by Lucy Finn
As we rode along, Gene asked me if I planned to file charges against George London and his secretary.
I shook my head no. I explained that there was no question in my mind that they were both guilty, but proving anything in a court of law would be tough. After an intensive investigation I might be able to build a case against Ms. Kawatchski, but when you came right down to it, she was just a lackey in all this. Maybe she told London about her family’s land belonging to the Shawnee, and maybe she recruited Scabby after meeting him in some bar. I could only guess about those things. I knew she didn’t call the shots. She didn’t go out to the Katos’ to set a fire without orders from London. But could we prove it?
“As far as London goes,” I said, “he’s a powerful man with powerful friends in politics and law enforcement. I have no hard evidence. I think we’d be wasting our time. But while he may be a criminal, he’s also a businessman. There’s no longer any profit in harassing the Katos or in trying to get even with me. I may have made a bad enemy, but I doubt he’ll risk coming after me.”
Gene’s jaw got hard and his lips got tight. “It’s not fair. Not right.”
“It’s the way of the world.” My shoulders sagged, and my voice was weary. I told him that the best I could do was quietly alert the Pennsylvania gaming control board that they needed to take a closer look at London’s land development company. I assumed he was behind the Running Brook people. I would also talk to some old friends in Philadelphia and attempt to put up some roadblocks if he attempted to get a gambling license. There really wasn’t much else I could do. Money talked in a louder voice than justice most of the time.
Ken hadn’t spoken so far. Now he nodded and said softly, “I understand what you are saying. Mihoko and I want you to get the settlement from the Shawnee, Ms. Ravine. Find us another farm, please, also. Forgive me for my…for my fight. I am very sad. I have thinking to do. I thought I had no hate in me. No anger. I learned much today about myself.”
Gene turned to him and said brusquely. “Listen, you protected your home. You defended your family. Don’t beat yourself up. You’re a man. That’s what a man does.”
Ken, a small smile playing on his lips, glanced away from the road for a second and looked at Gene. “You make a good samurai, I think.”
“You too, my friend,” Gene said. “You too.”
As Gene said he would be, Brady was fine, napping in his baby seat in front of the TV, which was playing his favorite DVD, Walk the Line. I picked him up, careful not to wake him. I cuddled him against my body and smelled his hair, kissing him over and over. Tears squeezed out from beneath my eyelids and ran down my cheeks. I wanted to hold him forever and never let go. I had come very close to losing my life today, and as I held my baby in my arms, the realization crashed down on me like a wall of icy water.
After a while, I carried Brady up to his room and put him down in his crib. While I stood there watching him sleep, I made some decisions. Life is short and unpredictable. It can change or end in a heartbeat. I needed to talk frankly with Gene, and I needed to do it today. If we could build a life together, we had to move ahead with it. If not, I needed to move on. I stayed next to Brady’s crib until he stirred. When he woke from his nap, I wanted him to see that I was there.
After I changed his diaper and dressed him again, I brought him with me downstairs to find Gene. My genie was in the kitchen, as usual. A man who couldn’t be idle and didn’t seem able to relax, he had assembled a stepladder, paint tray, and brushes, obviously ready to start the redo. He also had lunch waiting for me: a thick tuna salad sandwich, some chips, and a cup of hot tea. I put Brady in his high chair and took a seat at the table. I wanted to talk, not eat. I hesitated, not sure how to begin.
I exhaled a long shuddering breath. “Would you sit down? I need to talk to you.”
His face held a question but he did as I asked.
“Back in the junkyard, you said you love me, right?”
“Yes. I planned to tell you in a more romantic setting, with some candlelight and wine, but yes, I do.” He smiled at me and reached across the table for my hand.
“So what’s next?” I said, gripping his fingers.
“Next? As in you and me?”
“Don’t be dense. You know what I mean. My third wish. Your disappearing or—not. In other words, do I mean enough to you for you to stay here?”
“My heart tells me yes.”
“And your mind? What does it say?”
“It says, I think so. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I have mixed feelings about not trying to go back, about not trying to get home to my family. But—”
“But?”
“I’ve been using the Internet. I’ve done a lot of reading about the years between when I was enchanted and now. I found Laura, by the way.”
My heart gave a thud.
Gene had discovered that one of Laura’s sons went into medicine. He’d founded a cancer research hospital. Another owned one of those vineyards Gene had such an interest in. Finding out that Laura had gone on with her life made him reevaluate what returning home would mean to history—how it would change everything that perhaps should not be changed. I said I understood, but I felt obliged to point out that maybe Gene’s son with Laura would have become that doctor. I fought my own selfish desires in order to be fair.
Gene had also found his parents’ obituaries. I can’t even imagine how painful that must have been. Both his mother and father were well into their nineties when they died, only a few months apart. They had established a scholarship fund in his name, to help children from the outback get a college education. Gene was described as their son who was a World War II war hero.
“I know they mourned me,” Gene said. “But they were proud of me. When I ‘died,’ they didn’t fall apart. Life in the outback is harsh; only the strong survive. They were practical people. I didn’t come back and their lives went on.”
He looked down at our joined hands. “And I went on. I’m here, sixty years in the future. That may sound crazy, but I think trying to go back is crazier. I don’t know if a genie, or anybody, can stop time.” He raised his eyes to my face.
“I don’t have any answers,” I said softly. “But I do have an idea.”
“It seems you usually do,” Gene said and grinned at me. “Give me a kiss and tell me what you have been thinking.”
I moved from my chair to sit on Gene’s lap. I laid out my plan that we take the time from now until Christmas Eve to test the waters—to make absolutely sure our relationship worked and that we were truly in love, not infatuated with each other. It would also give us time to carefully construct my third wish.
For Gene to exist and function in the twenty-first century, we had a myriad of details to consider. He’d need a new birth certificate and other credentials that created a believable past. Would he be Australian or an American citizen? How would we handle his military status? My legal mind saw a maze of obstacles to setting up his new life. It might take me the entire five weeks to figure out exactly what documents he’d need.
With my arms around his neck, kissing him frequently as I talked, I explained that to Gene. He agreed that we needed to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s or we faced a potential legal nightmare.
“You know better than I do what documentation I need to get a pilot’s license and then to find a job, even to pay taxes,” he said. “And what do we need to get a marriage license?” He looked very worried.
“Marriage license? Eugene Hugh O’Neill, are you asking me to marry you?”
“I guess I am,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him.
“Then I think you’d better ask me properly,” I said and kissed him harder and longer.
When we finally broke the kiss, he gently put me off his lap and I stood up. Then he knelt down in front of me, on bended knee. My hand was cold and trembling when he took it. “Ravine Patton, will you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes.”
Suddenly bells rang and a golden glitter like fire-works’ sparks swirled around us, making the air dance with light. An engagement ring, shining blue in the depths of its emerald-cut diamond, appeared in Gene’s hand. He slipped it on my finger.
With that act, I had defied all logic, reason, and the laws of physics, and agreed to wed a genie out of a bottle.
Chapter 17
I didn’t wear the ring. Gene and I both decided that until I made the third wish, and he was in this century for good, it made better sense to wait to announce our engagement. We hoped to break the news on Christmas Eve when we went over to my mother’s for dinner and gift giving. So I slipped the ring off and put it in my vintage jewelry box, the one that had been my grandmother’s. I placed it with care on the red velvet where I could see it whenever I opened the cherished box.
That same afternoon, I also called the police and reported my car stolen. I talked to Cal’s nephew and said I looked out in the driveway and my car was gone. He took down a description of the car and told me to stop off tomorrow to fill out paperwork. He suggested it might be kids going for a joyride and told me not to get too upset. Few real car thieves ever ventured into the Back Mountain. He thought we had a good chance of getting my Beemer back.
I knew better. My poor car was squashed into scrap metal. It was gone and I had to accept it. The insurance would pay me blue book value, enough to get another car, but it would have to be a much less expensive one than a new Five Series BMW.
Since I believed Gene would end up driving the new vehicle, at least until we earned enough to purchase a second car, he and I carried on long discussions about what to buy. We quickly agreed that we needed four-wheel-drive because of the wicked winters in the Endless Mountains, and we started searching on the Internet together before we went car shopping.
Gene spotted a Subaru Outback and thought it had some nice features. Among other things, he liked the name. I vetoed it as being too small, especially if we started a family and got a dog. Gene and I hadn’t discussed children exactly, but he had mentioned he always liked having a brother and a sister, and he bet Brady would too. I figured that meant two more babies pretty much as fast as I could have them.
I had to tell my mother my car was gone, of course. After she clucked her tongue and ranted about crime out here in the country, she urged me to get a Ford F-150 pickup. “You need a truck when you live on a farm, Ravine,” she said. “And the Ford truck is a heavy vehicle. Safer than that foreign car you had. With all the big rigs on the road, it used to scare me, you driving around in that little thing.”
As it turned out, we didn’t get either a Subaru or a Ford pickup. I fell in love with a red Chevy Avalanche. The Avalanche offered a nice compromise between a truck and an SUV: It seated six; it had a comfortable ride; and it still had a truck bed in the back that made it, technically, a pickup truck. It was big enough to make my mother happy, and it was sporty enough for Gene to agree to my choice on the spot. My chic Beemer image took a full 180-degree turn when I got the insurance money and drove off the lot with my new Chevy, but my life had changed at least that much. Boy, it sure had.
In fact, the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were turning out to be the happiest in my life. Tawnya Jones wrote me a nice note along with her 150-dollar payment; I contacted the Shawnee and they were more than amenable to putting together a 2.5-million-dollar deal. I was pretty much over the moon. The Katos were pleased about the money and, by working with a local realtor, I lined up some beautiful farms to show them, as well as a spectacular riverfront house, a former hotel, where they could run a magnificent B and B and meditation retreat. It came with several outbuildings, including a posh stable which would end up housing their goats and cows.
Aware of their sudden good fortune, they had gotten over the sadness of having to give up the farm, and Casey was being treated like a prince. Every time I spoke with them, they thanked me again for him. It was karma, they said—Scabby’s cosmic way of making amends. It was a good thought, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it.
But I really did begin to believe in happy endings when we went to Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s.
Cal Metz was there, and my mother looked radiant with happiness. He had even brought over his basset hound, Charlie, to join my mom’s crew of canines. Through the dinner, we talked a lot and stuffed ourselves on turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes of course, green beans with Campbell’s mushroom soup topped with canned fried onions, and succotash—not my personal favorite, but my mother liked it, and so did Cal. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see they were a couple.
“Hmm. So you do have a boyfriend at your age,” I whispered to my mother as we cleared the table.
“Hush up,” she whispered back and blushed scarlet.
It was both Gene’s and Brady’s first Thanksgiving, which made it even more fun. Then, right before we got to coffee and pumpkin pie, the doorbell rang. That somebody actually rang the bell meant it wasn’t family, so I looked at my mother with a question in my eyes.
“I invited Tom, Cal’s nephew, and his fiancée to join us for dessert,” she said and gave Cal a conspiratorial look. I wondered what that was all about.
“I didn’t know Cal’s nephew got engaged,” I said to Gene as my mother opened the door. Gene, who didn’t know Cal’s nephew from a hole in the wall, just shrugged.
Tom Metz came into the dining room with my mother on one side of him and an absolutely gorgeous blonde on his arm.
“Hiya, Ravine,” the woman said and I did a double take. My mouth about hit the floor. The stunningly beautiful woman was Peggy Sue Osterhaupt. I got up and ran over to hug her. She and I jumped up and down like schoolgirls.
“I got me my teeth,” she said into my ear and pulled back far enough for me to see her smile, showing her perfect new uppers. “They’re dental implants too, not false ones,” she confided. “And I had me a little work done on my eyes too, but don’t you tell.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I answered in a quiet voice. “I’m so happy for you,” I added.
“You made this happen.” Tears glistened on her eyelashes. “I can never pay you back or thank you enough.”
“I only did my job, Peggy Sue.” I gave her arm a squeeze. “No thanks needed.”
We all sat down for dessert, and in the middle of the second helping of pie, my mother, never one for tact, turned to Gene. “My daughter hasn’t said, but when do you have to go back? To the war, I mean.”
Gene choked on his pumpkin pie. Then he looked up with a straight face. “Well, ma’am, I’m waiting to hear. My enlistment is up soon. I haven’t decided if I’m going to sign up for four more years. I might not have a choice, you know. I may not be able to opt out in the middle of the conflict, but I have reason to want to stick around here, if I can.”
My mother gave a smug smile in my direction. “I’m really pleased to hear that. I’m sure Australia is a beautiful place, but this is fine country, a good place to settle down.”
My face was burning red by that time. Gene squeezed my hand under the table. “Time will tell, ma’am,” he said. “I can’t see the future clearly yet, but I’m going to give it a lot of thought.”
When Peggy Sue and Tom left, Peggy Sue handed me an envelope. “Here’s your money for the lawyer bill,” she said, hugging me again. “You deserve every penny. I’ve never been so happy in my life. And I did quit down at Offset,” she added and winked.
“Thank you,” I told her, feeling very humble and grateful. “You look very beautiful, you know.”
“I know,” she said with a blazing smile. “It makes you believe in miracles, don’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it does.”
Later that night, after Gene, Brady, and I were back home and I opened Peggy Sue’s envelope, I found a money order made out to me for seven thousand dollars. The note with it said,
Don’t you dare try to give this back. It’s no
t even ten percent, and folks tell me most lawyers get a lot more than that. It’s the least I can do for you getting me back my money—and giving me a brand-new life.
Peggy Sue.
I could use the money. I still had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and bills were piling up. It might be a few months before the Shawnee settlement went through. That would provide the perfect cushion for Gene and me to start our married life. We’d have the money for him to go back to graduate school or enroll in flight school if he still wanted to be a pilot. I secretly favored grad school; I didn’t relish his being away from home for stretches of time.
I deposited the money order in the bank, and when I did, Mary Ann, the tiny, brown-haired teller who had tried to stop John Osterhaupt, winked at me as I made the transaction sitting in my Chevy at the drive-through. Then the other women who worked at the bank came over to the window to wave and give me a thumbs-up. That’s what it’s like to live in a small town—everybody knows about your successes, your failures, and most of your secrets.
The days of late November and early December slipped by quietly in a golden haze of happiness. I picked up a few new clients—a couple of divorces and one custody fight over a golden retriever, as well as some real estate cases. I put in a lot of hours on my mother’s charter school too.
As for Freddi, I had made up my mind that even if Gene and I didn’t work out—and I was so blissfully happy that I couldn’t imagine anything stopping my Christmas Eve wish—I shouldn’t play God. The decisions I made might ultimately screw up my own life, but the responsibility of screwing up somebody else’s was too great a risk. Still and all, I worried about her. She wasn’t pregnant, and she had told me during an afternoon of Christmas shopping at the mall that she had stopped taking the fertility drugs.
I asked her if the doctor thought she had given them enough time. She said it was her decision, not the doctor’s, and her mind was made up. She had started to look into international adoptions. She said things were a lot better with Bobby since the pressure of trying to conceive was gone.