Twenty Wishes

“There’s no love lost between us.” Anne Marie had no illusions about her stepdaughter’s motives. “You don’t like me. You never have. All these years you’ve been trying to get back at me, to punish me, and now you have.”



Not bothering to deny the accusation, Melissa buried her face in her hands and started to weep uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”



Anne Marie wanted to turn her back on Robert’s daughter and walk away. But she couldn’t bear to hear Melissa weep. Even though she was the one Robert had betrayed, Anne Marie reached for his daughter and folded her arms around Melissa.



The two women clung together, hardly aware of the people scurrying by.



Anne Marie’s reserve broke apart and the pain of Robert’s betrayal came over her in an explosive, unstoppable rush. She wept as she never had before, even at Robert’s funeral. Her shoulders heaved and the noisy, racking sobs consumed her.



Then it was Melissa who was holding her, comforting her. After all the years of looking for common ground with her stepdaughter, Anne Marie had finally found it.



In her husband’s betrayal.



Chapter 5



Barbie Foster stood in line at the movie theater multiplex, waiting to purchase a ticket, preferably for a comedy. She needed a reason to laugh. Her day had started early when she opened Barbie’s, her dress shop, two blocks off Blossom Street. The shop was high-end, exclusive and very expensive. Her clientele were women who could easily afford to drop four figures on a dress. Barbie made sure they got their money’s worth, providing advice, accessories and free alterations. She had a number of regular customers who counted on her for their entire wardrobes. Her own sense of style had served her well.



She didn’t want to sound conceited, but Barbie was aware that she was an attractive woman. Since Gary’s death, she’d received no shortage of attention from the opposite sex. Men wanted a woman like her on their arm—and, she suspected, they wanted her money. Barbie, however, wasn’t easily swayed by flattery. She’d been happy in her marriage and had loved her husband. At this point in her life she wasn’t willing to settle for mere companionship or, heaven forbid, no-strings sex. She wanted love. She longed for a man who’d treat her like a princess the way Gary had. Her friends told her that was a dated attitude; Barbie didn’t care. Unfortunately there weren’t many princes around these days.



She’d married young. In retrospect she recognized how fortunate she’d been in finding Gary. She’d had no real life experience, so the fact that she’d met a really wonderful man and fallen in love with him was pure luck. He was ten years her senior; at thirty, he’d had a wisdom beyond his years and a great capacity for love, for loyalty. He’d been working for her father at the time and came to the house often. She’d had a crush on him that developed into genuine love, although it took her a few years to recognize just how genuine it was. At nineteen, she always made sure she happened to be around whenever he stopped by, and enjoyed parading through the house to the pool—in her bikini, of course. She still smiled at the way Gary had looked in every direction except hers.



They’d married when she was twenty-one, with her father’s blessing and, surprisingly perhaps, her mother’s. She got pregnant the first week of their honeymoon. When she’d delivered identical twin sons, Gary had been over the moon. The pregnancy had been difficult, however, and he’d insisted the two boys were family enough.



The twins, Eric and Kurt, filled their lives and they were idyllically happy. Not that she and Gary didn’t have their share of differences and arguments, but they forgave each other quickly and never confused disagreement with anger. Their household had been calm, orderly, contented. The plane crash ended all that. Barbie had always been close to her sons, but following the tragic deaths, of Gary and her father, the three of them were closer than ever. They helped one another through their grief, and even now they talked almost every day.



Encouraged by her mother and sons, a year after Gary’s death Barbie started her own business. The dress shop helped take her mind off her loneliness and gave her purpose. Her sons were eighteen and growing increasingly independent. They’d be on their own soon. As it happened, they were attending colleges on the opposite side of the country. Swallowing her natural instinct to hold on to her children, she flew out to Boston and New York with her sons, got them settled in their respective schools and then flew home. She’d wept like a baby throughout the entire five-hour flight back to the West Coast.



Her house seemed so empty without the boys—her house and her life. She’d never felt more alone than she had since last September when she’d accompanied Kurt and Eric to their East Coast schools. Thankfully, though, they’d both come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.



She’d kept herself occupied with the shop, but the Valentine’s get-together with the other widows had revealed a different kind of opportunity. Barbie had begun to compose her list of Twenty Wishes, hoping to discover a new objective, some new goal to pursue. Her mother had leaped at this idea with an enthusiasm she hadn’t shown in years, and if for no other reason, Barbie had followed suit. They often did things together and, in fact, her mother was Barbie’s best friend.



The line moved. Barbie approached the teenage cashier and handed her a ten-dollar bill.



“Which movie?”



Barbie smiled at her. “You decide. Preferably a comedy.”



The girl searched her face. “There are three or four showing. You don’t care which one?”



“Not really.” All Barbie wanted to do was escape reality for the next two hours.



The teenager took her money and a single ticket shot up, which she gave Barbie, along with her change. “Theater number twelve,” she instructed. “The movie starts at four twenty-five.”



Although she wasn’t hungry, the instant Barbie stepped into the lobby, the scent of popcorn made her mouth water. She purchased a small bag and a soft drink, then headed for theater number twelve.



The previews were underway, and Barbie quickly located a seat in a middle row. She settled down with her popcorn and drink, dropping her purse in the empty seat beside her.



Glancing about, Barbie saw nothing but couples, most of them older and presumably retired. She nibbled on her popcorn and all at once her throat went dry. The entire world seemed to be made up of people in love. She envied the other women in the audience their long-lasting relationships, their forever loves, which was what she and Gary should have had. She wanted another chance. She was attractive, well off, a nice person—and alone. Falling in love again was first on her list of wishes. But she didn’t want another relationship unless she could find a man like Gary and there didn’t seem to be many of those.



Until the other widows had started talking about those stupid wishes, Barbie’s life had seemed to be trudging along satisfactorily enough. Her mother’s list was nearly complete. Not Barbie’s. She’d written down a few things besides falling in love. She wanted to learn how to belly dance. She and Gary had seen a belly dance performance during a brief stopover in Cairo years before and she’d been intrigued by the sensuous, feminine movements. She’d listed something else, too. She wanted to go snorkeling in Hawaii and shopping in Paris and sightseeing in London—all of which she’d done with Gary and enjoyed. But she didn’t want to do them alone.



At the moment, her desire to fall in love again seemed an illusion beyond her grasp. But she wasn’t exactly looking for a relationship. If she truly wanted to love and be loved, she had to be receptive to love, open to it, willing to risk the pain of loss.



She shook her head, telling herself there was no point in believing that a man might one day love her the way Gary had. Love her. Not her money, not her beauty. Her.



All of a sudden tears welled in her eyes and she dashed them angrily away. She didn’t have a thing to cry about. Not a single, solitary thing. Dozens of women, hundreds of them, would envy her life. She had no money problems, her children were responsible adults, and at forty she didn’t look a day over thirty. The tears made no sense whatsoever, and yet there was no denying them.



Reaching for her purse, Barbie pulled out a pack of tissues, grabbed one and loudly blew her nose.



The previews for upcoming features were still flashing across the screen. They were apparently comedies because the audience found the clips amusing. Sporadic laughter broke out around her.



Sniffling and dabbing her eyes, she noticed a man in a wheelchair approaching the row. He was staring at her, which wasn’t uncommon. Men liked to look at her. Only it wasn’t appreciation or approval she saw in his gaze. Instead, he seemed to be regarding her with irritation.



Maneuvering his chair into the empty space beside Barbie, he turned to glare at her. “In case you weren’t aware of it, you’re sitting in the row reserved for people with wheelchairs and their companions.”



“Oh.” Barbie hadn’t realized that, although now he’d mentioned it, she saw the row was clearly marked.



“You’ll need to leave.” His words lacked any hint of friendliness.



He must have someone with him and wanted the seat for that person. No wonder he frowned at her as if she’d trespassed on his personal property.



Retrieving her large purse, she draped it over her shoulder, grabbed her popcorn and soft drink and stood. Instead of walking all the way through the empty row, she tried to get past him.



In an effort to give her the necessary room, he started to roll back his wheelchair and somehow caught the hem of her pants. Barbie stumbled and in the process of righting herself, dumped the entire contents of her soft drink in his lap.



The man gasped at the shock as the soda drenched his pants and ice cubes slid to the floor.



“Oh, I am so sorry.” Barbie plunged her hand in her purse for the tissue packet and managed to spill her popcorn on him as well.



“I…I couldn’t be sorrier,” she muttered, more embarrassed than she’d ever felt before.



“Would you kindly just leave.”



“I—”



He pointed in the direction he wanted her to go, then shook his head in disgust.



Barbie couldn’t get out of the row fast enough. Feeling like a clumsy fool, she rushed into the empty lobby. She yanked a handful of napkins from the dispenser and hurriedly returned to the theater.



The man was still brushing popcorn off his lap when she offered him the napkins.



“Can I get you anything else?” she asked in a loud whisper.



His intense blue eyes glared back at her. “I think you’ve already done enough. The best thing you could do is leave me alone.”



“Oh.”



He didn’t need to be so rude. “I said I was sorry,” she told him.



“Fine. Apology accepted. Now if it’s possible, I’d like to enjoy the movie.”



Barbie gritted her teeth. She felt like dumping another soft drink on his head. It wasn’t as if she’d purposely spilled the soda. It’d been an accident and she’d apologized repeatedly. She felt her regret turn into annoyance at his ungracious reaction.