Page 94 of Wished

We’re quiet for a moment, Dorene watching the movie credits, me looking out the window at the petunias painted bright against the blue sky.

It was a dream,I tell myself.It was a dream.

Max never told me about his parents. He never told me how he felt about passion. He never asked me to?—

A chill hits me so hard that the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then my heart flutters and starts to race.

Max asked me to find the letter he wrote, to bring it to him, and to tell him passion wasn’t love. What if ... what if the letter is real?

Am I crazy to think it?

Would it be crazy to look for it?

“Yes,” Dorene says.

I look back at her, my forehead wrinkled. I’m pulled back into the small hospital room with its white walls and sterile air.

Dorene looks at me curiously, waiting for my response.

“What?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says happily, “I’ve decided. This was a wake-up call. I’m retiring.” She waves her hand in the air as if she’s drawing a line between her old life and the new. “Tomorrow I’m leaving for Saint-Tropez.”

A flood of warmth, like sunshine on the beach, washes over me, replacing the cold. Dorene mentioned this, but I didn’t know if she’d actually do it. As soon as she’s discharged, she’s packing a bag, hopping on a train, and leaving everything behind. No warning, no dallying. Just leaving.

“That’s what we do when we die,” she’d said. “I’m just starting my stay in heaven a little early.”

I smile at her—a genuine, happy smile. “Good,” I say. “I’ll miss you, but I’m happy for you.”

“You’ll help me settle in?” she asks, worriedly smoothing the rumpled white hospital sheet. Maybe the clots in her legs, the clots in her lungs, forced her into a new perspective, but that doesn’t mean she wants to do it all on her own. And she shouldn’t have to.

“Of course I will,” I say, wondering if Saint-Tropez will look anything like it did in my dream.

Dorene isn’t the only one with a new perspective. For years I’ve been waiting for “someday.” For that moment when I can reach out and grasp freedom. A stone cottage outside the city. A holiday in the French Riviera. The courage to talk to Max.

After getting fired, after Max (the real Max) telling me to never set foot in his home again, after Dorene’s pulmonary embolism, and after my dream and my wish, I’m not the same. While Dorene was recovering and making her decision, I was making mine.

“We’ll help you settle in,” I tell Dorene. “We’ll stay a week. Then I start my new job.”

Dorene makes a disgruntled noise, but I shrug. I don’t want to keep cleaning, and I’m not going to continue Dorene’s business after she’s gone. Instead I’ve accepted a nightshift job in the stockroom at the market where my mom works. During the days, I’m going to start working on plans for the first Open Heart Kitchen, based on my family’s love of feeding anyone who needs a meal. I dreamed it, and I want it to be real.

“Well, a week it is,” Dorene says. Then she smiles over at Emme. “I’ll enjoy seeing what she paints. And you,”—she pats my hand again—“I’ll enjoy seeing you relax. Flirt. I can say this, as I nearly died?—”

“You did not,” I say.

She holds up her thumb and pointer finger, holding them a half-inch apart. “Nearly.”

I shake my head. “No.”

She smiles. “Ah, denial. How sweet you are! As I said, since I nearly died, I can tell you, stop tiptoeing around life. Live, Anna. Steal a car, naked. Stay up until sunrise, dancing on the beach. Kiss a man who doesn’t know your name.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Live with passion, love with your heart. Now go away—I’m tired and I want to watch this next movie alone.”

“Go away?” I ask.

She nods. “Go away. You’ve been here as long as I have, and I think that chair has attached itself to your rear.”

I almost start to argue, but then I think about passion and love and ... the letter. What if the letter is real? That would mean my wish was real. What happened was real.

I stand so quickly the chair squeaks against the linoleum. My muscles ache from sleeping in a pull-out vinyl chair/bed for the past week, my eyes are gritty, and I’ve not had a good long shower in days, but suddenly I’m exhilarated.

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