The Secret Ingredient of Wishes Read Free

her mind had created. The first symptom of her psychotic break. That was the line the doctors gave her parents when she was ten to convince them to sign the papers and have her hospitalized for a month in the psychiatric ward.
    Pinching her eyes shut, she counted to three. With each number, she inhaled long and deep before releasing it. He’s gone. And there’s nothing I can do to bring him back. She touched one of the discolored spots on the wall as if she could will a photograph to appear. Breathing in deep, she imagined what Michael would look like now. Would his hair still be scruffy and tease the collar of his shirts? Would his baby face have slimmed down so his jaw and cheekbones are sharp and angular like our father’s? Would he still smile at me in the way that said we were about to do something silly?
    But try as she might, the face remained stubbornly childlike. Something in her brain refused to let him age past four—the age he was when she wished him away.
    When she was younger, Rachel told her parents and the doctors she no longer believed Michael had been real—it was less painful than meeting their faces, lined with worry and disappointment. But her memories of him were still very much alive. Especially here, in the house where she’d ended his existence.
    She kept waiting for them to disappear like the doctors had promised, but some small part of her refused to let him go.
    *   *   *
    In the kitchen, she started a pot of coffee and set to work on the dishes that were piled in both sides of the sink. Violet’s voice happily shouting “Ray!” broke her concentration. Startled, Rachel dropped a plate into the sink from her soapy hands, but thankfully it didn’t break. Her phone’s screen lit up on the windowsill when Violet’s voice—the ringtone she’d set for Mary Beth—called out her name again. She bumped the faucet handle with her wrist and dried her hands on the towel hanging from the oven door.
    â€œDid you do this?” Mary Beth asked when Rachel picked up.
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œA pony. On my front porch. With a sugar cone strapped on to its head with a piece of elastic.” The words tumbled out in the thick Tennessee twang that always showed up when she was really agitated. “She said it’s what she wished for and you made it come true.”
    How the hell could Violet’s wish come true? Unicorns do not exist. There’s no way I did that. Rachel tapped her nails against the ceramic mug in her hand. “Just wait. There has to be an explanation that doesn’t involve me.”
    â€œVi said she wished for a horse with a horn on its head and that’s basically what I’ve got,” Mary Beth said. “Are you sure you didn’t do this? Not even accidentally?”
    â€œYou know I don’t do that anymore.” Rachel ignored the voice in her head telling her she still could do it even if she didn’t want to. That she was solely responsible for the pony appearing at Mary Beth’s house. That more wishes could start appearing again, and who knows what else she might accidentally cause? What she might do to Mary Beth or Geoff or their girls if she wasn’t careful.
    The pounding in her head roared back full force at the thought. She’d been so determined in the past few years to keep the wishes at bay. And with one careless action, she’d put everyone she loved at risk.
    â€œI know you don’t. I just thought that if you had you might know how to get rid of it. You know, poof it back to where it came from before Vi sees it and gets it into her head that she can wish for more things.”
    Hands shaking, Rachel set down her coffee mug. She couldn’t blame Mary Beth for being nervous. Not when Rachel was stuck on the fact that wishing something into existence—even a low-rent unicorn—wasn’t that far off from wishing something or someone out of