As You Wish

by Jude Deveraux

  “And meeting people will help with your destiny,” Olivia said. “I can’t imagine that what you say you can do is possible.”

  “It is. We just have to be careful who we tell about it. Dr. Hightower has referred a lot of people to my aunts—and now me.”

  “I’m curious. Was Ray or Kathy the original target for this...opportunity?”

  “Kathy,” Arrieta said. “It was never Ray. Dr. Hightower thought you should hear him tell how he treats his wife because Kathy might not say anything. She’s good at keeping things to herself. But Ray is fine—thanks to his wife taking such good care of him. She’s the one who has the problems.”

  “How did you get her here?”

  Arrieta shrugged. “My aunts know lots of people so some calls were made and voilà! Ray leaves the country and Kathy goes to Dr. Hightower’s house. It all worked out.” Olivia didn’t have to ask about Elise.

  “Dr. Hightower wants to retire.” Arrieta said this with an intense look at Olivia. “Rescuing Elise was Jeanne’s final straw. She can’t take any more and we need someone to fill her role—someone who will send the right people our way.”

  “I think you’ll need a very special person who believes in... What do you call this? Time travel?” Olivia’s tone told how ridiculous she thought it all was.

  Arrieta looked at her nails. “If you returned to 1970, you could go back to school while Mr. Montgomery was in the Middle East. By now you’d be a qualified therapist.”

  Olivia was too stunned by that statement to speak.

  “I told Aunt Primrose that you’d never agree to this.”

  “You’re making it sound like you planned for me to come into the kitchen so I could hear about this.”

  “Cale said you would.”

  “Cale? Kit’s cousin? The writer? I hardly know her.”

  “She’s friends with Ellie Abbot, who my aunt sent back. Cale said you were insatiably curious and the most capable woman she’s ever met.”

  “Oh,” Olivia said. “I had no idea. That’s a wonderful compliment.”

  “Of course none of it would start until now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You can go back to 1970, marry Mr. Montgomery, and begin to study to be a psychologist. When he comes back from his secret mission, you and your family can live all over the world, then—zap!—you return here and use your certification to help us. The aunts and me, that is. You’ll help find people who need us.”

  It was all too fanciful for Olivia to comprehend. She just sat there blinking.

  “I guess I should tell you about the memory. When you get back here, after your, uh, journey, you can choose to remember or not. My guess is that Elise won’t want to remember what her family did to her. Kathy will need to remember that big, lusty Ray is a no-no. And you’ll want to know everything about both your marriages because you like a full mind. Actually, you need to remember all about your late husband and your dreadful daughter-in-law—I met her—so you can help other people.”

  Olivia was trying to digest this. “Will Elise remember us?”

  “Only the hate will be removed from her memory. Not the love.”

  “Can I tell Kit?”

  “If you wish. Your life is your own.”

  “If...if I did...uh, return to the past, could I tell him I’m from the future?”

  “You can, but it’ll be like that man with the songs. You can tell him about computers and cell phones and 9/11, everything. But at the end of three weeks it will all disappear. You’ll return here to this house and you’ll be this age. You will have gone through the years together but neither of you will have known the future.”

  “I was trained for the stage, so how will I remember that I need to study to become a psychologist?”

  Arrieta smiled. “That’s exactly what I asked my aunts. They said that if you’d really and truly liked being an actress you would have continued to be one.”

  At that, Olivia gave a bit of a smile. She’d never admitted to anyone but Kit that she’d loved the first week she’d been on Broadway, but doing it over and over, night after night, had bored her.

  “My aunt Primrose said that if you’d had Mr. Montgomery and been happy you would have gone back to school. And she believes you would have studied psychology.”

  “I did take a few courses in college and I loved them, but the stage seemed to be calling me.” She looked at Arrieta for a few moments. “The man with the songs wasn’t the only time it didn’t produce good, was it?”

  “No. Sometimes there are disasters.” Arrieta leaned forward. “Sometimes people are so joyous to be young again that they’re reckless and get themselves maimed, or even killed. They say they want to experience a different side of life so they run off with dreadful people. When they get back to the present, they nearly always choose to stay with the life they had before. Especially if they died in the second visit.”

  “I would think so!” Olivia paused. “But even with all the bad, when they returned, it would release that feeling of regret. It’s something that haunts me every day. I recently had a new one put onto me. I thought I was a good mother to my stepson, but I found out that he thinks I only cared about money. It’s made me worry that I wouldn’t be a good mother to anyone.”

  “Your stepson is a greedy little bastard,” Arrieta said vehemently. “Sorry, but this is a small town. When Josh was doing the renovations, your stepson came here. He and his wife are planning to add an entertainment wing onto their big house. They said that Mr. Montgomery was going to pay for it.”

  It took Olivia some moments to fully understand what she was hearing. After all the protests that Kevin and Hildy had made about her marriage to Kit, they were actually planning to benefit with his family’s wealth. That was more than Olivia could take. “All right, I’ll try it—but only if you tell me how you do it.”

  Arrieta shrugged. “Actually, it’s up to the people. I just have to think hard, and if they really and truly want to go, then it happens. I have no idea how. It’s just something some of the women in my family can do. We—” She clamped her mouth shut, not saying any more, then she got up and put the teapot on a tray. “Are you ready to go back in time?”

  “I think I am,” Olivia said, and they left the kitchen.

  When they were in the empty little library, Arrieta put the tea tray on the desk and handed each woman a cup. While they drank, she explained about memory.

  Elise said, “I don’t want to remember what my parents and Kent did to me!” Arrieta and Olivia exchanged looks. It’s what they’d predicted she would say.

  When they finished their tea, Arrieta took the empty cups and put them on the tray.

  After a moment’s thought, she moved her chair from behind the desk and sat down in front of the three women. “Shall we get started? All you have to do is tell me when you want to go back to, then close your eyes and think really hard about that time. I’ll do the rest.”

  Instantly, Elise nestled her hands in her lap, then closed her eyes. Her whole body seemed to relax.

  Arrieta looked away from Elise. “She’s already there. She wanted to get out of this world so very much. But if you two don’t want to go...”

  “Sorry,” Olivia said. Elise was smiling. She looked like she was sleeping—and like she was very, very happy. Whatever she was dreaming of, she was enjoying it. Olivia looked back at Arrieta. Whether what she was proposing was true or not, Olivia would like to again feel as happy as Elise looked. “I want to go back to exactly three weeks before they came to get Kit. I want every second I can get to change a lot of things with many people. I want—” She didn’t say any more because she felt herself drifting off, floating. Kit, Kit, Kit, she thought. With a smile, she imagined Uncle Freddy and Mr. Gates, the children, her parents, and... She felt too good to do any more thinking. She just gave herself over to the
feeling of being weightless, of not having a sad thought or feeling. She drifted. It felt like all the unhappiness of her life was being taken out of her mind, being removed from where it seemed to have settled down into her bones. She was smiling as she hadn’t done since... Since the day Kit left.

  Arrieta looked at Kathy. “What do you want to do?”

  “Be as happy as those two look. Do I click my heels?”

  “To stop talking would make a start,” Arrieta snapped. “Sorry. I’m new at this. I’m not used to dealing with sarcasm and doubt and all the other bad things that go with this job that I never wanted in the first place.”

  Kathy was looking at her with wide eyes. “When Ray went to Chicago,” she said softly, then closed her eyes. She was so skeptical about everything that it took minutes before she began to feel a release from what her life had become.

  “Kathy!” she heard her father order. “Get us some coffee.”

  “Get it yourself,” she heard herself say, and that made her smile. No one had ever talked to her father like that. Kathy began to smile so broadly that it was about to take over her entire body. The sheer size of the smile seemed to turn her inside out. She had no body, just an enormous, life-changing smile.

  Arrieta looked at the three women, glad that they were where they should be, then got up and went into the kitchen to call her aunt Primrose. Everything was going well. So far, anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As Elise pounded on the door of Carmen’s hotel room, her only thought was Alejandro. The skirt of her big wedding dress was thrown over her arm and her fist ached from hitting on the door. She was doing her best not to think of the horror of the last four hours. “Open up!” she rasped as she looked up and down the corridor. No one was there, but then they were probably all in the church waiting for Elise to march down the aisle.

  Just hours ago, she’d been sitting in the little library of that woman, Arrieta, doing as she’d been told, and thinking hard about the time she wanted to return to. When the silence continued, Elise opened her eyes, expecting to see Olivia and Kathy sitting beside her.

  Instead, she’d found herself in the big hotel suite her mother had booked for her to use for the wedding. Elise was sitting on a hassock with her ghastly wedding dress spread out around her. It was like a silk cloud left over from a nuclear explosion.

  To her left was a full-length mirror, and to her right were four of the six bridesmaids that her mother had chosen. They were the unattractive daughters of the two mothers’ college friends. “They’re all rich and they’ll help you in the future,” her mother said when Elise protested them.

  As she glanced in the mirror, she saw the girls huddled together, whispering.

  For a few moments, Elise was caught in a halfway point between then and now, and she could still feel the elation she’d had on her wedding day. She was going to marry Kent! The man of her dreams. And a side effect was that in doing so she’d please everyone. She had a vision of both families smiling and sharing meals together. It was going to be heaven!

  But now, years later, she knew how wrong she’d been. Marrying Kent had brought her more under the control of the families—and made her more unhappy.

  It had taken her a few moments to adjust to the transition and she heard Kathy’s voice in her head, telling her what she needed to do was run away. She sent a bridesmaid to get the limo driver to come to her. He said that yes, her bags for the honeymoon were in the trunk, and he’d been told to take the newly wedded couple to a nearby hotel. There wasn’t to be a honeymoon as Kent couldn’t be away from work for long. Elise gave the driver a check for five grand and told him that in about an hour she wanted him to drive just her to the airport. He smiled as if this kind of thing happened all the time, and said he’d be glad to. She’d then booked a one-way flight to Bangor, Maine, on her cell phone.

  After he left, her heart was pounding, but she was also exhilarated. She was going to do it! She looked at her left hand. No wedding ring. On impulse, she asked one of the girls where Carmen’s room was, making it sound like she truly cared about the help. Cared enough to strangle her, she thought, but kept smiling. When the girls didn’t giggle or exchange knowing looks, Elise was relieved. At least it didn’t seem as though they knew about Kent and Carmen.

  It was only by accident that Elise found out that the limo driver had betrayed her. Just as she was about to leave for her triumphant scurry out of the church, one of the bridesmaids burst into the room saying that there had been a bomb threat. They all came to a halt. The girl had reached the conclusion that there was a bomb because Elise’s father had called a security company and they’d come quickly.

  “There are men with guns standing in front of the church doors. And you should see the limo! There’s a guard in the front seat and one in the back. And I just saw two more security men waiting for the elevator. I think they’re coming up here.”

  For a moment, Elise’s heart seemed to stop. When it began again, it was in her throat.

  Think! she told herself. What would Olivia do? She wouldn’t stand for this! Elise thought. She’d probably say she wasn’t going to—

  Okay, Elise thought, I’m not Olivia and never will be. But she knew of one place where it was guaranteed that no one would look for her.

  Turning, she smiled at her bridesmaids and said that she’d like to be alone for a while. “To pray,” she added, knowing that that would clear them out quickly.

  She closed the door behind them, waited about two minutes, then opened it and ran out. There were some hotel guests in the hall who ooohed and aahhed at the bride in her big white dress. Elise grabbed all forty pounds of the skirt and hit the stairs just as the elevator dinged.

  Kent had rented his pregnant mistress a suite at the top of the hotel. No doubt he’d told Carmen that he needed her there. That he couldn’t get through the wedding to the bland Elise without the lusty, fiery Carmen nearby. Oh yes, if people were looking for Elise, the last place they’d look was in Carmen’s room.

  She pounded on the door harder. What if Carmen was gone? What if—?

  Finally, Carmen opened the door. Her pretty face was nearly green with morning sickness and it got worse when she saw Elise. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was a sneer.

  Elise pushed her way into the room. “I’m running away and you’re going to help me do it.” She shut the door behind her.

  “I’m just the gardener’s sister,” Carmen said. “I can’t—”

  Elise glared at Carmen’s stomach. “Do you really want to go that way? You want to turn me over to them so I can marry your boyfriend?”

  Carmen’s only reaction to that revelation was a couple of blinks. She put the chain on the door. “Your father called in men with guns. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  When Elise sat down on the bed, the dress billowed up so high that she got a mouthful of it. Sputtering, she said, “I’m not going to be bullied into a marriage that I don’t want.”

  The green look was beginning to clear from Carmen’s face, and for the first time Elise thought of it from her side. She was here to attend the wedding of a man whose child she was carrying. Elise’s voice softened. “I need to borrow some clothes and you have to help me find a way to get out of here.”

  Carmen’s lips tightened. “My clothes won’t fit you.” She gave a pointed look at Elise’s much flatter chest.

  “You’re going to be catty now?” Elise said. “Really?”

  Carmen gave a shrug, as though it didn’t matter what she did. For a moment, they stared at each other. Then Carmen picked up her cell and called her brother. She told him, in Spanish, that he needed to come to the hotel right away, that it was an emergency. She listened, then hung up.

  “My brother will be here soon,” Carmen said. Neither her eyes nor her voice had softened. She was still looking at Elise as though she were the enemy
. Not Kent, who was playing the women against each other, but Elise.

  She started to say she’d heard the call, but it dawned on Elise that this was years earlier. No one knew that she’d learned to speak Spanish. Nor did anyone know that she and Alejandro were friends. The first time around, they didn’t meet until after she was married. “So Diego is coming for me?” she asked.

  “No. He’s out of town. My younger brother, Alejandro, will be here as soon as he can, but it’ll be at least an hour. He’s one of the men who’s been working at your father’s house for a month.” She looked Elise up and down in contempt. “If you plan to sneak out, you need to change now. My brother has to work for a living. He doesn’t have all day to wait for you.”

  Elise was trying to steady herself as she grasped the facts. Alejandro was coming for her!

  She turned away from Carmen, pointed to the buttons down the back of the dress, and reluctantly, Carmen began unfastening them. When the dress was unbuttoned, Elise managed to step out of the thing and let it drop to the floor. She was glad she’d worn her yoga pants.

  Reverently, Carmen picked the dress up and put it on the bed.

  As Elise took a robe off a chair, she looked at the way Carmen was smoothing the dress. It was as though she was imagining her own wedding. Softly, Elise said, “What is it that you like about Kent?”

  Carmen didn’t turn around, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet. “He makes me laugh. He’s generous, always doing things for me.” She straightened her shoulders, then turned to look at Elise. “And the sex is great.”

  Elise stifled the hurt that she felt. “He sounds like he is truly in love with you.”

  “Yes, he is. And I’m in love with him.”

  Elise nodded toward the dress on the bed. “It must have hurt to see him planning his wedding to marry me.”

  Carmen grit her teeth. “I wanted to kill you. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Elise went into the bathroom and closed the door. For a moment she leaned against it and tears came to her eyes. Generosity, laughter, fabulous sex. She’d seen none of those in the years she’d been married to Kent.