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the hoe bite deep, pulled it back with a jerk. All trace of laughter was gone from him now. “Unless some traveling storyteller arrives to tell the tale of my birth between now and midnight.”
    Raoul had wished for the same thing every year too: to know who he truly is, the beginnings of his story.
    “I’m sorry,” I said suddenly. “It was a thoughtless question. Give me back the hoe, Raoul. This is my job, not yours.”
    I reached to tug it from his hands. Raoul held on tight. “Leave it alone, why dont you? Its not a thoughtless question. Its a perfectly sensible one. It just should have been mine, not yours. You’re the one whose wish is about to come true.”
    “It’s not tomorrow yet,” I replied. “Now give that to me. You’re doing it all wrong.”
    “All I’m doing is killing weeds, Rilla,” Raoul said, using the nickname he’d bestowed upon me when we were both small. But he relinquished the hoe. I worked my way to the end of the row, started down the next one. Raoul kept pace beside me. We were facing the sea once more.
    “Do you remember the first year we made wishes?” Raoul asked.
    “I remember being tempted to wish you would go back to wherever you came from,” I replied with a smile. “Old Mathilde gave you every single day of the year from which to choose a birthday, and you selected the same day as mine.”
    “It wasn’t so unreasonable,” Raoul protested. “We’re so close in age we might have been born on the same day, for all anyone knows.”
    I gave a snort. We had been over this before. Ever since Raoul had first announced he intended to muscle in on my birthday, we had bickered with each other about it. Some years with good nature, other years not.
    “That’s not the reason you did it, and you know it,” I said.
    “No,” Raoul replied. “It’s not.”
    I stopped hoeing, on purpose this time. “Then why?” In all the years we had teased each other, we’d never quite gotten down to the reason for his choice.
    Raoul dug the dirt with his toe. “It’s simple enough,” he said. “So simple I would have thought you’d have figured it out by now. You had everything else I wanted, so I thought I might as well have your birthday, as well.”
    I let the head of the hoe fall to the earth with a
whump.
“What do you mean I had everything you wanted?” I asked.
    “
Have,”
Raoul corrected. “Not much has changed, not even in ten years.” He moved his arm in a great sweep, as if to take in everything around us. “You have all this. You know who you are and where you come from. You have a home.”
    “This is as much your home as it is mine,” I said, genuinely unsettled now. “Besides, I’m not so sure knowing who I am and where I come from makes me any happier than you are. It’s not a very nice feeling to know your father blames you for your mother’s death and plans to never forgive you for it.”
    “At least you know who he is,” Raoul answered. “His name, and the name of your mother. It’s more than I know.”
    “But don’t you see?” I asked. “The fact that you don’t means that you can hope. You could be anyone, Raoul. Your possibilities are endless, while mine are already sewn up tight. And even if you never find out, you’ll still be whatever you can make of yourself.”
    Raoul made A slightly rude sound. “You sound just like Old Mathilde.”
    I made a face. “I do, don’t I? I suppose it could be worse. She’s right more than half the time.”
    “Actually, I think it’s more like three quarters,” Raoul replied. “That doesn’t make this any easier, Rilla.”
    I put a hand upon his arm. “I know,” I said softly.
    Raoul reached up, put his hand on top of mine. Even in the depths of winter, Raoul’s hands are always warm. I think it’s because of all the fires he keeps, banked down, inside himself. He gave my fingers a squeeze, then let his hand drop away. I picked up the hoe, ready to get back to work.
    “Rilla,” he said