Lisa Dale - Simple Wishes

Jay had changed her forever.

Something big had happened today. Adele had never talked so much about her mother before, especially not to a man like Jay. He had a way of opening her up and soothing her heart unlike any other man shed ever met. Her skin still felt warm where hed touched her.
She stared out the window at the falling snow. She wondered: Could I be in love?
Love was a dangerous word.
She had to get herself under control. She wasnt cut out for romance. Any day now, she would leave Notch Lane. And yet, with each snowflake that fell gently on the pines outside the cottage, she fell more and more under the spell of this man, this place...
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright S 2009 by Lisa Dale
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Claire Brown
Cover illustration by Melody Cassen
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First eBook Edition: April 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-54357-6

To Mom,

For pulling up the lilies in the garden because

I was allergic. For helping me write my first book

in fourth grade. For never sending me anywhere

without a weeks worth of homemade soup.

And for being one of my best friends.

Thank you.

Contents

A few quick notes to the reader: I apologize for any errors in transliterations included in this book. Ive attempted to use revised romanization, but because older systems are still in use, the task was fraught with dangers and pitfalls, particularly for one who doesnt speak Korean. Some readers will notice I used the nonromanized spelling for Yi Soon Shin ; this reflects the way the heros name was spelled in American subtitles when I watched the series.
Big huge thanks: To my editor, Michele Bidelspach, and my agent, Kim Lionetti, at Bookends, LLC. To Melanie Murray, for championing this book early on. To friends who offered feedback on early drafts: Lisa Karakaya, Dana Schwartz, Cathy Arnatt. To fellow booknerds at www.BookAnatomy101.com, with special thanks to Suzz Knizner. To mentors and friends at Fairleigh Dickinson Universitys MFA program. To Paige Wheeler, for showing me the ropes. To the entire Pendorf family, especially Theresa (Sun Ae), for dressing me up in her hanbok and not laughing when my legs stuck out the bottom. To Pop and Gram, for stocking the fridge and offering a place to get away and write. To Tia, for being my most fervent advocate since I was in diapers. To Mom, David, and Erica, for their love and friendship. And, of course, to Matt, for being himself.

F or her twelfth birthday, a classmate gave Adele a book of New York City in photographs. The pages were thick and glossy. The binding creaked in her hands. She said thank youto her friend, and at recess, while the other students hung out in clusters near the chain-link fences of the school yard, she sat alone against the brick of the science building, where no one could see.
Black-and-white pictures captivated her with scenes of the city: stoic skyscrapers, lonely park benches, bicycles chained to street signs, a snow-covered police car, and peopleso many people. They sat on wide concrete stairs, handed money to street vendors, huddled shoulder to shoulder on cramped buses, and held hands in the park. It was the people that captivated Adele the mostthe pleasure of looking intimately, of judging without being judged.
After school, she brought the book home to show her mother.
Marge glanced at it, then looked away. What are you gonna do with a book like that? she asked. She was cutting an onion against a wooden board, each movement making her upper arm jiggle.
Adeles palms sweated against the shiny cover. I dont know, she said. Im gonna keep it?
She sat down at the kitchen table and ran her fingertips over the pages. Her mother set out a glass of milk and a few oven-warm cookies. Adele didnt touch them. She stared at the pictures hard, adoring them desperately but somehow unsatisfied.
Will you take me to New York? To the Statue of Liberty? she asked.
You dont wanna go to New York, her mother said.
Why not?
Because its dirty. Marge mashed a clove of garlic with the back of a big spoon, and the smell bloomed warmly in the kitchen. No place for a daughter of mine.
It is not dirty. Our yard is dirty. We dont even have a real sidewalk.
Thats enough. Marge wiped her hands on a towel and reached for the book. Let me see that. She flipped through the pages, her glasses on the tip of her nose and her chin sagging onto her chest. Adele watched her mother closely. She imagined that her fatherwhod died before she could rememberwould have taken her into New York to feed the pigeons, just like the photographs showed people doing.
Marge tucked the book under her arm and walked toward her bedroom.
What are you doing? Adele asked, following her.
You dont need this giving you ideas, Marge said. The bedroom door swung shut behind her.
Adele stood there, dumbstruck. She fought the sudden urge to drag her fingers over her face, to give in to self-pity. From the moment shed showed the book to her mother, shed known there was a chance it would be taken away. And yet, she hadnt been able to stop herself. Shed practically run home from school with it in her hands, knowing her mother would be in the kitchen, waiting. She had no one to blame but herself.
She should have pretended the book meant nothing.
When Marge emerged from her bedroom, the book was not in her hands. She locked the door behind her and stood so that the fading light of day cast a reddish hue on the white of her apron. Though not tall, she was a big woman, with wide shoulders and thick hips and legs. Someday, Adele might meet her eye, if she managed to grow a few more inches. Now she could only look at her own hands, clasped before her belly.
Will you ever give it back? she asked quietly.
Dont worry, her mother said. Ill make it up to you. I promise.
Adele didnt blink.
Now go do your homework. Ill call you later for dinner and cake.
She went upstairs, her goose bumps rising, because the kitchen was the only warm room in the house. The smell of Marges cooking drifted up the stairs, snuck under Adeles closed bedroom door, and saturated the air with the scent of simmering vegetables, spices, and meat. Her stomach growled. She sat down at her desk to work.
Later, she would forget all about the book, about New York. Years would pass before she would rememberand when she did, the smell of glossy pages and the romance of black-and-white sidewalks would rise up out of her memory as if it were coming from the marrow of her bones.
But now, she simply did her homework, agonizing over every curling letter of every word she wrote, and she waited for her mother to call her downstairs to eat. She had no expectation that Marge would make up for the theft of her pictures. And yet, deep down, she would hold her to the promise just the same.

A dele dropped her overstuffed duffel bags on the gravel driveway.
The cottage stood before her, nearly unchanged by the many years that had passed since she last saw it. It reminded her of a toadstool: squat, stout, and brown. The brick and gray siding was unfaded. The bay windows that faced Notch Lane were intact. The shingles werent peeling off, and the door wasnt flapping in the breeze like in some spaghetti western. Adele could imagine her mother inflicting her will on the place from beyond the grave: Dont you dare get dirty, house. Dont you dare crumble on me.