Wishes Read online

  They all stood around the table that was heaped with food, each husband holding his wife.

  “Is that what’s making me so happy?” Jace asked Nellie, pulling her close with one arm, his baby son in the other. “All the love in this house?”

  “Yes,” Nellie said, tears in her eyes. “I never thought I’d know this much love or be this happy. I didn’t know this much happiness existed.”

  Jace kissed her.

  “Here!” Kane said loudly. “If we’re all so happy, how come everybody’s cryin’? Maddie, you know any real songs? How about ‘Half a Penny, Half a Bushel’? Or ’Ring Tailed Ringating’?”

  “Kane,” Houston said firmly, “I doubt very much if someone of Maddie’s caliber knows—” She broke off as Maddie burst into a rousing song worthy of any saloon singer and, laughing, everyone began to sing with her.

  “She ain’t a bad singer after all,” Kane said to his wife.

  Nellie, singing along, looked at her husband holding their child, then at the other people around her. It was still disconcerting to see her immaculately groomed sister snuggled up to her perpetually dirty husband, but Terel seemed to adore him, and the children as well. Nellie looked at her father, his arm around his plump wife who had just joined everyone. Her ears sparkled with the diamond earrings he’d given her for Christmas, and Nellie knew that her dress bill for this month alone made Terel’s former expenses seem nonexistent. But again, she’d never seen her father so happy.

  Nellie squeezed Jace’s hand and moved closer to his side. “I am the happiest person on earth,” she said softly, and he kissed her again.

  The Kitchen

  Berni sniffed, then gave Pauline an embarrassed look. “I’m very happy for her. She deserves to have some good things happen to her.”

  “You made everyone happy,” Pauline said, standing and leaving the room.

  “I guess I did,” Berni said proudly as she followed her. “Although I meant for Terel to learn a little humility.”

  “You didn’t really think she’d wash and iron, did you? Would you have?”

  “Not on your life!”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “Okay,” Berni said, “so now I go to Heaven, right?”

  “Not quite.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You really haven’t paid your dues yet.”

  “Dues for what?”

  “You haven’t paid your dues for living a completely selfish life on earth.”

  “I helped Nellie.”

  “Yes, you did. That was stage one, and you passed very, very well, but still you need to experience some of the things that other women experienced while they were on earth.”

  “Such as?” Berni asked suspiciously. “I don’t have to become one of those athletic women, do I? Run? Climb mountains, that sort of thing?”

  “No, nothing like that, just ordinary woman things.”

  Berni wasn’t sure what she meant. It seemed to her she’d experienced everything a woman could while on earth. What else was there? “What are you talking about?”

  Pauline stopped and looked at her, her face serious. “There’s something I think I’d better explain. There are levels to the Kitchen. Some of them are pleasant, but some of them are…not so pleasant. Level One, which you’ve been to, is to introduce you to the Kitchen and to cushion the blow of death. Level Two is…”

  “Is what?” Berni asked.

  “Level Two makes you very concerned about doing your job well—your earthly job, that is.”

  “You mean I’m to be somebody else’s fairy godmother?” She thought a moment. “It wasn’t so bad. It was kinda fun, actually.”

  “I’m glad you think so, because you must do it again—only the second time there is a bit more urgency.”

  “You mean there’s a time limit?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s just that most people are somewhat anxious to leave Level Two.”

  The fog before them cleared, and Berni could see a sign. “Just as before,” Pauline said, “you must choose one room in which to wait.”

  As they moved forward Berni could read the sign. “No,” she whispered, abruptly turning away.

  Pauline caught her. “You must choose.”

  “I can’t.” Berni buried her face in her hands. “They’re all too horrible. Couldn’t I just go to hell and be burned alive for eternity?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the easy way out. You didn’t earn heaven while you were on earth, so now you must suffer as other women have suffered.” Pauline turned Berni around and made her look at the sign. “You must choose.”

  Berni forced herself to open her eyes and look at the sign once again.

  a trip across America in a sports car with three kids and a dog

  backpacking and sleeping in a tent with your stepchildren

  TV that runs only PBS pledge drive twenty-four hours a day

  clothes shopping with a man

  “Clothes shopping with a man?” Berni whispered in horror.

  “It’s more horrible than you can believe,” Pauline said. “Before you leave the house he makes you tell him exactly what you want to buy, what color, what style, what fabric. In the store he folds his arms and glares at you and looks at his watch. Sometimes you have to shop with him for his own purchases. You search two hundred and seventy-one stores for exactly the pair of shoes he wants, you finally find them, and he says the stitches on the toe are one thirty-second of an inch too long.”

  Berni’s face lost all color as she looked back at the sign.

  5. dieting while raising three teenage daughters

  6. at home with eight sick kids—or one sick husband

  7. driving a car with a male passenger who keeps screaming and whimpering

  8. trapped in an elevator with your husband’s ex-wife

  9. a husband who retires and wants you to spend every minute with him

  10. a boss who constantly makes passes at you

  “No,” Berni kept whispering, but she knew she had no choice. She raised a trembling hand and pointed. “Just get me out of here quick,” she said to Pauline before the fog cleared away from the horror she had chosen.

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  River Lady

  Twin of Fire

  Twin of Ice

  The Temptress

  The Raider

  The Princess

  The Awakening

  The Maiden

  The Taming

  The Conquest

  A Knight in Shining Armor

  Wishes

  Mountain Laurel

  The Duchess

  Eternity

  Sweet Liar

  The Invitation

  Remembrance

  The Heiress

  Legend

  An Angel for Emily

  The Blessing

  High Tide

  Temptation

  The Summerhouse

  The Mulberry Tree

  Forever…A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Books eBook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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