The Wishing Garden Read Online Free

still felt panicky. Terror zapped her all the time now, whenever she caught a glimpse of blue toenails or a tattoo sketched out in washable ink. When she saw where things were headed, with or without her consent.
    She walked out and closed the door, relocking it with the knife. Ramona came up and put her arm around her. “Don’t believe it,” she said.
    “How can I not believe it? You think I let people in here and then make up stories? You think I’m just scamming people?”
    “I think you believe in yourself. I think people pick up on that and believe in you, too. But this … this is letting superstition rule your life instead of living it and seeing what happens. This is assuming the worst and, frankly, I’m ashamed of you.”
    Savannah breathed deeply. Outside, she could hear a neighbor trying to start up his 1970 Volkswagen van and the gay lovers two doors down serenading each other with old love songs. In the morning, if it was clear, the sky over the bay would turn red as desire.There would be nowhere else on earth she’d rather be.
    “Go to sleep, Savannah,” Ramona said. “In the morning, you’ll wake up laughing like always. A bad thing has never happened to you your whole life.”
    Savannah did not sleep all night. She sat on the stoop of her narrow house, drinking gritty, black coffee. Just after dawn, when the sun struck the top of the pink-and-blue Victorian across the street, her own shadow walked right past her, holding a suitcase with one hand while the other stroked the fur of a wolf.
    Emma slammed open the front door and trudged outside in her robe. The right side of her face bore the imprint of her pillow, the hollows beneath her eyes were caked with blue eye shadow. This was the girl who, a year ago, had gotten up every morning at dawn to practice penalty shots in the street, until her debatable best friend, Diana, told her soccer was for jocks, not for anybody’s girlfriend.
    Emma sat down on the stoop and took the coffee out of Savannah’s hand. She drank the remainder in one gulp.
    “Something wake you?” Savannah asked.
    Emma said nothing, just squinted into the morning sun.
    “They say when you’re startled awake,” Savannah went on, “it’s from the kiss of your future lover. He’s already out there looking for you.”
    “That’s bullshit,” Emma said, but nevertheless she looked down the street, where a couple of handsome college students had recently moved in.
    “I woke up every morning at dawn the week before I met your dad. I swear to God.”
    Emma pulled back and stared at her. “I worry about you, Mom.”
    Savannah laughed. “Well, don’t. I’m the happiest person on the planet.”
    “That’s what I mean. You ought to be laying out those cards for yourself until you come up with some dark-haired hunk who’ll buy you a place up in Pacific Heights. You ought to be trying for something
more.”
    Savannah shivered, because everything she wanted was right here, and if she hadn’t taught Emma that by now, it was unteachable. It was something you knew or not, it was the difference between feeling happy or lost.
    “Don’t worry about me,” Savannah said. Emma snorted. She noticed their legs were touching and quickly yanked hers away. “You’re unmarried, and hanging out with crazies. You ought to be freaking out, having some kind of midlife crisis like Diana’s parents.”
    “You can’t judge the world by the Truffs. Things haven’t always gone their way.”
    “You know what they talk about at dinner?” Emma went on. “She tells him it’s his fault she got pregnant so young, and she never got to be an actress, then he tells her if she wasn’t so goddamn fat, she could still try, then she says he’s an asshole, then he says he never loved her, then Diana tells them both to shut the fuck up, then they yell at her for cussing, then they watch
Home Improvement.”
    Savannah put an arm around Emma’s tight shoulders, but Emma shrugged her off. Her