Three Wishes (30 page)

He didn’t. At least all night.

I was up for most of it, alert to every sound, keeping my window wide to listen for his horse, waiting for the front door to open again. As morning dawned, I sat up and rubbed my face. I’d gotten maybe a couple hours of sleep, dozing off and on. Might he have slipped in while I was out?

I’d ruined things here—caused a rift in this big, wonderful family. Why hadn’t I found a way to leave before I’d done such damage?

I moved to the green and black dress Captain Worthington had given me, something I could put on by myself, and then paused. I turned toward the chest and fished out my maxiskirt and cami, bundling them inside Abuela’s shawl.

I had to get back to a time when a cami and maxiskirt were cool, not this crazy costume from a Western set in Hollywood.

I had to get home to my own time, before I destroyed everyone I was coming to care for.

Let the Venturas—these people who had so quickly wormed their way into my heart—get back to their normal life, before I screwed things up even more.

That thought brought me up short. I
was
coming to care for them, I admitted to myself. Every one of the Venturas. Javier. Each of his siblings. Adalia and little Álvaro. Even Doña Elena.

That wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. Surely that would tie me here to this time all the more securely, making it more difficult to get back. The beginnings of love? Family?

I shook my head and sighed, running my fingers through my curly mop, pushing it up into another messy bun. Doña Elena wouldn’t approve, but I was about to get out of
her
hair shortly. I just had to get into that safe…

I slipped on my socks and boots, opened a drawer to grab the fossil and Javier’s note, reached for my clothes bundled in Abuela’s shawl, and hurried down the stairs and into the library. No one was about, the house curiously quiet, other than servants chatting and laughing back in the kitchen. Maybe everyone was exhausted after entertaining the guests so late the night before. I moved behind Javier’s massive desk, slid the chair to one side, and then cautiously opened the huge oil painting that covered the safe like a door. It squeaked on the hinges, but thankfully, no one came to check out the noise.

I stared in relief at the smooth, black surface. It was here, right where I assumed it was. One hurdle crossed. But now…

There was a lock on the metal door. With an opening for a sizable key. I tried the handle, on the crazy-lucky chance that Javier had left it unlocked. But it didn’t move. My eyes went back to the keyhole. At least it wasn’t a combination lock. Where would he keep the key? I opened his desk drawers, starting at the bottom, checking for false bottoms or sides.

“What are you doing, Zara?” Doña Elena barked, striding through the door. She came straight to the desk.

I rose, startled, feeling the blush of guilt on my cheeks.

“I’m searching for the key to the safe. I-I need that lamp. Javier put it in here. I need to try to get home.”

Her dark eyes pierced mine. “You are home, Zara. Where you are meant to be.”

“I need to try and get back to my own home in my own
time
, Doña Elena. This was a mistake. Such a big mistake. I will find what I wished for there and not divide your family any farther.”

I took a deep breath and moved around the desk. “Please forgive me for telling Javier your secret. I had no right. It was only that he didn’t believe me, not totally. Only when I told him about the lamp, and how you tossed it into the sea, did things seem to make sense to him. But I’m sorry. Truly.”

She stiffened, glanced to the window, then back to me. “I supposed it was a matter of time, with your arrival. I’d only thought that I would be the one to tell him.”

“You should’ve been. Forgive me. I was angry and frustrated, and it simply came out. I had no right. Did…Carlos ever know?”

She nodded and looked to the window and back. “He did.”

“Did he know you were throwing the lamp back out to sea? For me?”

She shook her head “No. It was after he was gone. He would not have approved. He thought it…unsettling how I came to him. He loved me, with a great, deep love, but he preferred to forget how our love began.”

“That’s understandable.”

She looked into my eyes. “Zara, Javier responded in a similar manner to his father. But I can see it in him. My son and you can share the sort of love his father and I did. I feel it in my bones.” She reached out to take my hand. “In my soul. I know it as utter
truth
. It would be a grave mistake to leave him.”

To leave us,
her eyes told me.

I stared at her and gently pulled my hand from hers. “Your son is undeniably wonderful, Doña Elena, but I can’t help feeling that this is wrong, as much as it is right.”

“That will ease in time.”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m leaving, Doña Elena. Going back to my own time. Javier will find the love you wish for him. With a woman of
this
time and place. It will be better. You’ll see.”

She shook her eyes sadly. “No. My boy needs the extraordinary. Someone different than the girls here. Don’t you see? I had to bring him home from university, from a future he greatly desired. The only way to keep him here was to bring him a love that makes this place, in this time, the thing he desires most. Otherwise, he’ll forever be lost in dreams about the future.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I cannot be that person for you. I’ll throw the lamp into the sea when I get back and pray that it brings you the daughter-in-law you deserve. The girl who
wishes
to be here, in this time, as well as for love and family.”

She swallowed hard, waited a moment, then a moment more, as if thinking I’d change my mind. Then she moved around the desk, removed a book from a shelf, fetched a key from its center, put it in the lock and turned it, and pressed the lever to one side. The heavy door creaked open. Inside were stacks of gold and paper dollars, but my eyes were on the older, more brassy gold of the lamp. She took hold of it with both hands, bent her head in prayer, and then turned to me. “Go,” she said. “Go, if God and the future will allow you to return. And if not, return to us, Zara. Embrace this as His good gift to you.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, taking it from her and wrapping it tenderly in Abuela’s shawl with my clothes, intent on keeping it hidden from anyone I met on the way. I glanced back through the open doorway. “Say good-bye for me? To the children, to Javier? To…everyone?”

She nodded, once, and I turned to go. In the doorway I stopped and looked back to her sad face again. “Thank you, Doña Elena. For welcoming me. Believing that I could be…what you prayed for. It was an honor.”

She didn’t answer, and I slipped out the front door as quietly as possible. I didn’t take a horse this time. I’d walk the several miles to the beach, because I didn’t want to leave one of the Venturas’ horses there to find her way home—or get caught by blackcoats or the Vargases. And without a corset to keep me from breathing well, I figured it was doable, even in the laced-up boots that were as far from Nikes as a girl could get.

I trudged down the road, ignoring the calls of the guards above the house, ignoring the curious gazes of the workers in the vineyard on one side and fields on the other. I even ignored the snuffling horses that came to the fence as I passed the farthest corral, as if I might have a carrot or sugar beet in my pocket. I was going home. Back to my own time. To our apartment and a fresh change of clothes every day. To showers and buses and cell phones. To the restaurant and student loans and college with a program for meteorologist-wannabes.

To the future I’d always thought I’d have.

I looked up to the skies, where gathering clouds dotted the horizon, indicating moisture in the atmosphere, a possible approaching storm. It felt a little cooler today, cool enough that I was glad I’d brought Abuela’s shawl. I switched the lamp to my other arm and forced myself to forget how warm and welcoming the villa had been. How I’d loved living with a family and gradually feeling a part of them.

I paused a moment—actually stopped short in the road—thinking of Abuela’s empty apartment.

Of the urn, full of ashes, sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to do something about it.

I forced myself to move on, telling myself I’d figure that out soon. Maybe I’d scatter her ashes at George Point, near the tide pools and starfish she’d loved.

I had to go back. Had to, had to, had to.

It was my place, my time. Not here, not now.

In less than an hour, I was trudging along the crest above Tainter Cove, looking in relief at the big boulders to my left, the shipwreck below me, and George Point to the right. The last time I’d tried to go back, I’d sat near those stones, thinking it was where I was when I came to this time. Maybe the trick was to get as close as I could to the tide pools, where I’d found it in the first place. I trudged down the bank of sand, sinking so low that it crept over and into the edges of my high boots. But it didn’t matter. Soon I’d be kicking them off, so I could leave them behind.

The wolf-dog raced past me, startling me and then making me laugh. I shifted left, and she shifted right, turning in a wide circle along the waves’ edge, then loped back toward me, as if seriously happy to see me. I smiled. “Centinela,” I greeted her.

I knelt and waited for her to approach, again crooning to her when she hesitated, sniffed the air, then backed away. It took several long minutes, but at last she nosed my open palm and allowed me to scratch her chin, her cheek, her ears. Then she ran away along the water, acting as if she was playing a game with the wash of it, nipping at the foam, tossing her head in the air.

I shook my head. I’d never unravel the mystery of where she came from and why. But at least I’d managed to save her life. Twice. And she’d made me smile when I needed a smile most. I’d always be grateful for that.

I sank down to the sand, as close as I could get to where I believed the tide pools would someday emerge, unlaced my boots and yanked them off, and stuffed the socks inside. My toes dug into the sand, and already I felt a little closer to home.

I set about trying to wish my way back. I thought about all the wishes I had in my old-present. Tried thinking about them in different combinations.

But after several hours, it hadn’t worked.

Eventually the wolf-dog came to sit beside me, and I rubbed her back. She turned to look at me and whined a little.

“What is it, girl? Do you not want me to go? Well, I have to. I have to.”

I rose and walked down to the water, letting the waves wash around my feet and climb up my skirts. I was thirsty. I hadn’t thought to bring a canteen; I hadn’t thought I’d be here that long, now that I was ready,
really
ready to get back to my own time and had the lamp in hand. I set off down the beach toward the shipwreck.

Centinela paused and lifted her head, staring up the dunes, growling quietly. I turned.

And there he was again. Javier.

He didn’t hold a gun this time. He just stared down at me with such a mix of frustration and fear and relief that it made me catch my breath. He eased his mare down the dune, swaying in the saddle, and when he reached my side, Centinela loped off down the beach, as if she didn’t want to intrude.

I found myself wishing she had stayed.

Javier lifted his far leg over the saddle and slipped to the ground. Then he turned back, pulled a slightly rumpled red rose from his bag, and brought it over to me. “A farewell present,” he said softly, lifting my hair and tucking the fat bud behind my ear. “I thought you could press it, if it survived the trip. Something to remember me by.”

I looked up into his eyes. “I don’t think I could ever forget you, Javier. Ever.”

He glanced down to the lamp tucked in the crook of my arm and took a slight step away. “So there it is. You can open locked safes as easily as you seem to do everything else.”

“I wish,” I said, smiling up at him. “Your mother opened it for me. When it became clear that I only wanted this—to return here, and try and get home.”

“My mother…wants the best for people. But clearly, she goes too far at times.”

“Isn’t that the way of every mother you know?”

He sighed. “Mine is more overbearing than most,” he said. “Zara, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you feel trapped here. That you were pulled back into a time and place you did not want. Into a…into our world. It wasn’t fair of her. I can see why you were angry with her. Even though such a…
transition
proved to be a boon for her, she should not have assumed it would prove a boon for another.”

The frustration, the hurt on his face, mingled with the heavy, magnetic draw between us, made me want to cry. I lifted a hand to his cheek. “It’s terrible, Javier. This. It’s not because of you. I swear it isn’t you. You are…wonderful. So is your family. Even your mamá. But I don’t
belong
here.”

He swallowed hard and ran a hand through his curls, pushing them back, then letting them fall exactly back where they’d been. “So…have you tried?”

I nodded, frowning. “So far, no luck.” I gestured down the beach. “I tried there, first. As near as I could get to where I found the lamp. You know, back in my own time.”

My eyes met his as he nodded. He seemed to have accepted it as truth, strange and fantastic as it might be. It was as if we were both trying to make our way through this strange dream, so that we could both wake up and move on with our lives.

“May I stay with you, until you go?” he asked.

I shrugged and moved on down the beach, back to the big boulders again. Maybe it’d help, having him here, as it seemed he was one of the touchstones that pulled me to this time.
Love
.

I shoved away the word, tried to swallow, but found my mouth dry. “Do you have any water?” I managed.

“Yes,” he said, turning to his saddle. He fished out his tin canteen and handed it to me. I drank deeply, and then he took a drink too, before popping on the cork and returning it to his bag. We moved on, back to the rocks.