Three Wishes

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Apparently not as much as I expected.”

  “Will it affect the pregnancy in any way?”

  “It shouldn’t. But I think we can plan on taking the baby by cesarean section.”

  “Why?”

  “Her uterus has been cut and repaired. It hasn’t had much time to recover. I wouldn’t want to risk a rupture during hard labor. A cesarean is no problem, though. We won’t even use general anesthesia. A spinal block will do it. Many a woman who delivers vaginally has that.” He frowned, tapped a fist in the air, murmured, “I was so sure.” With a final head shake, he brought himself back. “I don’t foresee any complications with the pregnancy itself. You’re perfectly healthy, Bree. You’ve had an amazing recovery from the accident.”

  She shot Tom a look that said he was partly responsible. His chest swelled.

  Sealy reached for a prescription pad and a pen. “You’ll take vitamins daily. Eat a balanced diet. I’ll see you monthly until the seventh month and more often after that.” He glanced at her record and pulled up a calendar. “As I figure it, you’re due . . .” The tip of his pen counted out the weeks. “Too much,” he said, with a chuckle, and raised his eyes. “As I figure it, you’re due on or about Christmas. I’d say there’s magic in that.”

  I’d say there’s magic in that.

  Tom heard those words over and over during the ride back from Ashmont, and with growing concern. If Bree shared that concern, she didn’t let on. She was exuberant the whole way. The only thing to upset her was when he refused to let her sit close and belted her in on the passenger side, but she held his hand in both of hers, as though she would float away if she didn’t, and she didn’t stop beaming.

  It was almost enough to make him forget. When she turned her smile on him, he felt the force of it deep inside. He lived to make her happy.

  But he kept hearing those words. I’d say there’s magic in that. And he had to know.

  “Bree?”

  “What if it’s a boy?” she asked in a dreamy voice.

  Helplessly, he smiled. “What if it is?”

  “He’ll look like you.”

  “He could look like you.”

  “No-o,” she wailed, shaking his hand. “I want a little Tom.”

  A little Tom. The thought of it made him so proud that he thought he would burst. But there was still the other. “Bree?”

  “We’d name him Tom, wouldn’t we? Tom, junior?”

  “Maybe he should have a name all his own. My mother’s family name was Wyatt.”

  “Wyatt,” Bree repeated. “That’s a great name. If it’s a girl, she can be Chloe.”

  “Chloe. Where did that come from?”

  “Nowhere. I just like it. Chloe Gates. It flows. I used to dream of changing my name to Chloe, but I couldn’t let go of Bree. It’s one of the few things I have of my mother.”

  Tom knew that she thought about her mother a lot, more so since the incident at the diner. He had actually talked with the private investigator who had helped him on many a case in the past, but they had precious little to work with to decide whether the second wish had come true or not. “Her name wasn’t Bree.”

  “No, but she chose it for me. My grandparents always hated it. Keeping it was one of the few things my father ever did against their wishes. That and going to Boston in the first place. I’ve always thought Bree was short for something. Brianna, or Brittany. Or Bridget. Can you imagine me as a Bridget?”

  He couldn’t. Shifting gears, he pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road.

  She twisted to look out the rear window. “What’s wrong?”

  He parked and faced her. “I need to know something, Bree. Did you wish for the baby?”

  She started to blink, caught herself. “Of course I did. I wished ten times over. It’s what I want more than anything else in the world.”

  “But did you wish? You know, do the ritual? Did you use your last wish for this?”

  “You heard Dr. Sealy. He said my conceiving wasn’t an impossibility.”

  “Bree.”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The look on her face said it all.

  “Oh, baby,” he breathed, feeling a deep, tingling fear. He hooked his arm around her neck, brought her face to his shoulder, and closed his eyes. “Why, Bree? Why?”

  She clasped a fistful of his flannel shirt. Her voice came from his collar, words spilling fast in argument, as though she was trying to convince herself, too. “Because you’ll be the very best father, and because I want your baby, and because if I was given three wishes, I was meant to use them. I don’t know where I got the notion that the world would end once I used the last wish. We don’t know that at all, and anyway, the more I think about it, the more I say that we’re crazy to believe in three wishes. Life doesn’t happen like that. When you pull a quarter out of Joey Little’s ear, it’s sleight of hand. That’s all magic is, an illusion, but there’s a rational explanation for it. So yes, I made a wish, but that’s not why I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant because I love you, and because we wanted it so much, and because we’ll be good parents, and because you turn me on so much that my body is entirely open when we make love. Scar tissue didn’t have a chance against that.”

  Tom couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Christ, what’s medical school in the face of logic like that?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” His laughter ended. Fear was suddenly a living, breathing thing inside him. “What if you’re wrong? What if the wishes are real? What if the thing about the third wish is true? What if that really does mean . . .” He couldn’t finish.

  In a quiet voice, she said, “I’m not going to die.”

  Hearing the word loosed his fear. Wrapping both arms around her, he buried his face in her hair. “If something happened, I’d never forgive myself. I don’t want to live without you. I can’t. You’re everything good that’s come into my life, everything good that I’ve become.” She was shaking her head no against him, but he believed what he said. “You are. You’re my heart and soul. You’re my conscience. When I’m with you, I feel more at peace than at any other time in my life. I don’t feel driven. I don’t feel competitive. I’m a decent person when I’m with you. A caring person. A happy person. I fell in love with you, not with the idea of having a baby. I don’t need a baby. If we could go on living just the way we have for the last few months, I’d be happy. The baby’s no good without you.”

  She pushed at him so suddenly that he couldn’t hold her. The next thing he knew, her eyes were flashing. “Don’t say that. Don’t think it. That’s pretty much what my father thought. I don’t ever want a child of mine raised that way.” She softened, grew pleading, touched his face. “Don’t you see? This is what our love is about. It’s what lives after both of us are gone. We all die, Tom. Sooner or later we do.”

  He saw her tears and was lost It was like that every time. When she cried, her emotion became his. “Oh, Bree,” he whispered.

  “We do.”

  “But I want it to be later.”

  “It will be.”

  “I wish you’d talked with me first.” He might have talked her out of it. He might have suggested they try to get pregnant without wishing for it. Of course, they had made love many dozens of times since November. He hadn’t once worn a condom. Her body had been entirely open then, too. And she hadn’t conceived.

  That realization made him all the more fearful.

  “You’d have said no,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  “So we’d have argued. I thought this all out, Tom. Really I did. I went over every argument, and the ones about wanting to have our baby were the best, but then there were the ones about not trying. About not trying and always wondering. About letting ten years go by and still wondering, and regretting, and then finding it was too late to try.” She tipped up her chin in defiance. “Besides, it’s my body.”

  Tom cursed liberated women then, but he felt the sa
me little catch inside that he always felt when the bottom line was clear. He wanted to be angry with her, but he loved her too much for that. So he sighed. “Well, it’s done. You are pregnant.”

  Her eyes lit. “I am so happy. Be happy, too.”

  “How not to be?” he asked. “As long as I don’t think.”

  If he was nothing else, though, Tom was a thinking creature. More, he was a deliberating creature. It was the single trait most responsible for his success as a lawyer. He could look at a case from every angle, could analyze every argument and devise a strategy that, nine times out of ten, worked.

  So he began deliberating. On trial was the validity of Bree’s three wishes. The plaintiff was his own peace of mind. His goal was to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that one of those three wishes had not been granted.

  As he interpreted the testimony of the fire inspector, the cause of the fire could never be proved one way or another.

  Likewise, given the doctor’s suspension of disbelief, the pregnancy.

  The one piece of evidence that hadn’t been established as clearly, and therefore held the most promise, was the positive identification of Bree’s mother.

  Chapter

  14

  Tom had the best of intentions. He called his investigator friend and put him on the case. A few phone calls later, the investigator reported that the little bit of information on Bree’s mother that was filed in records at the hospital in Chicago where Bree was born led nowhere, which meant that either the woman had given false information or the address she gave the hospital had been so tentative that no trail remained. Tom put him back to work checking out New York women who drove small red Mercedeses, women who were possibly involved in litigation and who traveled to Montreal on business.

  Then life distracted him.

  First, there was the weather. Mid-May brought clear skies and warm sun, fragrant apple blossoms, budding trees, and greening grass. Even beyond framing a two-car garage on the far side of the carport, there were chores to do, like replacing storm windows with screens, cutting back trees that were growing too near the house, cleaning the yard, and doing the season’s first mowing. The year before, when he was alone and raw, these chores had been therapeutic. This year, they were a pleasure.

  Second, there was Bree. How could he dwell on dark fears when she was so happy? She smiled through morning sickness, smiled through afternoon fatigue. She cut back her work hours to four a day and was right there puttering around the house with him, smiling all the while. If she ever thought about a less than happy ending to their story, she didn’t let on. She was exhilarated and beautiful. His love for her grew with each day that passed.

  Third, there was the phone. It rang more and more often with calls from people wanting legal advice. Those calls came from a growing circle of towns, from families and small-time entrepreneurs with problems that were novel enough to stump their local lawyers. In some instances, Tom shared thoughts off the top of his head. Others required research. He found the thinking a challenge, an easy return to law after a time away, but he never billed a client. That would have made the challenge a job rather than an intellectual exercise. If a case required follow-up, he referred it to Martin Sprague.

  Martin proved to be a pleasant surprise. He was a plodding workhorse of a lawyer, making up in follow-through what he lacked in creativity. Tom was pleased to direct work his way, not only because of that, or because the man needed the work, but because Tom was a Panamanian now, and Panamanians supported each other.

  Fourth, there was his family. He wanted to tell them about Bree and the baby, but he didn’t think he could have borne it if his father hung up again, not when what he had to say was so close to his heart. So he bought a point-and-shoot camera and began writing letters. The first few were short and direct. They included pictures of Bree and him, and while he hoped for a reply, he didn’t expect one. Each week, he sent a new letter. By the beginning of June, he was sending pictures of the house with its freshly painted porch and of Bree at the brook. He also dropped notes to his brothers, lighthearted, undemanding little things that said he was thinking of them.

  He talked with his sister every few weeks. She had given birth to a boy and was doing well, and, yes, Harris Gates had come around. She thanked Tom for the large package of baby clothes he and Bree had sent. But she didn’t invite him to the christening.

  Tom didn’t blame her. His presence would have detracted from the occasion. But he wasn’t holding that against Alice. If anything, he grew more determined to check regularly on the baby and her.

  By late June, the investigator had reached a dead end. He had amassed a file of information on New York business-women of the right age who owned sporty red Mercedeses, but Bree couldn’t make a positive identification from the photos he offered.

  “Not surprising,” he said. “The car may be owned by the woman’s husband or her boss. It may be leased. I’ve checked hotels and motels in Montreal, but I can’t find the record of a car like that registered at any of the cheap ones on the day in question, and the expensive ones keep their records under lock and key. Times have changed, Tom. Thanks to guys like you suing the pants off them, places like that are locked up tight. And as for the litigation angle, nada. It could be she was talking about a friend that day.”

  Tom wasn’t as disappointed as he thought he would be. He was coming around to Bree’s thinking that the pregnancy had resulted from natural causes, which meant that the woman at the diner had been no one in particular and that the fire on South Forest had been pure coincidence. The natural-cause approach was the one that made sense, the one any levelheaded man would take.

  Being a levelheaded man, though, Tom was cautious. He got second and third opinions from doctors in New York, who studied Bree’s records and agreed with Sealy and Meade that while the chances of Bree’s conceiving were slim, they had existed. The New York doctors also agreed, after seeing results of the tests Paul had run on Bree in May, that she was healthier than many an expectant mother. They assured Tom that her heart was steady and strong, and saw no reason whatsoever why Tom should drag Bree to New York for the birth.

  So he pushed away the three-wish theory and espoused that of natural causes. Natural causes were easier to swallow than wishes. Natural causes were what he wanted to believe, because his life with Bree was rich. They were rarely apart, and then only for brief stretches. Many a day, he stayed at the diner while she worked, and he was seldom the only one in his booth. He had friends now, friends of hers, friends of his own. People looking for him knew to find him there. If the subject was law, he jotted notes on a paper napkin. If the subject was social, he sat back and relaxed. In both cases, he was more content than he had ever been, not to mention within easy reach of Bree.

  She was his soul mate. He didn’t know another word to describe it. She thought the way he did, felt the way he did. They were both small-town people at heart. She had known it all along. He had simply been longer in the learning.

  Her quickness was only one of the things he loved about her. He had never been in a relationship that was so well balanced. When he felt like reading, she wanted to read. When she was hungry, he wanted to eat. When he wanted to walk in the woods, she was one step ahead. When she wanted to lie in the sun, he had chairs drawn up before she had changed her clothes. They went barefoot in the grass and deep-kissed under the lilacs. They talked and laughed and read each other’s minds, and they rarely argued. She was his best friend. He would never have imagined a wife would be that, and it kept getting better.

  July brought warmer sun and richer greens. Fireworks lit Panama’s sky on Independence Day, marking the first of an endless string of summer celebrations. There were concerts on the green, warm evenings spent on nubby blankets, listening to the regional high school’s marching band or singing along with Panama’s barbershop quartet. There were cookouts in the lot behind the town hall, softball games in the schoolyard, a make-your-own-sundae orgy to introduce Panama
Rich’s twenty-fourth flavor, Oooey Gooey, which was a concoction of vanilla and mocha ice creams, caramel, fudge, marshmallow, and nuts. Even on evenings when nothing formal was planned, people gathered on the town green.

  Tom bought a more sophisticated camera. It became a regular at his side, in his hand, at his eye. He photographed Bree in profile in the morning sun, with one hand on the new swell of the baby and a dreamy look in her eye. She had started wearing maternity clothes—early, she said, but her other clothes were too tight in the bust and belly, and besides, she admitted proudly, she felt pregnant and wanted to look it. He photographed her in every imaginable pose at home, photographed her in a huddle with Flash and LeeAnn at the diner and laughing with Jane and Julia on a bench on the green. He photographed the barber through the front window of his shop, the bread truck loading up for a day’s deliveries, the bottlers at Sleepy Creek Ale taking a cool beer break in the parking lot of the brewery at day’s end.

  In its summer mode, the diner offered fresh lemonade and lime rickeys, soft-serve frozen yogurt, and iced cappuccinos. The Daily Flash listed two cold salads for every hot special and promoted Oooey Gooey. Picnic tables covered the grass in front of the diner. Sandwiches to go were the rage.

  The sounds of Panama were of lawn mowers, sprinklers, and fun, the scents were of warm grass, hazy sunshine, and grilled chicken. For Tom, though, the essence of the season was captured by the Panama Rich ice cream truck with its jingle-jangle bell, its pied piper following, and the old-fashioned ice cream sandwiches it sold, meant to be eaten from the outer edges in.

  The dog days of August had set in when Martin Sprague called and invited Tom to his office for a meeting. Ostensibly, the topic of discussion was a case Tom had referred. But he had never been asked to the office before.

  On the second floor of the Federal that housed the bank, it consisted of two rooms overlooking the town green. One room was for a secretary, who wasn’t there when Tom arrived. The other room was for Martin. It had the smell of old papers and the look of a man who was busier than he had expected to be. Folders lay in odd spots beside books that bulged where random objects had been inserted to mark a place. A standing fan, slowed by the heat, swiveled sluggishly from side to side. Only the computer that sat on a small side cabinet looked fresh, as much a guest there as Tom.