? ? ?
I nearly collide with the UPS deliverywoman later that morning as I’m rushing out the front door, digging through my cluttered purse for my sunglasses, worried I’ll be late for my meeting with Magda. I bend down to pick up the boxes that dropped and read the Williams-Sonoma return label. Our wedding gifts are arriving. Our eyes meet as I stand back up and I realize she looks familiar, her caramel-colored curls sparking a memory as they glisten in the morning sunlight. But I’m sure she’s never delivered anything here before. “Tom out sick?” I ask, still trying to place her face.
“Something like that,” she answers cryptically as she readjusts the packages in her hand.
“Wait! I know. You work at Starbucks, right? Remember me?”
She tips her chin toward me. “How could I forget that loud sigh of yours, Kate?”
Something about the way she says my name makes me pause as I awkwardly hold an unusually heavy box to my chest—could it be the ice cream maker I couldn’t wait to try out? Finally, she adds, “In fact, not only did I make you a kick-ass latte, I also gave you the power to change your life.”
I take a step back and stumble over a Macy’s box I hadn’t seen resting at my feet, the stranger grabbing my elbow before I fall. “H-how . . .” I stammer. “. . . how do you know about that?” I whisper, glancing back toward my front door, not wanting Max to overhear us. Knowing I’ll never be able to come up with a believable story to explain why I’m in a heated discussion with the UPS driver.
She smiles, revealing a small gap between her front teeth. “You’ve just found the person who holds the key to all the questions you have, and that’s what you want to ask me?” She leans her head back and laughs before glancing at her watch and heading back toward her truck.
“Hold on!” I cry. “I have a better one. Why me?”
“You needed help,” she says simply as she hops behind the wheel and begins to buckle her seat belt, extending a handheld computer toward me. “I’m going to need you to sign for those right here.” She winks.
I scrawl my signature. “Why do some come true and not others?”
She smiles sweetly. “You want to bring peace to the world?”
I nod.
“One thing you must understand, Kate. All wishes must lead back to you and your journey. So no wishing for the cure for cancer or for the end of poverty, even though that would be nice,” she says, and turns the ignition, which comes alive loudly. “And remember, every choice has a consequence,” she calls out over the engine. “So be careful.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You’ll see,” she says cryptically as she taps her watch. “Gotta run. These packages won’t deliver themselves!”
“Wait,” I ask, feeling desperate for her to stay a few minutes longer. “What’s your name? And how will I find you again?”
“I’m Ruby. Don’t worry, I’ll track you down,” she says right before pulling away from the curb, the exhaust choking me as she speeds down the street.
? ? ?
“Come in and shut the door,” Magda says as soon as I arrive at the office, still reeling from my run-in with Ruby.
“Good morning,” I say, and smile. “I love your necklace,” I lie, the large baubles looking far too big around her birdlike neck. But flattery goes a long way with Magda.
“Thank you,” she says briskly, and then waves me toward a white leather chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
“What’s up?” I ask casually while wiping my wet hands on the cushion, wondering why she called me at home to ask me to meet her, praying she’s just going to unleash one of her usual rants, like I’d used the wrong font in an ad or she hadn’t liked the outfit a model had been wearing in the proofs she’d seen.
“I’m having a lot of problems with Courtney’s work,” Magda says plainly, and I hold my breath as she rattles off a series of mistakes she thinks Courtney’s made. She tells me she woke up that morning with a change of heart about Courtney’s attention to detail and work ethic. Everything Magda says sounds nothing like the Courtney I’ve worked with for five years—who may be the kind of woman who would steal your fiancé, but at work, always played by the rules. She worked hard to make sure every I was dotted and every T was crossed.
My first instinct is to defend her, but I remind myself that I wished for this. And maybe struggling at work was just what Courtney needed. She’d been spending far too much time focusing her attention on Max and needed to pour more of herself into her job. And if there was one thing that would capture Courtney’s full attention, it would be attempting to please Magda.
I nod as Magda tells me she’s going to call Courtney in next and tell her how disappointed she is and shift her responsibilities until she feels she’s worthy of managing an important client again.
“So you’re talking to me before her?” I ask. “Why?”