Three Wishes

Michael picked up his book again. “So that’s why I’m not going to be unfaithful to you.”

Lyn blinked and watched the words on her page dance and dissolve.

“Because you remind me of my mate Jimbo.”

She closed her book and used it to whack him on the stomach.

CHAPTER 6

“Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. You are seated at the right hand of the Father, receive our prayer. For you alone are the holy one, you alone are the Lord—”

“Remind me to tell you about water aerobics!”

“What?” Gemma bent her knees and dropped her head down to her grandmother’s height.

“Water aerobics!” hissed Nana Kettle into her ear. “I don’t want to forget!”

“O.K.” Gemma stifled a giggle and Nana gave her a naughty look.

When the Kettle girls were little, their grandmother used to take them to Sunday morning Mass and sit with a ramrod-straight back, monitoring their every move with flinty eyes. The stealthiest pinch of a sister’s thigh didn’t escape her. Now, Gemma took Nana to church every few weeks. Her grandmother still dressed as piously as ever—buttoned-up cardigan and skirt—but her standards of behavior seemed to have slipped. One Sunday the two of them got the giggles so bad, Gemma worried that Nana would choke to death right there in the pew.

“I don’t know how you stand it,” said Cat. “Why do you go? It’s not like you believe in God anymore, do you?”

“I don’t know,” said Gemma, which infuriated Cat.

“Do you have an opinion on anything?”

“Not really.”

It was true, in a way. Opinions were for other people. It was fascinating how upset they got about them.

“Please be seated.”

The congregation shuffled, coughed, and sighed as they settled themselves down for the sermon. Nana dropped her chin on to her chest for a nap.

Gemma watched the people in front of her. She loved secretly spying on people, observing their little dramas. There was a couple today with a tiny baby. At the beginning of Mass, their baby had cried and they both became cross and irritated, mouthing panicky instructions at each other. Now, the baby was sleeping, and Gemma watched the man’s hand reach across and pat the woman’s knee. The woman slid slightly on her seat so that her shoulder pressed forgivingly against his. Ah. Lovely.

The man had very thick brown hair. Marcus had had hair like that. Actually the back of his head was remarkably similar to Marcus’s.

Don’t, Gemma told herself sternly. He doesn’t look at all like Marcus. Think about Charlie’s head! Charlie’s adorable, balding head!

But it was too late. Marcus had elbowed Charlie right out of his way.

“What the f**k are you doing?” was the last thing Marcus said before he dropped Gemma’s hand, stepped off the curb, and died instantly.

It was an unfortunate choice of last words. After all, he had said much nicer things to her in his lifetime. He’d said lovely things. Romantic things. Passionate things.

It was just that now, before Gemma could remember a single “I love you,” she first had to remember, “What the f**k are you doing?”

What the f**k she was doing was leaning over to pick up the wedding invitation that had mysteriously slithered out of the satisfying square bundle held firmly in her hand.

“Oh!” she said. Had she been shedding invitations the whole way from the car?

Marcus let go of her hand. Gemma reached down for the envelope. There was a shrieking squeal of brakes, like an animal’s frightened scream.

She looked up and saw Marcus flying. He was a big man, Marcus, and he was flying like a rag doll in the air, his limbs flailing loosely in a horribly undignified manner.

He didn’t fall like a rag doll. He collided violently with the road, slamming lumpily against the concrete.

Then he was still.

“Oh, Jesus.” Gemma heard a man’s voice.

Run. She knew she was meant to run to him.

Car doors were opening. People were pounding across the pavement, calling urgent, important instructions to one another.

Within seconds Marcus was surrounded by a group of people and still Gemma stood, with their wedding invitations in her hand.

This was something quite big. This was something for grown-ups to fix. This was something for strong, fatherly men and efficient, motherly women. Capable people.

Carefully, she put the pile of envelopes down in the gutter and stood with her hands hanging limp and heavy by her side, waiting for somebody to tell her to what to do.

Then her body started moving on its own, running across the road, and her hands were pushing rudely at people’s backs and shoulders to make them get out of the way. She could hear herself screaming “Marcus!” and his name sounded strange to her, as if she were making it up.

Two weeks after the funeral, she went back to work. It felt like she’d been away visiting a different planet. She was teaching second grade at the time and when she walked back into her classroom, she was greeted by an eerie sight—twenty-four seven-year-olds sitting upright in their seats, hands flat on their desks, big eyes watching her every move.

Even the naughty ones were quiet. Not a peep from Dean the Attention-Deficit Demon. Then one by one they began to walk up to her desk, to silently hand her gifts. Mars Bars. Bags of chips. Hand-drawn cards.

“It made me very sad that you were sad, Miss Kettle,” said Nathan Chipman, a trifle accusingly, as he handed her a soggy Banana Paddle Pop. He leaned over and whispered confidentially in her ear, his breath warm against her neck. “I even cried a little bit.”

Gemma put her head down on the desk and felt her whole body torn by wrenching sobs, as feet pattered across the room and dozens of little hands patted her consolingly on the back and stroked her hair.

“Don’t cry, Miss Kettle. Don’t cry.”

There’s something wrong with me, she thought. There’s something very badly wrong with me. She was twenty-two and she felt all used up, a dried-out old husk, a dirty old rag.

After school that day, she obeyed a sudden weird impulse and went to confession, fascinated by her own behavior. It had been so long, and she and her sisters had shrugged off their Catholic educations so effectively, it felt like she was taking part in a bizarre, cultish ritual.

But as soon as she knelt down in the dusty-smelling, terrifying little cupboard and the window slid across revealing the priest’s shadowy profile, she automatically crossed herself and chanted in that secret, trembly whisper of years ago, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it has been six years since my last confession. Here are my sins.”