The Wishing Garden Read Online Free Page A

daughter stood up and walked across the soggy grass, leaving imprints of tiny feet, her middle toes adorned with slim gold rings.
    Savannah sighed. Emma had dieted herself down to nothing, wore hideous makeup and said ‘Fuck’ likean anthem, but anyone with eyes could see that her skin was smooth as water. Even when she cut her hair herself—which she’d done on a dare a week ago—it curled appealingly around her face. One day, Savannah prayed, Emma would just give up trying to ruin herself. One day, she’d just snap out of it.
    “I’ll tell you the absolute truth,” Savannah said. “Life is glorious. Love is spectacular. If anyone tells you differently, they’re blind. Happiness is a choice you have to make every morning.”
    Emma snorted again, and went back inside for more coffee. She drank it on the front porch, too far away for conversation.
    Savannah sat on the stoop and didn’t turn around. She took what she could get now, even if it was only a twenty-foot intimacy. Half an hour later, the mailman walked up the hill. He handed her a stack of catalogs, and a single letter on top. “Not a bill in sight,” he said, and smiled as he walked away.
    Savannah looked at the Prescott, Arizona, postmark and dropped the letter into her lap. Her mother had scrawled the address in nearly indecipherable purple ink, and something in Savannah’s stomach curled up, rising high and tight against her lungs. A sane person would have just burned the letter, but Emma was behind her, staring so hard the back of Savannah’s neck burned, so she blew on the envelope once for good luck, then slit it open.
    Savannah
,
    Your father’s dying, but before he does it, he’s decided to go insane. He’s gotten it into his head that he has to have another bench for his garden, as if he hasn’t spent half his life building worthless things already. He wants it to be some kind of testament to his life, andthere’s no telling him how pathetic that sounds, a man fitting his whole, tiny existence onto a single slab of wood. He’s hired a psycho to do just that, for a price that would make your skin crawl, let me tell you. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the man takes a chainsaw to us the second he gets his money.
    Nevertheless, your dad says he needs your help with the bench, and what that really means is he would like to see you one more time before he dies.
    Mom
    Savannah squeezed her eyes shut. She’d gone home only a few times in fifteen years, to show off Emma as a baby and young girl, before—she hoped—any damage could be done. She hadn’t been back in six years, hadn’t even seen this house in Prescott her parents had retired to. In the last two years, they had stopped asking her to come.
    Yet her father had planted a fig tree the day she was born and held it upright for three hours during a ravenous spring flood. He’d been the one she hadn’t wanted to leave. Her fortune had just come true—the Eight of Swords had issued its warning, and if the Three of Swords was her father dying, then of course she had no choice.
    All of a sudden, Emma was beside her. “What is it?”
    Savannah opened her eyes and handed her daughter the letter. Emma read it over, then crumpled it in her hands. “So what does this mean?”
    “I guess it means we’re going to Arizona,” Savannah said.
    “For a few days?”
    “For as long as we’re needed.”
    “Oh no. No way. I’m going to the dance next Friday. Diana is having her sixteenth-birthday party in two weeks.”
    “Emma, he’s dying.”
    “Well, I’m sorry, but you’re the one who never cries at funerals, who’s got the guts to smile at sobbing widows. You can’t just yank me out of school. There’s only a month left.”
    Savannah stood up, but Emma backed away. “You can finish up the semester in Prescott. It’s a pretty town. I heard it’s a big retirement community now.” She saw the look on Emma’s face and touched her arm. “Emma, he’s my father. He worked