Page 36 of Wished

“—had a letter,” I say, ignoring his interruption. “Which explained that if you make a wish, the necklace will make it come true.”

“That’s just astory,” Max says. “A story my ancestor came up with to explain why his wife didn’t get her head chopped off in the French Revolution. She wished it to stay on her shoulders. It’s not real.”

“Then how do you explain this?” I gesture between us. “And that?” I gesture at his closed office door, where outside I can hear his assistant on the telephone.

Max turns and stalks to the window. He shoves aside the curtain and stares over the water. A tour boat glides past, its reflection blurry in the water.

I walk across the thick carpet until I’m standing in the sunlight next to Max. The tour boat gives me an idea.

“What if,” I ask, “the necklace doesn’t so much create a new reality? What if when you make a wish, it flips you into your reflection?” I point out the window. “One reality is the boat, the other is its reflection. Right now, we’re in the reflection.”

“You’re deluded,” he says. “You. Me. Agathe. It’s a pandemic of delusion.”

I hold up my hand. “Plus all your staff downstairs, your housekeeper, your handyman, your cook, your gardener?—”

“Handyman? Cook?” Max frowns. “What housekeeper?”

“You don’t know her?”

Max pinches the bridge of his nose. “Madame ... Blinken ... and Gerard ...” He glares at me. “Wait a minute. You said you made a wish.”

I nod. I guess I didn’t think ahead when I admitted that. Of course he’ll want to know what my wish was.

“What exactly did you wish?” His eyelashes lower again, and he’s suffused with a look of deep concentration. When he looks at me again he says, “What did you wish ... Anna?”

I stare at Max. “You know my name.”

“Anna Madeleine Benoit Barone.” My name rolls off his tongue, rough and melodic. “Tell me what you wished.”

He knows. He already knows. He has to.

The way he’s watching me makes me feel as if his hand has encircled my wrist again and he’s pulled me close against him. I can feel the heat of him, his inhales and exhales, the steady beat of his pulse.

I turn my face to the sun, stare at the wavy, distorted reflection of the tour boat rippling in the blue waves, and say, “I wished we were married.”

10

Max shiftshis Vanquish into fourth gear, slinging us down the road, speeding us along the lake toward his estate. We’re low to the road, hugging the curves, drifting in an “S” as the road winds through the countryside.

The purring roar of the V12 fills the interior as thickly as the tension riding off Max. The interior is close, tight, intimate. The leather seat is impossibly soft and it vibrates warmly beneath my bare legs. I’m held tight against the seat as Max shifts, maneuvering the curves of the lake. The car feels as if it’s being pulled by a locomotive engine. Its power rumbles through the interior, and I can’t help but watch Max grip the shifter as he guides the car through traffic and into the wide-open country.

The air conditioning fans the scents of fresh cut grass and newly leafed spring forests. The flickering of shade and leaves flashes over the windshield in sparks of sun and dark. It paints my bare legs, and I watch Max’s hand on the shifter. His grip is firm and reminds me of the way he holds my wrist, both in real life and in my imagination.

“Why married?” he asks, looking over at me.

I glance back at him, but he’s staring straight ahead, guiding the car through a series of curves following the sinuous shore of Lake Geneva.

When I admitted my wish back at the office he didn’t say anything. Instead he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of there. His assistant called after us, but he only said, “I’m taking the day off.” He covered his surprise when several people greeted me as Mrs. Barone on our way to his car. The only way I knew it disturbed him was in the way his hand tightened on mine.

But still he didn’t ask questions, he just tugged me to his car, opened the door, said, “Get in,” and then sped out of the parking garage.

He flicks on his turn signal and pulls onto his estate’s long drive. The house looms ahead, a tall, barren, shadowed behemoth.

“Anna?” He finally glances over at me. When he tilts his head his dark hair falls over his eye, hiding his gaze.

I sigh and stare out the window at the estate drawing closer. I didn’t notice it when I ran out this morning, but there are quite a few things different about the exterior. The stone has been scrubbed clean, and now, instead of a dull, somber appearance, the façade glistens in the sun. Before the windows seemed to cast a lonely gaze over the water; now they sparkle merrily, reflecting the sky.

Yesterday the grounds were varying shades of green—thick ivy, lush grass, nodding ferns at the edge of the evergreen forest—but now islands of bright color are strung around the house like pearls on a string. A bed of pink flax. An island of sunny orange marigolds. A river of purple and red tulips stretching toward the sun. An ocean of daffodils waving beneath the front walls. It’s a rainbow of flowers, capturing every color God made.

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