Three Wishes

by Barbara Delinsky

  “It’s not much,” Martin said, with an awkward look around. “But it serves my needs.”

  He gestured Tom into one of two straight-back chairs and went to sit behind the desk. After pulling out a handkerchief and mopping his forehead, he jumped back up and opened the cabinet under the computer. It proved to be a small refrigerator. “Cold drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Even with the fan, the office was warm. Four windows were open, two on either side of the wall behind the desk, but there was no breeze coming in off the green. Tom wore the T-shirt and denim cut-offs that were the summer uniform in Panama. Martin was the only man in town who wore a suit at any time of year. This day, mercifully, his shirt sleeves were short.

  “You can have root beer or root beer,” he said. Straightening, he handed one of two bottles to Tom. Then he returned to the desk and opened the nearest folder.

  “The Ulrich business. I got your notes. You’re right. It’s a standard age-discrimination case, but the thing is that what you’re suggesting involves going to court, and I don’t do that. So I’ve been sitting here thinking that I could call Don Herrick over in Montgomery and he could take it to court, but then I said that that didn’t make sense, not with you living right here in town and looking like you’re going to stay. Are you?”

  Tom could see that Martin was uneasy, but it seemed a different uneasiness from the one that, months earlier, had had the man warning him off. There was more curiosity than resistance this time.

  “I’m staying.”

  Martin pushed the Ulrich folder out of the way and ferreted another from the pile. He opened it and fished through the papers there. Gruffly, without looking at Tom, he said, “I did some calling. You practiced for more than five years in New York, so you don’t have to take any test to get admitted to the bar here. You have to file an application and do a clerkship. That’s three months working under a local lawyer, someone like me. You’re pretty much already doing that.” He raised his root beer but set it back down without drinking. Both hands grasped the corners of the papers before him. “So,” he said, looking anywhere but at Tom, “what do you think?”

  Tom was stunned.

  “And don’t say you don’t know local law,” Martin grumbled, “because you do by now. You’ve done as much work for me in a handful of months as a kid out of law school does in a year. Local law? Hell, it’s national law, more and more. And don’t say most of this stuff isn’t your field, because you did well enough with it in spite of that. You were the one who hooked the paper company up with investors and helped them avoid a takeover. So that’s not your field. There’s other stuff that is. Well?”

  Tom held the cold drink can to the fast-beating pulse at his wrist. “I wasn’t planning on practicing law when I came here.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “It wasn’t just words. I meant it. I’m not looking to take away from your practice.”

  Martin waved a resigned hand. “They’re going to you for different things. Things I can’t do. Things I don’t want to do. They’ll keep coming to me for their wills and estates, and their mortgage problems, and their lease agreements, but if I don’t get help on the rest”—his bewildered gaze encompassed the papers on the desktop—“they’ll go to someone else. It occurs to me”—he shot Tom a skittish glance—“you could do your thing and I could do my thing and we’d have a corner on the market. Know what I mean?” He sniffed.

  “I think so.”

  “Hell, if we don’t do the work, someone else will, and I’d rather the money be in our pockets. Course, the money’s not like New York money. Nor’s the practice. You already know the kinds of cases we get up here. Pretty tame, by comparison. Could be you’d be bored.”

  Tom doubted it. “I have a life besides law here. I don’t want to work the way I did in New York.” He felt no competitiveness, no driving hunger. Practicing law in Panama would be more fun than work.

  “All these cases, and you never asked for a referral fee,” Martin said.

  “I’m not in it for the money.”

  “It isn’t right. I say we make an agreement. You fill out an application to join the Vermont Bar and do your clerkship with me. You keep whatever money you bring in, after expenses.” He sat back with a there-it-is, take-it-or-leave-it look on his face.

  Tom found himself smiling. As agreements went, it was refreshingly simple.

  Martin mopped his forehead. “I can put you in the next room and put Celia in a room down the hall.”

  “I have an office at home. I can work there.” He glanced at the computer. “Is that functional?”

  “It is. I’m not. And I won’t promise to be. I don’t trust those things. Look, this isn’t the fiftieth floor of some skyscraper. It’s the second floor of a building that’s got no air-conditioning in a town that’s got nothing but volunteers in its fire department. The clients don’t come in wearing fancy clothes, and if you want to take them to lunch, it’s Flash’s or nothing. We’re not fancy here, but we have legal needs, too.”

  “It’s a deal,” Tom said, feeling pleased.

  Martin looked surprised. “You don’t want to think about it?”

  “Nah. It’s good.”

  Martin scowled. “Don’t think you can do your clerkship and then open up a separate office down the street from me, because I’m putting a non-competition clause into our agreement. And don’t think you can move in here and take everything over yourself in two years when I croak, because I’m only sixty-six. I’m not croaking so fast.”

  “I hope not. The last thing I want to do is wills and estates and mortgages and leases. I’ll handle the other stuff.”

  “You’re satisfied with that?”

  “Yes.”

  Martin rose from his seat only enough to stick out his hand. Tom shook it, and it was done.

  Incredibly, Martin smiled. It was an odd smile, tight but pleased. Closing the Ulrich folder, he passed it over and sat back. “There’s something else I need you to do.” He took a swig of his root beer, set the bottle down, ran a hand back over thin hair. “It’s a touchy situation. There’s a woman in Des Moines wants to hire me. Her mother’s living here. Julia Dean?”

  At mention of Des Moines, Tom had immediately pictured Julia. “Yes?”

  “Eliot knows about this. The son called him not long ago. He said he told you.”

  Tom nodded. “I told him that the son had to work through authorities in Des Moines if he wanted to claim mishandling of a trust fund.”

  “He’s decided not to do that until he has evidence against his mother.” He paused, made a face. “Evidence against his mother?” He grunted his disapproval. “The daughter’s angle is to hire someone local to observe Julia and report on her instability.”

  “Instability?” Tom would have laughed if Martin weren’t so serious. “Bree and Julia have become close. From what I’ve seen, Julia’s entirely stable.”

  “I always thought so myself, but I figured if I didn’t look into it, the daughter would hire someone else, and I’d rather give Julia an edge with me. Or with you.”

  “We’re not psychiatrists.”

  “The daughter didn’t ask for one. She said anyone with two eyes would do. She told me to hire whoever. I’m hiring you. So to speak.”

  Tom had defended many guilty people in his day. It had been his job to force the prosecution to prove his client guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Along the way, he had made mincemeat of witnesses who testified against him, had discredited the creditable, besmirched the innocent. In some instances, those witnesses suffered afterward. He knew of several who had lost jobs as the result of doubts he had cast on their testimony, others whose marriages were hurt—and those were only the ones he knew. During the first months of his self-imposed exile, he had given thought to those he didn’t know and felt more than a little guilt.

  Determined not to repeat his sins, he didn’t skulk around watching Julia Dean. That wouldn’t do in as small a town
as Panama, where people saw things and talked. The mail Julia received created gossip enough. He didn’t want to give fodder for more.

  Julia was well liked. Flash wasn’t the only one to rave about her work, though he did so on a regular basis—and she was regular herself, arriving like clockwork every Tuesday and Friday to arrange fresh flowers in the diner’s vases. Tom had never heard a derogatory word spoken about her, had never seen anything to suggest mental upset, much less instability. He didn’t want her hurt by even the hint of suspicion.

  So he began by calling her daughter in the hope that a talking-to would appease the woman, but Nancy Anderson was upset. She proceeded to repeat much of what the son had told Eliot the first time around. “She hasn’t been herself since my father died. When I ask her what’s wrong, she denies anything is, but I know my mother, Mr. Gates. She spent a lifetime hating to travel. She always liked staying home. Then my father died, and she packed up and moved halfway across the country to a town where she knows no one.”

  “She knows people here now. She knows everyone in town. Maybe she just needed to make a change.”

  “She always hated change.”

  “Your father’s death forced a change,” Tom pointed out He wasn’t playing therapist, was simply expressing pure common sense. “It’s possible that she couldn’t bear to stay there doing the same things as always but without him.”

  “No. It’s something else. She was so determined when she moved. It’s like one day she just snapped. And then there’s the trust fund.”

  “Do you or your brother need money? Is that the problem?”

  “No, but what if we do someday? My father left that for us. There was enough so that she could live off the interest, only she isn’t. But that’s not the main reason we’re doing this,” she insisted. “We’re worried.”

  Tom didn’t doubt it. Judging from Nancy Anderson’s voice, she was legitimately bewildered and more than a little hurt. “There’s no cause for worry. She has a very nice life here.”

  “A flower shop?”

  “Is that out of character, too?”

  “No. She used to grow flowers in the yard. She used to dance out there. Flowers do something to her. They make her wild. You can understand why I’m worried.”

  Tom had seen Bree dance through wildflowers by the brook. He still held the image, clear as day and sweet.

  “Does she have a man there?” Julia’s daughter asked. “Because if a man is behind her taking that money, it really worries me.”

  “There’s no man that I know of. The grapevine would have said if there were. Have you asked her about the money?”

  “I can’t. She’ll think that’s all I’m worried about, and it isn’t. Really it isn’t.”

  “What, exactly, do you want us to do on this end?”

  “Watch her. The police chief wouldn’t do anything. So I’m prepared to pay to have the job done. I want someone to look at her closely and see how she is.”

  “Why don’t you? Why don’t you fly out for a visit?”

  “I wanted to when she first moved there, but she told me not to. Each time I mention it, she waves a hand and says it’s easier for her to visit us here. I think she’s hiding something.”

  “There may not be anything illegal in that.”

  “Or there may be. We want to know why she’s doing what she is.”

  Tom suspected that a good mother-daughter heart-to-heart would solve the problem, but he was a fine one to talk. His father had hung up on him once, and he hadn’t called again. Parent-child relationships involved great emotional risk, regardless of the ages of the parties involved.

  “I have to tell you, Mrs. Anderson,” he warned, “Julia has many friends in this town. She’s known for being kind, talented, and reliable. I don’t think you’ll find anyone here willing to say she isn’t stable.” Mindful that the daughter might go elsewhere if she didn’t get what she wanted from him, he bought time by adding, “I’ll find out what I can. In the meantime, I want you to consider the possibility that your mother just needed to try something new. All right?”

  Tom drove to the flower shop after he dropped Bree at work. A sign on the door said that Julia was weeding in the garden out back, and sure enough, there she was, sitting in the flower beds looking perfectly content, with a misshapen straw hat on her head and the occasional bee humming about.

  She was an attractive woman, slim and of average height. Her brown hair was streaked with silver, but it remained thick. When she pulled it up into a clip, as she often did when delivering flowers to the diner, she looked a decade younger than the fifty-something she was. The peaceful look she wore helped.

  Tom smiled. He liked Julia. More, he identified with her. She, too, had come to Panama knowing no one and had made a life for herself here. Unstable? Hell, from the look of her, she was rock solid and thriving.

  When she spotted him, he glanced at the low ceiling of clouds. “You’re taking your chances.”

  “Chances of what?” she answered, with a smile. “Getting wet? I won’t melt. This time of year, it’s cooler working under clouds than sun. How’s Bree?”

  “Fine. She’s at the diner.”

  “She told me the morning sickness ended.”

  “Finally.”

  “It was worse on you than on her, I imagine. Men suffer during pregnancies.”

  “Thank you,” he said appreciatively.

  She tipped her head back to see him better from under the hat. “Are you here for flowers?”

  “I’m here for you.” He swatted at a hovering bee. “Can we talk while you work?”

  “Of course,” she said, but she set her weeding fork aside and tugged off her gloves. Her serenity wavered. “Is something wrong?”

  He settled on a nearby patch of grass. “Martin Sprague got a call from your daughter. She’s worried about you.”

  With a single definitive nod, Julia sighed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “She doesn’t understand why you’re doing what you are.”

  “What did she want Martin to do?”

  “Give an unbiased opinion of your mental state.”

  “For what purpose?” Julia asked, then said, “Don’t answer. I don’t want to hear.” She pushed the hat back with her wrist. “I spent the better part of thirty years doting on Nancy and Scott. They can’t understand why I’m not doing it still.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “Because they’re adults. Nancy is thirty, Scott is twenty-eight. They’re both married, both parents themselves. They don’t need me. At least they shouldn’t.”

  “Your daughter says she saw a change when your husband died.”

  “No doubt. Teddy died a slow, painful death. He was only fifty-two. I had been in love with him since I was ten. Then he was gone, and I needed to be someplace where I didn’t see his face all the time.”

  “Why Panama?”

  “There was no flower shop.”

  “Did you look at other towns?”

  “I didn’t have to, once I found Panama.” A bee flew near. She gracefully waved it off. “My children think this was a sudden decision on my part. They might not understand the truth, which is that during the last months of Teddy’s life, he was so sick and sitting by his bedside was so painful for me that the only way I could survive was by daydreaming. I studied maps and did my research and made my plans. I loved him with all my heart, and I buried a part of me with him, but the rest of me needed to move. Does that sound callous?.”

  It didn’t to Tom. Nor did it sound like the voice of an unstable woman.

  Reaching sideways, Julia bare-handedly tore a clump of weeds from the ground. She tossed the clump into a half-filled bag. Brushing off her hands, she asked, “Did she tell you about the trust fund?” Tom nodded.

  “That really has them hot and bothered. Oh, they don’t come out and say it. They say things like, ‘Isn’t setting up a business risky at your age?’ Like I have one foot in the grave,” she drawle
d. “It’s my fault, I suppose. When we knew Teddy was dying and were trying to get used to the idea, I kept telling them about the trust fund because I wanted them to know that Teddy had provided for them. Here, too, they may not understand the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “That Teddy meant for me to use as much or as little of that money as I wanted. He put it in writing. I have a copy of that paper. So does our lawyer. The children won’t go to him, because he was a close friend of Teddy’s and mine, and they’re sure he’ll side with me. But we both do have copies of that paper.” She ran her palm over a pool of orangy-pink impatiens. “I bought the house here with what I got from my house in Des Moines, but I dipped into the trust fund to set up the shop. There’s plenty left for my children.” She turned beseeching eyes on Tom. “For years I gave them everything I could, even when there were things I wanted that I couldn’t have. For years I put them first. Now it’s my turn.”

  “Have you told Nancy that?”

  “In gentler terms. But she doesn’t hear, and her brother goads her on.”

  “Would you like me to talk to her? Explain a little of that?”

  Julia grew hopeful. “Would you?”

  “Should I mention the paper your husband left?”

  “If you have to.” She smiled a silent thanks. “You’re a good man, Tom. Bree is lucky to have you. Unless people are right and her father became so withdrawn that he couldn’t see beyond himself, he would have liked you, too.”

  “He was a tough man.”

  “Unsatisfied. From what I hear.”

  “Lovesick. From what I hear. He never got over Bree’s mother.”

  A distant roll of thunder drew Julia’s head around. “Maybe if he’d been a stronger man,” she said when she looked back at Tom.