“I think I’ll do that, too,” Rams said.
“True Love!” Sara said. “One of us must wish for True Love.”
Everyone looked from Gemma to Colin and back again, as they were the only unmarried people there.
“Colin is a Frazier,” Gemma said, “so I’m not sure he should fool around with this.”
“You believe in these wishes, don’t you?” Joce asked, her eyes wide.
Gemma couldn’t tell them what Tris had told her in confidence. “I’d just like to do some more research before—”
“I agree with Sara,” Colin said as he stood up. “Why not wish for True Love? I’ve got a house now, so why not fill it?” He lifted his glass of lemonade and everyone picked up their glasses and held them aloft. “I wish that next year at this time we’re all here together again, but that I will have my True Love with me.”
“And she’s expecting a baby,” Sara added.
“Right,” Colin said. “And that Sara has two babies—you better get to work, Mike—and Tess is the best mother in the world, that Mike has brought down a master of true evil, and—Who am I forgetting?”
“Luke!” Gemma said. “The writer.”
“And Joce and me,” Rams said.
Colin kept his glass lifted high. “Luke gets his books remembered forever, and Rams and Joce come up with something to wish for.” He started to take a drink.
“What about Gemma?” Mike asked.
“The last person on earth I’d forget is Gemma,” Colin said as he looked at her. “I hope you get everything you wish for in life.”
Everyone turned toward Gemma and noted the way her face turned red.
“To answered wishes,” Rams said and they all took deep drinks.
In Miami, sitting at her father’s bedside in the hospital, Nell held up her bear. “See, Daddy, I told you.”
“Told me what, sweetheart?”
“That Landy’s necklace blinks.”
“It sure does.” He took the bear and held the necklace for a moment. It was a pretty thing, with a tiny, glistening rock inside a little cage made of gold. The necklace looked as though it could be valuable. “Where’d you get this?”
“It was in that box of junk jewelry I bought at the church rummage sale,” her mother, Addy, said from the other side of the bed.
“Where’d it come from to get there?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Addy said. “Why are you interested?”
“No reason,” he said. “It just doesn’t look like junk and maybe somebody’s looking for it.”
Nell took the bear from her father. She didn’t like what he was saying. She’d almost forgotten that daddies made rules that weren’t to be broken.
“I don’t think so,” Addy said. “That necklace was stuck inside two flat pieces of lead, like somebody’d been using it for fishing. Nell and I had to use the vise on your workbench and two screwdrivers to get it open.”
He chuckled. “Like mother, like daughter.”
Nell clutched her bear and its necklace to her. “I like it.”
“All right,” he said, “you can keep it.” He looked at his wife. “But later . . .” He left the rest of the sentence blank. She knew what he meant. When they got back to Edilean she’d find out where the necklace came from.
14