As fate had it, on this day Julia was tying a huge pink bow around the neck of a vase filled with pink and white tulips, a gift for the barber’s son’s wife, who had just given birth to a daughter. Bree watched for a minute, then asked, “When you do up arrangements like these, do you think back to when your own children were born?”
“Sometimes,” Julia said. She gave the ribbon a twist. “It was a special time.”
“Was it hard?”
“Childbirth?” She smiled. “No. The cause was good.”
“Labor can go on forever.”
Julia gave a negligent nose-scrunch. “The worst comes only at the end, and then there are drugs to help. Drugs hurt the baby, you say? Well, our kids didn’t seem damaged any. In my day, mothers weren’t as quick to martyr themselves. After the children were born, yes. Child rearing was our major occupation. We often put it before our own best interests. At the time of birth? No. Ignorance was bliss.”
“Kind of like a reward for surviving pregnancy?”
“Oh, I liked being pregnant. I liked it very much.” She held back the vase, looked at it, then turned it to Bree.
But Bree was trying to convince herself that she didn’t want to be pregnant. “I’ve heard awful stories.”
“You’re talking to the wrong people,” Julia said. She paused, raised hopeful brows, lowered her voice. “Are you pregnant?”
“Good Lord, no. I just got married. It’s too soon to be having a baby. So much has happened to me so quickly that I need time to adjust. I like working, and I like being alone with Tom and anyway, he’s still trying to decide what to do about his work, so it wouldn’t be fair to impose kids on him yet.”
“I don’t think children would be an imposition with that one,” Julia said.
Bree knew she was right, which didn’t help things much. She trusted Julia’s judgment. But she needed an ally. So she raised the subject with Jane, leaning in close across the counter after the lunchtime crowd had thinned. “Do you worry about getting older? Does that thing about the biological clock ever get you to wondering?”
Jane sighed. “All the time. But what can I do? I don’t draw men like you do.”
“The right man just hasn’t seen you. Someday he will.” Bree believed it. Jane was too good a person to go through life alone.
“Someday,” Jane said, and sighed. “I may be too old for kids by then.”
“You could adopt. Single mothers do. Michelle Pfeiffer did. So did Rosie O’Donnell. The way some men are, a woman’s better doing it alone anyway.”
“Doing what alone?” Dotty asked, taking the stool beside Jane.
Jane gave Bree a look that said You should have warned me she was there, but Bree hadn’t noticed it herself.
“Having kids,” LeeAnn put in, having caught the conversation in passing. “Look at me. I’ve done it alone, haven’t I?” She left again before anyone could answer.
“Look at her,” Dotty muttered under her breath. “Don’t look at her. She’s no example of motherhood, doing that thing to her hair. Besides, it’s just fine for a pretty little Hollywood face to adopt a child. Those women don’t have to worry about paying the bills.”
“Neither do I,” Jane said quietly. She was looking at Bree. “I have a home. The oil is paid for. So’s the electricity and the phone.”
Dotty drew back and stared at her. It was only when Bree looked at Dotty that Jane did, too. “Don’t worry, Mother. I’m not having a child.”
“Having? I hope not. Good God, Bree. Are you putting bugs in her ear now that you’re married? Well, she isn’t, for one thing, and for another, you shouldn’t be having a child yourself. You just got married. You don’t know if the marriage will last.”
“It will last,” Jane said.
“The voice of experience. She’s an expert on marriage and on babies.”
“Adoption was the subject,” Jane corrected.
“Don’t you dare do that, either. I’m not up for raising another child.”
“If it was my child, I’d be doing the raising.”
“Like you do the cooking?” Dotty asked.
Bree tried to defuse the situation. “Verity was saying—”
“Verity?” Dotty turned to her. “That woman has nothing worthwhile to say. You talk with her too much, Bree. You encourage her.”
“To do what?”
“To come into town. Fine. We can’t keep her out of town meeting. But she doesn’t have to be lurking around at the crafts fair. People won’t buy what she crochets. She makes us all nervous. And showing up at your wedding?” Dotty reared back. “I wouldn’t have liked that one bit, if it had been me.”
“Verity is harmless,” Jane said before Bree could stop her.
Dotty picked right up where she had left off. “That shows how much you know. You’ve been here when she’s been talking nonsense. Don’t you know it’s nonsense?”
“She says things to shock us.”
“Oh, she does? Who told you that?”
“I did,” Bree said.
Dotty sighed. “Bree. Why do you tell Jane things like that? She believes them.”
Looking straight ahead, Jane said, “Verity makes sense when you talk with her alone.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing? Is that where the talk about adopting a child came from?” She pushed out a breath. “God save us from idiots.” She left the stool with an impatient “Are you coming?”
As she walked off, Bree touched Jane’s arm.
In a shaky whisper, Jane said, “One day she’ll push me so far that courage won’t matter. I hate her.” She put a fingernail to her mouth.
Bree pulled it down. “You don’t. She’s your mother.”
Jane wrapped a remorseful arm around Bree’s neck. “I’m sorry. I know you never had a mother. I am selfish, like she says.”
“If you were selfish, you’d have moved out long ago.” Bree set her back. “Apply to art school.”
“Art school?” Jane looked suddenly panicked. “It’s a dream, that’s all.”
“Make it come true. Apply. You’ll get in.”
“You’ve never said this before.”
“I should have. It’s so possible.”
“I’m thirty-five. I’d be the oldest in the class.”
“I bet you wouldn’t be. But even if you are, so what? Apply, Jane. You will get in.”
“And then what? How will I pay for it? How will I live?”
“Jane!” Dotty called from the door of the diner.
Bree held Jane’s arm when she would have fled. “Scholarship. Dorm. Job. You can get all of them. Then you’ll be free.”
Jane looked torn.
“Think about it.”
Jane nodded quickly and ran after Dotty, only to stop halfway there and run back. Anger tightened her face. “Don’t listen to what she said about having children. Have them now, Bree. You’ll make the best mother in the whole wide world.”
So Flash didn’t want children because he was part child himself. That didn’t apply to Bree, who had never really been a child at all.
Verity hadn’t had children because the circumstances were wrong. That didn’t apply to Bree, either. She was married at the right time to the right man in the right place, with the right amount of love and desire and money.
Julia, bless her soul, had not only loved being pregnant but loved giving birth, which shot a great big hole through the complaints Bree had heard. And Julia was right about Tom. Being a father wouldn’t be an imposition on him. He wanted family more than anything. He would thrive.
So would she, Bree knew. Jane was right. She would make a great mother. It didn’t matter that she had never had one of her own to learn from. She loved children. She loved Tom. She would love his child. It made sense.
What didn’t make sense was how to do it, because if the doctor was right and she couldn’t conceive, the only way to achieve it was through a wish. But she still didn’t know if the wishes were real. The fire was list
ed as accidental. The woman in the diner was long gone. Two wishes spent? Or none?
So, okay. She could wish, and nothing might happen. She would know for sure that the wishes weren’t real, they could adopt a baby, and that would be that.
But if the wishes were real and this was her third, what then? She could live happily ever after with Tom and his child, and thank God every day that she’d had the courage to take the risk. Or she could die.
A bizarre thought, that one. And totally unfounded. She had no proof that she would die. She didn’t even know where she’d gotten the idea.
But given the possibility of it, no matter how remote, was wishing for a child an irresponsible thing to do? A child without a mother—she knew how that was. Tom would have the burden of raising it alone.
But Panama was filled with people who loved them. Her wedding had shown her that. And Tom wasn’t Haywood. He was strong and outgoing and able. If he was left to raise their child alone, he would have plenty of help.
She didn’t want to die. She wanted to be with Tom. She wanted to be with their child. But if she didn’t risk a wish, there might be no child at all.
What do I do? she asked the being of light, but it didn’t answer. Are the wishes real? Do I dare?
In the end it came down to greed. Having Tom’s baby was the one thing that could make her life more complete than it was. She tried to talk herself out of it: told herself that what she had with Tom was so much more than most women ever had that she should be satisfied, told herself that they could adopt a baby, told herself that making a third wish wasn’t worth the risk.
Then she saw Tom at town meeting, standing to discuss the pros and cons of keeping town positions under the civil service system, and all the while he was talking, his hands were behind his back, doing funny little things to entertain two restless children in the row behind, and she knew. She knew she could debate forever, but the truth was that her heart had already made up her mind. She’d had enough of being sensible and cautious. Expecting the worst was no way to live. These days, she was banking on optimism and hope. These days, she was squeezing the best out of life.
More than anything else, she wanted to give Tom a child. She didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine that child. She could see it clear as day, just as she could feel her own joy. That joy justified the risk.
So she did it. That night, after town meeting adjourned, when she was in the bathroom before joining Tom in bed, she laced her fingers together by her chin, closed her eyes tight, and whispered, “I . . . wish . . . to have Tom’s child.” She pictured the being of light and repeated the words. “I . . . wish . . . to have Tom’s child.”
For long minutes she stood there, with her heart pounding at the gravity of what she’d done. But the wish was sent. She couldn’t take it back. Trembling, she imagined it rising on a starbeam and finding the being of light. As she homed in on that being, its luminescence was as strong as ever before, and soothing. Gradually, the pounding of her heart eased, and her trembling gave way to an overall calm. She drew in a slow, deep, satisfied breath and let it out. Smiling, she combed through her hair, smoothed the silk of her negligee, and went to join Tom.
It happened that night. She was convinced by the sense of fulfillment she experienced as she lay against him afterward. They were both bare and damp. From a microscopic near-nothing deep inside, her body glowed.
She didn’t tell him, neither then nor the following week, when a home test confirmed what the tiny dot of heat that glowed more strongly inside her each day told her was true. Nor did she worry. She was committed. There was no turning back.
Between repairing winter’s damage to the grounds, preparing the malleable ground for the garage he planned to build, and playing newlywed with Bree, a busy month passed before Tom asked about her period. She had figured he would ask in time. He was always attuned to those days when she was feeling bloated and crampy. “How did I miss it?”
“You didn’t.” She kept her voice low, her excitement in check, but barely. “It’s late.”
He was instantly on the alert. “How late?”
“Two weeks.” Bits of excitement escaped. “What do you think?”
“I think you should do a test.”
“I did. It says I am. But I’m not supposed to be.”
Tom made no effort to control his excitement, which was precisely what Bree wanted to hear. “Doctors can be wrong,” he said. “It won’t be the first time. Did you call him?”
She nodded.
“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 aft
er 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.
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