Heartwishes (35 page)

Tris didn’t say anything as he led her to a powder room just off the hallway. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a little plastic cup. “Urine sample,” he said.

“Sure. To check for food poisoning, right?”

“To find out what caused you to throw up. See that room?” He pointed to a door she’d not noticed before. “I’ll be in there.” He closed the bathroom door.

As Gemma did what he’d told her to, she tried hard not to think. Of course it was some stomach virus. They were always going around, weren’t they?

By the time she finished and left the powder room, she was shaking. Tris, wearing his white coat, was standing in the doorway of the room he’d pointed out to her. It had been set up as an exam room.

“It’s smart to have this in your house,” she said, and she knew her voice sounded nervous. “Do you get many patients out here?”

“Some. Gemma, I want you to sit down there and take some deep breaths. Use what you learned in training and calm yourself down.”

“Sure,” she said as she watched him pick up the cup and leave the room.

She knew he was gone only minutes, but it seemed like hours. She looked about the little room and tried to use her historian’s brain to make a story out of what she saw. The exam table looked old, and she wondered if Tris’s father had bought it back in the 1950s. Against the wall was a tall metal cabinet with glass doors and it also looked old.

She told herself to get up and go look at it, but her legs didn’t seem to work. And her curiosity failed to elicit any response from her.

When Tris opened the door, Gemma was sitting just where he’d left her, and she looked up at him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked in what she figured was the voice he used with his patients.

“Food poisoning?” she whispered.

“Gemma . . .” he began, and she saw the answer on his face.

She put her hands over her face. “I’m not ready for this,” she whispered. “I have a job. I hardly know Colin.”

Tris put his hand on her shoulder. “How about some tea and toast? I’d offer crackers, but I don’t have any.” When Gemma didn’t
move, he bent and helped her up. “Come back to the living room and we’ll talk.”

Minutes later, they were sitting on his couch and Gemma was trying to eat the toast Tris had made for her, but whatever went down wanted to come back up. He’d removed his white coat and was once again her friend.

“A baby?” Gemma said. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. Tomorrow I’m going to give you some prenatal vitamins, and I’ll get you an ob-gyn. Under the circumstances I don’t think I should . . .”

“Yeah,” she said. “That could get in the way of friendship.” She looked at him, and what she was feeling was in her eyes. “What do I do? How do I tell Colin?”

Tris put his hand on hers. “Gemma, if you don’t want this, I can arrange an abortion. No one but you and me need ever know that this happened.”

She jerked her hand from his. “I never want to hear anything like that again!”

“Good,” he said, and for the first time, he grinned. He took her hand again. “Gemma, everything will be fine. I’ve known Colin all my life, and he’ll do whatever you want.”

“You mean make an honest woman out of me?” she said and there was disgust in her voice. “I’ve always wanted a man to feel like he
had
to marry me.”

“If Colin weren’t madly in love with you, he would never marry you, but he would take care of you financially.”

“He is not in love with me!”

“You think not?” Tris got up to get her more tea. “I’ve never in my life seen Colin act obsessed as he does around you. Even when we were kids, he was always the steady one. When one of us would come up with some harebrained scheme, the others would agree
to go along with it, but not Colin. He never cared if everyone was against him but always had his own values.”

“He took a job from his father that he hated.”

“Colin has a very, very strong sense of family.”

“Jean . . .”

“That was purely physical and Colin was dazzled by her,” Tris said as he filled a mug with hot water.

Gemma looked glum. “If Jean is dazzling, what am I? The bland, boring consolation prize?”

“You are love,” Tris said as he put milk in her tea and took it to her.

“But we’ve known each other a very short time.”

“You’re right,” Tris said as he sat down beside her. “It’s a known fact that in order to fall in love, you have to know a man two-point-six-eight years.”

Gemma couldn’t laugh. “What am I going to do? This isn’t what I planned for my life. I wanted to wait until my dissertation was finished, until after I had a good job.
Then
I was going to look for a man to spend my life with.” She looked at him. “But Mrs. Frazier wanted grandchildren so she wished for them.”

“You don’t think unprotected sex had anything to do with it?” Tris asked.

Gemma groaned. “I’d rather think this was caused by magic than by my own stupidity.”

Tris laughed. “Okay, it’s getting late. I’m going to drive you home. Tomorrow I’ll get your car to you and I’ll bring you some vitamins. Let me know as soon as you tell Colin, and I’ll get Rachel to help with your diet. You need to eat well.”

When he helped her to stand up, she looked at him. “A baby?”

“That’s right. A big, happy Frazier baby. Wonder what he’ll wish for when he grows up?”

“Don’t remind me.” She started toward the door, Tris close beside her. “I guess we know why the wishes were activated. Your niece pulled the lead away from the Stone and the genie escaped.”

“Guess so,” Tris said. “Have you thought of any baby names yet?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Colin is my friend as well as my cousin, and I was dreading the day he’d come to me and say that he and Jean were going to get married. I always wondered if I’d be able to pretend that I was happy for him. But now he’s had the good sense to . . .”

“I know,” Gemma said. “You don’t have to say it.” They were at Tris’s car and he helped her into the passenger seat. “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”

“I would never reveal the secrets of a patient or a friend. Until you personally tell me it’s okay, I won’t say a word. Buckle up. You have two people to worry about now.”

23

G
EMMA THOUGHT SHE
wouldn’t sleep much after Tris left her at the guesthouse, but she did. In fact, she fell across the bed and was asleep in an instant. When she awoke early the next morning, the first thing she thought of was that when she’d first arrived in Edilean she’d so much wanted to belong to the place. Had that been a wish from her heart? Had Nell’s blinking necklace “heard” her? Had it known that she was destined to be a Frazier by marriage? Colin’s grandfather said the wishes included “ladies.” So maybe the Stone did include wives. In that case, she thought she should call Ariel in California and tell her to take a pregnancy test.

Gemma lay in bed and ran her hand over her flat stomach. She couldn’t imagine it growing with a child. But according to Dr. Tris, that was just what was about to happen.

She put her hands behind her head and looked at the ceiling. So now what happened? she wondered. Of course the first thing was to tell Colin.

On the other hand, what if he did what Tris had hinted at and
asked her to marry him out of a sense of duty? What kind of marriage would that be if he spent his life feeling that he’d been forced—or tricked—into marriage?

Gemma got up and as she showered, the idea that she was expecting a baby seemed like a fantasy. She didn’t feel in the least ill, and wasn’t there supposed to be morning sickness? She put her hand on her stomach. “Are you so determined to be different that you’re going to make me ill in the evenings?”

She got out of the shower, dressed, ate a solid, good-for-you breakfast, and started to work. She was writing about what she’d found out about the first Shamus Frazier, and as she wrote, she nearly forgot her life-changing news. In the quiet of the library, she could put aside her concerns about her future.

At one point, she couldn’t resist looking at what was possibly the Heartwishes Stone. It was such a small thing, a little oval cage, no bigger than the tip of her little finger, and inside was the tiny rock that glistened when she held it up to the sunlight. Could this little object really and truly grant wishes?

Even though she told herself it was wrong, she clasped it in the palm of her hand and said, “I wish that my baby lives a long and happy life.” She opened her hand to see if the Stone was changing color as it had when Nell had it around the neck of her teddy bear, but the necklace was the same.

“This is ridiculous,” she said as she put it back in its lead case, and closed the top of the compact. As she’d told Tris, she put it in the little basket that was near the bathroom sink and held her other cosmetics. It was hidden in plain sight.

That afternoon young Shamus showed up at her door. She didn’t get up to open it, just motioned for him to come in. He went directly to the kitchen and made a couple of sandwiches for them, then sat down to draw.

They had developed a routine where they said little to each other, and she knew that Shamus liked the silence that usually surrounded her. She’d seen that the inside of the Frazier house was more turbulent, more active, than she liked, so maybe it was the same for him.

“I’m going to have a quiet child,” she said, then glanced up at Shamus. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he didn’t seem to have heard. He just kept sketching on his big pad.

Later, she nodded toward his wooden art box on the table. Gray duct tape was all along the bottom, and it was very ugly. “Why don’t you leave that here and I’ll see if I can fix it?”

He nodded once but didn’t look up. Whatever he was drawing today was certainly absorbing.

She went back to trying to put her copious notes into a readable form. Twice she found herself looking at the names of the family she was writing about. The Fraziers seemed to love to stick to the old names, but she couldn’t bear to saddle her child with “Peregrine.” And what about the girls? Would Alea want her to name the child Prudence? Gemma reassured herself by remembering that Mrs. Frazier had named her daughter Ariel.

As Gemma was musing over this, Shamus left, raising his hand in farewell, and closing the door after him. She saw that he’d left his art case behind, and peeping out from under it was a piece of paper. Since Shamus rarely let anyone see his drawings, Gemma was overcome with curiosity. Getting up, she went to the coffee table. When she picked the drawing up, what she saw so jolted her that she sat down heavily on the couch.

Shamus had drawn Gemma sitting under a big tree like the one at Merlin’s Farm, and she was reading. She looked absolutely absorbed in her book, oblivious to her surroundings. It would have been a completely accurate portrait except that there were three
little boys, each one the spitting image of Colin, near her. One was swinging by his hands from a low tree branch. The second one was wearing a sheriff’s badge and cowboy boots, and looking like he was about to arrest the boy in the tree. The third one, wearing a diaper that looked decidedly soggy, had constructed an obstacle course of rocks and twigs, and was running four tiny cars over it.

Gemma could only stare at the picture in open-mouthed astonishment. But then, she leaned back on the couch and couldn’t help laughing, as the drawing looked very true to life. She could envision herself in just such a position, absorbed in her reading as her children occupied themselves.

“Whatever made him draw this?” she whispered, and remembered her comment about having a “quiet child.” It seemed that he had combined that with Mrs. Frazier’s very vocal desires for grandchildren, and Mr. Frazier’s frequent statements about wanting a child to inherit the ancestors’ passion for wheels. Add to it that Gemma kept her hand protectively on her stomach most of the time and that she went to the bathroom every few minutes, and it looked like Shamus had figured out her secret. In a single picture, he had put his parents’ Heartwishes with what Gemma had accidently told.

Gemma carefully stored the drawing in a portfolio and went back to work, but every half hour or so, she’d look up, smile, and shake her head in wonder.

At six, she received a text message from Colin and her heart leaped. So this is what it’s like to be in love, she thought, then told herself she was being silly. It was too soon for that. But then, wouldn’t it be better if she were in love with the father of her child?

Could you meet me asap at Merlin’s Farm by the summerhouse? Mike and Sara aren’t here. It’s just us.

Gemma could feel her heart beginning to race and her mind filled with all sorts of possibilities. Did “just us” mean that he wanted
a tryst, a secret assignation? Merlin’s Farm, with its atmosphere of spirits long gone, was about as romantic as it could get. There they’d have privacy. They’d be away from his family, and the people who would talk about them.

She hurriedly put on some makeup and ran to her car. On the short drive there she imagined lying in his arms and telling him about finding the Heartwishes Stone. And later, as they lay under the stars, she’d tell him about the baby. And then what? she wondered. She hoped he’d be overcome with joy, that he’d lift her in his arms, twirl her around, and they’d talk about their future life together.
Happiness
is what she wanted and needed.

As Gemma pulled into Merlin’s Farm and drove toward the barn, she laughed at herself. For all her protestations of wanting a career and independence, when it came down to it, she wanted to be Cinderella and have a big, strong man rescue her.

She saw Colin’s Jeep parked near the secluded area that held the little lattice summerhouse, and she pulled in beside it. The moment she saw Colin she knew he hadn’t invited her there for a tryst. He looked worried, as though he had something truly awful to tell her.

“Hi,” he said as soon as she got out of the car. He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a perfunctory kiss.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.