Christy Yorke - The Wishing Garden

Are you concentrating, Dad? Savannah asked, because he had stopped swirling the cards. He started again and thought about the only question he really wanted answered: How much more time would he have with Maggie?

Savannah took back the cards and laid them out. They looked all right to him. No Death card, no Devil.

Look at this, Dad. Your future is the Knight of Wands. Ive always loved that card. Its the card of journeys. Advancement into the unknown without fear. Its a card of risk.

Doug looked over at his wife. She turned suddenly and stared at him. Whats there to risk if youre already dying?

He leaned back. Maggie was absolutely right. What did he have to risk except those few things that cancer could not devour and the bittersweet poetry of his soul?

If he was already dying, then the least he could do was go about it flying through thin air. He found himself thinking everything depended on whether or not Maggie thought him capable of poetry. All of a sudden, he had a million ways to say he loved her, and he had to get them all down on paper.

Also by Christy Yorke

M AGIC S PELLS

T HE W ISHING G ARDEN

A Bantam Book/August 2000

All rights reserved.

Illustrations from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, known also as the Rider Tarot and the Waite Tarot, reproduced by permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Copyright 1971 by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Further reproduction prohibited. The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck is a registered trademark of U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Copyright 2000 by Christy Cohen

Cover art copyright 2000 by Robert Hunt No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76813-1

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Dear Reader:

Im thrilled to share The Wishing Garden with you. Its main character, Savannah Dawson, was inspired by my husband, Rob, who is nicknamed Mr. Positive. Like Savannah, Rob sees the good in everyone and finds the bright side to every disaster. Obviously he drives me crazy, but mostly because I wish I could be more like him.

While Rob breathed life into Savannah, my young children are the driving force behind all my novels. I began writing stories about the power of wishes and loves ability to transform us for one reason: I wanted my daughter and son to believe in a world of possibilities.

Like them, may you believe in magic. May you wish daily on stars.

Sincerely,

F or Dean,
who makes me laugh

O NE
T HE E IGHT OF S WORDS W ARNING

W hen people first moved to San Francisco, they often cried through the whole month of June. Theyd had no idea the rain would come in daily and sideways, that fog would accumulate to the consistency of pured potato soup. Old-timers, however, knew the secret to living happily in the city. They didnt ask for too much. No more than a few days of sunshine in autumn, a decent parking space, a fifteen-hundred-a-month studio apartment. They certainly didnt ask for their hearts desires, unless they were masochists to begin with and wanted to be hurt.

That was probably the reason Savannah Dawson had never made her living telling fortunes. No one trusted her ability to turn out one good fortune after another. Not only was she cheaptwenty dollars for half an hour and a ten-card tarot spreadshe had never dealt the sorrow-filled Three of Swords. She promised anyone who walked through her door true love, yet only teenagers, the drunk, and the desperate took her up on it. They believed in little but destiny and grand passion, and Savannah assured them of both.

When the Devil came up, no one panicked. Savannah shrugged it off with a wave of ruby-red fingernails and told them they were going to lose something all right, but probably just those ten extra pounds or a tradition of lonely Saturday nights. By the time they put their twenty dollars in her tin, they were expecting greatness and no longer scared of a thing.

Savannah made her living working at San Franciscos Taylor Baines advertising agency. She headed up a creative team that had linked milk consumption with true love, but when it came to fortunes, she wasnt making things up. Take the case of the fifty-year-old spinster shed told to look north for true love. The woman had gotten out a lawn chair, turned her back to the ineffective San Francisco sun, and refused to move. When the mailman shed known forever came around the corner, carrying mace to ward off dogs, she wondered why she hadnt noticed before that his thinning hair turned gold in the sunlight. She started ordering from L. L. Bean, so hed have to spend a few extra minutes lugging snowshoes and parkas shed never use to her door, and every time he accepted her offer of fresh-squeezed lemonade, she got a little sick thinking of all the wasted time.

Even for a nonbeliever, like the gin-drinking man who only went to Savannahs house on a dare, there was no denying that when Savannah turned over the possibility-filled World card, his hair stood on end. He told everyone the fortune-teller was crazy. His wife had left him, his teenagers smoked pot and didnt listen to a word he said, and if some bejeweled psychic in a velvet-paneled room thought he was going to be happy, she was sadly mistaken. Still, the next night he didnt fix the gin and tonic the second he walked in the door. He stepped out on the back porch for a minute and was stunned by what hed been missing during cocktail houran astonishing primary-colored sunset, shades of reds and yellows he had forgotten even existed. The wind scratched up clippings from his neighbors freshly cut lawn, and his throat swelled. By the time he walked back in the house, he was a little bit taller, and that extra inch was pure hope.

Savannah had that kind of effect on people, so when she read her own fortune and the Three of Swords came up smack-dab in her own future, she could only sit back and stare at it.

Ramona Wendall, her best friend and a two-hundred-pound palm reader for fancy San Francisco parties, sat beside her on the leather couch in Savannahs house. Between them, theyd polished off a bottle and a half of Chianti, which hadnt made either of them the slightest bit drunk. Earlier, Savannah had let her fifteen-year-old daughter, Emma, have half a glass, and now Emma slept like the dead behind the bedroom door she had recently taken to locking.