Twenty Wishes

Melissa was waiting for her as she came out of the stall and handed her a dampened paper towel. Tears had forged wet trails down the younger woman’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry…I shouldn’t have told you. I…I had no idea what else to do.”

Anne Marie held the cold, wet towel to her face with both hands. Shock, betrayal, outrage—all these emotions bombarded her with such force she didn’t know which one to react to first.

“I should’ve talked to Brandon,” Melissa whispered, leaning against the wall. She slid down until she was in a crouching position. “I shouldn’t have told you…I shouldn’t have told you.”

A waitress came into the ladies’ room. “Is everything all right?” she asked, looking concerned. “The manager asked me to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with your dinner.”

As Melissa straightened, Anne Marie tried to reassure the woman that this had nothing to do with the food. “We’re fine. It wasn’t the soup…it’s nothing to worry about.”

“There’ll be no charge for your dinners.”

“No, please. I’ll pay.” The anger had begun to fortify her now, and she washed her hands with a grim determination that was sure to kill any potential germs.

Melissa waited for her by the washroom door, following her back to the table. Anne Marie scooped up her purse and slapped two twenty-dollar bills down on the table. That should more than cover their soup and coffee. Like a stray puppy, her stepdaughter trailed her outside, a foot or two behind.

The rain had begun in earnest by then and was falling so hard large drops bounced on the sidewalk. Anne Marie flattened herself against the side of the building while she struggled to comprehend what she’d heard. It seemed impossible. Unbelievable.

It couldn’t be right. Robert would never risk getting Rebecca pregnant. Even the one night they’d spent together—She froze. They hadn’t used protection. She’d told him she was off her birth control pills and it was as if it no longer mattered to him. His lack of concern had thrilled Anne Marie. She saw it as the first crack in his stubborn unwillingness to accept her need for a baby.

“Anne Marie…” Melissa choked out her name. The tears ran down her stepdaughter’s face, mingling with the rain. Her hair hung in wet clumps but she didn’t seem to notice. “Someone needs to talk to Rebecca—to ask her…”

“Not me.”

“I can’t,” Melissa wailed.

“Why not?” she asked. “What difference does it make now?”

“If the baby’s Dad’s, then…then it’s related to me. And if that baby really is Dad’s, then…I have to know. I’ve got a right to know.”

Anne Marie wondered if Robert’s daughter would have been as tolerant toward a child she might have had. “Did Rebecca—did she have a boy or a girl?”

“A boy.”

The pain was as searing as a hot poker against her skin. It took her a moment to find her voice. “If the child is Robert’s, why hasn’t Rebecca said anything?”

“I…I don’t know,” Melissa whispered. “I shouldn’t have told you….”

“You wanted to hurt me,” Anne Marie said coldly.

“No!” Melissa’s denial was instantaneous.

“There’s no love lost between us.” Anne Marie had no illusions about her stepdaughter’s motives. “You don’t like me. You never have. All these years you’ve been trying to get back at me, to punish me, and now you have.”

Not bothering to deny the accusation, Melissa buried her face in her hands and started to weep uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Anne Marie wanted to turn her back on Robert’s daughter and walk away. But she couldn’t bear to hear Melissa weep. Even though she was the one Robert had betrayed, Anne Marie reached for his daughter and folded her arms around Melissa.

The two women clung together, hardly aware of the people scurrying by.

Anne Marie’s reserve broke apart and the pain of Robert’s betrayal came over her in an explosive, unstoppable rush. She wept as she never had before, even at Robert’s funeral. Her shoulders heaved and the noisy, racking sobs consumed her.

Then it was Melissa who was holding her, comforting her. After all the years of looking for common ground with her stepdaughter, Anne Marie had finally found it.

In her husband’s betrayal.

Chapter 5

Barbie Foster stood in line at the movie theater multiplex, waiting to purchase a ticket, preferably for a comedy. She needed a reason to laugh. Her day had started early when she opened Barbie’s, her dress shop, two blocks off Blossom Street. The shop was high-end, exclusive and very expensive. Her clientele were women who could easily afford to drop four figures on a dress. Barbie made sure they got their money’s worth, providing advice, accessories and free alterations. She had a number of regular customers who counted on her for their entire wardrobes. Her own sense of style had served her well.

She didn’t want to sound conceited, but Barbie was aware that she was an attractive woman. Since Gary’s death, she’d received no shortage of attention from the opposite sex. Men wanted a woman like her on their arm—and, she suspected, they wanted her money. Barbie, however, wasn’t easily swayed by flattery. She’d been happy in her marriage and had loved her husband. At this point in her life she wasn’t willing to settle for mere companionship or, heaven forbid, no-strings sex. She wanted love. She longed for a man who’d treat her like a princess the way Gary had. Her friends told her that was a dated attitude; Barbie didn’t care. Unfortunately there weren’t many princes around these days.

She’d married young. In retrospect she recognized how fortunate she’d been in finding Gary. She’d had no real life experience, so the fact that she’d met a really wonderful man and fallen in love with him was pure luck. He was ten years her senior; at thirty, he’d had a wisdom beyond his years and a great capacity for love, for loyalty. He’d been working for her father at the time and came to the house often. She’d had a crush on him that developed into genuine love, although it took her a few years to recognize just how genuine it was. At nineteen, she always made sure she happened to be around whenever he stopped by, and enjoyed parading through the house to the pool—in her bikini, of course. She still smiled at the way Gary had looked in every direction except hers.

They’d married when she was twenty-one, with her father’s blessing and, surprisingly perhaps, her mother’s. She got pregnant the first week of their honeymoon. When she’d delivered identical twin sons, Gary had been over the moon. The pregnancy had been difficult, however, and he’d insisted the two boys were family enough.

The twins, Eric and Kurt, filled their lives and they were idyllically happy. Not that she and Gary didn’t have their share of differences and arguments, but they forgave each other quickly and never confused disagreement with anger. Their household had been calm, orderly, contented. The plane crash ended all that. Barbie had always been close to her sons, but following the tragic deaths, of Gary and her father, the three of them were closer than ever. They helped one another through their grief, and even now they talked almost every day.

Encouraged by her mother and sons, a year after Gary’s death Barbie started her own business. The dress shop helped take her mind off her loneliness and gave her purpose. Her sons were eighteen and growing increasingly independent. They’d be on their own soon. As it happened, they were attending colleges on the opposite side of the country. Swallowing her natural instinct to hold on to her children, she flew out to Boston and New York with her sons, got them settled in their respective schools and then flew home. She’d wept like a baby throughout the entire five-hour flight back to the West Coast.

Her house seemed so empty without the boys—her house and her life. She’d never felt more alone than she had since last September when she’d accompanied Kurt and Eric to their East Coast schools. Thankfully, though, they’d both come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

She’d kept herself occupied with the shop, but the Valentine’s get-together with the other widows had revealed a different kind of opportunity. Barbie had begun to compose her list of Twenty Wishes, hoping to discover a new objective, some new goal to pursue. Her mother had leaped at this idea with an enthusiasm she hadn’t shown in years, and if for no other reason, Barbie had followed suit. They often did things together and, in fact, her mother was Barbie’s best friend.

The line moved. Barbie approached the teenage cashier and handed her a ten-dollar bill.

“Which movie?”

Barbie smiled at her. “You decide. Preferably a comedy.”

The girl searched her face. “There are three or four showing. You don’t care which one?”

“Not really.” All Barbie wanted to do was escape reality for the next two hours.

The teenager took her money and a single ticket shot up, which she gave Barbie, along with her change. “Theater number twelve,” she instructed. “The movie starts at four twenty-five.”

Although she wasn’t hungry, the instant Barbie stepped into the lobby, the scent of popcorn made her mouth water. She purchased a small bag and a soft drink, then headed for the-ater number twelve.

The previews were underway, and Barbie quickly located a seat in a middle row. She settled down with her popcorn and drink, dropping her purse in the empty seat beside her.

Glancing about, Barbie saw nothing but couples, most of them older and presumably retired. She nibbled on her popcorn and all at once her throat went dry. The entire world seemed to be made up of people in love. She envied the other women in the audience their long-lasting relationships, their forever loves, which was what she and Gary should have had. She wanted another chance. She was attractive, well-off, a nice person—and alone. Falling in love again was first on her list of wishes. But she didn’t want another relationship unless she could find a man like Gary and there didn’t seem to be many of those.

Until the other widows had started talking about those stupid wishes, Barbie’s life had seemed to be trudging along satisfactorily enough. Her mother’s list was nearly complete. Not Barbie’s. She’d written down a few things besides falling in love. She wanted to learn how to belly dance. She and Gary had seen a belly dance performance during a brief stopover in Cairo years before and she’d been intrigued by the sensuous, feminine movements. She’d listed something else, too. She wanted to go snorkeling in Hawaii and shopping in Paris and sightseeing in London—all of which she’d done with Gary and enjoyed. But she didn’t want to do them alone.

At the moment, her desire to fall in love again seemed an illusion beyond her grasp. But she wasn’t exactly looking for a relationship. If she truly wanted to love and be loved, she had to be receptive to love, open to it, willing to risk the pain of loss.

She shook her head, telling herself there was no point in believing that a man might one day love her the way Gary had. Love her. Not her money, not her beauty. Her.

All of a sudden tears welled in her eyes and she dashed them angrily away. She didn’t have a thing to cry about. Not a single, solitary thing. Dozens of women, hundreds of them, would envy her life. She had no money problems, her children were responsible adults, and at forty she didn’t look a day over thirty. The tears made no sense whatsoever, and yet there was no denying them.