Three Wishes (9 page)

Tom was feeling like a pariah by the time Flash set down a glass of water and said, “I hear your Jeep was totaled.”

“The axle's gone.”

“Are you getting another?”

“Jeep? No. I want something heavier.”

“Self-protection?”

For sure, Tom thought, and said as much with a look.

Flash moved on. In the stainless steel, Tom watched the occupants of one of the booths slide out and head for the door. LeeAnn had barely reset the table when a new four-some slid in.

Martin Sprague ran a napkin across his mouth. “Hear you're a lawyer,” he said, without looking at Tom.

Tom would have denied it, had there been any point. “I was.”

“Not much need for lawyers in Panama.”

“I didn't come here to practice.”

“That's good. I do what has to be done.”

Tom imagined that he did. Panama was hardly infested with crime. Since he had come, the only offense he had heard about was the case of a four-year-old child stealing a handful of artificial flies from the tackle shop. Martin Sprague might be getting along in years, but Tom guessed that the legal needs in a town like this were tame enough for him to handle. “Are you the only lawyer here?”

“Not enough work for any others.”

“What type of things do you do?”

“Nothing you'd be interested in,” Martin said, and raised a sharp voice. “LeeAnn, where's my check?”

Tom took a drink of water, set down the glass, ran his fingers up and down its sides. The cuts on his palms were beginning to scab. The cool felt good.

Martin moved away the instant LeeAnn gave him his check, and waited for his change by the cash register at the end of the counter.

Eliot Bonner slid onto the stool on Tom's left.

Tom shot him a look. “You're brave. Everyone else hurried off when I came. Is it the writing that did it, or the accident?”

“Both, I'd guess. No one thought twice about you when you didn't make noise. Now you stand out. Panama's like a boat. You up and rocked it.”

“Yeah, well, I didn't do it on my own. I have a totaled Jeep and a battered body to prove it.” And then there was Bree. “Any luck tracing that truck?”

“Nope. I talked with local departments. Talked with the state police. I was hoping one or the other would have caught someone driving stupid that night. There were a couple of other accidents and an arrest or two, but nothing involving a pickup. Hard to believe, what with so many trucks around here. Lucky, maybe.” He smirked. “Bree says it was blue, you say black, your Jeep says maroon.”

“Trust the Jeep,” Tom advised and might have made a remark about physical evidence holding up in court, if his veal hadn't come just then. He began to salivate instantly. It looked and smelled as good as anything he had had in New York. Of course, he might have salivated over stale meat loaf, he was so hungry.

“There are a dozen people in town with maroon pickups,” Bonner said. “Every one of them's got alibis. None's got dents consistent with what happened.”

Tom decided that Flash hadn't been bragging without cause. The veal was tender and light, the Madeira sauce pleasantly mild. He chased a second mouthful with helpings of new potatoes and grilled asparagus.

“What about maroon pickups in neighboring towns?” he asked as he ate.

“We're working on it. Bree said not to bother. Said she's alive and that's all that matters.”

Tom put his fork down. “It is, assuming whoever was driving that pickup got enough of a scare to change his ways, but that's a big assumption. He probably didn't even know I hit Bree, probably thought he'd just hit another car. He's probably out there telling himself, No sweat, car's insured, no one's the worse for the wear.” Tom realized how angry he was. “Who's to say the next time he careens around in the snow he won't hit a bunch of kids and kill one or more outright?”

“Told her that myself.”

“He must have been stoned or drunk. How else could a human being do what he did and then just drive away? Hell, she nearly died.”

Bonner squinted up at the stainless steel. “I heard she did. Heard she died on the table. Heard she made it to heaven, before someone sent her back. She tell you about it?”

Tom wanted to say that what Bree told him was privileged information, only they weren't lawyer and client. He wasn't quite sure what they were—friends, maybe—but whatever, he wasn't betraying her. “Heaven?” he echoed. “Did she tell you that?”

“Nah. My cousin works with Paul Sealy. Bree told Paul.”

Bree had told Paul, who told his coworker, who told Eliot, who would tell Earl and Emma. Emma would tell Dotty, who would tell anyone else in town who cared to listen.

Tom was angry on Bree's behalf. “Did Bree tell Paul in confidence?”

“Who knows. Look, it's no big thing. She won't sue Paul, any more'n she'll press charges against whoever was driving that truck. If you ask me, it's a lot of hokum, this near-death business, but I don't blame Bree. She had a scare. She earned the right to hallucinate. I just don't want someone having a real-death experience because I didn't catch the bastard the first time around.” He pushed himself off the stool, straightened the belt under his belly, cleared his throat. “So. I hear you've been on Larry King.”

Tom stared at him, then beyond. Conversation was abruptly down again. Half the diner was looking their way.

With a thanks-for-nothing look at the chief, he returned to his veal.

“More than once,” Bonner went on. “He musta liked you.”

“He liked what I did,” Tom muttered, jabbing at his food with his fork. “I wrote about incendiary cases. It made for an easy show.”

“What about Barbara Walters?”

Tom snorted. “You've done your homework.”

“It's my job. I'm all Panama's got. So. How'd she treat you? Did she put you on the spot? She can be a tough one sometimes. Course, that's what people like about her. Boy, she's been at it for a long time now. How'd she look in person?”

Tom raised a piece of veal, pondered it, returned it to his plate. Whoever in the diner hadn't known who he was before this would know now, and it wouldn't stop there. It was only a matter of time before the whole town knew.

So let them know something else, he decided. With a resigned sigh and a meaningful look at the faces turned his way, he said loudly and to the point, “I bought a house in Panama because it seemed like the kind of place where people respected each other, the kind of place where I could go about my business without being questioned about the past. I chose Panama because I wanted privacy, and because it was far away from New York.” Though his gaze settled on Bonner, his voice was a warning for the rest. “If I wanted to tell the world I was here, I'd have taken out an ad in the
Times.
If the media track me here, I'm gone. Am I getting through?”

 

Miraculously, he finished his dinner. No doubt stubbornness was part of it, since his hunger had left with the mention of Larry King. It wasn't that he had a gripe with the man, or with Barbara Walters or any of the others who had interviewed him. The majority of those interviewers had simply asked the questions Tom's publicist had fed them. They were questions Tom had helped formulate, each designed to show yet another flattering side, and he hadn't felt a bit of guilt doing it. That was how the game was played. He had left those interviews walking on air, totally enamored with himself, sold on the flattery.

Thinking back on it made him sick to his stomach. But he needed food if he planned to stay at the hospital again, and he most definitely did plan to stay. He felt good when he was there, felt decent and different and right. So he finished the veal, drank two cups of coffee, ordered desserts to go, and left.

 

When Tom started high school, he was five feet eight, which would have been a fine height for a fifteen-year-old if he hadn't wanted to play football. He had come off a summer of painting houses during the day and playing ball at night, so he was tanned and fit, but he lacked the bulk that the older players had.

“You're scrappy,” his mother pointed out when she caught him moping around on the eve of tryouts.

“That doesn't matter. I won't make it. I'm too small.”

“Smallness is a state of mind,” she said, as she puffed up every cushion in the living room except those on which he was slouched. “Walk onto that field with your head high, and you'll look a foot taller. Look the coach in the eye, and he'll think you're more solid. Carry yourself like a quarterback, and people will see you as one.”

It worked. He played backup to a senior quarterback that freshman year, then starting quarterback for his remaining three years. By the time he graduated, he was six four and strong. Though he no longer needed pretense, the lesson in projecting confidence was ingrained.

It stood him in good stead now. For the third night in a row, well after visiting hours ended, he walked into the medical center past the nurse at the desk, swung into the stairwell, climbed the stairs, and strode down the second-floor corridor to Bree's room as though he had every right in the world to be there. No matter that the nurses on duty were new and that his battered face made him look like a thug. Then again, perhaps they knew exactly who he was and didn't dare stop him. Whatever, no one looked twice.

He was the one to blink when Bree was nowhere in sight.

 

Bree sat in the dark of the deserted lounge at the far end of the hall. The music drifting from wall speakers was classical, soft and soothing, exactly what she needed. Her room had grown oppressive. Even now, well after the last of her friends had left, she could still hear them telling her that they missed her, that they wished her a speedy recovery, that any out-of-body visions would end once her mind cleared.

The thing was that her mind was perfectly clear. She had slept most of the morning, had cut back on pain pills, and if anything, her memory of that time in the operating room had sharpened. She didn't tell her friends that. They weren't inclined to listen, and she didn't have the strength to make her case. Sitting here, with the mild night air whispering in through half-open windows, she found it hard to believe that a major snowstorm had hit three days before, much less that she had died, gone to heaven, and returned.

It was all at the same time crystal clear and totally unreal. Unreal that it had snowed so hard so early in the season. Unreal that she had been at just that spot on Birch Hill at just that moment. Unreal that she had watched the goings-on in the operating room. Unreal that she felt the calming force of that bright light still. Unreal that silent Tom from the diner was Thomas Gates of national renown.

Thomas Gates. Unreal.

Shifting gingerly in the wingback chair, she started to raise her legs to tuck her cold feet beneath her. When the soreness in her abdomen wouldn't allow for the movement, she settled for layering one foot over the other and burying her hands in the folds of her robe.

She knew about Thomas Gates. Being a fan of his books, she had read articles on him. Many hadn't been flattering. He wasn't supposed to be very nice.

Odd, but the Tom Gates she knew seemed perfectly nice.

Releasing a breath, she put her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She remembered those articles in detail. Thomas Gates was reputed to be callous and conceited, but she hadn't seen either trait in him, and as for being the womanizer the articles implied, he hadn't womanized in Panama. He hadn't come on to her as had other men in the diner, hadn't leered or teased or touched her in inappropriate ways.

Footsteps came from the hall, and suddenly he was there. Thinking she might have imagined him, she blinked, but he remained.

She hadn't wished him there. She was being careful not to make wishes accidentally. But she was inordinately pleased that he'd come.

“Hi,” he said. Backlit as he was, she couldn't see his face, but his voice was gentle, smiling.

Her heart beat a little faster. She smiled back. “Hi.”

“Walk all the way down here yourself?”

“Uh-huh.” Dryly, she added, “It took everything I had.”

He made a show of looking around. “No more IV. That's progress.”

“Uh-huh. I had solid food for dinner. Chicken.”

“Bet it wasn't as good as Flash's.”

“No. But that's okay. I was full after two bites.” She felt revived now that he had come. “Want to turn on a light?”

“Not if you prefer the dark.”

“I don't.”

He slipped a hand under the shade of a nearby lamp. The soft light that filled the room made him real, in an unreal sort of way. He was gorgeous, with his tousled hair and his athlete's build, and he was
there.

“I didn't think you were coming,” she said.

“I promised I would. You just slept through the promise.”

No. She had heard. Then she had wondered if she had simply dreamed it up because she wanted it so much. “I thought you might go home and think about it and decide I was loony.”

“If you are, then so are a hell of a lot of other people.” He lowered a leather knapsack from his shoulder at the same time that he lowered himself to a chair. The knapsack settled on the floor between his knees. He unstrapped the top and pulled out a folder that was a solid inch thick. “Printouts from my computer. They're personal accounts of other people who have experienced what you did.”

Bree's heart beat even faster than before. She looked from the folder to Tom and back. She didn't know whether to be more pleased that there were others like her or that Tom had made the effort of seeking them out.

The first took precedence. Taking the folder from him, she put it on her lap and covered it with a proprietary hand. Cautiously, she asked, “Did you read them?”