Book of Wishes
Long after everyone was asleep and the house was so quiet Meghan could hear the thump-thump-thump of the dog’s heart, she lay in bed looking at walls lit only by the glimmer of a pale moon. The events of the day kept cycling through her mind. She remembered how Tracy’s eyes blinked nervously and how her hands trembled after she’d slammed the receiver down. It wasn’t just anger; it was fear. Was Tracy fearful for herself, Meghan wondered, or was she concerned about Lucas?
She reached out and absently ran her hand along the smooth fur of Sox’s side. He rolled onto his back and offered up the underside of his belly. She stroked it, and he squirmed closer.
Although she was still troubled about the events of the day, a smile softened the corners of her mouth as she tightened her arm around his warm body. Pushing himself deeper into the hug, Sox stretched his neck and nuzzled his snout in the curve of her neck. He settled himself, then sighed with satisfaction.
“Oh, Sox,” she whispered softly, “you understand everything, don’t you?”
There was a muffled chuff. It was the dog’s way of answering.
“Please don’t let me fall in love with you if you belong to someone else.”
The dog snuggled closer, his fur soft and warm against her skin.
“If only you could talk,” she said. “Then you could assure me no one will ever show up and take you away.”
Her words were still hanging in the air when she could have sworn she heard a chortle that sounded like her daddy.
For a long while they stayed side by side, Sox nuzzled close and Meghan gently scratching the feel-good spot behind his ear. She spoke to Sox the way she’d once talked with her daddy, confiding in him the troubling thoughts that picked at her brain.
“I’m worried about Tracy,” she said, “but more worried about Lucas. I know Tracy needs time to work through this, but I can’t help feeling I need to do something. How do I help a person who’s not ready to be helped?”
She rambled on for several minutes. Then Sox wriggled free and jumped down from the bed. He trotted across the room and sat beside the desk, looking back at her.
“Do you need to go out?”
The dog didn’t respond as he usually did. He sat there eyeing her as if to say, “Nope, guess again.”
“I know you want something, but I have no idea what,” she said, smiling.
He stood, put his paws on the chair, and eyed her again.
In an odd and almost indescribable way, she felt he was telling her to write in her journal. She laughed. Such a thought made sense.
“Sox, you know me as well as Daddy did.”
It was always easier for Meghan to sort through problems when she saw them written out. Things that were gray and fuzzy in her head became crystal clear once they were penned in her journal. She swung her legs from the bed and started across the room. As she dropped into the chair, Sox gave a sigh of contentment and curled up alongside the desk.
Taking a new composition book from the drawer, Meghan began to write. She wrote page after page of words describing all that had happened. When she wrote of Lucas, the letters were scripted with a flourish and flowed easily into one another. When she wrote of Dominic, the words were scrawled in bold heavy-handed strokes of anger.
As she told of Tracy’s fear, her hand trembled, and the words fell into a slant as if they were leaning against one another—the same way Meghan hoped her sister would lean against her. Although she felt neither fearless nor bold, she wrote of these attributes as her wish for Tracy.
Pages flew by. Some words released the anger in her heart, and others asked for a stroke of luck to turn possibility into probability. When the pages of the composition book were full to the center, she turned another page and continued to write.
She told of the doctor Lucas would see and counted the days until it would happen. After numbering the days, she gave each day a specific wish: that Lucas might speak a word or mimic a sound. She asked that Tracy’s fear be lifted from her shoulders and that their mama’s wisdom of boys who are late to talk be changed from speculation to fact.
After Meghan had emptied her heart of all those things, she wrote of Sox. Those words were penned with a gentle touch. The ink seemed to grow paler as she acknowledged a responsibility to at least try to find his owner.
“I’m certain someone loves him,” she wrote. “It’s impossible not to.”
When there was only a single page left in the book, she penned a prayer for herself.
“Please, God,” she asked. “Let Sox be mine.”
She closed the book, then stood and pulled a box from her closet. Beneath the lid was a nest of ribbons in a perfusion of colors: white, blue, pink, yellow, green, silver, gold, black. All of them were exactly one yard long and one-quarter-inch wide.
Tonight she would do as she had done with all the other composition books. Once the pages were filled, she tied a ribbon around the book and sealed the thoughts inside. Knowing the book would forever remain closed enabled Meghan to write the deepest secrets of her heart, no matter how foolish or hopelessly sentimental. She was free to wish for the moon or entertain thoughts of romance that would turn her cheeks crimson if they were spoken aloud.
Each time, the color of the ribbon was chosen according to the mood of the book. After Clancy’s disappearance she’d filled five notebooks with hopeless prayers for his return; all five of those books had been tied with a black ribbon. These pages were more hopeful, so Meghan chose a sash of rose-colored satin, looped it into a bow, and then slid the book into the box beneath her bed.
When she snapped off the light, Sox padded across the floor and jumped into bed. As she climbed in beside him, Meghan noticed a thin band of rose-colored dawn feathering the horizon. A whispered sigh escaped her lips as she closed her eyes. This was indeed a good omen.
It was almost nine when Meghan awoke. By then Lucas had already eaten breakfast and was toddling from room to room in search of Sox. The minute the dog thumped down the stairs, Lucas squealed and ran toward him.
Meghan hoped to get a picture of Sox for the Snip ’N’ Save ad, but instead she ended up with more than a dozen photos of Lucas and the dog. In one, he was lying on the floor beside the dog, so squished together there was not a sliver of space between them. In another, he squatted nose to nose with Sox. Each picture was cuter than the previous one, and Meghan kept clicking the camera.
When she loaded the photos onto the computer and scanned through them, it crossed her mind to use one of these wonderful photos for the Snip ’N’ Save ad, but it seemed unfair. If Sox did have an owner who wanted him back, it would appear heartless to snatch the dog from a baby who so obviously loved him. As much as Meghan wanted to keep Sox, she wasn’t going to resort to underhanded tricks.
Hopefully she didn’t have to. Hopefully her prayer would be answered, and Sox would end up being her dog. If not . . .
In her mind, there was no “if not.” Sox was simply meant to be her dog. She’d already fallen in love with him.
At eleven o’clock, when Lucas went down for his nap, Meghan took Sox into the backyard to snap a picture of him alone, but for some odd reason the dog wasn’t cooperating. He’d sit in the right position for a second or two, but the moment she began to focus the camera, he turned away.
The first shot was of the back of his head. The second shot caught his tail as he walked off. The third shot showed him lying down with his face buried in his paws. After each ruined shot, Meghan moved him back into position and started over. The ninth shot, although not head-on, at least caught his profile and was a reasonable likeness. She decided to use that one.
She loaded the picture into the computer and began assembling an ad; that’s where she got stuck.
Meghan had written hundreds, maybe even thousands, of words about Sox, but now she couldn’t find the right ones for an ad that could conceivably take him away from her. If she were to tell the absolute truth as she saw it, the ad would read “Awesome, wonderful dog who understands every thought.” But, of course, that was only her perception of Sox, and if she wrote something like that, it was possible every person in Magnolia Grove would want to claim him.
One by one she ran through the words she’d written in her journal: gentle, loving, smart, loyal, funny, good with children. There were so many words and not one of them right.
After nearly an hour of deliberation, she wrote, “Found: What appears to be a mixed-breed puppy with white paws. For more information, contact the Snip ’N’ Save.”
Meghan leaned back in her chair and eyed the finished product.
Even turned away, Sox looked far too cute. Dozens of people would want an adorable pup like this, and it would be heartbreaking enough to let him go if someone else were the rightful owner. No way could she risk having a stranger show up and lay claim to Sox. In these few days, he had gone from being a stray to one very tiny step away from being her dog.
She clicked on the picture, dragged it out of the layout, then reduced the size of the ad from a half-page feature to a one-eighth insert that would go back by the classified listings.
Perfect, she thought, and slid the ad into the FILLERS folder. If there was space, she’d run it in the next issue. If not, she could do it the week after or even two weeks out.