The Secret Ingredient of Wishes (31 page)

Catch reached over and patted her hand. Her skin was so thin, practically translucent. “It's too late. I'm too old. I told them it wasn't worth trying.”

“No,” Rachel said again. “I'm sorry. That's not acceptable. I should have done something sooner. I knew something was wrong. Maybe then the doctors could have—”

“I can't be fixed. And there's nothing you or Ashe could've done.”

Rachel jerked her hand free and met Catch's eyes, defiance shining brightly in them. “Ashe doesn't know, does he?”

“No. And you're not telling him either.”

“I can't keep this from him. And you shouldn't either. Don't you think he's been lied to enough?”

Catch rubbed at her heart. Her stiff cotton shirt rustled beneath her fingers. “That's not a fair thing to say. This is different.”

“Only because you're the one who doesn't want him to get hurt this time.”

“So, I guess he knows all about your brother, then?” Catch countered.

“I haven't told him because I don't want to scare him off. You haven't told him because you do. That way it'll hurt less when you go. But he's not going anywhere. You're one of the few family members he has left. If you don't tell him, he might not ever forgive you. And neither will I.”

Rachel pushed back from the counter and slammed through the back door. The morning air had turned sour. She sucked it in through her mouth, trying to catch her breath.
Catch can't be dying. I can't lose her too.
She fled to the back of the property line that separated Catch's house from Ashe's. He mowed both yards so there wasn't the telltale line to mark the end of one and the beginning of the other.

The plum tree was now no more than a moldering, leafless stick poking out of the ground to infect the other trees around it. Their leaves had turned brown and curled at the ends. The apples and peaches were speckled with rotting spots and ant bites.

She couldn't let it ruin everything.

Despite its brittle appearance, the tree put up a fight. The bark ate into her hands as she tried to rip it from the ground. She leveraged her weight and nearly sat on the ground as she yanked. Something cracked, and a small fissure opened down the center of the wood. Rachel didn't let go. Even when a thin trail of blood dribbled down her wrists.

“Whoa. Hey, what're you doing?” a voice yelled from somewhere to her right.

She didn't answer. If she stopped now, the tree—with all its disease and destruction—would win. The roots shredded as it pulled free from the earth. The soil underneath was black and slimy with fermenting juice. The stagnant air engulfed her, and bile pumped into her mouth, coating her throat.

“Hey,” the voice said again, closer. She knew this voice.

She went to say something, then turned and vomited at her brother's feet.

*   *   *

When she looked up a moment later, he was still there.
Michael
. Blinking, she met his eyes. Eyes that were a reflection of hers. His face was broad with a strong jaw like she remembered their dad's being.

Before she could wrap her mind around how Michael was in Catch's backyard, his hands were on her arms, holding her up. He stepped them both a few feet to the side. “Are you okay?” he asked. In his deep Southern voice, she heard traces of the boy she remembered.

“I'm sorry,” she said, crying hard enough to be embarrassed but not being able to stop. “I am so, so sorry. I didn't mean to do it. If I could take it back I would. God, I would undo it in a heartbeat if I could.”

“Relax. It's not a big deal. If I'd been the one to pull the tree out and find that shit, I probably would've puked too.”

He wasn't making any sense. She took a steadying breath and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah. You're Rachel.” He slid his hands down her arms to inspect her bleeding palms. “These look pretty deep. We should get you cleaned up. C'mon. My brother's got a first aid kit on the deck.” He walked toward Ashe's house, pulling her along by the wrists.

“You're…” Rachel trailed off.

“Scott Riley,” he said.

The name rolled off his tongue like he'd been saying it all his life. Which, of course, he nearly had.

The pressure built in her head until all she could hear was a shrill ringing that kept time with her racing heart. Unable to look at him, she focused on the dirt and blood that caked her hands. A new rush of bile made her throat clench. She swallowed every few seconds to keep from throwing up again.

“I need to sit,” she said. Her weak voice matched the shaky feeling in her knees.

He lowered her onto the top step of the deck. Holding her hands off to the side so the blood dripped onto the deck instead of her shorts, he said, “Can you hold them here for a minute? I just need to run inside and get the stuff. You okay until I get back?”

Rachel nodded, which made her vision blur. For a second, she saw the four-year-old boy with shaggy hair and unconditional trust. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I'm just gonna grab some water real quick and the kit. Don't pass out on me now.”

He came back after a minute, though it could have been ten, she wasn't sure. His footsteps pounded on the wood beneath her, the vibrations pulsing in her wounds. She bit her lip to keep from crying again when he crouched in front of her. His face—so familiar, yet so different—hovered inches from hers.

“How're you doing? Still with me?” Scott asked.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

He poured cool water on her hands. Her cuts stung as he rubbed gently with a soft cloth to clean them. She tried not to flinch.

“So, what did the tree do?”

“It was killing the others,” Rachel said, her voice a little stronger than a moment before.

“Next time, maybe you should use an ax or some shears. Your hands are pretty cut up.”

“I'm fine,” she said, hoping it sounded like the truth.

Scott laid a dry towel across her hands and prepared the gauze. He squirted ointment on the bandage and rubbed it in with a Q-tip. His hands were gentle when he wrapped the gauze around one hand, then the other.

A snippet of a memory fought to the surface. She could see his small, careful hands doctoring the front paw of his stuffed dog, Rufus. His eyes had been calm, focused, just as they were now.

He set her hands in her lap, rubbing a thumb over her right wrist. It was such an Ashe move it stole her breath. “Feel any better?” Scott asked.

“Yeah. You were always good at that,” Rachel said.

“Good at what?” His eyebrow quirked up in confusion.

“Nothing. I think I must be a little out of it. Sorry.”

“Want me to walk you back?” Scott asked.

Rachel leaned her head against the scratchy wood beam of the stair railing. “Is it okay if I just sit out here for a little bit?”

“Sure. I'm supposed to go meet Ashe soon, but I can hang around for a few minutes if you want.” He stood and dumped the water from cleaning up her hands over the railing into the grass.

“No, go. You've done more than enough.”

His phone buzzed and he answered it after a quick glance at Rachel. “Hey, bro. I'm about to head out. Had a little mishap with Rachel, but she's gonna be okay.”

She looked up, startled at the mention of her name. Scott smiled at her.

“She's okay.… All right. See you in a few,” he said. He sat on the step beside her. His legs stretched two steps below hers. “He's on his way home.”

Oh, no. How am I supposed to keep Catch's cancer a secret from him? How am I supposed to tell him that his brother is also my brother?

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Her thoughts continued to race, amplifying her dizziness. Rachel closed her eyes against the sharp glare of the sun as her hands continued to throb.

“Ashe seems really happy,” Scott finally said.

“Does he?” she asked without opening her eyes.

“Yeah. Everything with Lola messed him up pretty bad. But he seems better since you've been around.”

“What do I have to do with anything?”

“He likes you. You reminded him that not everyone has to suck.”

Rachel smiled at that and raised her head to look at him. But she moved too fast, and black spots covered half his face as her consciousness ebbed. Terrified he would disappear again, she wrapped her fingers around his forearm. He was solid beneath her grip. His sincere, concerned expression was so familiar that she wanted to cry again.

“You okay, Rachel?” Scott asked.

She shook her head. “If you knew more about me, you wouldn't feel that way. Neither would Ashe. I've done things that hurt people I loved and no matter how I tried I couldn't make it right.”

He contemplated this for a moment, sitting beside her quietly, before finally asking, “Did you do them on purpose?”

“No, but the results were the same.”

A door slammed, followed by quick footsteps on gravel. Ashe appeared around the corner of the house. His dark sunglasses shielded his eyes, but she could tell he was scrutinizing her to see what was wrong. He nodded to his brother, a silent message to move. He sat next to her and waited until his brother had gone inside to ask if she was okay.

Rachel couldn't look at him. “Yes,” she answered.

“What happened?”

“Tore out the plum tree.”

“With your bare hands?”

“Yes.”

“Let me look.” He picked up her hands and set them in his lap. He kept his touch light as he lifted one side of the gauze to examine the damage. “Why?”

“It needed to come out,” she said.

“Why didn't you ask me to do it?”

She tugged her hands away, but he closed his fingers around her wrists, keeping her in place. “Contrary to how it might seem, I am capable of doing things on my own. Go see for yourself. The tree's not there anymore.”

“I didn't mean it like that. And I'm glad Scott was here to fix you up. If you'd gone back into Catch's looking like you must've looked, you'd have given her a heart attack.”

A heart attack might have been better than what Catch is dealing with.

The thought sent a sharp pain through her chest. She sucked in a breath and Ashe put an arm around her.

“Ashe—” Her throat tightened, and for a moment, she forgot about the pain in her hands as words crammed in her mouth vying to get out first. “I have to go,” she said.

If she let one confession escape, there was nothing left in her to keep all of the others in.

 

32

Locked in her room, Rachel put on her headphones and cranked up the volume on her iPod. The deep bass line pumped through her, making her body vibrate. Lying on the bed, she stared at the ceiling fan. The blades thrashed around in a frantic circle.

She'd always thought finding Michael, apologizing for what she'd done to him, would erase the guilt. Instead it dredged up more memories. And she was too worn out to fight them off. The angry bass and frantic guitar did nothing to drown out an argument she hadn't thought of in years.

Michael had been gone for two months, and Rachel had refused to believe what her parents said. That she'd made him up, that maybe her insistence was more than a little girl's overactive imagination—that maybe she was ill.

On the night they agreed to commit her to the hospital for a month, she'd lain curled up in the hallway with a hand pressed to the cool wall where Michael's door had once been.

“I can't live like this anymore, Roger,” her mom had shouted. She didn't seem to care if Rachel overheard.

“Calm down, Cynthia. Let's talk about this,” her dad had said, Rachel straining to hear him.

“I've tried that. You don't listen. We have to do something. She's not getting any better, and frankly, neither are we.”

The springs creaked on the bed when her father had sat—her mom was too light for it to ever notice her weight. “We can help her, but we both have to believe she can get better.”

“You say that like I'm not trying!” Her mom's voice had risen an octave, verging on hysteria.

Rachel had turned away from the wall. The carpet had pressed a pattern to her left cheek. She'd run her fingers over the hills and valleys on her skin. A strip of pale light slithered under the door.

“No, I'm not. I know you're trying. I am too. We've just got to agree on what's best for her,” her dad had said.

“But why does that have to be what you want? It kills me to see her like that. But what's worse, she believes in it so hard that sometimes she makes me second-guess myself and I almost start to believe Michael was real. Whatever is wrong with her, we need to get her some help.”

“You really think locking her up for a month is what she needs?” he had said, his voice booming under the door.

“I want her to get well and that's not something we can do. The doctors can. I have an appointment for us to go talk with them on Tuesday and for them to evaluate Rachel.”

Rachel shot up from her bed in Catch's house and clamped her hands to her ears. Even through the blaring music, the memory of her parents' voices refused to cease.
Make it stop,
she begged.
Please make it stop
.

She had been right all along.

Maybe if they had believed her, they could've gotten him back sooner. Maybe her mom wouldn't have become so depressed and distraught that she saw killing herself as the only solution. Maybe her dad wouldn't have left them to deal with their unanswered questions and guilt on their own.

The cardboard boxes she'd used to pack up her things, stacked by the stairs, caught her eye. She dug through the top box, tossing aside journals and pictures and sci-fi books that reminded her of Michael. Her hand closed over the cool plastic pill bottle, the gauze on her hands making her movements stiff. She shook out two pills and tossed them back with no water. The pills burned for a few seconds as they began to dissolve in her throat. She let saliva build up and swallowed hard to wash the bitter taste away.