Summer of Two Wishes

by Julia London

  “And you’re not doing a damn thing to get your life back,” Brodie said. He slammed a cabinet door shut and stared pointedly at Finn. “Remember what you said in Germany? You said you couldn’t wait to get home and get on with it.”

  Honestly, Finn could hardly remember Germany any more. Everything but the moment he was living in had begun to fade into nothingness. Frankly, he liked it that way—it kept him numb and blind. He didn’t have to think. “I’ve done some work around the folks’ place—”

  “You fixed a fence, Finn. And I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about Two Wishes.”

  “I need money to get that up and running.”

  “Then get a job! Look, I’m going to be blunt,” Brodie said, and took the broom from Finn so he would focus on him. “You’ve got to get your shit together. I did a little asking around, and I found this guy in Austin who runs a therapy group—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Finn snapped, and walked away from his brother into the kitchen.

  “Finn, listen to me—you’ve got some classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress—”

  “Brodie, don’t be an idiot—”

  “—and this guy is doing some amazing work with guys coming back from the war.”

  Finn braced himself on the kitchen counter and worked to draw a steadying breath. “I don’t have that,” he snapped. “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve got it or not, I’m just saying you’re not you and obviously, you could use some help.”

  “I don’t need help,” Finn said again, and closed his eyes. His blood was pumping hard in his neck. It felt like his head could blow off his shoulders at any moment.

  “So, what, you’re going to hang out with Mom and Dad for the rest of your life, drinking beer?”

  “Get off my back.”

  “Mom and Dad aren’t in a position to take care of you forever. Dad needs back surgery, did you know that? And what about the ranch, anyway? What about getting some horses? Luke told me just a couple of days ago he’s got a pair of rescued horses that have been neglected and could use a place. Whatever it is, just do something, and for God’s sake, stop moping around about Macy—”

  With blood roaring in Finn’s ears, something detonated inside him. He angrily swiped at some canisters on the kitchen counter and sent them crashing to the floor. He whirled around and kicked with all his might at the refrigerator, and still the roaring did not stop. Brodie grabbed his shoulders and tried to shove him up against the wall, but Finn was too quick and too strong for his little brother; he managed to twist around, shove Brodie against the wall, and hold him there with his arm across his throat.

  “Let me go, Finn,” Brodie said angrily.

  His green eyes were blazing with anger and pain, and the roaring began to subside in Finn. Appalled by what he’d just done, he jerked away from Brodie. “Brodie, I—”

  “Get out of my house before I call the cops.” Brodie’s face was red with fury.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn said. “Man, I am so sorry.”

  Brodie’s response was to point at the door.

  With his head down, Finn walked out. He opened the door to his truck and was climbing in when Brodie appeared on the back stoop. “Hold up!” he barked, and strode to Finn’s truck. He thrust his hand toward Finn; he held a yellow scrap of paper between his fingers. “Take it,” he said.

  Finn took the paper; Brodie pivoted sharply and strode back to his house, slamming the kitchen door on his way in. Finn opened the paper. In Brodie’s scribble it read, Dr. Ed Rock 442–6944. Finn shoved the paper in his pocket and got in his truck. He wasn’t going to go see some goddam shrink.

  He drove out of town and pulled onto the highway in the direction of Dallas, and thought, Dallas…why not? There sure wasn’t anything keeping him here.

  28

  Macy was shaking when she left Arbolago Hills.

  Honestly, she wished she could leave Cedar Springs for a time, go some place where Finn and Wyatt didn’t exist, where she could be alone with her thoughts and only her thoughts. Not her mom’s, not Sam’s, not Emma’s, not Laru’s.

  “Hey,” she muttered, “that’s not a bad idea.” She was not the sort to run from her problems—at least she didn’t think she was—but she’d never had problems quite on this grand scale. Running seemed like the only viable solution. She would leave Cedar Springs, give herself time to recover from the extraordinary events of the last few weeks, get over this stupid morning sickness emotional roller coaster thing, and decide what to do in a calm and rational manner.

  Macy was so convinced that was what she must do, in fact, that when she reached Laru’s, she ran inside to pack a few things.

  In the guest room, she paused only long enough to check the mail she’d picked up at home to make sure she wasn’t leaving something behind that needed her attention. She quickly flipped through some bills and then saw an envelope from Hill Country Weavers. “Great. I’ve probably been axed from the program there, too,” she muttered, and ripped open the envelope.

  In the envelope was a note from Eliza, the instructor. Macy, she wrote, I admit I’ve always been a bit of an Anglophile. I’ve been intrigued by your project and did a little research I thought you might find interesting. We look forward to seeing you back in class. Fondly, Eliza.

  Behind the note were pages printed off the Internet. It was a census of Cedar County conducted in 1848. The census listed three hundred inhabitants, their marital status, their parents’ names, and the places of their birth. If they didn’t hail from Texas, they most likely hailed from Arkansas or Tennessee. But there, in the middle of the roster, was a pair of Lockharts.

  Duncan Lockhart, the entry read, born 1818 at Eilean Ros, Scotland. Parents, Liam and Ellen Lockhart. Wife, Glenna Lockhart, born 1820, Aberfeldy, Scotland. Property owned: two mules, twenty-four heifers, forty cows, one bull, one section plus two hundred acres.

  Macy tried to imagine how hard the journey from Scotland must have been for them. She wondered why they had come, if they had been running from something or to something. Just seeing their names made her think of Finn and the sacrifice he’d made, of his unflinching, unselfish bravery. The tears—the stupid, blinding tears that seemed to follow her everywhere of late—welled up and her vision began to blur. She gasped for breath at the same moment her knees buckled. Macy grabbed onto the dresser to keep from pitching to the ground and sank down to her knees.

  “Macy!” she heard Laru cry. “Are you all right?”

  She wasn’t all right—she was fractured, splitting into a million little pieces of herself and the person she thought she once was. To her horror, Macy began to sob.

  She felt Laru’s strong arms envelop her. Laru held Macy as she cried, rocking back and forth, her chin on Macy’s head. How long Macy cried, she had no idea, but when the well had at last dried, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked at Laru.

  “Ugh,” Laru said with a grimace at the sight of Macy’s face and handed her a box of tissues from the dresser.

  “Thanks,” Macy said tearfully.

  “Should I call Jilly?”

  “God, no, please,” Macy said wearily.

  Laru frowned as she pushed Macy’s hair from her face. “I won’t, but on one condition. You must see a doctor as soon as possible.”

  “Yeah,” Macy said with a sheepish smile. “I could use some sleeping pills. Or something.”

  “I’m not talking about sleeping pills, Macy. I’m talking about an OB/GYN. The sooner you see one, the sooner you know when you conceived and when you are due. You can’t figure out the rest of your life until you know that.”

  Macy’s eyes widened. “Did Jesse tell you?” she asked angrily, pausing in the wiping of her nose. “He promised he wouldn’t tell you!”

  “Excuse me?” Laru shot back. “Jesse knows you’re pregnant?”

  “Oh God,” Macy muttered. “You mean he didn’t tell you? Wait—how do you know?”

&
nbsp; “No, he didn’t tell me, and I will find out later why he knew and I didn’t. I know because of the morning sickness and the raging hormones and the fact that you left the packaging for the pregnancy test on top of the trash.”

  “Ohmigod,” Macy moaned. “I can’t do anything right!”

  “Your inability to hide your secrets notwithstanding, you need to see a doctor,” Laru said again. “For the baby’s sake and for the sake of knowing who—”

  “It’s Wyatt’s!” Macy cried.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Laru.”

  “Still—”

  “I know, I know,” Macy said, throwing up a hand as she sagged against the dresser. “I’m not prepared for this. Not six weeks ago, Wyatt and I decided to try, but my God, I never thought it would happen so easily! Finn and I tried to have a baby for two whole damn years and nothing happened. I wish we had—God, I wish we had. If we’d had a baby, he never would have left, he never would have died!” The damn tears started to drip again. She squeezed her eyes shut and put the tissue to her eyes. “I love Finn more than…more than anything. But I also love Wyatt and I may be carrying his baby. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Laru said, shifting to sit beside Macy, propped against the dresser, too. “It may seem impossible now, but it’s not. As you get older you’ll figure out that life is just one damn thing after another, and you won’t even be able to remember if this damn thing happened before or after another damn thing.”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” Macy said sullenly.

  “I know you’ll make the right decision for you and the baby,” Laru continued. “But the first thing you have to do is go and see a doctor. I have a friend who is an OB/GYN in Austin. Her name is Debbie Schuler. I will call her today and ask her to get you in as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” Macy said, grateful that Laru was handling it.

  Laru smiled and wiped mascara from Macy’s cheek. “One piece of friendly advice. If I were you, I wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone until you’re sure. That’s something else you learn as you get older—adding gasoline to a fire is rarely a good idea.”

  Wyatt couldn’t stay in the house after that argument with Macy—the place still had her vibe, her scent. He headed back to his office, noticing for the first time how many of the yellow ribbons adorned cars in his part of the country. Seemed like everyone was related to a soldier. Not him. He thought it was a sad testament to his life that he had nothing substantial but his work and his wife.

  For some reason, that had seemed okay to Wyatt until now. He’d been raised an only child and was used to making his own way. He felt pathetically lonely right now. He wasn’t even that close to his parents. They’d been driving around the country in a massive RV for years and his conversations with them were superficial: How’s the weather, how ’bout them Cowboys, etc. Nor did he have any close friends he could call. His buddies were mainly golf buddies, not the sort of friends he would burden with this. The next best thing he had was Linda Gail and her husband, and Wyatt would hardly call them friends, really.

  Although it was nearly 4 PM, Wyatt spotted Caroline Spalding’s Mercedes parked outside his office. When he walked into the office, she was standing next to Linda Gail’s desk. “Well, hello, Wyatt. I was just going to leave you a note.”

  “Hello, Caroline. How are you?”

  “Good! Hey, I had an idea. When I close on the land my dad left me, I thought I might buy something closer to Austin. You know, something I could build on. Do you have anything you could show me?”

  Wyatt didn’t think today was the best time for him to do so, but Caroline seemed the perfect diversion from a pretty rotten day thus far. “I think I’ve got something. Can you give me thirty minutes?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll just wait outside.” She smiled at Linda Gail as she went out.

  Wyatt watched her walk out to her car. He turned and saw Linda Gail busily typing something, her back very straight and stiff.

  He couldn’t help himself. Perhaps it was because he needed a friend right now more than he’d ever needed one in his life, or perhaps it was because he and Linda Gail were closer than he gave them credit for being. Whatever it was, something made him blurt, “I’m losing her.”

  Linda Gail looked up, surprised. “Caroline?” She snorted. “Honey, you’re a big fat whale and she is reeling you in like a champion fisherman.”

  “Not Caroline! I’m losing Macy,” he said. “I’m losing her, Linda Gail, I can feel it. And I don’t want to lose her.”

  Linda Gail blinked. Slowly, she stood up. “Bless your heart, Wyatt. But you’re going to have to fight for her,” she said, almost as if she’d been expecting this conversation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you are going to have to court her like she’s never been courted before.”

  That was the best advice Linda Gail could offer? “I sent her flowers a couple of times last week.”

  Linda Gail shook her head. “That’s not what I mean, Wyatt. This isn’t you trying to dig out of the doghouse. You’re in way deeper than that.”

  Not exactly comforting news.

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong, that’s a good start,” Linda Gail hastily added. “But you’ve got to court her. You’ve got to make her think she’s the only woman you would go to the ends of the earth for, and that you are there for her right now, because she’s going through the worst crisis of her life. If there is one thing a woman wants in a time of crisis, it’s a man who can and will stand up with her. She doesn’t need another problem; she needs support and protection.”

  Wyatt had no idea how to make Macy feel supported and protected. He thought he’d already done that. “She knows that,” he said uncertainly.

  “I can promise you she doesn’t know which way is up right now.”

  He could believe that much was true. “Tell me what to do, Linda Gail,” he said hopelessly. “I don’t know what to do.”

  29

  The next morning, when Karen discovered that Finn hadn’t come home the night before, she started calling around, looking for him. When she finally got Brodie on the phone, he told her what had happened.

  Karen panicked. “Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t know, Mom. Don’t care,” Brodie said curtly. “I gave him the name of a doctor in Austin. The rest is up to Finn.”

  “But we can’t just leave him out there somewhere!” Karen cried.

  “What are we supposed to do, track him down and haul him in?” Brodie said irritably. “He might as well have stayed in Afghanistan if you’re going to keep that tight a rein on him.”

  Rick said basically the same thing. So did Lucas, her oldest. Even Reverend Duffy told her not to panic.

  It was too late for that. Karen called Macy Clark. Of course, she had to try two or three different numbers before she finally tracked her down at Laru Friedenberg’s. If Karen’s opinion of Macy could be lowered any more, it was then. Karen thought Laru was about as loose as any woman she’d ever heard of. She ought to be living in Austin with the rest of the hippies and leave Cedar Springs to good, decent folk.

  And Laru didn’t try and warm up to her, that was certain. But she at least gave the phone to Macy.

  “Hello, Macy,” Karen said primly when Macy answered the phone. “I am trying to find my son. Have you seen him?”

  “Finn?”

  Granted, Karen had three sons, but she really wouldn’t be calling Macy to ask about Brodie or Luke, would she, now? “Yes, Finn. He didn’t come home last night and I am trying to find him. When is the last time you saw him?” There was a very pregnant pause on the other end of the line. “Macy? What are you hiding?” Karen demanded.

  “I’m thinking, Karen, I’m not hiding anything!”

  “If you’d thought a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we?” Karen snapped. Macy gasped. Rick, who was sitting in the other lounge
r watching baseball on TV, glared at her.

  “What do you mean by that?” Macy asked.

  “Why don’t you just let him go, Macy? It’s obvious he’s all twisted up over you, but you married Wyatt Clark just as soon as you could, and you aren’t doing Finn any favors now by dragging this out. He could get on with his life if you’d let it go.”

  “For God’s sake, Karen,” Rick muttered.

  “Am I wrong?” Karen asked him. “I don’t care if it makes Macy upset! I want what is best for my son!”

  “When I married Wyatt, you gave me your blessing,” Macy said, her voice shaking. “If I’d thought for one single moment that Finn might be alive, I would never have married Wyatt, and you know that, Karen. You know how much I loved Finn.”

  “That’s what I’m saying! You loved him. I am asking you to love him now and just end this so he can get on with his life! And I say that hoping it’s not too late!”

  “I am going to hang up now,” Macy said, her voice even lower.

  “If you hear from him, you tell him to call me, Macy!” Karen cried. “You tell him to call me, because I am worried sick about him, and I don’t want to lose my son again! I will not lose my son again, do you hear me? I will fight with everything that I’ve got to keep from losing my son again!”

  The line was dead, she knew. But she didn’t realize the tears were streaming down her face until Rick handed her a tissue and put his arm around her. “He’s all right, Karen. You’ve got to stop worrying like this. Finn’s all right. You’re not going to lose him again.”

  Easy for Rick to say. He didn’t have that dream every night, the one where someone came to her door to tell her Finn was dead again.

  When Finn called later that afternoon to let her know he was okay, Karen let him have it.