As You Wish Read online

  “Hamburger or hot dog?” Kit asked. “Coke or Tab?”

  The old names made her smile. With the health consciousness of the twenty-first century, she hadn’t had a Coke or a hot dog in years. “Dog and a Coke.”

  Kit got a hamburger and a Coke.

  When their orders came, Olivia couldn’t help staring at it. By twenty-first-century norms, there was very little food on the plate. No side of coleslaw swimming in high calorie mayonnaise, no beans in brown sugar, no fried potatoes. She hadn’t noticed it until now, but people ate about half as much as they did in the modern, tech world. “And to burn it off, all we do is sit behind a computer,” she murmured.

  “What did you say?” Kit asked.

  She brought her attention back to the present. “I’d like mustard and pickle relish,” Olivia told the girl behind the counter. She would marry a young man from Richmond, move away, have two kids, go through a horrible divorce, then return to Summer Hill and eventually marry Dave Harrison and be very happy. “How is Dave?”

  “Who?”

  “Dave Harrison. Sings in the choir at church? Oh, sorry. I thought you two were together. I know he likes you a lot.”

  “Does he? He hasn’t said anything to me. Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

  “I know. He lives in Richmond. But later...” Olivia took a bite of her hot dog. “You know, you’re so good with people that you might try selling houses. I bet you’d be really good at it. I’d buy from you.”

  The young woman took a step back from Olivia, looking at her as though she were crazy. “I, uh... I have to go check on supplies.” She practically ran from the room.

  Olivia looked at Kit, waiting for him to ask her questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You think she’d sell us some ice cream for Ace?”

  “That girl would sell us the drugstore and leave town five minutes after she got the money.”

  “And you’ve had experience in buying houses from her?”

  She avoided his question. “Did you know that hot dogs are made of ground-up animal hooves?”

  Kit looked at his burger for a moment and she could see the muscle working in his temple. He seemed to be trying to decide what to say next. Finally, he turned to her. “Tell me or not, but whatever you need help with, I’m with you.”

  Olivia thought she’d never loved anyone so much in her life as she did this man in this moment. “I think of things as I see people.”

  “Then we’ll have to go find them,” he said. “Since we’ve both worked seven days a week for a month now, I think we deserve some time off. Think the kids can feed themselves for a couple of days?”

  “Ace and Letty, for sure. Give them a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and they’ll be fine. The other kids, I don’t know. Maybe Nina can babysit.”

  They laughed together.

  On the drive back to Tattwell, Olivia sat next to Kit—no seat belts in the car—and he put his arm around her shoulders. When they got back, he kissed her good-night, but he didn’t ask to go into her room with her. Behind him, she could see Ace’s little blond head above the covers. His last visit to the hospital to see his mother had been the worst yet. The child needed comfort, and Kit was his security blanket.

  She went into her own room. The bed seemed big and lonely. If Kit had asked to spend the night with her, she would have said no. Maybe. That he didn’t ask bothered her.

  She went to sleep right away, but she had nightmares. She saw burning houses, car wrecks, multiple funerals, and three suicides. When she awoke, she was in a pool of sweat—and her lower back was aching in a way it hadn’t done in years. It took her a moment to remember what caused that particular pain. She went to the bathroom and sure enough, she had started her period.

  Instantly, tears came to her eyes. She was not pregnant. All of the horror that had happened wasn’t going to. If Kit left her now it wouldn’t be so traumatic. She wouldn’t have to go to an unwed mother’s home, give her child up for adoption—and for the rest of her life she would NOT feel that she deserved nothing good to happen to her.

  She went back to bed and put her hands behind her head. This changed everything! Broadway was still open to her. Last year she’d been in a local play and she’d forgotten how much she loved being onstage. That the play had been put on by Kit so he could win her back didn’t count.

  Freedom of choice was a wonderful thing, she thought. The entire world was open to her. Careers, travel, men, anything was possible.

  Smiling, she tried to go back to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, the dreams returned. Except they weren’t dreams. She was remembering things that had happened in her dear little town. She’d lived in it all her life and she’d always been involved with its people. As she grew older, people began to depend on her. After Alan died, after she sold everything to pay off the debts of Kevin and Hildy, she became a sort of matriarch for the entire town. “Go to Olivia. She’ll know what to do,” seemed to be a motto. Because of her position in town, she knew a lot of secrets.

  When Letty and Ace threw open her door before daylight, she felt worse than she had when she went to bed. As with children throughout time, they wanted something new and different to occupy them.

  “My kingdom for an iPad,” she mumbled. “DVDs and the latest movies to keep them all busy.”

  Kit, in shorts and T-shirt, was standing in the doorway. “Who wants green pancakes?”

  Squealing, the kids ran to him, and Olivia gave him a look of thanks. Twenty minutes later, she was downstairs and telling Ace he was named Harry Potter and Letty was Hermione and they were at wizard school. Everyone ate in silence as Olivia told the story.

  After the dishes were washed and the oldest and youngest were gluing together pointed wizard hats and painting sticks to be magic wands, Kit told Livie that Nina would look after them so they could go out.

  At first Olivia thought he meant that they’d go somewhere and make love. But there was no way on earth that she was going to let him touch her. She wasn’t going to tempt destiny so that when he went away she was left behind carrying his child.

  As for the marriage... If she wasn’t expecting a baby, there was no need to rush into that. Maybe she would go to Broadway and try it again. She’d see Kit when he returned.

  He saw the way she pulled away from him. He didn’t comment but she felt him stiffen. “You said it helped with what you need to do if you see people. I thought we’d go to town and look.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said formally. Arrieta had said that she could only change things that related to her, to Olivia. But how far did that extend? In her little town, tragedies affected everyone. If she could help just one person, she’d feel she’d accomplished something great.

  Besides, Olivia was not from the ME generation. She picked up a pen and a spiral notebook off the phone table and she was ready.

  She directed Kit to drive her around the streets of Summer Hill as she thought about the owners. There were several people she hadn’t met, but she knew the majority of them.

  There were few families that hadn’t been struck by that awful word tragedy. Some of them no one would know about until the next generation. A man abuses his children and they do it to theirs. A girl molested as a child goes berserk when she’s an adult.

  There were accidents that could have been prevented, diseases that if detected earlier wouldn’t have killed.

  Olivia and Kit rode in silence as she made notes. How could she prevent these coming catastrophes? She knew that as she was now, if she went to the authorities and reported rape, incest, abuse, she wouldn’t be believed. Her youth and inexperience would be against her.

  Besides, she thought with a grimace, it was the times. In the 1970s if a woman accused a man of rape, she was put on trial. She had led him on, entrapped him. If she’d worn a low-cut blouse years before, she was considered a slut an