The Right Wish Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Michelle Mankin

  All rights reserved

  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 data base or retrieval system without prior written permission from the owner/publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Edited by Pam Berehulke at Bulletproof Editing

  Cover design by Lori Jackson Design

  Photography by Wander Aguiar from Wander Photography

  Formatting by Elaine York at Allusion Graphics

  Table of Contents

  * * *

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Other Books by Michelle Mankin

  About the Book

  * * *

  A modern-day retelling of Snow White by New York Times bestselling author Michelle Mankin.

  Once upon a time with a beautiful hooker who used to be a princess, and a handsome manager for rock stars who is more than he seems.

  She’s kind and fanciful. He’s bossy and straightforward. She has nothing and feels like her life has no value. He has a reliable, well-paying job that keeps his bank account full, yet his yearning heart is empty.

  Both have hidden their true selves away.

  But if your secret self is hidden, how can the right person ever find and fall in love with the real you?

  Two lost and lonely souls arrange to meet at a pay-by-the-hour motel.

  Is it happenstance, fate, or a wish come true when his carefully crafted reality and her make-believe one collide?

  Prologue

  * * *

  Camaro

  “Is it dead?” Leroy asked.

  “No.” Shaking my head, I stared down at the baby bird that had fallen onto the frozen patch of snow, silently urging it to move.

  Suddenly, it fluttered its wings.

  “Yay!” Leroy exclaimed, and we exchanged relieved smiles.

  “I think it was only stunned.”

  I exhaled a breath that lingered in the icy air, and hoped that I was right. After all, the tiny bird had flown a little before it plummeted.

  “Hey, little baby,” I crooned. Crouching down, I gently scooped it up, making a soft pink nest with my gloved hands. “Don’t be scared. You’re not alone. I have you.”

  “It’s not moving its wings anymore.” Leroy’s bottom lip trembled. “If it can’t fly, it’ll die.”

  “Not if we help it.” I hunched my body protectively over it as the merciless Chicago wind gusted. “Poor baby,” I whispered. In my hands, the bird was as inconsequential as air, like I’d felt since my mother became ill.

  I glanced around. The rose garden was empty, the bushes pruned back to bare spires by the estate gardeners. Encased in ice, the delicate limbs were bowed almost to the breaking point.

  “What can we do?” Leroy shook his head. “We’re only kids.”

  “Where’s your dad?” My voice seemed small in the abandoned rows, the flowers nowhere to be seen. The blooms were hibernating, waiting until spring to appear.

  “With yours. In the garage. Doing a rebuild on the Chevy Nova.”

  “Oh.” My dad wouldn’t help. He would just lecture me about finding something more practical to do. “Can you go get your dad and ask him to come?”

  “He’s working.” Leroy’s breaths formed puffy clouds as he shifted his weight from one insulated boot to the other. “I’m not ’upposed to bother him while he’s working.”

  “Okay.” I nodded in understanding. My mom would help if I asked, but I wouldn’t. She wasn’t strong enough to come outside anymore. “We’ll just have to figure out how to fix it ourselves.”

  “How?” Leroy’s brown eyes widened, his black brows nearly touching the worn edge of his Chicago Bulls cap.

  “I don’t know yet.” I just knew I couldn’t abandon it. I had to do something.

  Noticing a disturbing stillness, I glanced down. The bird was no longer moving. Icy dread pooled in my stomach.

  Breathe, I begged silently, hoping for a miracle. A moment passed, a long, frustrating one. My prayer was like most of my pleas lately. They might rise to the heavens, but once there, they fell on deaf ears.

  “It’s gone.” Tears blurred my vision. “It’s not breathing anymore.”

  “No.” Leroy shuffled closer.

  I would have reached for him if I hadn’t held the bird, even though my father wanted me to be strong. He’d warned me that I needed to learn that difficult things, like my mother’s illness, had to be faced alone.

  “Poor little bird,” I whispered, guilt gripping my heart. “Maybe I hurt it when I picked it up.”

  “It was already hurt when it fell, Cam. It’s not your fault.” Leroy gave me a concerned glance. I was seven, a whole year older than him, and tested above my grade level at my private school. But lately it seemed like he was more mature.

  “Camaro!”

  My head snapped up. My father sounded mad, but he was mad most of the time now. And me? I was just tired and sad.

  “Where are you?” he shouted.

  “In the garden!” I called out.

  As his heavy footsteps crunched toward us in the snow, my heart quaked like my trembling legs did, anticipating his anger.

  I shoved the bird into Leroy’s hands. “You take it.”

  “I don’t want to.” His eyes widened to the size of the Nova’s headlights, and his dark complexion paled. “I’m afraid of dead things.”

  “You shouldn’t be.” I lifted my chin, pretending I wasn’t a little afraid of death too. “It’s still a bird. It’s not different just because it’s dead.”

  “Okay.” His
bottom lip trembled, but he took the bird from me. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Nothing right now. Keep it safe. Later, we’ll find something nice to put it in, and a pretty place to bury it.” I’d overheard my parents talking about the importance of a final resting place, and it seemed to me this little bird needed one too. “The mama bird needs to be able to visit her baby. But she won’t know where to find it if we don’t make a marker, and maybe leave a map near the nest that points the way for her.”

  “I’ve got some crayons in our car,” he said.

  “Camaro Rosa O’Brien!”

  Oh no. My full name. I was in big trouble.

  “Yes, Daddy?” Holding my hand over my cramping stomach, I turned around slowly. The thin layer of ice in front of me cracked beneath my father’s large feet.

  “Why didn’t you answer me the first time I called you, young lady?” His voice was gruff, and his light gray eyes were as dark and cold as the wrought-iron gates that framed our driveway.

  I ducked my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

  “Sorry isn’t an excuse for disobedience.”

  “I know.”

  There were no acceptable excuses, not for anything wrong I did. Not since my mother got sick, at least.

  Plunged into darkness by his shadow, I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just playing with Leroy.”

  “You should be playing with children your own age.”

  He meant he wanted me to play with other girls from the private school I attended. Girls who lived in big houses like ours, and dressed like princesses in fairy tales that someone else wrote. I liked dressing up too, but I preferred making up my own fairy tales.

  “Go along, Leroy.” My dad jerked his chin toward the garage. “Your father’s waiting for you in the driveway.”

  “Yes, Mr. O’Brien, sir.” Leroy’s gaze dropped to the ground as he shuffled toward me. “Good-bye, Cam.” He hugged me with one arm and returned the tiny burden to my care.

  “’Bye, Leroy.” I pressed my lips together to keep them from trembling as I watched him scurry away, the frozen snow crunching softly beneath his lighter steps.

  “What the hell?” my father said abruptly. “I mean, what’s that in your hands?”

  I glanced up at him to see his gaze narrowed. “It’s a bird. A baby one. It fell out of the tree while we were playing.”

  “It’s dead.” His voice was harsh. Reality wasn’t something he softened.

  “I know.” My stomach lurched, and my eyes burned with the threat of tears.

  “What on earth were you planning to do with a dead bird?” His reddish-brown brows disappeared beneath the O’Brien logo of the ball cap he always wore with the brim turned backward.

  “I don’t know.”

  Frowning, he shook his head. “You are a peculiar child.”

  I wanted to cry. My father’s disapproval sliced deep.

  He didn’t understand me, not anymore. More and more often lately, he retreated to his favorite pastime, taking apart old cars and putting them back together. At one time, I’d been welcome in his garage. I knew all the names of his tools because he’d taught me, and we’d talked about other things as I passed them to him.

  But he didn’t even try to talk to me anymore. He was on one side of the world with his sadness, and I was on the other side alone with mine.

  I pressed my lips tighter together, knowing not to cry in front of him. He wouldn’t comfort me. Not because he didn’t know how, but I feared it was because he just didn’t love me anymore.

  “It’s time for your mother to go to the hospital.” He lifted his head, his handsome features sharpening to harsh angles as he glanced at the house.

  “I want to go with her to her treatment this time,” I said softly. Every moment with her was precious. I sensed that as his anger grew, her time was running out.

  “You can’t.”

  I could if he’d let me, but I didn’t argue with him. I wouldn’t be able to change his mind.

  “She wants to see you before she leaves. C’mon.” He grabbed my arm and steered me toward the house.

  Distracted by the firmness of his hold, I wasn’t prepared and could only gasp when he yanked the bird from my grip and tossed it into the compost bin by the garage. Like it didn’t matter.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. Would I be tossed aside and forgotten after my mother was gone?

  “Don’t look at me like that, Camaro. It could be diseased, harmful to your mother. Go inside before you catch a cold and get yourself sick, and her too.”

  Bobbing my head, I slipped into the house and dashed ahead of him into the mudroom, where I quickly washed my hands before going into the kitchen. Several cooks were already at work on lunch inside the cavernous space. The mouthwatering aroma of fresh-baked bread made my stomach growl, but I forgot hunger and everything else but her.

  My mother turned in her seat, surrounded by the soft winter light that filtered through the bay windows that overlooked her beloved rose garden. She’d been watching me.

  “Cam,” she whispered kindly, holding out her thin arms to me. “There you are, my precious girl. I wanted to see you before I go.”

  The scented rose fragrance she wore enveloped me before she did. I returned her hug, careful not to hold her too tightly. My father stood guard nearby, his strong arms folded over his chest.

  “Mommy.” I choked out the word, trying not to sob. “Please don’t go to the hospital.”

  “Don’t cry.”

  As she stroked her hand soothingly up and down my back, I buried my face in the hollow space below her ribs.

  “Doctor’s orders. I have to go, Cam.” She pulled me closer to comfort me, but the welcoming softness of her body was gone, and her hard angles poked me.

  “Don’t do it anymore,” I begged. “It’s not making you better. You get sicker every time.”

  She resumed stroking my back. “It’s a stronger treatment.” Her voice was light, the familiar roll of her r’s revealing her Italian heritage. “It won’t cure me, but it might give me a little more time to spend with you and your daddy.”

  “It’s not right. You’re so good. Why is this happening to you?”

  To me. To us as a family. I need you.

  “Camaro.” She removed my hands from her waist and gathered them in hers. “Look at me.”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  Dutifully, I lifted my head, and she smiled down at me with her pretty emerald-green eyes. They were the same color as the jewels in the intricate double-strand gold necklace my father had given her, the one she always wore. She was beautiful, the prettiest woman I’d ever seen. But she was so thin now, her once vibrant bronze skin too pale.

  “Sometimes in life we don’t get the things we want the most. But we show how brave we are by how we react to the bad, whether we deserve it or not.”

  I nodded. I hated the bad and what it had done to her. She certainly didn’t deserve it.

  “I need you to be brave, dolce bambina.” She squeezed my hands and released them. “Be kind. Be true.”

  “I’m trying to.” I stood up straighter, but inside, I felt like the mushy oatmeal one of the cooks had tried to get me to eat this morning.

  “I know you are, my fairest.” Pain pinched my mom’s gaze. “That’s all I ask.”

  Nodding, I swallowed a sob. At times, the sadness nearly choked me. Although I would do anything for her, nothing I could do for her was enough.

  “Whatever happens to you in this world, be truly yourself,” she whispered urgently. “I want the right people to come into your life and genuinely love you.” She turned to look at my father. “Like your father loves me.”

  Standing tall beside her, the intensity of his deep unhappiness seemed to permeate the entire room. But as strong and as powerful as he was, he couldn’t make her well. Her being sick was breaking him, breaking all of us.

  “I just want you to g
et well.” My lips trembled. “Why aren’t you getting better? That’s all I want. I wish and pray for it every night. Why won’t my wish come true?”

  “Some wishes do, sweet Camaro. I wished for a strong, brave, and loyal man like your father to come into my life, and here he is.”

  She straightened and held out her hand to him. Gently, he took it and drew her from her chair and to his side. She was so delicate, so frail, and he was so large, but with her, he was always careful.

  “I’m the one who had my every wish come true, the day I met you, Chiara,” my father whispered, his gray eyes bright.

  “Thank you, Finn.” She smiled at him, and he gazed adoringly back at her.

  My eyes burned as I watched them. I could practically hear the crack of my father’s heart breaking.

  My mother turned to me. “I couldn’t have wished for a better daughter.” Her green eyes darkening, she released my father’s hand and knelt in front of me. Our gazes at the same level, she tucked a long strand of my ebony hair behind my ear. “Your father’s love and you are my happily-ever-after, no matter what happens to me.”

  “I don’t want you to die.” She was all that was good. I would be lost without her. And I didn’t want to be truly me. I didn’t want to be anything without her. Hot tears slid down my chilled cheeks. “Please don’t die, Mommy.”

  “We all die, my sweet.”

  “Not in fairy tales.” Not in my stories. Never in my stories.

  “In Snow White,” my mother said kindly, “the sleeping death took her before the prince arrived to give her a true love’s kiss.”

  “She didn’t really die.”

  “Who is to say what death is? Perhaps it’s only that we sleep for a while, and then wake one day to be reunited with everyone we love in a glass castle in the sky. A perfect kingdom. A place without pain or sorrow. But until then, we have now. And right now, it’s up to you, up to each of us in this family, to make our own happiness.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Happiness is only a wish, the right wish, one that comes true when you nurture it with the love and kindness that’s inside you. You know that. We’ve talked about it several times. Make every day sweeter for those around you, my darling. In giving others your love, you receive a far greater gift in return.”