My Last Wish novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Wish 1,001

Callie's POV

In the morning, the lemon tree sat in the middle of Dane's kitchen table, in its clay pot, in the sun.

It had come through the winter in an empty house.

It was still alive, and it had one small green lemon.

Dane made coffee with the right amount of cream.

He set the cup in front of me and sat down across the table, and he looked more nervous than I had ever seen him.

"You said daylight," he said.

"I did."

"So." He turned his own cup. "What do you want, Callie?"

I had been asked that question for three months.

I had answered it with a gala, a hearing, a robe, a day at a park, a bridge, a floor.

Every answer had been something I could take with my hands.

I looked at the tree.

"I haven't written a wish since the night I read them," I said. "Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because I thought if I wrote one, it'd go into a drawer."

"Callie."

"I'm not angry. I'm telling you what I was afraid of." I put my cup down. "I was afraid I'd want something and it would be decided for me. By a man with a bow, or by you, being careful."

"I'm not being careful anymore."

"I know. That's why I can say it."

I pulled a slip of paper from the pile Dane kept by the fruit bowl.

It was an ordinary slip, the size of my palm, cut from the back of a hardware receipt.

I took the pencil from behind his ear.

My hand was steady.

I wrote it small, in my own handwriting, and I turned the paper around so he could read it.

I wish Teddy has a father who stays.

He read it once.

I watched it go in.

He didn't move for so long that the coffee stopped steaming.

"That's number one thousand and one," I said. "The first was for a mother. This is the second."

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