The Wish. Diane Pershing

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter Two

      She got her wish. Just like that.

      There was no drama about it, no breath-robbing, head-spinning whirling through space, no dramatic drumrolls, no eerie voices or otherworldly music. It just…happened.

      One minute Gerri was sitting on her couch at home, petting her cats, and the next, poof! she was perched on the ladder in her bookshop, in the exact position she’d been in last Friday evening, looking for an arcane book on ancient Aztec tattooing rituals for an elderly customer currently waiting on the phone. Rance stood at the foot of the ladder, as he had then, talking to her about his family, complaining some, making some jokes, generally chatting with her as he liked to do now and again, using Gerri as an available ear.

      “Mother is really getting into this whole I-want-to-be-a-grandmother thing. You know, we-need-heirs-for-the-family-name, and you-aren’t-doing-your-part. On and on. Like she did about six months ago. Back then, if you recall, I managed to distract her by taking that racing car course, which about drove her crazy.”

      “That would certainly do it,” Gerri found herself replying, just as she had that night.

      Inside, however, her mind was doing its own speed laps. She had to hold on tightly to the sides of the ladder to keep her balance. As her eyes couldn’t seem to focus, she wasn’t able to read the words on the books’ spines yet. Dear God, she thought, her heart rate accelerating, her mind filled with confusion, wonder, even some terror.

      What was going on here? one part of her asked, even as the other part answered promptly. You just made a wish by rubbing a pair of ugly reading glasses. You are now where you were a week ago. Ergo: The wish has been granted.

      Even so, her scholar’s mind shifted through alternate possibilities: she was in the middle of a dream, one of the wish fulfillment types that Freud had written about in his seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams, in which the dreamer incorporates her daily worries or fantasies into a story, one that allows the dreamer to continue sleeping, achieving needed rest. Or…

      She was hallucinating. Gerri pinched her upper arm, and it hurt. She gazed down and Rance was still there. So, no hallucinations. Or…

      Someone was playing a joke on her, had snuck up behind her as she sat on the couch at home, conked her over the head, hauled her here, placed her on the ladder, arranged for Rance to be in attendance.

      Not likely.

      But then…how…? Was she really here, back through the time-space continuum, to exactly one week ago?

      There was one sure way to check it out. She ran her fingertips over her cheekbone. No pain, no swelling. The shop’s round security mirror hung just to her left, so she leaned in to peruse her image. Nope, no discoloration or bruises. Just her extremely average face, with its hazel eyes, pale eyelashes and brows, a sprinkling of freckles across an average nose, a mouth of no particular distinction, except it wasn’t too large or too small.

      But no swelling or redness in the least. The evidence of her accident had been with her all week, but right now, there was none. And her sprained ankle? To make sure, she put her weight on her right foot as she balanced on the ladder rung. No pain, no weakness there.

      So, then it was the week before. Had to be.

      Her mind reeled, searching and discarding one more time, all kinds of other theories: sci-fi ones like an alternate universe or a time machine, mathematical ones like relativity gone berserk, malformed logarithms. Logical explanations like…

      None. There were none, no other explanation. Except the one that she knew, in her gut, was the one.

      The magic glasses worked. Her wish had been granted. Period, end of discussion.

      It was like someone had pressed the rewind button on a videotape, to the beginning, instead of fast forwarding to the end, which in her case had been the dreadful dinner dance and her making a total fool of herself.

      She would get to do the week over.

      She closed her eyes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! There was to be a reprieve from Gerri the klutz, the social misfit, the tall, brainy woman unfit to be on the arm of Terrance Wallace III. Now, cautiously, she even allowed a small ray of hope to shine inside. Maybe, if she was very careful, and paid a lot of attention to her behavior this week, maybe, just maybe, the prince would finally notice the existence of the right princess for him, even though she’d been part of his universe for what seemed like years and he hadn’t gotten the message yet.

      Only one year, of course, since Rance had come into her shop, searching for a coffee-table book for his uncle’s birthday, but in that year, Gerri’s fantasies and dreams had been filled with him.

      The subject of her thoughts was complaining again. “I don’t know what kind of distraction I can give Mother this time. I don’t intend to marry yet, if ever. And any grandchildren are way in the future. I’m only thirty-two, for Pete’s sake.”

      “Maybe you should tell her that.”

      “That I’m thirty-two?”

      She grinned down at him. “That marriage is way in your future. You’re pretty independent, so let her know.”

      “Done it and done it. Doesn’t get through. Hey,” Rance said with a speculative gleam in his eye, “you and I would have great kids, know that? With my looks, which I’m told are passable, and your brains, which are off the scale, the kid would be a major winner. Mother would finally shut up.”

      On that previous Friday night, the one before “the wish,” Rance’s remark—even tossed off as lightly and mockingly as it had been—threw her. She’d been flattered that he’d even thought of her as a woman. In fact, her always-overactive brain had conjured up a picture of the physical act involved in making children. With Rance.

      That graphic image had made her lose her balance. She’d slipped off the ladder, bruised her cheek on one of the rungs and had badly sprained her ankle. For the entire next week, she’d had to wear an Ace bandage and soak her foot morning and night. She’d missed riding her horse Ruffy, missed her nice morning visits with Des, hadn’t seen or heard from him all that week, in fact, until he’d called up on Friday afternoon and casually suggested they grab a sandwich together that evening.

      And last week, needless to say, she’d looked awful at the ball.

      Not this time, Gerri told herself. This time she would get to do it right.

      “You know,” she found herself replying to Rance with a lightness that matched his, “a famous actress once said something like that to George Bernard Shaw. She suggested they have children together because with her looks and his brains, their offspring would rule the world. ‘But, madam,’ he replied, ‘what if they had my looks and your brains?”’