“It was a masterful plan, if I do say so myself.”
He pulled her to a stop beside the fountain, keeping her tucked close against his side. “What do you see?”
She looked but couldn’t tell what it was he wanted her to home in on. “Did they clean it?” As far as she could tell, it still had the same patina of age it always had.
“Look closer.”
Her gaze skimmed the edges, the base, the pool of water with its glinting treasure beneath. “I still don’t know what you want me to see.”
“Okay I’ll chalk it up to the fact that you’re wiped out. Here’s a different question. What do you hear?”
Norah listened closely. A faint breeze rustled the leaves of the massive oaks shading the green. Voices from people walking down Spring Street and Main carried back on the wind. And underneath it all, the soft burble of…water.
“It’s running!” She could see it now, the faint trickle of water. Not a lot, but something where there’d been nothing for years.
“It is. I noticed it before we left for Chicago last week.”
“Did they finally figure out what was wrong with it?”
Cam tugged the plaque from her hand and set it aside, pulling her to sit beside him on the fountain ledge. “Nobody’s touched it.”
“But it’s running again. Why would it just spontaneously start up?”
“I have a theory.” He said it in a tone that clearly expected skepticism.
“Lay it on me.”
“Well, actually it was sort of your theory. Do you remember the day we made our wishes?”
“Sure. Hard to forget when I got my wish.”
That distracted him. “What was it?”
“For my time here to show me what my path was, what I was meant to do. I’d say I pretty much got my answer today.”
“I got the wish I made that day, too.”
“Yeah? What was yours?”
“I wished for a miracle to save Wishful. We got you.”
Norah’s heart squeezed. “Cam. You are the sweetest thing.” She leaned in, brushed her lips over his.
“Don’t know that it’s sweet if it’s just plain truth.”
“Flatterer.” She settled back. “So what was your theory? Or my theory. Whatever.”
“You said that the fountain dried up as hope in Wishful did. Over the last four months, you gave that back to us. You saved us in more ways than one. Me most especially.” He leaned over and trailed his hand through the water, scooping a coin up from the bottom.
“What are you doing? You can’t do that. That’s somebody’s wish.”
“Sure I can. It’s mine.” He turned his hand over to show her. But it wasn’t a coin in his palm. It was a ring. Diamond, flanked by sapphires and filigree. Gorgeous and sparkling in the late April sun.
Norah’s throat closed up.
“I could’ve asked you that day at my grandmother’s, but it was always meant to be here. Source of hope. Font of wishes.” He took her limp hand in his and smiled. “I love you. I want to spend the next fifty or sixty years showing you how much while we build a life and a family together and keep right on saving this town, side by side. Say you’ll grant me my wish and be my wife.”
She swallowed hard. He was so steady, so perfect. So hers. It was worth every hour of work, every moment of frustration and doubt, every turn in her life, because all of it had brought her here, to him.