The Secret Ingredient of Wishes (33 page)

Ashe squeezed her leg to get her to look at him. When she did, his look of concern nearly made her tell him everything right then and there. She shook her head, just a hint of movement to tell him to let it go for now, and brushed her fingers over the back of his hand. She exhaled slowly when he smiled at her.

Scott held out his plate to Ashe for another piece of pie. “Run it off later?”

“Definitely,” Ashe said, carving out two more slices. He transferred one to Scott's plate, then he dished himself the other piece. With a quick glance at Rachel's plate—and her barely touched pie—he set the knife down again.

“What? We like pie,” Scott said, seeing Rachel's face, the fork halfway to his mouth.

She laughed. “Obviously. I just didn't expect you two to be so much alike,” she said before she could stop herself.

“Why's that?” Ashe asked.

“He's not—” She paused to think of something else to say that wasn't
He's not your brother
. Instead she took a small bite of her pie, adding, “He's not here much.”

“That's only been the past few years. He's had his whole life to try and emulate me.”

Scott snorted. “Emulate, my ass.” He took a swig of beer and rolled his eyes. “We've always been like this. Hell, Ashe's name was my first word.”

Rachel's stomach twisted.
No it wasn't. My name was.
She swallowed the words down, grateful neither of them noticed her reaction.

“Technically your first word was ‘ass,'” Ashe said, laughing.

He knocked his knee against Scott's. Scott slapped his leg away.

“Well, I was trying to say ‘Ashe.' Not my fault ‘sh' is hard to pronounce when you're little.”

“So is ‘ch,'” Rachel said. She nudged a raspberry around her plate with her fork. “Michael said my name first too, but the best he could do was
Ray
. Even when he was older he only called me Rachel if he was mad at me.”

“Why didn't I think of that?” Scott said. His eyes were bright, mischievous, when he looked at her. Much more like Ashe's than Rachel would have thought.

She blinked and the resemblance vanished, as if she'd imagined it.

“Start now and you'll have to find a new place to stay,” Ashe warned.

“Catch would take me in. And then Rachel and I could sit around plotting ways to get back at you for being a jerk.” He winked at her.

Rachel smiled in response, hoping neither one of them could see how much effort it took to keep her real emotions locked inside. But the more time she spent around Scott, the more she worried she wouldn't be able to keep this secret for much longer.

*   *   *

Rachel walked into the kitchen the next morning just as Catch was heading to the back door. She called out her name and Catch's head snapped up, locking her eyes on Rachel's. The sagging purple skin under Catch's eyes seemed to grow darker, heavier by the second.

She's not getting better. Why didn't the wish work?

She shifted under Catch's annoyed gaze. “Not baking this morning?” Rachel asked, noticing the clean counters and lack of pie baking in the oven.

“Not yet. I've got some things to do first,” Catch said. She shook her keys for emphasis as her other hand remained on the doorknob.

“Were you heading to the store? I can go for you if you want, save you the trip. Just tell me what you need.”
And save me from seeing Ashe or Scott if they come over for breakfast.

Catch pursed her lips and grumbled something under her breath. Then she said in a more normal tone, “If you must know, Miss-Asks-Too-Many-Questions, I'm going to the doctor.”

“Oh,” Rachel said. She tapped her fingers on the cool counter in time with her heart, which sped up at the word “doctor.” “Do you want me to come with you?”

“I most certainly do not. But if you insist on being helpful, you can stay here and make a few pies for me to take over to Elixir when I get back this afternoon.”

“Must be pretty important if it's going to take all morning.”

Catch gripped the doorknob harder, twisting it back and forth without pulling the door open. “Just some tests to check the progress and make sure nothing's spreading. Now you get to work on those pies and stop worrying about me, got it?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Rachel said, though she wouldn't stop worrying about Catch. At least not until the wish came true.

She waved bye to Catch, then stood in the kitchen for a few minutes, forcing the events of the past few days to the back of her mind. Then she gathered the ingredients and utensils she needed and started baking.

When the back door opened a while later, Rachel had the potato chip crust for a salted chocolate tart cooling on the counter and a pastry crust for a chess pie underway. She opened her mouth, ready to ask Catch how things had gone, but the words evaporated when Ashe stepped inside.

“Hey,” he said. His mouth pulled down in concern, causing lines to form at the corners of his lips.

“Hey, Ashe.” Nerves broke free of the calm she'd managed to hold on to since Catch left and rioted in her stomach. She turned her attention back to the dough.

“Still upset about whatever was nagging at you yesterday?” When she pressed her knuckles harder into the dough but didn't respond, he continued, “Yeah, I noticed something was wrong even though you were pretending like it wasn't.”

She should've known he wouldn't let it go. And she couldn't be mad at him for it because it meant he cared enough to check up on her. Sighing, she said, “I've just got a lot on my mind. I'll be okay.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Ashe stood next to her, ducking his head to make her look at him, and settled his hand on her lower back. The tips of his fingers found skin where her shirt rode up beneath the apron she wore.

“Nope,” she said and pressed her hips into the counter to keep from leaning back into him and the comfort he offered.

“C'mon, Rachel. You don't have to deal with it all on your own. Whatever this is, you can talk to me. You know that, right?”

Rachel rolled the ball of dough to the far side of the counter and rubbed her hands so flour and bits of dried dough flaked off and rained onto the floor. “I can't tell you
this,
Ashe.”

“Why not?”

“Because once I say it, you can't unknow it. And it will change everything.”

Ashe's hand slid from her back, but he didn't move away. “Is it Catch?” A mix of fear and frustration at being kept in the dark turned his voice hard.

Rachel hesitated, chewing on her lip. Until she knew if her wish worked, she couldn't tell him about the cancer. Even then, she'd probably still keep it from him if Catch asked her to. “No,” she finally said.

“Then what is it?”

“Ashe, please drop it.”

“I can't.” He stepped around her and dropped onto the stool on the other side of the counter. His fingers tapped impatiently on the granite. “You're upset about something and it's making things weird between us. I would really like to put a stop to both.”

“Why do you have to be so nice? This would be so much easier if I didn't care if I hurt you.” She mumbled the last part.

“Yeah, see, that's not the way to make me stop worrying.”

Rachel turned away, her fingers fumbling with the knot on her apron. When she got it undone, she set it on the counter, ignoring the thin circle of flour she'd been rolling the dough through. She braced her hands on the counter and leaned on the end of the island so she was only a foot away from Ashe. “Last chance. I'm telling you, once you know this … well, it's going to change things.”

Ashe stared at her. “I can take it.”

“Fine. I found my brother,” she said.

“What? Seriously? No wonder you've been so distracted.” He covered her hands with his, curling his fingers around her wrists and rubbing the soft skin at the base of her palms. “How? Where is he?”

Rachel fisted her hands under his, and he pulled away. “He's in Nowhere. But he doesn't remember me. He doesn't even remember his name, who he really is.”

Leaning forward on his elbows, Ashe drew his eyebrows together, studying her. “What do you mean?”

“Somehow when he disappeared, he ended up here. A family took him in and raised him like he was their own. And no one knows except Catch.”

“I'm sure you've noticed that Nowhere is a pretty small town. How would people here not notice that a family suddenly had a young son they didn't have before?” His voice dropped, the pity in his words making it soft and cautious. “Even with Catch's help, I don't see how everyone would forget that.”

“I don't know how it happened, but it did,” she said. She pushed back from the counter. Her palms left sweat marks along the edge. “Something about how he arrived in Nowhere altered people's memories, altered
your
memories so you think he's always been here.”

Ashe stood, the stool scraping along the floor as he moved it out of his way. His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Wait, what are you saying? Do I know your brother?”

She picked at a spot of dried dough on the counter, then looked up to meet his gaze. “It's Scott.” Her voice came out stronger than she'd expected.

“No.”

“I know it's hard to believe—”

“That's because it's not true,” Ashe said. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight so he leaned slightly away from her. His jaw tightened, pulling his face taut. “I'm sorry about what happened to your brother, and I get that you want him back. But Scott's not him. You're seeing something that's not there because you want it to be true.”

Rachel wanted to yell at him, to tell him he was wrong and he'd see the truth if he'd just open his damn eyes, but she held it all back. She wouldn't want to accept it either if the roles were reversed. Her throat ached from the restraint. “Do you really think I wanted to find him this way? That I'd want to tell you or Scott that this isn't the life he was supposed to have?”

“I know you and Catch think the town brought you here to find him, that it wouldn't let you leave when you tried to bail after everyone found out about the wish thing. But I think you're letting the magic of Nowhere go to your head, making you think things that can't possibly be real. Making you see something in
my
brother that's not there.” His voice turned as hard as his face, all traces of his earlier worry gone.

“I'm not. For the first time since I was little—since I wished Michael would get lost and he did—I am one hundred percent sure about what is real. Just ask Catch about Scott. She'll tell you the same things I have.”

When Rachel met his eyes, denial stared back at her. A thick patch of goose bumps erupted on her arms and neck, and she rubbed at them with a shaky hand. The silence stretched between them, tingeing the room with doubt.

Ashe stalked to the door, the hard set of his mouth saying that some part of him knew his brother wasn't his at all. “You're wrong, Rachel. I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.” He didn't look at her as he walked out and slammed the door behind him hard enough to shake the pies on the counter.

 

34

Catch still wasn't back after lunch, so Rachel took the pies down to the coffee shop herself. She walked them in the front door and even received a few smiles and calls of “Hey, Rachel,” from the customers. She returned their greetings, grateful that they'd finally accepted her. Then she wandered around downtown and sat in the park under the shade of an old oak tree to avoid going back to the house and potentially fighting with Ashe again or running into Scott. Everley had given her a few days off to let her hands heal completely, but Rachel thought that she might have sensed Rachel's emotional upheaval and wanted to keep her stress levels as low as possible so wishes didn't go haywire again.

While she appreciated the gesture, it gave her too much time to think. And all she could think about was her brother.

But now Scott was walking toward her, Lucy tugging on the leash a few feet in front of him. He smiled when he saw Rachel. She jumped up from the bench. The desire to hug him battled with the need to run. She froze in the middle of the sidewalk and squinted against the sun. Lucy strained to reach Rachel as fast as she could, and Scott had to use both hands to restrain her.

“Seems like somebody's excited to see you,” he said as they got closer.

Rachel's mouth tasted like she'd licked an eraser. Swallowing did nothing but spread the feeling farther down her throat. “Yeah,” she croaked.

He looked at her curiously. “You okay?”

“I think the heat's getting to me.”

“Do you wanna grab something to drink? I'm sure Lucy wouldn't mind a stop at Elixir. They usually keep dog bones and a bowl of water for the pooches.”

Rachel wiped her hand along the back of her sweaty neck, trying to get ahold of herself. “I'll be okay. Thanks.”

“Oh, c'mon. I promise we don't bite. Well, I don't, at least.” He laughed and ruffled Lucy's fur on her head.

When Scott spoke, she could hear an echo of Michael begging her to play with him. When she nodded and accepted his invite, she prayed she was doing the right thing.

Lucy nudged her muzzle under Rachel's hand as they walked. She scratched her nails in the downy fur under the dog's chin.

“I didn't believe Ashe when he told me at first,” he said.

“Believe what?” Her fingers froze in the dog's fur as she thought of all the things Ashe could have told him about her.

“That Lucy liked you. I thought he was just saying it so I'd like you too.”

“You'll only like me if the dog does?” she asked. “Wow. Tough crowd.”