Page 9 of Three Little Wishes

“Remind me again why we’re friends?” When Naomi began listing all the reasons, Willow sighed. “I was being sarcastic.”

As she disconnected and pocketed her phone, Willow glanced at the coins glinting at the bottom of the fountain. She wondered if any of them had once belonged to her or her sister or her cousin. Their mothers and grandmother had drilled into their heads that they were responsible for making their own wishes come true, but that hadn’t stopped them from hedging their bets and making wishes every time they found coins while cleaning the restaurant.

They used to think La Dolce Vita’s customers must all be rich to be so careless with their loose change until one night they’d caught Bruno placing coins under the tables and chairs.

Willow smiled at the memory as she reached in her pocket and pulled out a lint-covered quarter. Thinking she could use all the help she could get, she tossed it into the fountain. The quarter bounced off Venus’s knee and rolled onto the floor.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered, bending to pick it up. This time, when she made her wish, she pushed up the sleeve of her blazer, stuck her hand in the water, and placed the quarter on the bottom of the fountain, snug between a nickel and a dime.

“Mommy, the lady is stealing money from the fountain!”

“No. No, I wasn’t. Honest. See.” She turned to the little boy, showing him her empty hands. “I just wanted to make sure my quarter stayed in the fountain this time.” She liftedher head to offer his parents a convincing smile, only to meet the dark, sardonic gaze of the man standing behind them.

Really?Willow yelled silently at Venus. She’d wished for an answer to her problem, and what did she get? Her problem standing five feet in front of her, looking at her with an arrogant eyebrow raised.

“You know what? Save your money. Venus is falling down on the job and no longer granting wishes,” Willow told the little boy while once again shoving up the sleeve of her blazer.

She stuck her hand in the fountain and pulled out the quarter, showing it to her audience. “It’s mine.” She put it in her pocket. The way things were going, she’d need it.

She turned and walked into her mother.

“Honey?” Gia Rosetti frowned, searching Willow’s face before leaning around her to offer their audience a sweet smile.

Noah Elliot, Willow noticed, wasn’t among them. She caught sight of his broad back, dark head bent, phone pressed to his ear as he walked out of the restaurant. A part of her wanted to chase after him and drag him back inside while the other part of her wanted to slam and lock the door behind him.

“Bruno will be with you in a moment,” her mother said to the family of three and an elderly couple whom Noah had held the door open for. Maybe he wasn’t a complete ogre.

Putting an arm around Willow’s shoulders, her mother steered her toward the back of the restaurant. “Is everything okay?”

Willow wanted nothing more than to share her worries with her mother but she couldn’t bear to tell her that in two weeks, she’d be homeless, most likely jobless—unlessshe counted working part-time at La Dolce Vita, which she didn’t—with little more than a quarter to her name.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, and the reason she couldn’t had nothing to do with feeling guilty about Camilla. Neither was she worried her mother would be anything other than fully supportive if Willow found herself homeless and jobless.

The problem was that over the past year, Willow had come to the uncomfortable realization that she was the only Rosetti who hadn’t made something of herself. If there were a photo under “Failure to launch” on Wikipedia, she swore it would have her face on it. As much as she doubted her family members were surprised—after all, when their mothers used to ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up, Willow had said “A beach bum”—it was important to her that she prove to them as much as to herself that she was a contributing, responsible, independent member of society. In other words, that she could adult with the best of them.

“I’m fine, Mom.” She smiled and put an arm around her mother’s waist, giving her a side hug.

Her mother, who was routinely mistaken for actress Eva Mendes, arched an eyebrow. “You were stealing money from the fountain.”

“A quarter, and it was mine.” She fished it out of her pocket and held it up. “I realized at the last minute it was my lucky quarter.”

“You can’t fool me, honey. We’ve heard the rumors that the station might be closing, and I understand how worried you must be. But it might not be the worst thing that could happen.”

“How can you say that, Mom? I won’t have a job, and I’ve been working at Channel 5 since I was in high school. It feels more like home than a job.”

“I know, and I know how much you hate change and how much you love your friends at the station, but you’re only getting part-time hours. At least if you were working for one of the big networks, they could offer you full time. Your first year at college, all you talked about was becoming the host of a morning show. It’s not like you’d get the opportunity at Channel 5, even if someone else buys the station. And think of it: if you got a job in Boston, you could live with Sage. You two would have so much fun together.”

Willow adored her sister, who was a high-powered divorce attorney. But as much as she loved Sage, Willow hated the idea of living anywhere other than Sunshine Bay. She hated it so much that the thought of moving from her beloved hometown made her heart race, and not in a good way. She felt faint, swamped by a wave of panic and sorrow.

And those feelings only intensified when her grandmother, who could pass for her daughters’ older sister, walked over and shoved a bowl of gnocchi at Willow. As much as she’d hate to leave Sunshine Bay, the station, and her friends, it was Willow’s love for her family that anchored her to this place.

“Mangia.You’re fading away.” Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed behind her stylish red-framed glasses as she looked Willow up and down. “Who died, and why weren’t we invited to the funeral?”

“No one died, Nonna. I decided to deliver the weather as my professional self instead of a lobster for a change.” She kissed her grandmother’s cheek and took a seat at the longtable, the window on the back wall providing a spectacular view of the golden-sand beach and whitecapped waves in the turquoise bay.

The table was reserved for the family, their initials carved into the honey-colored wood. Each and every one of them, from Willow’s mother and aunts to Willow and her sister and her cousin, had grown up at this table. They’d eaten their meals here, done their homework here, played restaurant and Barbies and done crafts here, talked about friends and boyfriends at the table. Some of the most meaningful moments of her family’s lives had happened here, in a restaurant that had been owned by the Rosettis for generations.

She got a little emotional thinking about all the good times they’d shared and what her family meant to her. It didn’t matter how desperate she’d been to save the station; she never should’ve reached out to her aunt. She should’ve found another way.

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