He chuckled and got moving.
They didn’t get too far out of town when she saw the sign for Miracle Creek Trailhead. “How have I been here all this time and not come this way?”
“It’s nice to know we still have some surprises for you here in Plunkheadville, Ms. Madigan.” He turned right at a road marker and parked in a lot that hadn’t been cleared of snow in a day or two. “For somebody who’s traveled the world, you’re disappointingly unfamiliar with our little valley.”
“Give me some time,” she argued.
“How much time do you have?” he countered, eyeing her.
Instead of responding to his challenge, she turned to study the view out the window.
The sun had barely come up and light shone across the surrounding peaks. She’d need the perfect angles to get the shots she wanted.
“Is the bridge far?” she asked, hopping down and grabbing her gear from the truck bed where she’d packed it so the camera could acclimatize to the cold. She’d worn fingerless gloves for dexterity and hoped the bite in the air wouldn’t fog up her lens too badly.
He shut his door and met her at the back. “You can see the top of the bridge, right between those pines.” He pointed, and she stood on her toes, barely making out the tip of a structure.
“Perfect.”
Though the air was crisp, the hint of sun felt good on Riley’s face. Untouched pillows of snow topped shrubs and trees, and as they rounded a bend in the trail, more snow hugged the roof of the old covered bridge, the railings, and the open window ledges, just as she’d hoped. She dropped to a crouch and pulled out her camera and her favorite lens for this kind of shot, grateful for no fog on the glass.
“You’re going to start shooting right here?” Mark asked.
She snapped a few pictures, turning the camera for a portrait angle. “Why not?”
“Well, I haven’t even introduced you, yet.”
She stood and aimed again at the bridge. “Your dad said there’s a legend.” She snapped a couple more frames. “When I asked about your mom’s painting in the dining room. Something about wishes.” She lowered the camera and quickly looked over what she had so far.
“He told you that?”
The doubt in his voice made her look up. “Yeah. What?”
“I’m surprised he mentioned the wishing, that’s all.”
She moved closer to the bridge, and he followed, grabbing her bag. “So, what’s the legend? How did it start?” She scrutinized the structure as if she could coax out its secrets.
“The basic story is soon after the bridge was built in the 1950s, a desperate farmer threw a coin in the water and made a wish that his crop would survive the blight that had been spreading from orchard to orchard that season.”
“Did it work?”
“His was the only orchard to yield a full crop. Word spread.”
She snapped a few more pictures. “That doesn’t seem like enough to start a legend.”
“Soon after, a woman made a wish that her boyfriend would come into enough money that her parents would accept his offer of marriage.”
“So, what, he inherited a bunch of money from his great-aunt?”
Mark smiled. “No, but he was offered a job at a car dealership and the two married soon after. After a few years, he bought it. Wade’s Miracle Auto.”
She’d seen the old sign in front of one of the car dealerships in town. “He got a job.” She threw Mark a challenging look. “What else?”
“Ask around. People have wished on everything from college acceptance to babies to protection over their loved ones.” He looked around at the trees and the sky and the water. “Some people just come up here to pray.”
“But surely not everyone gets their wish?”
He shrugged, but said nothing, watching her.
“You make a broad enough wish, of course it will come true,” she said. “I could wish for sunsets for the rest of my life. Voila, granted. To make a specific wish, though . . . Have you tested it?”
“Ah, that’s the thing. You only get one wish.”
“So if I wished we stay right here on this bridge forever and ever, then we’re stuck here? Forever?”
“That would be horrible.”
“The worst.” Her face warmed from the flirtatious tone in his voice.
She approached the structure, the sound of the creek growing louder with each step. “Have you made your one wish?”
“Almost.”
“Almost?” She glanced back at him. “What stopped you?”
“My mom.”
She turned.
He shrugged. “She brought us out here that last Christmas. The doctors had done all they could. She came out here a lot to sketch, take pictures. I think she just wanted to be here one more time.”
“Did she make her wish?”
“I think so. She just closed her eyes, held Dad’s hand. By the end of that few minutes, I don’t know . . . It was like this dread came over me. Like I knew she hadn’t wished to get better.”
“Oh, Mark.”
He set her bag on the plank floor of the bridge and, after brushing away some snow, leaned his forearms on the railing over the creek. “She finished with a smile on her face. Peaceful. I begged her to tell me what she’d wished for. I begged Dad to make his wish that she’d live.” He shook his head. “I told him if he wasn’t going to wish, then I would. I was almost a man, right?”
Riley nodded.
“But my mom stopped me.”
“Why? What would’ve been the harm?”
“She told me that you only get one real wish, and if you make it before it’s time, or if you make the wrong one, it’ll float up, but it won’t come back down. It won’t settle. It’ll itch at you and wake you at night and leave your mouth bitter.”
Riley leaned on the rail next to him.
He stared at the frothing water beneath them. “Dad squared me up to him and asked me if I really thought he hadn’t made every wish, said every prayer, to keep Mom
