Ninety-Nine Wishes, One Broken Marriage novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ninetieth
Damian thanks his wife in front of three hundred people while Perry's wish ninety lights her phone. She picks the ferry, and comes home to an empty closet, papers and his ring in the dish.
Damian was thanking his wife in front of three hundred people when Perry's text lit up my phone.
It was the hospital's annual dinner, in a hotel ballroom.
My husband stood at the podium with a glass plaque in one hand, the one they give the best surgeon of the year.
"Most of all," he said, "I want to thank my wife, Joanna, who has put up with my pager for three years."
People turned to look at me. I smiled and lifted my water glass.
My phone sat face up beside my bread plate.
The message had come in during the soup course. It said: Is Damian next to you?
I had written back that he was.
Perry always asked that before he sent a wish. I had never wondered why.
Now the second message sat under it.
Wish 90. The sea. This Friday, two seats on the 7:10 ferry to the island. Don't tell Damian yet, he'll only worry. xo
I had promised Perry Griswold ninety-nine wishes the year his kidneys failed.
He was thirty now, and on a dialysis machine three mornings a week.
I owed him more than I could pay in wishes, and there was a reason I had never told my husband.
I turned the phone face down.
It was too late. My sister had already leaned over my shoulder.
Bea was twenty-five and a first-year intern on Damian's service. She had never learned to whisper.
"Ninety?" she said. "Jo, Friday is the day before your anniversary."
The woman on my other side stopped chewing.
At the podium, Damian had stopped speaking.
He looked at the table, then at Bea, then at the phone under my hand.
"Damian booked the cabin in March," Bea said, louder. "The one you've wanted for two years."
"Bea, stop," I said.
"I'm not the one who should."
The chief of surgery cleared his throat and thanked Damian for his remarks.
Damian came down the steps with the plaque. He set it on the tablecloth and sat beside me.
He didn't touch the phone. He waited.
I turned it over and showed him.
He read it twice. His jaw moved once.
"Say no to this one," he said quietly.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
That was the question I could not answer.
"Because I promised him, Damian."
"You promised him ninety-nine wishes. You never promised him our anniversary."
Across the table, somebody lifted a phone and started filming Bea, who was still standing.
Damian saw it. He stood, took the phone out of the man's hand, and gave it back with the video deleted.
Then he took my elbow and walked me out through the lobby.
In the parking garage he stopped beside my car.
I always drove at night. Damian had stopped asking why years ago.
"Nine more after this one," he said. "Do you know how many of them were for us?"
"Perry is sick."
"I know he's sick. I'm the one who reads his labs when he's too proud to ask for the results."
I had no answer to that either.
He held out his hand for my keys, the way he used to.
I put them in my own pocket.
He nodded slowly.
"If you get on that ferry, Jo, don't bother coming to the cabin. Don't bother coming home."
He didn't raise his voice. He never did.
"Friday at seven, I'm going to be in surgery," he said. "Choose before then."
He walked back to the elevator without his plaque.
So I got on the ferry.
Perry was waiting at the rail with two paper cups and a bag of ginger candy.
He looked thinner than he had on Monday. He grinned anyway.
"You came," he said. "Did Damian let you?"
"He didn't."
Perry's face went soft, and he squeezed my hand.
"He'll come around, Jo. He's a good man. He just doesn't understand yet."
I wanted to believe him so badly that I let him buy me tea.
We watched Marrow Island come up out of the fog. Perry cried a little at the sight of the water, and I held his shoulders.
I texted Damian a photo of the sea. He never answered.
On Sunday night I let myself into our house.
The hall light was on. His keys were gone from the bowl.
I went upstairs. Damian's side of the closet was empty, every hanger bare.
On the kitchen table lay a white envelope with the St. Brendan's logo on it.
Inside were separation papers, already signed.
His wedding ring lay in the dish beside them, and under the ring was a note in his small, even handwriting.
Ninety is the last one I'll watch.
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