As You Wish

by Jude Deveraux

  “I don’t understand why Alan and Willie didn’t stay together. You should have seen them in the hospital when he was dying. She cried incessantly. She kept begging me to find a way to cure him.”

  “How could you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Olivia said. “They seemed to think I could do anything.” She paused. “I need some answers. I know where Willie and her second husband live. I need to go see her. Now. Can you...?”

  “Can I keep them asleep until you get back? I’ll try, but they’ll want you to be here after they wake up. Elise especially. That girl has grown to love you.”

  “It’s mutual.”

  “Take your time. Do what you need to.”

  Minutes later, Olivia was driving down FM 77 toward the town. Willie and her husband lived in a huge house on the outskirts. Olivia had seen the house only once, and it had been the talk of everyone. It’s like that awful place Kevin and Hildy lived in, Olivia thought. But now that was in a time that had never happened.

  As she drove slowly through the town, she remembered when Kit had driven her around.

  She’d looked at each house and thought of who lived where and what had happened to them. Even though she’d tried to warn people, the same tragedies nearly always happened. And right now she was thinking of them as her failures.

  But at the end of the street, she pulled the car over and turned off the engine. The yellow house on the end had not been the scene of unspeakable tragedy. The girl who’d grown up there had not slit her wrists because she’d been bullied at school.

  At first the memory was vague, but as Olivia looked at the house it became more clear. She and Kit and Tisha were in Summer Hill on vacation. Olivia had her degree then, but she hadn’t practiced much. They were by the lake with a picnic lunch when she saw a girl being teased by two others, and the girl looked like she was going to cry.

  Olivia didn’t know why she was so drawn to the situation, but she knew she had to step in. The girl, Lisa, had parents who were too busy, too extroverted to see what was being done to their quiet, introverted daughter. Olivia invited the girl to join them and after that day, they started corresponding. When she was back in Summer Hill, they talked.

  On the day that would have been when Lisa committed suicide, Olivia knew she had to get to the school. She didn’t know why, but she ran to the girls’ locker room just in time to keep the boys out, and she got Lisa’s clothes back to her.

  After that, Olivia had long professional talks with the principal about those bratty girls, and with Lisa’s parents.

  Today, Lisa was married with two children and she taught elementary school.

  Olivia sat in the car for a few moments to let the memories sift through her brain. It’s like waiting for the cream to come to the surface, she thought. Maybe she hadn’t been able to save everyone, but at least she’d succeeded with a few.

  When she pulled in to Willie’s driveway, she wondered what she’d find. For those three weeks when she was in 1970, Kit had enjoyed tales of the internet and cell phones and overnight delivery with the passion of a drug addict. But he’d deeply disliked what she’d told him about her marriage—and he disagreed with it all. “I pushed my way into his life,” she said. “I needed a child. I was starving. You can’t sympathize because you’re not a mother.”

  “It’s true that I don’t understand men who don’t support their family,” Kit said.

  Olivia couldn’t make him see that Alan was a different type of person. He wasn’t as strong as Kit. And Alan hadn’t had the advantages that Kit had. Nothing she said made him understand.

  She rang the doorbell, then waited, her heart pounding. When Willie came to the door, Olivia was pleasantly surprised. Willie no longer looked like she’d never done an exercise in her life. She was trim and had on makeup and her hair was soft and sleek. She was in her late sixties now but she looked good.

  “Olivia Montgomery!” Willie said. “How nice to see you! How’s your family?”

  “Fine. And yours?” She was trying to dredge up what she knew from her two roads of memory. Willie and Alan. Willie and her contractor husband. Willie and... “Alana is your daughter. And you’re Kevin’s stepmother.”

  “Oh heavens! What’s he done now? He didn’t try to sell you anything, did he? Sorry. Where are my manners? I just made some iced tea. Come in and have some.”

  Willie’s kitchen was pretty and bright and clean, and they sat at the little breakfast table with frosty glasses of tea.

  “Now...” Willie said, letting Olivia know she was ready to hear whatever she had to say.

  “I know we don’t know each other very well, but—”

  “Don’t you remember that I met Alan through you? That you invited me to that appliance sale?”

  Olivia remembered it well but she didn’t get them together. “Diane—”

  Willie laughed. “That’s right. You and the man you married locked Alan and Diane in that closet together. I thought that was really funny. When Mr. Trumbull opened it, they were kissing. I thought what a great guy Alan was to turn something bad into good. He married Diane and after she died...” Willie shrugged.

  “You were there.”

  Willie’s face changed. “To my great loss.” She got up to get some cookies. “Have some. I can’t eat any as I gain weight just smelling them.”

  “You married Alan?” Olivia encouraged.

  “Yes, I married the lazy jerk.” Willie waved her hand. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but after what I went through with that man I can say anything. But you don’t want to hear about that.”

  “I do!” Olivia said. “I want to hear every word.”

  “See this?” Willie motioned to her huge, new house. “This is what a man is supposed to provide for a woman. A home.” She wiggled her left hand to show a big diamond ring. “This is what he’s supposed to give her. But Alan didn’t do anything. He was a parasite! You’ll never believe this, but he expected me to do all the work of running that appliance store. And his mother was just like him. They were like twin sci-fi creatures that latched on and tried to suck all the juice out of me.”

  She grabbed the sides of her hair and pulled. “It still makes me so angry I want to scream.” She let go of her hair. “Alan came up with grandiose schemes of more stores and how he was going to do all the work. So his mother bought a store, then Alan went off to play golf. One time I got really angry and demanded that he show me his golf clubs. The bastard didn’t have any. I’m not sure but I think he was having an affair and he expected me to support him and his mistress!” She leaned forward. “Right after our daughter was born, I got out!” Willie grimaced. “When I think of that man! Do you know how he met his third wife?”

  She didn’t wait for Olivia to answer. “Alan had a girl who worked in the office. She was really good with numbers and people. A real find. One day he came to me—by that time I was working for my current husband—and said he wanted Alana for the day. I thought that was weird since he didn’t pay much attention to her, but I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Olivia said softly, eyes wide.

  “Alan took our daughter to work and did his helpless act. He was soooo good at that. You ever know a man who did that?”

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “Intimately.”

  “So anyway, Alan told her I was a lazy ex-wife and he had no one to help him, et cetera. Six months later they were married. She divorced him two years after that. I know all this because she came to me to apologize for all the bad things she’d thought about me.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Olivia whispered.

  “You?” Willie said. “You can’t mean you and Alan. I can’t imagine you would ever fall for a do-nothing like Alan Trumbull.”

  “Only if I had a trauma in my life so horrible that it made me feel like I deserved
to be treated badly.”

  Willie looked at her for a moment. “That’s right. You’re a psychologist, aren’t you? Maybe I should make an appointment and talk about how bad Alan made me feel. He had me believing I didn’t deserve more than he gave me—which wasn’t much of anything.”

  “What happened to Kevin?”

  “Poor kid. He’s very much like his father. Married a couple of times, but they didn’t last long. No kids.”

  “Was one of them a girl named Hildy?”

  “Wow! You’ve got a good memory. He dated a big girl named Hildy when he was in his twenties. But by that time the appliance stores were failing. When she dumped Kevin, he was real upset about it. Personally, I think she wanted a man with money.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “Wasn’t she in that play you guys put on last year? That was great! I can’t believe you got two big-name movie stars here to little Summer Hill. You want some more tea?”

  Olivia stood up. “I want to go see my home,” she said. “I want to remember all the good. And most of all, I want to forgive myself.”

  Willie was looking at her as though she wasn’t quite sane. “Sure. I’ll show you out.”

  As Olivia got into her car, all she could think was that Alan’s misery wasn’t her fault! Her ability to do things, to manage multiple appliance stores, to run a house, take care of a difficult child, all of it were things he wanted. But he’d made her feel...

  Olivia had to pull over to the side of the road to bury her face in her hands and let herself cry. But it was a good cry, one of relief. She had carried so much guilt in her! During all those years she was married to Alan, she’d felt that she’d ruined his life. If she hadn’t gone after him, he would have found a sweet girl like Willie. They would have been a family and been happy.

  But that wasn’t true! Alan got the woman he’d loved for so many years—but without Olivia supporting them by working six days a week, they weren’t happy. Willie said Alan was a parasite. But wasn’t that what Willie was too? The only thing she’d said about the husband she had now was that he could provide her with a good house and rings for her fingers.

  Olivia looked out the windshield. She’d tried hard to give people what they said they wanted. Alan said he wanted more stores, more of her being a wife to him. By that he meant running the house as well as the stores. Taking care of Kevin, rescuing Kevin, trying to make Alan feel like a man.

  Olivia began to smile. Willie was right in that Olivia would never have fallen for a man like Alan. He and his stores had been her punishment for the guilt she felt at losing her daughter.

  But that hadn’t happened! For a moment, she closed her eyes and remembered seeing her beautiful daughter grow up. Tisha had been a quiet child who loved being with her parents wherever they went. For years, they were a happy threesome, content to follow Kit around the world. He’d come home and tell them they were to move to Yemen—or Dubai or Morocco.

  Usually somewhere in the Middle East, as that was Kit’s area of expertise. He’d leave it to his wife and daughter to pack up and move. It was what Rowan said had been dumped on his mother and she couldn’t handle it. But Olivia had loved it!

  Irony, she thought. Kit had loved what Olivia was good at, while Alan had hated it, been jealous of it. When she’d done something big in her life with Alan, he’d sneered at her, then said something meant to put her down. But with Kit, when she accomplished some huge task, he’d thanked her, praised her, whirled her around in his arms, and made love to her.

  At the thought of the life she’d had with Kit, she smiled broadly. The smile started inside her, under her rib cage, then spread outward. Gradually, it took over her body—and that smile pushed out the guilt she’d carried all those many years she’d lived with Alan. Gone was the guilt about her daughter and the penance she’d paid for it by allowing Alan to endlessly punish her.

  When the smile finally reached her lips, she knew she was a different person. No more guilt. Best of all, there would be no more looking back. No more regret.

  Olivia started the car. She wanted to see her home. For all their travels, little Summer Hill, Virginia, had been where they called home.

  When she pulled through the gate, she saw Young Pete and he gave her a half smile. She remembered how Kit and the caretaker had bonded as they worked together on the big estate. Kit’s early job at Tattwell had come in handy. Whenever he had a big decision to make, he grabbed the garden tools and went to work.

  She parked by Diana’s Cottage—but that name was gone. By the door was a brass plaque that said DR. OLIVIA PAGET MONTGOMERY. PSYCHOLOGIST. As she touched the corner of it, more memories came back to her. Wherever they lived, she’d kept up her certification because she knew it was important. She hadn’t remembered Arrieta and her ability to change the past, but Olivia had been fierce about keeping up with her training. One time Kit had been quite unpleasant about her returning to the US to take some courses. He couldn’t go with her, so he’d used all his skills of persuasion to get her to stay. His argument was that she could let her credentials lapse and renew them later. But Olivia had stood her ground and told him no.

  He’d mumbled that only dictators were as unbendable as she was. She took that as a compliment.

  She opened the door and went inside. The living room, where she and Elise had sat with a shirtless Ray, was her waiting room, and where she met with groups of people. She had clients who drove in from Charlottesville and Richmond to attend Saturday-afternoon sessions that sometimes lasted for hours.

  The downstairs bedroom was where she sat with individual clients. Unfortunately, in the closet was a four-foot-tall stack of boxes of tissues.

  She went upstairs. Just hours ago, these two bedrooms had been where she and Elise stayed, where Elise had closed the windows in fear of being found out. Now that room was Olivia’s office. Bookshelves, her desk, and filing cabinets filled it. She knew that to refresh her memory she would go through every folder, listen to tapes, and review the videos. Her clients deserved that.

  The room where Livie had stayed was still a bedroom. When Kit was away, she often slept there, surrounded by files and tapes. A few times, women had used the room, hiding from some horror that had happened in their lives.

  She went back downstairs and out to the back. The little walled-in area was now a garden and she knew that in the summer she often held group sessions there.

  Leaving her office, she walked across the lawn, past the huge expanse of manicured grass in front of Camden Hall. This morning, when she and Kathy and Elise had run off in the car to some woman they were sure was a charlatan, the big house had been empty. No one had lived in it for years.

  In 1970, Olivia had only spoken to Kit of the house once. His reaction, like she was after him for his family’s money, had upset her so much that she’d not mentioned it again.

  But Kit had remembered. The night before their tiny wedding, he’d slipped into her bedroom at Tattwell and handed her an old shoe box. He hadn’t said anything, just let his dancing eyes speak for him.

  She assumed it was a gag gift, something silly to make her laugh. Inside were some wadded-up scraps of fabric that had been used to make animals for the kids. In the middle was a big steel ring with half a dozen keys on it.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “If these are the keys to your heart, they’re too small.”

  He kissed her for that, then stretched out beside her, took the ring, and held up a big, rusty key. “This is to the gate, although I’ve been told it’s never locked.” He began to flip through the keys. “This is to Diana’s Cottage, Camden Hall, River House, and—” He broke off because Olivia was staring at him. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Dad had a hard time getting the place. It’s been empty all these years because the family couldn’t agree on which one of them owned it. They settled it by no one being allowed to do anything b
ut pay for the upkeep. Dad had to get a friend of his to go to Burma to get one of the owners to sign the deed.” He looked at her. “Please tell me you didn’t change your mind.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.

  “Tell Dad he’s the best there is and that you’ll name a kid after him and he’ll be happy forever.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tulloch,” Kit said.

  Olivia put the keys in the box, the lid on, and handed it back to him. “It’s not worth it.”

  He laughed. “It’s a good Scottish name, but using it in the middle will be fine.

  “Christopher Tulloch Montgomery the Second might work.”

  When she groaned, he kissed her. They would have made love but Ace opened the door. Behind him was a sleepy Letty. As always, they’d thought she was home with her parents. All day the children had been quiet. They were worried about the wedding, afraid Olivia was going to leave them.

  “Kit is going away but I’m staying right here,” Olivia told them again.

  “You’re going to New York,” Letty said. They were standing at the foot of the bed.

  “No, I’m not.” Olivia opened her arms to them and they crawled up to her, Ace on one side, Letty on the other, Kit on the end.

  “I vote for a story,” Kit said.

  “With dragons,” Letty said.

  “And knights,” Ace said.

  “I guess I could tell you some about Khaleesi and her baby dragons.” All three of them snuggled against her.

  “Sorry, George,” Olivia whispered to the author, then began. “Once upon a time there was a beautiful young woman who was to marry a huge and terrifically gorgeous young man who wore black around his eyes but very little clothing. And he rode an enormous black stallion and was the ruler of a fierce tribe of more beautiful men and—”