Wish Read Free Page A

had been her mom’s idea to pick up and leave Willis in the middle of the school year. Olivia had thought it was a bit of a coincidence that her mother had randomly been offered a top position at a prestigious firm in San Francisco, the same San Francisco where she happened to have access to a house that had been in her family for almost a century. Never mind that up until then the house had been referred to only as “that deathtrap Great-aunt Peggy left us”—all of a sudden, everything was falling into place. Bridget had a new job, Olivia had a new school, and Mac, an out-of-work contractor, had a new project.
    A project that, by the looks of things so far, was quickly turning into a thousand little projects, none of which seemed to be approaching any form of completion.
    “A couple,” Olivia lied. “Everybody’s really nice. And the building’s cool. Really old, with lots of big windows.”
    “Yeah?” Her dad had turned to face the sink and was already fidgeting with a stubborn faucet. She could keep talking, if she wanted to, but she knew she’d said enough. He’d gotten what he needed. She’d communicated. She was functioning.
    All was well in familyland.
    She mumbled something about homework to the back of her father’s head, and left him to fix the things he still could.
    Olivia collapsed onto her bed after a quick and quiet meal of Indian takeout with Mac, her body sinking into the lavender comforter she’d brought from home. She closed her eyes and inhaled the thick, downy fabric, which still reminded her of Itsy and Bitsy, the twin calico kittens the girls had adopted when they were six. They’d only been allowed to keep the cats for a few months, before Bridget had started breaking out in head-to-toe hives and discovered she was allergic.
    Olivia remembered squeezing Violet’s hand as they walked up the long driveway back to the MSPCA, tears streaming from Violet’s chin and careening onto the gravel. Olivia promised her sister that one day they’d move into a house of their own and have twenty cats and eat nothing but Oreo sundaes and watch all the TV they wanted. This had worked, and Violet had stopped crying, until they got home and she realizedthat their blankets still smelled like the kittens, who, after much begging, had been allowed to sleep in the girls’ room.
    Olivia’s eyes were closed when a crisp, hair-tickling breeze blew in from the open window, rattling the doors in the room on their loosening hinges. She sat up and saw that one door was slowly creaking open—the narrow, knotted door at the back of her room.
    Connected to Olivia’s bedroom and facing an overgrown garden at the back of the house was a tiny corner room with a low, garret-style roof. A little bit smaller than Olivia’s room, it had two arched bay windows with a cushioned love seat between them. When Olivia had announced she wouldn’t be taking this room, but the more ordinary, larger, street-noisy room beside it, her parents hadn’t argued. Nobody said anything, but they all knew.
    The smaller room was the one Violet would have wanted.
    And when the moving trucks arrived and all that was left to unload were several unmarked boxes, nobody said anything then, either. But somehow the boxes—sealed after a silent afternoon spent stowing Violet’s things—had ended up in that room, behind two doors that would always stay closed.
    Olivia slowly rose to her feet and walked over to the door in the corner. She reached out and held the cold brass knob, lingering for a moment.
    It was almost as if she could feel Violet, waiting for her on the other side.
    A chill spiked the hairs on the back of her neck and she snapped the door swiftly shut.
    The gauzy white curtain ballooned again and Olivia moved to the window. As she tugged it open even wider, sharp citysounds came flooding in—a squealing car alarm, the steady whoosh of wet traffic, boisterous after-dinner voices—as if she’d unmuted a movie she hadn’t known