Wished

Chapter 9

9

Max’s words strike like a lightning bolt, electrifying the dark office. Energy crackles between us, a snap and a pull that flicks as vividly as the crack of static electricity.

You’re my wife.

The shock of the words snaps around the office like leaves tossing in a storm. It’s not a question. It’s an unequivocal statement.

The look on Max’s face, though, isn’t one of calm acceptance. It’s the exact opposite.

Sometimes when Dorene describes an angry client, she says they were “so furious their face was thunder and lightning.”

I’ve never understood. How can someone have a face of thunder and lightning?

Well. From now on, all I need to do is picture Max in this moment.

The clenched jaw, the hard eyes, the intensity of his emotions. His hands are balled in tight fists, and he takes a swift step forward. All my instincts scream at me, to run, run, run.

My pulse skitters in my neck, and I stumble back.

Max reaches out, lightning-quick, and catches my wrist in his grip.

When he touches me, his eyes narrow further and his lips flatten.

“I remember now.” He looks down at his fingers shackling me. “You’re the woman who tried to steal my necklace.”

His gaze drags over my features, catching on my mouth.

I tug at my wrist. He holds me firm. “You know, you have a bad habit of holding my wrist when I don’t want you to.”

At my words he blinks, shakes his head, and then his eyes widen.

“Why is it,” he asks, “that suddenly I have a slew of memories telling me you always like it when I hold your wrists?”

Jeez.

By his gaze, I know exactly the types of moments he’s talking about. A picture flashes in my mind. Me lying naked on the curving marble stairs in Max’s home, the cool steps digging into my thighs and my bare back. Max holding my wrists above my head as he drives into me.

Me against the warm wood paneling of this office, my legs wrapped around Max’s middle. Max gripping my wrists as he thrusts into me, the books on the bookshelf shaking as he pounds away. Me in the cushy bed I woke up in this morning. Max holding my wrists tight against the soft sheets as he kisses my clit.

He sees it too.

I’m sure he does.

The temperature of the office just went up about five thousand degrees.

He watches me, taking in my appearance. His pupils nearly swallow the dark brown of his eyes.

Apparently, our marriage is full of conjugal bliss.

When I tug at my wrist again his expression cools, and he says in a quiet voice, “Do you promise not to run?”

I lift my chin. “I came to you. What do you think?”

He considers this for a moment, sorting through whatever he knows of me and whatever he sees in his memories. After ten long seconds he drops my wrist. When he does, I take a big step back.

Outside the office the phone rings, and I hear Max’s assistant speaking quietly. Inside the office the only noise is Max’s measured inhale and exhale and the quiet hum of his electronics.

“All right,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ve figured it out. No need to worry. This is a dream.” He looks back at me and flicks his hand in the air as if he’s shooing me away. “I’ve fallen asleep at my desk and I’ll wake up any minute. When that happens, I’ll go back to work and you’ll go back to ...”—he waves his hand again—“stealing. Lying. Hoovering. Whatever.”

I glance to the ceiling and send up a prayer for patience. And forgiveness. “It’s not a dream.”

“It is. Case in point, you don’t look like this in real life.”

I glance down at myself. There was a mirror in the bedroom this morning. I look just the same as ever. “Yes, I do. I look just like I always do.”

Max shakes his head. “No. You wear thick glasses. You cover your hair with a handkerchief. I don’t even know what color it is in real life. I thought it was blonde. In real life you dress in dirty jumpers and ugly jeans. You’re shorter. Older. Not this alluring or?—”

“Okay.” I hold up my hand. “Stop.”

“Why?”

“This isn’t a dream. I look exactly the same as ever. You just never noticed me before.”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t believe me. “Not possible.”

Of course it’s possible. I lived it for three years.

“Look,” I say, “this can’t be a dream. People don’t share dreams.” I step forward and pinch his arm. Hard.

“Ouch!” He yanks his arm away from me.

“Exactly,” I say. “This being a dream is as likely as time travel or switching bodies. Those things don’t happen.”

Max taps his temple with his pointer finger and says, “Then how are you in here? How do I remember you as my wife? I have years of memories that I know aren’t real. They’re floating in my mind, parallel to reality. It’s like I have two pasts. How do you explain that?”

I shake my head. “I can’t.”

I don’t know why everyone else only remembers me as Max’s wife. I don’t know why I don’t remember us married. I don’t know why Max remembers both. I can’t explain it.

But, “I know why it happened.”

Max tilts his head, leaning closer. “What do you mean, you know why this happened?”

I glance around the oppressive office, at the thin stream of light filtering through the heavy curtains, at the thick wood desk, at the dark colors and weighted atmosphere.

“I wished it.”

Max gives me a flat stare. “You wished it.”

I nod slowly. “The sapphire necklace?—”

“The necklace you tried to steal.”

“—had a letter,” I say, ignoring his interruption. “Which explained that if you make a wish, the necklace will make it come true.”

“That’s just a story ,” Max says. “A story my ancestor came up with to explain why his wife didn’t get her head chopped off in the French Revolution. She wished it to stay on her shoulders. It’s not real.”

“Then how do you explain this?” I gesture between us. “And that?” I gesture at his closed office door, where outside I can hear his assistant on the telephone.

Max turns and stalks to the window. He shoves aside the curtain and stares over the water. A tour boat glides past, its reflection blurry in the water.

I walk across the thick carpet until I’m standing in the sunlight next to Max. The tour boat gives me an idea.

“What if,” I ask, “the necklace doesn’t so much create a new reality? What if when you make a wish, it flips you into your reflection?” I point out the window. “One reality is the boat, the other is its reflection. Right now, we’re in the reflection.”

“You’re deluded,” he says. “You. Me. Agathe. It’s a pandemic of delusion.”

I hold up my hand. “Plus all your staff downstairs, your housekeeper, your handyman, your cook, your gardener?—”

“Handyman? Cook?” Max frowns. “What housekeeper?”

“You don’t know her?”

Max pinches the bridge of his nose. “Madame ... Blinken ... and Gerard ...” He glares at me. “Wait a minute. You said you made a wish.”

I nod. I guess I didn’t think ahead when I admitted that. Of course he’ll want to know what my wish was.

“What exactly did you wish?” His eyelashes lower again, and he’s suffused with a look of deep concentration. When he looks at me again he says, “What did you wish ... Anna?”

I stare at Max. “You know my name.”

“Anna Madeleine Benoit Barone.” My name rolls off his tongue, rough and melodic. “Tell me what you wished.”

He knows. He already knows. He has to.

The way he’s watching me makes me feel as if his hand has encircled my wrist again and he’s pulled me close against him. I can feel the heat of him, his inhales and exhales, the steady beat of his pulse.

I turn my face to the sun, stare at the wavy, distorted reflection of the tour boat rippling in the blue waves, and say, “I wished we were married.”