After another few rolls, Catch peeled the crust from the table and dusted it with a shake of flour before draping it in the buttered pie dish. She pressed it into the corners with her wide thumbs, smoothing it up the walls and over the lip so the excess hung jagged-edged and thin around the rim.
“Then, when your mind is so full of those words you think it might burst, you dip your brush in some melted butter and write the words across the bottom of the pie.” She handed Rachel a small glass ramekin with a tablespoon or so of butter in it and said, “Put that in the microwave for eighteen seconds.”
Rachel obeyed. She watched the bowl spin in a lazy circle. She started to open the door when the butter bubbled and popped, but Catch’s bark of “Leave it!” had her jumping back.
“It’s not gonna bite you,” Catch said.
“No, but you might,” Rachel mumbled.
“Only if you mess up my pie.”
Rachel let the microwave beep three times and turn off before she pushed the door release button. She removed the butter. It spit at her, a few drops searing the back of her wrist. Setting it on the counter, she wiped her hand on the towel hanging from a drawer knob.
“So, now I just write it?”
“Now you write,” Catch said, sliding the pie dish toward her.
Holding the hot bowl in one hand, Rachel painted the words I wish Lola would keep my secrets. Her hand was steady as she wrote. The butter pooled on the surface until the words were unintelligible.
* * *
Rachel had been ignoring the worry niggling at the back of her mind as the pie baked. But when the oven timer wailed, she could no longer put off asking the question.
“How am I going to get Lola to eat this when it’s done?”
Catch passed the oven mitts to Rachel, not getting up from her stool. “If she’s already talking about you, she’s gonna be suspicious when you show up with a pie. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t throw it in your face.”
“So no words of wisdom or helpful tips from all your years of doing this?”
“You can’t force someone to eat it. But you can trick them, if your conscience can handle it.”
Rachel’s conscience already had so much weighing on it she wasn’t sure how much more it could take. But there really wasn’t another option.
Once she had the pie on the cooling rack, Rachel dropped back onto the seat next to Catch. She tapped her foot on the bottom rung of the stool. “What would I have to do?”
“You’d just have to give her the pie and let her think I’ve changed my mind about helping her.”
Rachel sat up straight, her foot slipping to dangle a few inches off the floor. “You want to use Ashe as bait?”
“In a broad sense of the word. But as he won’t actually be involved, I feel less bad about it,” Catch said. She wrapped one arm around her stomach like she had a stitch in her side and twisted to face Rachel.
Rachel mentally added it to the list of symptoms she’d seen Catch exhibit over the past few weeks. All together, they didn’t add up to anything good. But Catch had already released her grip and set her face in an expression that said she wouldn’t suffer any more questions about her health. So Rachel refocused on the problem at hand. “Would you really be okay doing that? Do you think she deserves that?”
“Either you want your secrets kept or you don’t, Miss-Doesn’t-Want-to-Get-Her-Hands-Dirty.”
“I do, it’s just—” Rachel started.
Catch hissed out a breath between lips pulled tight over her teeth. “Just nothing. I’m not saying I won’t get a little satisfaction out of lying to her, but it will get you the results you need. You’ve just got to convince her that to bind a secret that big she has to eat some of the pie too.”
It took a few more minutes of convincing before Rachel gave in. She still wasn’t comfortable lying to Lola, but as she couldn’t come up with an alternative, it was the best option she had. So she sat there while Catch called Lola and told her to come collect her “damn” pie.
When the soft rap of knuckles sounded on the front door less than an hour later, she shot a nervous glance at Catch and picked up the still-warm pie. The scent of rich chocolate and perfectly browned crust lingered in the kitchen. Light spilled from the lamp at the end of the driveway. The little bit that reached the porch made it hard for Rachel to see Lola’s face as she paced. Rachel slipped outside, forcing Lola to pull up short.
“I’m here to see Miss Sisson,” Lola said. She gathered her hair in her hands, twisting it into a thick knot like Mary Beth always did when she was nervous. She looked past Rachel into the house, her lips parted as if she couldn’t decide if she wanted to say something more.
“She sent me to bring this to you,” Rachel said, her voice shaking slightly. She held out the pie with a steady hand, but Lola didn’t take it.
“I’m doing fine, by the way. After you wished that I’d choke.”
“I didn’t wish that. I didn’t wish anything. And I’m sorry it happened.”
Lola’s eyes narrowed. “And I’m supposed to believe you?”
“I don’t care if you believe me. I’m just here to give you the pie, which Catch said you wanted.” Rachel stepped back toward the door, gripping the handle with her free hand. “But if not, I’m more than happy to leave you out here with your accusations while I take the pie back inside.”
“No, wait.”
Rachel dropped her hand and met Lola’s conflicted stare.
Lowering her eyes, Lola said, “I do want the pie. I know Miss Sisson doesn’t want to hear this, but will you please tell her thank you.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Lola took the dish, careful to avoid contact with Rachel. “I’m scared Ashe’s dad won’t eat a pie if I’m the one bringing it to him. Maybe I should find someone else to give it to him to make sure it works?”
Rachel jerked back and bumped into the door. The glass rattled in the quiet that stretched between her and Lola. No. His own father? “Please tell me he’s not—”
“Oh, my God.” Lola pressed a hand to her lips as if she could pull the words back in. Shame bloomed on her face a bright pink as she dropped her gaze to the porch. “Catch didn’t tell you, did she?”
“No, she didn’t.” When she thought it was just some random guy, Rachel could justify letting Lola think the secret would never come out. But Ashe’s dad? A secret that big was not something she wanted to be responsible for letting out. “And I can’t let you eat that.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not about Ashe,” Rachel said, guilt building hot and thick in her chest.
Lola’s eyes narrowed and she shifted the pie out of Rachel’s reach. The foil cover crackled as her fingers dug in tighter. “The hell it’s not. It’s not my fault Catch didn’t tell you what the pie was for, but you don’t get to take it back just because you don’t like that Ashe is involved.”
“I mean the pie won’t do what you think it will. It won’t help you with Ashe because Catch didn’t make it. I did. And I can’t let you eat it knowing that you think it’s for something else.”
“I should’ve known that’s not what this pie was for. But I thought maybe you’d convinced her to make sure Ashe didn’t find out. I saw the way he looked at you the other day. The way you looked at him. I thought maybe you cared enough about him to not want him to get hurt.”
Rachel leaned into the cool glass of the storm door behind her. She thought about how just hours before Ashe had kissed her, and she’d kissed him back. “I do care about him. And I’m sorry for letting you think the pie would help make things better with him.”
“You do realize that I could just wish for everything to go back to the way it was, for Ashe to forget what I’ve done and to love me again?” Lola said. She slid a hip onto the porch railing, balanced the pie next to her, and shook a cigarette out of a pack. Lighting it, she added, “And you’d have to make it come true.”
“I can’t just make things happ
en because people want them to, no matter what your sister said.”
“Mary Beth wouldn’t have told me that about you if it wasn’t true.”
She shouldn’t have told you at all. But that was back before she and Mary Beth only had each other to rely on. Back when Mary Beth still wanted her sister in her life. Rachel drummed her fingers against the storm door. “When exactly did she tell you all this? I thought you hadn’t talked to her in years.”
“It was one of the last times we talked. She seemed to be getting better so my parents let us talk on the phone once a week. It might have been a long time ago, but I still remember what she said.”
“How could that possibly be true?”
“If Catch can make secrets stay secret with pies, what’s to say you can’t make wishes come true?”
“Because it’s a crazy idea, Lola,” Rachel said, hoping she would see that. She turned away from Lola when the cigarette smoke blew into her face. “My crazy idea. Why do you think I was in therapy?”
“Same reason my sister was. You lost someone you loved and you couldn’t handle it.” Lola shrugged, taking another drag on her cigarette. “She told me about your brother and some of the things you would do for the other patients. You made Mary Beth’s nightmares go away.”
That was the one thing Mary Beth had ever outright wished for. At first she’d held fast to the belief that the wishes that came true for the other girls were just coincidences. But after months of waking up in a cold sweat from images of her best friend dying in the car crash—while Mary Beth, the driver, walked away with only a concussion and a few scratches—she’d finally whispered her wish to Rachel the next day in therapy. And Rachel had taken care of it, and Mary Beth.
“Just because those things happened doesn’t mean I had anything to do with them. I can’t do what you’re saying I can.”
“All right, then, I wish Ashe—” Lola said.
“No,” Rachel blurted. Even though she would have to read the wish for it to happen, she refused to take any chances where Ashe was concerned. She waved a hand through the smoke and thought she saw Lola suppress a smile. “Wait.”
“If you can’t make it come true, what does it matter if I say it?” Lola’s tone was condescending, her lips twisted into a smug smile.
Rachel took a deep breath to keep her voice from shaking. “It doesn’t,” she lied. “Say it if you want. But I won’t be responsible if anything bad happens. That’s all on you.” She hoped the threat of making things even worse between Lola and Ashe would keep Lola in line.
“I want Ashe to forgive me because he wants to. Not because I made him,” Lola said. She stubbed her cigarette out on the bottom of her shoe. “And just so you know, I didn’t say anything to make things hard for you. I just miss Ashe. And I miss my sister. And you’re the best chance I have of reconnecting with her.”
“So you thought you’d threaten me to get me to help you?”
“Not my finest hour, I admit. But seeing you with Ashe on top of realizing you got to spend months with my sister when I wasn’t allowed to just made me snap. I mean, what makes you so special that you get to be with the people I love?”
Nothing. Rachel knew that. She didn’t deserve them, but neither did Lola. “This isn’t really doing you any favors.”
“Just think about it.” Lola gave Rachel a sad smile, then strutted down the sidewalk to her car, leaving Rachel even more confused. It was easy to hate Lola when she was the cheating mean-girl she was used to seeing. Less so when she talked about missing Mary Beth.
The pie sat on the railing, untouched. Rachel snatched it up, wondering what in the hell she was going to do now.
19
Rachel held a lighter to the ring of shrink-wrap she’d slipped over the cap of a lotion bottle as a mother and daughter volleyed differing opinions back and forth. They argued about which scent would make the best sweet sixteen present for a friend, what made LUX products organic, and whether or not the daughter could go out with some boy named Tommy that weekend. No matter what the mom said, the girl responded in typical teenage fashion—contradictory for the sake of being contradictory.
“Telling me I’m wrong isn’t helping your cause,” the mother said. She held out a candle for her daughter to sniff. When the girl pinched her nose, she snapped the lid back on. “Don’t ask me about him again.”
The girl rolled her eyes, heavily lined in black, then stormed out of the shop, the bell clanging as the door slammed shut in her mom’s face. Shoving the candle back onto the shelf, the mother followed and jerked the girl to a stop when she caught up with her on the sidewalk. They faced each other, neither one ready to admit defeat.
Rachel heated another cylinder of plastic, shrinking it onto the lid of the lotion bottle as the argument she could no longer hear continued to rage outside. She kept expecting them to move somewhere more private—that’s what her mother always did whenever they had argued about Michael—but they remained in full view of anyone nearby.
Averting her gaze, she noticed a scrap of paper sandwiched between the clear layers of shrink-wrap on a bottle she had already sealed. She rotated the bottle to see what had accidentally gotten caught—and how she hadn’t noticed it before. The paper read Some days I really wish you weren’t my mother.
She didn’t have to hear the girl say the wish to know she was the one who had made it. The vehemence on the girl’s face as she stood with her arms crossed over her chest said it all.
Rachel flinched though it was already too late. Her elbow collided with the bottle of lotion she’d just sealed, which smacked into the bottle next to it, knocking them both to the floor. The glass shattered, dousing the air with the scents of juniper berries and lime as the lotion poured out.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed the wish not to come true. Don’t ruin this family. Please don’t ruin this family. She turned back to the window, knowing she could do nothing to stop it.
The mother’s expression had hardened, her lips pulling into a thin line. She responded to her daughter, words pouring out in a rush, then immediately clasped a hand over her mouth, her coral-colored fingernails bright against the sudden paleness of her cheeks. Whatever the wish compelled her to say to her daughter left her too stunned to move. She didn’t even reach for the girl, who backed up step by step until a few feet separated them. She didn’t move when her daughter turned and ran.
Rachel rubbed out the goose bumps on her arms. The woman’s confession must have been hurtful, but at least she was still there. Rachel hadn’t made her disappear.
Leaving the lotion to puddle around the shards of glass, she eased the door open and met the woman on the sidewalk. “Are you okay?” she asked.
The mother rounded on her, eyes shiny with tears and jaw clenched. “This is all your fault,” she said. She spun around to chase after her daughter, who was already halfway across the park, nearly running into Ashe and Jamie in her haste.
“Did something just happen?” Ashe asked. He skimmed his fingers over Rachel’s wrist where her pulse jumped, then led her back inside.
She couldn’t look at him. Didn’t want to see on his face what she’d seen on so many others. Disbelief. Fear. Blame.
“Just some long-buried secrets being blabbed because I happened to be in the vicinity when the daughter wished for something she shouldn’t have,” Rachel said, the guilt too fresh to be covered with a lie.
“She’s just upset, and after what happened with Lola you’re a convenient scapegoat.”
No matter how much she wanted it to be different, wishes didn’t come true around her for no reason. This was all her. She stuck her shaking hands into the front pocket of the apron.
“What’s going on?” Jamie asked, confused.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Okay.” He stretched the syllables out so the word hung in the air between them. When she didn’t elaborate, he said, “Well, then,” and raised an eyebrow at Ashe for an explanation that didn’t come.
Rachel turned her focus to the empty sidewalk for a few seconds, ignoring the part of her that yearned to confess everything and have Ashe tell her that what she could do with wishes was fairly normal by Nowhere standards. Then she spotted the slip of paper getting soggy in the pool of spilled lotion.
Normal people didn’t ruin total strangers’ lives.
* * *
Not ready to face anyone yet, Rachel walked through the yard instead of going inside when she got home from work. She wove between the trees, stopping only when she reached the decaying plum tree at the back of the lot. She held her breath against the stench emanating from its corpse. The cracked, crispy leaves had finally fallen off. The spindly branches were broken and hung at odd angles like dislocated joints. She snapped one off. The gritty bark stuck to her hand, and she flicked it to the ground, then scratched at the brown flakes clinging to her skin. She glared at the plum tree as if she could speed up its demise by sheer will.
She jumped when someone banged on Catch’s back door in a series of angry raps. Hugging the back side of the trees, Rachel crept closer, unseen.
The mother of the girl whose wish Rachel had made come true a few hours before crossed her arms over her chest and kept her eyes trained on the kitchen through the window. She straightened her shoulders, then took a step back when Catch appeared a moment later.
“You said my secret was safe. That there was no way Genevieve would ever find out. You promised me,” the woman said, her voice catching on the last few words.
Catch slapped a palm on the door casing, blocking the entrance. “Now hold on there, Delia. I told you the same as everyone else who comes to me for help. The secret is always yours to tell. I have no control over what you do or don’t say.”
“But I didn’t want to tell her! The words just came out without my permission. Like that girl used a wish to control my body and made me say things before I could stop myself.”
The Secret Ingredient of Wishes Page 15
