’m tired and hungry.” She picked up her spoon and arched a brow.
Bree forced an apologetic little laugh. “Sorry,” she said, and withdrew, discouraged for the first time. Tom had warned her that the mother she found might not be the one she wanted, and that was okay. She hadn’t expected that they would fall into each other’s arms and be inseparable. She didn’t want it, didn’t need it. She had her own life. She’d done just fine without a mother up to now and could do just fine again.
If this woman was her mother.
Feeling shaky and unsure, she returned to her own booth and closed the laptop. Flash was napping in the office, sprawled in the chair with his feet on the desk. She stole in, set down the computer, and stole out, then called Tom from the kitchen phone and whispered a frantic “She’s here—at least I think it’s her, but I don’t know for sure. She’s beautiful and rich, and so different from anyone who usually comes that I don’t know what to say to her or how to get her to say whether she is who I think she is.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Eating soup. But she isn’t admitting anything, she isn’t very friendly at all, and I don’t know what to say.”
“Hang in there, honey. I’m on my way.”
Bree hung up, ran to the door, and peeked through the window. The woman was still there, looking elegant and out of place. It would have been worse if the diner had been full, but the predinner lull was in effect. LeeAnn was at the counter, talking to Gavin, Julia was arranging the last of her stems, the grillman and the cook were smoking out back.
Taking a damp cloth and a deep breath, Bree went out front and began to wipe down unoccupied bench seats in anticipation of the evening crowd. It was a job that justified her looking from booth to booth.
The woman alternately jotted down notes and spooned up her soup. Her hand was steady, her movements were smooth. At one point, she made another phone call. She looked thoughtful, distant. From time to time, she glanced up. Each time, Bree averted her eyes and poured herself into her work, but the more she thought about what was happening, the more frightened she grew. Time was passing. Before long, the woman would finish her soup, pay her bill, and be gone. If this was Bree’s wish fulfillment—this one brief meeting with her mother—she wanted to know.
She pictured the being of light and let the peace of it calm her, but there were no answers to be had in that calm. Tell me she’s it, she begged. Give me a sign. Just so I’ll know I’ve seen her once, so I’ll know my wish came true.
Nothing.
Then Tom, she pleaded, peering through frosty windows to search East Main for a sign of his truck. Bring him quickly. He’ll know what to do. He can carry this off better than me.
But Tom wasn’t there. She was on her own, just as she had been for most of her life, and why? Because some woman—perhaps this one—had decided she didn’t want to be a mother, well after the deed had been done.
Desperate to know the why of that, she tucked the damp cloth behind the counter and went to the booth where the woman sat. “I have to ask you something,” she said, in a voice that surely betrayed her fear but was the best she could do.
The woman took a wallet from her large leather purse. “How much do I owe you?”
“Does the name Haywood Miller mean anything to you?”
A ten came out of the wallet. “I’m afraid not. Do you have my check?”
Bree took the pad from her pocket. “Thirty-five years ago, Haywood Miller was working in Boston when he met a woman named Matty Ryan. I was thinking you might be her.”
“Me?” The woman shuddered. She gestured toward Bree’s pad. “I have to be going. I owe you what—five, six dollars?”
“They fell in love, but something happened, and they had to separate. He never forgot her. He loved her until the day he died.”
The woman set down the ten and reached for her purse. “This should cover it.”
“Wait. I need to know. This may be my only chance.”
But the woman was tucking the purse under her arm and starting for the door.
Bree caught her arm. “This sounds bizarre, but you may be my mother.”
Cold eyes pinned her in place. “Your mother? Oh, please. Look, I don’t know any Haywood Miller, and my name isn’t Matty Ryan, and I pray that no daughter of mine would accost a stranger in a diner. Now”—she glanced at Bree’s hand on the sleeve of her suit—“if you don’t release my arm, I’ll charge you with assault”
Bree let go. She watched the woman leave the diner, climb into her car, and speed off down East Main toward the highway. By then, her eyes were flooded with tears.
“It’s all right,” came a soft voice behind her. A tentative hand touched her shoulder. “She isn’t your mother.” Julia Dean was there, looking heartsick. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”
Bree looked at Julia, then beyond. Most everyone in the diner was watching her. She made an embarrassed sound, shook her head, and went to the end of the row of booths. Julia came right along.
Elbows on the jukebox, Bree pressed her fingers under her eyes to stem the tears. “It’s okay. Really. I don’t know what I expected.” She grew angry. “A woman would have to be pretty cold to abandon her newborn baby. She’d have to be pretty selfish to go through life without ever calling on the phone or sending a card. She’d have to be heartless to just vanish.” She blew out a shaky breath. “I used to wait on my birthday. I figured she couldn’t forget that date. But she did. Every year. I thought she might come when my father died, but I guess that didn’t mean anything to her, either.” She turned pleading eyes to Julia. “What kind of a person does that?”
Julia didn’t answer. Looking as pained as Bree felt, she moved her hand in small, light circles on Bree’s shoulder. Finally, gently, she said, “There may be a reason. She may not have done all those things out of choice. She may have thought about you a lot.”
Bree wanted to believe it. She almost could, hearing it in Julia’s sure voice. Still, there was the lingering scent of the woman who had just come and gone. “That woman didn’t look like she was even curious.”
“She isn’t your mother.”
“How can I know that? How can I be sure?”
“Your mother wouldn’t talk to you like that. She wouldn’t sit here and order you around. She wouldn’t come all this way just to hurt you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re not like that,” Julia said, with a small squeeze and more of that quiet confidence. “And everyone in town says you take after your mother.”
Bree sighed. “No one here has ever met her.”
“It makes sense, though, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose.” She sure didn’t take after her father.
A winded Tom rushed to her side, with a dismayed “I missed her.”
Bree leaned into him. “You did. Boy. She was something.”
“Not your mother,” Julia repeated, and left her with Tom.
“No?” Tom asked Bree.
“She denied it.”
“What else is new?”
“She was really beautiful. That was always one of my dreams. But she wasn’t very nice. Maybe I came on too strong. Maybe I scared her away.”
“Maybe Julia’s right and she isn’t the one.”
“Maybe. But how will I know, Tom? How will I know for sure?”
As miraculous as Tom’s presence in her life was, he didn’t have an answer. Back home that night, when he questioned her about the woman who had come to the diner, Bree told him everything she remembered, right down to the pale pink of the woman’s nail polish. But Bree didn’t have the number of her license plate, and Tom agreed that a sporty re
d Mercedes wasn’t any more unique in New York than a woman who wore a smart navy suit and carried a briefcase-type purse with a cellular phone inside.
So the woman was gone. Left behind, ongoing, was the matter of the three wishes.
Tom disagreed with the ongoing part. “It’s over, Bree. That’s it. Two wishes, no more.”
“But what if they weren’t wishes?”
“What if they were? I won’t take that chance.”
“I’m the one taking the chance.”
“No, no, honey,” he said, with a firm head shake and as determined a look as she had ever seen. “It’s my chance, too. I’m the one who loves you. I’m the one who needs you. I’m the one who wants to live with you for the rest of my life. It may have been your chance three months ago, but now it’s our chance. I say forget about the wishes. You’ve made two, and we can’t prove they didn’t come true. I don’t want you trying a third. Not after what you said to me in the hospital about your fear of your time being up once you spend that last wish.”
Bree might have argued more if she had felt he was being controlling for the sake of having control, but all she saw beneath his vehemence was love.
“Let’s set a date,” he said.
She searched his eyes. They were a strong sterling gray in a season of grays, but warmer and more uplifting than any other gray in town. She wondered if they would stay that way even when the reality of her not being able to have a child set in. “You need to think about it more.”
“What’s to think about?”
“Kids.”
“I’ve already thought about that. It’s settled. Like the matter of three wishes. Over and done. A no-brainer. We’ll adopt.”
“Think about it, Tom.”
“What do you think I do all the time you’re at work?”
“Paint walls. Strip woodwork. Sand floors.”
“And think about you.” He paused, frowned. “Is there something else, something I don’t know about, that’s holding you back?”
“God, no. I love you.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s my track record, isn’t it?”
“No! I’ve never trusted anyone the way I trust you.”
“Then why don’t you believe that I mean what I say? The issue of kids is okay. Before I met you, I’d given up the idea of having kids, period.”
“You come from a big family. You want one of your own, I know you do.”
“Small family, big family, we can have what we want, and don’t”—he held up a warning hand—“don’t say adopting isn’t the same, because I disagree.” He took a step back. “Adopting is a nonissue. I can say that a dozen times, but you don’t seem to want to be convinced. So there has to be something else on your mind. Maybe when you figure out what it is, you’ll let me know.”
His face was a mess of anger and hurt that she didn’t know how to address, and then it was too late. For the very first time in their relationship, he backed off.
It was a while before Bree found the something else that was giving her pause, and then it came only after she stepped away from the relationship and looked at the whole. Childbearing was an issue, but more for her than for him. She was the one who still had to come to terms with her body’s failings. In the excitement of being with Tom, falling in love, and getting his ring, she hadn’t done that. She had been happy to be swept up in a world as fantastic as anything she had ever seen in her private little dreams.
The deeper issue had to do with the whole of that fantastic world. Until last October, she had been a realist. Then the accident happened, and her life had changed. But threads of the realist remained. They were reminding her of where Tom had come from, what he had been, and the sheer improbability of his landing in Panama, let alone as her lover. They were tweaking the far reaches of her mind into wondering now whether all that was real. They were trying to reconcile the life she had thought was perfectly fine before with this new one, which seemed too good to be true.
Bree could think of only one person in town who could help her decide if it was.
Chapter
12
No one in Panama knew exactly when Verity Greene had come to town. It might have been twenty years before. It might have been twenty-two, or eighteen. People simply started seeing her walking across the green or browsing in the library or the general store. If she attended town events, it was at a distance. Likewise, she came to the diner at odd times and only when the counter stool at the far end was free. She minded her own business and spoke only when spoken to, and then with a southern accent that charmed Bree but made others all the more wary.
What she said didn’t help if endearing herself to the town was her goal. She was forever contradicting popular sentiment. Though she did it with a smile—and often quite sensibly, Bree thought—she was considered odd. No one understood how her mind worked. No one had cause to find out.
Her house was as much a mystery as she was. It was a small cottage that stood about as far out of town as it could stand and still be in Panama. To get to it meant driving deep into the woods on a rutted path. No one seemed to have known the path existed, much less the cottage, before Verity had taken root there.
From the first, she was considered bohemian. She wore long skirts, vivid crocheted vests, and voluminous blouses. Her hair was long, dark, and wavy, and was held back by a bandanna that covered her forehead. She was always impeccably clean, though as far as anyone in town knew, she had neither hot water nor indoor plumbing. As far as anyone in town knew, she had no electricity, either. She grew her own herbs and vegetables, stripped the best blueberry patches before anyone else could find them, and was thought to eat small animals as they died in the woods. She had no apparent source of income. As for her name, few believed it was real.
Theories had abounded over the years. One theory held that she was an outcast from a commune that had thrived in the seventies in southern Vermont. Another held that she was the daft daughter of a southern billionaire. A third held that she was a witch.
Bree had never believed the last. She had talked with Verity, and while the woman had unusual views and no qualms about sharing them when asked, she seemed harmless. More, she seemed lonely, though when Bree suggested that to others, few agreed. The general consensus was that Verity chose to live as she did. Whether out of fear or respect, the town let her be.
Eliot was one of the few to have ever been to the cottage in the woods. He had described how to get there to Emma, who had told Dotty, who told Jane, who told Bree, who set off in Tom’s truck first thing in the morning under the guise of shopping for clothes. She rarely shopped for clothes, hated shopping for clothes, and Tom knew it, but he didn’t question her. He hadn’t said much at all since their talk about setting a wedding date. He had held her, showered with her, made oh-so-sweet love to her. He had fixed her breakfast and eyed her longingly through the eating, but he hadn’t said much. Nor had she. She just didn’t know what to say.
After stopping at the diner to smuggle food from the back room reserves, she drove to the town line. Once there, she made a U-turn and drove very slowly back until she spotted the twin-trunked birch that was visible only from that direction. Beside it were the faint ruts that marked Verity’s road.
The woods were surprisingly dark given the sun above and the snow below. Bree turned on her headlights and jolted along for what seemed an age. The jolting echoed the thud of her heart, which said she had no idea what she was in for. But she didn’t stop and turn around. Verity was her last, best, whimsical hope.
When the road finally ended, it was Verity’s old orange VW Bug that marked her arrival. The cottage itself was nearly hidden under a cluster of pines.
Uneasy, Bree knocked on the door. She waited several minutes and knocked again. She shifted the bags in her arms and was about to knock a third time, when she saw Verity’s startled face at the window. Seconds later, the door opened.
; The startled look remained, making Bree wonder when Verity’s last visitor had come. Though she was dressed, she wasn’t wearing her normal bandanna. Bree hoped she hadn’t come at an awkward time.
She held out the bags. “For you.”
Verity looked puzzled.
“It’s not much, just soup and stew and some other wintry things. I’d have brought your usual,” she added, with a tentative smile, “only it wouldn’t travel well.” Verity’s usual was one hot dog, an order of fries, and a Coke. Bree had always thought it a sedate order for someone who was supposedly bizarre, though a perfectly sensible one for someone who normally lived on homegrown goods.
Verity’s expression softened. Quietly, she accepted the bags and carried them into the cottage. Bree took a breath for courage and followed, though only enough to close the door. From there, she looked cautiously around. The whole of the place was a single large room, with a kitchen at its far end and a sleeping loft above. The walls were made of exposed logs, the heat was from a wood-burning stove. Baskets of brightly colored yarns were strewed around, a cozy touch. The fragrance that filled the room came from a window garden, where herbs were warmed by a string of sunbeams piercing the pines.
Bree wasn’t sure what she had expected—incense smoke, the bodies of little creatures hung to dry, a world of dark corners and eerie sounds—but the cottage held none of that. It was simply furnished, commendably neat, startlingly conventional.
Verity returned to her. In the absence of the bandanna, wisps of gray hair glittered through darker strands. A long shawl covered her blouse and the top of her skirt. She wore thick socks but no shoes.
Bree tucked her hands in her pockets. “I like your place. I didn’t know you had lights.” She also saw a refrigerator and a television. “You must have your own generator.”
“And a satellite dish,” Verity said, in her light southern way.
“Ah. Shows how much we know.” Bree smiled.
Verity looked around the cottage but said nothing.
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