Page 141 of When You Wish Upon a Wideout

“She... ” Sienna could feel the emotion creeping up her throat. “She was worried about me.”

“Grace is a kid,” Emily reminded her. “Mature for a fourteen-year-old, but she’s still a kid.”

Sienna nodded. “That’s right. She’s a kid. And she wants to believe in the fairy tale, in Prince Charming coming back to save the day, but... ”

“Beau is kind of like Prince Charming.”

“That’s just it. It wasn’t real. Any of it.”

Sienna sat, looking at the diary to her right, took a deep breath, and began to tell Emily the tale of the year Beau and Sienna had spent together, the adventures they planned and wished for, the promises he broke or waited too long to fulfill.

Emily waited until Sienna had stopped speaking. “So he was at your dad’s funeral?”

Nodding, Sienna sighed. “He saw Grace and... ”

“Thought there was someone else.” Emily sighed. “He did come back again—"

“Because of Grace’s letter. Not because he had ever planned to. She wrote him the most heart-wrenching and”—Sienna paused, rubbing her chest—“you wouldn’t be able to say no to that, you know? None of it was because hechoseto. Grace gave him a list, and do you know what was on it? Beach vacation. Dole Whips. A motorcycle ride.” The paper with Grace’s handwriting flashed before her mind. “Do you know where she got it? From here.” She held the diary, and Emily took it. “All those things, they were on our list. Beau’s and mine. We never did them before. We were always supposed to.”

Emily flipped through the diary. “So, it was like a bucket list you two had?”

“We called it a wish list,” Sienna said softly, but she offered nothing else before rising from the bed. “You can read it if you want. Enough people have.”

* * *

A half hour later, when Sienna had finished her beer and lay on the couch, Emily appeared with the diary. Sienna could tell she had been crying as she sat on the couch and wrapped her in a hug. “I want you to know that you raised the most special human on the planet, and if I’m half the mom to Abigail you are to Grace, I’ll know I’ve done something right.”

Sienna returned the embrace. “You’re a great mom. I mean it, go be with your baby. I’ve kept you here long enough.”

“Before I go, I need to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

Emily looked down at the diary and sighed. “I read fast, but... you talked about a wish list, but there isn’t one written here. Just lines here and there where you mention it.”

“We never wrote it down,” Sienna said.

“Was the hot-air balloon ride on it?”

Sienna nodded, her mind flashing to Beau’s truck when she had straddled him after getting milkshakes at the diner.

“Prom was, I saw that entry.” Emily shifted on the couch, pulling out Sienna’s phone from her back pocket. “But what about dancing in the rain?”

Sienna furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

Handing her the phone, Emily shrugged. “I didn’t mean to snoop. I saw the message.”

Dancing in the rain was on the wish list.

Sienna’s heart raced as she remembered the day—or night—when Beau had crept into her room with the night light and kissed her under a neon ceiling for hours, staying until after midnight so he could be the first to wish her a happy birthday.

They put dancing in the rain on the wish list that night.

“Maybe he didn’t need Grace’s help after all,” Emily said with a sigh. “Maybe he remembered. That’s not for nothing.”

Opening the diary, Sienna began to scan the pages. She was looking for mentions of dancing in the rain, of hot-air balloon rides, of chasing the sun until they ran into the moon. But there were no mentions of that in Sienna’s handwriting as she searched line by line. Those things, Sienna realized—andeverything, just as Beau had said—he remembered.

Emily gave Sienna’s leg a gentle squeeze.

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