Heartwishes

"A man who uses as few words as my Shamus," Mr. Frazier said.

"And both of them are artists," Gemma answered.

"And my Shamus gets straight As in school." Mr. Frazier"s voice was full of pride as he took her to a second warehouse.

By evening, she was ready to snuggle with Colin and tell him all that she"d seen and heard and what she"d thought about it all. But he didn"t return. At about eight, he texted her that he was still in D.C. I"ll be back as soon as I can, he added.

At 1 A.M. her phone woke her. Colin told her that his brother Pere had been in a car wreck.

"Was he badly hurt?" Gemma asked, sitting up and wide awake.

"Not bad," Colin said. "Tris is with him, and they promised to keep me informed. I was going to come back, but Dad said not to."

"Should I go to the hospital?"

"No," Colin said. "The place will be packed with people. But, Gemma, would you find out the truth? If it"s serious they might not tell me."

"I"ll find out," she promised. "I"ll call Tris and ask him."

"Thank you," he said. "Now go to bed."

"It"s lonely without you here hogging all the s.p.a.ce."

"It"s lonely here without you in every way," he answered and they hung up.

Gemma tried to sleep, but she was worried about Pere. The next morning, she got up early. She knew it was no use going to the gym. There were some people who could work out alone, but she wasn"t one of them. If she was by herself, ten minutes after she got to a gym, she began thinking of something she"d read, or needed to read, and left. She wouldn"t even be aware of what she was doing. She"d just find herself at her car, her keys in her hand, and minutes later, she"d be back at work.

She managed to doze a bit, but when she finally awoke it was still early, and she wondered if Tris was at Ellie"s having his egg burrito before the store opened. Fifteen minutes later, she was at the back loading dock. One of the men waved at her and she went inside. As she"d hoped, Tris was sitting at the table and drinking coffee, an empty plate in front of him. He"d just finished eating.

"Gemma!" he said. "What a wonderful surprise." He guessed why she was frowning. "Pere is fine. Just a broken leg. He swerved to miss some critter crossing the road and hit a tree. And yes, he was probably going too fast."

Gemma let out her breath and sat down. "Colin was afraid Pere was seriously hurt and no one was telling him." She got out her phone, excused herself to Tris, and quickly texted Colin that Pere was okay. When she finished, Ellie asked if she wanted anything to eat.

"Whatever is the least amount of trouble," Gemma answered. She looked back at Tris as a thought came to her. "Is Pere in a cast?"

"From crotch to ankle. It"s going to take him a while to recover from this."

Gemma was looking at the tabletop, and when Ellie put an egg sandwich and a big mug of tea in front of her, she spent a lot of time saying thanks.

Tris had been watching her. "You have something in mind, don"t you?"

"Not really," Gemma lied. "Have you met Pere"s latest girlfriend?"

"I wouldn"t call her "latest." They"ve been together for over a year," Tris said. "Who have you been talking to?"

"No one," she said, lying again, but she couldn"t tell him what Rachel had told her in confidence. "It"s just that she didn"t strike me as someone to settle down and raise a family. How about you? What did you think of her?"

"I don"t think a single thought has ever gone through my mind when I"m around Eloisa. When I look at her it"s all physical."

"My point exactly." She took a bite and chewed slowly while Tris tried to figure out what she was up to. "Do you know the interior layout of the Frazier house?"

"I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. Why?"

"I was just thinking about that little room off the kitchen. I saw a bathroom with a shower next to it, and isn"t there a big couch in that room?"

"You mean the old porch. Mrs. Frazier did the same thing my mother did. After Colin was born, she had the porch enclosed so she could watch the children while she was in the kitchen-not that Alea ever did any cooking, but she does love to supervise. Mr. Frazier called the room a jail because she put a gate across the doorway and locked the kids inside."

Gemma was patiently waiting for him to finish. "I want you to suggest to the Fraziers that Pere should stay in that room while he recuperates."

"Why? He could stay at his place in Richmond. He"ll be fine there."

"Don"t you think that Pere will need constant tending and that he"d be better off at home?"

"Did Alea put you up to this?"

"No. I was just thinking about Pere, that"s all."

Tris wasn"t understanding. "That"s good of you, but Rachel is the one who"d get stuck with taking care of him, and she already has too much to do. But maybe you"re right that he"d be better off in Edilean. He could stay upstairs and I know just the nurse for him. She-"

"No!" Gemma said, then lowered her voice. "I mean, it"s not fair to anyone to have to run up and down stairs all day. But maybe someone could help with the cleaning so Rachel can spend as much time as needed with Pere."

At last Tris understood what she was telling him. "Oh, yeah. I see. I think that would be a great idea. Pere will need entertaining, won"t he?"

"And a nurse won"t do that."

"Are you kidding? The nurse I have in mind plays chess and juggles, and she"s beautiful. She could-"

Gemma was glaring at him.

"Right. Nurses don"t entertain their patients. Maybe it"s better to get someone Pere already knows and feels comfortable with."

"Think you can get Mrs. Frazier to agree? She might want to put him upstairs and hire that juggling nurse."

"If I were to hint to Alea Frazier that more than just recovery might come out of this, she will sew her son"s feet to the floor of that room. I must say that Rachel has done a good job of keeping this a secret. How long has it been going on?" Before Gemma could answer, Tris said quietly, "Uh oh. The store has opened and we"ve been found out. Here comes old Dr. Burgess. I"ll have to ask him to sit down. d.a.m.nation but I need to talk to you. I may have found the Heartwishes Stone."

"You what?!" Gemma said much too loudly as someone grabbed the back of her chair and she almost tipped over. Tris was up in a second, one hand steadying Gemma, the other taking the arm of a bent old man. When Gemma"s chair stopped wobbling, Tris helped the man to sit down between them.

"Dr. Burgess," Tris said, "I really want you to let me examine you."

"I"ve had too many doctors poking and prodding at me," he said in a smooth voice, looking more at Gemma than at Tris. "I can no longer bear the sight of a needle."

Gemma tried to be pleasant as Tris introduced them, but she was quite annoyed. Why had Tris let her go on and on about Pere when he had something so important to tell her? She desperately wanted to hear what he had to say.

Dr. Burgess was chattering on about how he was so very hungry and wanted one of Ellie"s pastries and her coffee. When he fumbled about as he started to get up to go to the counter, Tris told him to sit, that he"d get the food for him.

"What a dear boy you are," Dr. Burgess said as Tris left.

The second he was alone with Gemma, the old man moved his chair a bit closer to hers, and she had to give him her attention. Whereas she"d liked odd-looking Mr. Lang from the moment she first saw him, she didn"t like this man, who had moved much too close to her.

"It"s you I wanted to talk to," he said, smiling at Gemma in a way that would have been appropriate from a much younger man but that she found a bit creepy from this old man. "I don"t know if you"ve been told that I"m also an historian. I would love to hear about your research. I want to know what you"ve been finding out. From the gossip around town, it"s truly fascinating. And also," he said with a sly look, "I hear that congratulations are in order for your engagement to our local sheriff."

"You"ve heard wrong," she said. "There is no engagement. Colin Frazier and I have only been dating."

He put his age-spotted hand on her arm. "But you are living with him, aren"t you?"

She pulled away from him and picked up her bag.

"Oh dear, I"ve offended you," he said. "I do apologize. I thought it was normal today for young couples in love to live together. Maybe I"m wrong."

Tris returned with coffee and a plate of pastries. "Gemma, you aren"t leaving already, are you?"

"Gemma-may I call you that?-was just about to tell me all about her research."

"She"s good at her job," Tris said, looking from one to the other as he sat down.

She wanted to stay with Tris and hear about the Heartwishes Stone, but more than that, she wanted to get away from this old man. In spite of his protestations of hunger, he hadn"t touched the pastries. She glanced at the big belly that protruded under his old cotton shirt. The cuffs were frayed, the collar discolored around the neck. If he was hungry for something, it wasn"t for cream puffs.

It hit Gemma all at once what was bothering her about the man. He was an ailing historian who, by the poverty of his clothing, hadn"t been very successful in his career. The man was an academic, which meant that he desperately wanted to be published. She had no doubt that he"d heard rumors about the Heartwishes Stone and he planned to find out all he could from her, add to it, then get published. She had a vision of newspaper articles, magazines, tabloids, TV, the Internet, all of them splashed with stories of the Heartwishes Stone. Minutes after the stories appeared, Edilean would be inundated with . . .

She didn"t want to think of what would come into the peaceful little town: everything from rampant greed to the truly needy. All the horrible things she envisioned were the reason she"d decided never to write about the Stone in anything that would possibly be published. She"d even thought of talking to Mrs. Frazier and explaining why the doc.u.ment Gemma wrote for the family"s private use shouldn"t include the story of the Heartwishes Stone. It was one thing to write of an old legend, but things that were happening now seemed to be going back to that Stone.

She had to shake her head to clear it.

"Are you all right?" Dr. Burgess asked, his hand yet again on her arm.

Gemma didn"t want to be near the man any longer. She stood up and looked at Tris. "I"d like to talk about Pere some more. Could I come by your office?"

"I"m booked solid today. I"ll be so glad when Ariel gets here and can help out. How about dinner tonight?"

"Great," Gemma said. "I"ll come by your office at six."

"Perfect." He smiled at her. "And don"t worry about Pere. I"ll take care of everything."

"Nice to have met you, Dr. Burgess," she said quickly, then kissed Tris"s cheek and left.

As soon as she got to her car, she texted Tris to tell Burgess nothing about her or the Stone.

I don"t trust that man.

He wrote back, Thanks for the tip An hour later she was in the guesthouse, but even the beauty of the library couldn"t make her keep her mind on her work. She kept thinking about what Tris had said, that he may have found the Heartwishes Stone.

At twelve-thirty, she got a text from Joce.

Did you hear Sara"s news?

She typed back that she hadn"t heard anything about Sara.

Joce wrote back: Call me or come over and I"ll give you lunch and tell all.

It was the break Gemma needed. She practically ran to her car and was at Joce"s beautiful old house five minutes later. The door was ajar, so she pushed it open. She very much wanted a tour of the house, but from the cacophony it seemed that both babies were crying.

Joce looked exhausted and frantic. "They"re dirty at both ends," she said.

Gemma didn"t reply, just took a baby and stripped him/her-it turned out to be a him-and plunked him down in a sink full of warm water. Like magic, he got quiet.

Joce looked at her in awe.

"My sister taught me how to do this."

For the next few hours, she and Joce worked like a team, with washing babies, feeding them, then washing again, and redressing. Joce never stopped telling Gemma thanks. When the babies were ready to go down for their second nap, it was three hours later.

"Why don"t you lie down and take a nap yourself?" Gemma said to Joce. "I"ll listen for the babies and look after the house."

"I couldn"t allow that," Joce said. "You"ve done too much already."

Gemma had to practically push her up the stairs, with Joce saying thanks at every step.

While they slept, Gemma toured the house on her own and got the laundry done, cleaned up the kitchen, and put the living room back in order. When everyone was still asleep, she checked the fridge and found ingredients to make a meat loaf. She smiled as she worked, remembering Colin teasing her about her meat loaf, which she"d never made for him.

At a little after five Joce came downstairs with two smiling babies in her arms. Gemma took one.

"I can"t thank you enough for this," Joce said as she looked in the oven window. "Sometimes I get so overwhelmed I can"t think. If it weren"t for friends like you I don"t know how I"d manage. I don"t know how Sara is going to cope. She knows so few people outside of Edilean."

"Are you saying she had her baby?"

"Good heavens! You came over to hear the news and I forgot to tell you. Last night Sara had an emergency C-section and delivered twins."

Gemma quit bouncing the baby and stared at Joce. "Twins? Didn"t she have a sonogram so she knew how many kids she was having? Or did she just not tell anyone?"

"She didn"t know. The second baby was positioned behind the front one in such a way that no one saw it on the sonograms."

Gemma was having trouble collecting her thoughts. "At the barbecue, Sara wished for . . ."

"I know. She wished for twins."

Gemma sat down at the kitchen table, the baby held firmly to her. "Boy or girl?"

"Two boys. Mike said he"s already ordered martial arts gear for them."

"How is he?"

"Excited. Bewildered. Scared out of his mind."

"I wish-" Gemma began, then swallowed. "I mean, I hope that they come back here and live."