Wishes Read online

  “I can’t ask him,” Nellie whispered.

  “For me? For your dear old aunt?” Berni said pleadingly.

  Nellie took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. “All right. For you.” She stepped out the door into the cold, snowy air and started walking toward the hotel.

  Berni shut the door and smiled. Easy, she thought. Almost too easy. Jace probably hadn’t come to lunch because he hadn’t received the note, but Berni knew Nellie was a person who took her responsibilities seriously and would no doubt sit down and wait for Jace to give him the message personally.

  She sat down at the table, started munching Nellie’s cookies, then snapped her fingers and the 1989 Christmas issue of Vogue appeared in her hands. This fairy godmother stuff is a cinch, she thought. She’d probably have Jace and Nellie together by ten o’clock tonight. Maybe they’ll name their first kid after me, she thought, smiling.

  On the other side of the kitchen door Terel tightened her mouth into a firm line. So that’s it, she thought. Their aunt was a friend of the Montgomery man’s mother. That’s why Aunt Berni had so suddenly and unexpectedly come to Chandler. It had nothing to do with choosing one of the Grayson girls to inherit. Aunt Berni wanted her friend’s son to marry Nellie.

  And leave me behind, Terel thought. Nellie gets to marry a rich man and get out of this dreadful town while I have to stay behind.

  Tiptoeing, Terel made her way across the room and out the front door without making a sound. “Nellie!” she called, once outside.

  Slowly, Nellie turned to her sister. “I thought you were taking a nap.”

  “I was, but I was afraid to leave you alone with her.”

  “With Aunt Berni?”

  “Yes, with her. I tell you, Nellie, my every instinct cries out to beware of her.”

  “But she seems so nice. I don’t think—”

  “You didn’t think there was anything wrong with that awful man who said he loved you, either.”

  Nellie looked down at her hands.

  “Where were you going?” Terel asked.

  “To the…ah, Aunt Berni asked me…”

  “She didn’t ask you to see him, did she? Oh, Nellie, she is cruel. This is unspeakable! How could she do something like this to her own flesh and blood?”

  “I don’t think she meant any harm. She merely wanted me to ask her friend’s son to dinner.”

  “And you think that was mere coincidence? You think she just ‘happened’ to ask you to go to this man? You think she doesn’t know every sordid detail of what’s happened to you?”

  “I didn’t really think about it. She asked me to go, and—”

  “And you obeyed her. Oh, Nellie, why don’t you ever stand up for yourself? Tell her you’re not going to degrade yourself more than you already have. Tell her the truth about the man.”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes, that he made free with you then went off and left you, and that he walked out, and more, with nearly every female in town, and that he’s a liar, saying he wrote you letters while he was away. Oh, Nellie, the man is a scoundrel. He’s proven that repeatedly, but here you are chasing after him like you did the night of the Harvest Ball”

  Nellie wrung her hands. She knew Terel was saying these things because she worried about her, but the words made Nellie feel really awful.

  “All right, Nellie, I wasn’t going to tell you,” Terel said with a sigh, “but your Mr. Montgomery has been taking Mae out for the last two days.” She put her hand on Nellie’s arm. “I’m so sorry about him. I know you believed you cared for him, but you’ll get over him. He’s not worth shedding one tear over. Now that you’ve lost weight you’re quite presentable-looking, so we’ll be able to find you a husband. Ted Nelson needs a wife, and he’s a very dependable man.”

  Ted Nelson was at least fifteen years older than Nellie. He ran a livery stable on the edge of town with his two big half-grown sons, who everyone said were so dumb that the horses were teaching the boys to read and write. It was debated around town whether any of the Nelsons had ever had a bath.

  “Well, don’t turn up your nose,” Terel snapped. “Everyone says Ted Nelson has a fortune hidden somewhere. But if you don’t like him, we’ll find you someone else. Maybe we can look in Denver. No one there knows of your reputation. Maybe—”

  “I won’t ask him,” Nellie said, putting her hands over her ears. “I won’t ask Mr. Montgomery to dinner. Please stop.”

  “All right,” Terel said tightly. “I don’t know why I bother. Sometimes you act as though I am the villain.” She slipped her arm through Nellie’s. “Let’s go to the bakery and get something to eat. You really are getting too thin.”

  At the moment Nellie felt hungry enough to eat the bakery itself—boardwalk, shingles, sign, and all.

  Berni was again puzzled when, at dinner, Jace Montgomery didn’t show up. She sat through the long, boring meal eating Nellie’s delicious food and listening to Terel chatter. She watched Charles Grayson smile at his younger daughter and now and then frown at Nellie.

  As far as Berni could see, losing weight had had no effect on Nellie’s life. Charles and Terel had always treated her as someone to do their dirty work, and they didn’t seem to think that her losing weight was any reason to change their attitude. Nor had the weight loss changed Nellie. Even though she was now a knockout, she still had very little self-confidence. Nellie wasn’t encouraging the young men who came to call on her; she wasn’t now demanding that her family treat her with respect. She was the same Nellie she had always been.

  Berni winced when she thought of this Nellie. Poor substitute for a fairy godmother I am, Berni thought. Maybe I should have done the “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” bit and changed a few pumpkins into coaches. Nellie got to go to the ball with her handsome prince, but only because someone else came up with a dress. Everything her fairy godmother had done for her had backfired.

  After dinner Berni excused herself to her room. There she took a clear glass dome from the top of a lamp and put it on the table. “It’s not a great crystal ball, but it’s the best I can do,” she said aloud. “Now, let’s see what’s going on.”

  She moved her hands over the globe, just as she’d seen countless gypsies do in the movies, and to her delight images began to appear. It took a moment for the images to appear clearly, but then she saw Terel talking to the big kid, Duke. She saw the note Berni had sent to Jace’s mailbox, saw Terel take it, read it, and crumple it. She saw Terel talking to Nellie when Nellie was on her way to visit Jace at his hotel.

  Berni leaned back in her chair, and at first her only thought was admiration. Terel was more clever by far than Berni had believed. Somehow she’d known Berni was out to help Nellie, and she’d managed to anticipate what Berni was going to do and then thwart her.

  “If this keeps up, in two more days Nellie will be even worse off.”

  Berni looked at the fading images in the globe. She’d very much like to beat Terel without using magic, she thought. It would be a challenge to outfox this young woman, but the truth was she didn’t have time. She had only three days in which to perform miracles for Nellie, and now one of those days was gone.

  So, Berni thought, the first day was a draw. Let’s see what can be done with the remaining two. First she needed a plan.

  She tried wiggling her nose like Samantha on “Bewitched,” but that didn’t work, so she wiggled her ears instead. (In all her life on earth no one had ever known Berni could wiggle her ears.)

  A chalkboard appeared before her, and a piece of chalk, hovering nearby, was ready to write. Berni leaned back in her chair.

  Number one, she thought, and the chalk began to write, Nellie believes Jace left her, and that he fooled around with other women. Number two, she doesn’t believe Jace sent her any letters.

  And number three, Jace’s feelings are hurt because he doesn’t think Nellie returns his love. “And heaven help any woman who hurts a man’s feelings. He’ll go off and brood for a few hundre