Free Stolen Wishes by Lexi Ryan

never with any definitive
plans. I’ve let myself believe that and the half-packed house meant
the move wasn’t going to happen.
    He doesn’t answer but drops his gaze to his
hands.
    “You can’t do this.” My words sound panicky.
Wild. “She’s going to make us move, and that’s not fair. My life is
here. I don’t want to leave.”
    “I’m sorry,” he says to the floor.
    “Cally!” Drew’s voice comes from her bedroom
and she shuffles out and wraps her arms around my leg. “Come play
Barbies with me?”
    “Daddy has to go now, Drew,” my father says,
nearly choking on the words. He squats to his haunches and opens
his arms for her.
    Tears burn the back of my eyes.
    Drew runs into his arms and wraps her arms
around his neck. “Bring me back something cool,” she demands. “And
maybe next time I can go with you.”
    “Maybe,” he manages, but Drew seems
oblivious to his emotion.
    Gabby toddles out from the bedroom next, and
Dad scoops her off the ground and nuzzles the side of her neck. She
squeals with delight.
    “I’ll call,” he says. “And if you want to
move back here with me when I get home, let me know.”
    Drew frowns. “Cally’s going to Las Vegas
with us. She can’t live here with you.”
    “We’re not going to Las Vegas, Drew,” I
scold, as if it’s her fault my parents have lost their minds.
    “Yes we are. We’re leaving at the end of the
month.”
    My heart plummets, falling far past my
stomach, past the floorboards, and deep into the dark and fiery
part of the earth. “No.”
    Mom wasn’t failing to say anything about the
move because she’d changed her mind. She wasn’t talking to me about
it because she didn’t want to argue. And waiting until the last
minute to pack the house? That’s just her M.O.
    Drew’s eyes light up. “But you should come
to Las Vegas, Daddy! Mom says it’s a super fun place.”
    She can’t comprehend the permanence of my
parents’ separation. Maybe it’s for the best.
    “I need to get to the airport,” he says
quietly, settling Gabby to the floor and picking up his suitcases.
“You girls be good.”
    He heads to his beat-up old hatchback, and
the girls rush to the window to wave at him as he goes. They don’t
understand. Or maybe he’s been absent enough in their lives that
they truly don’t care. I don’t know.
    I watch his car back out of the driveway,
and I feel like he’s taking part of me with him. Not because I’m
that close to my father, but because he was my last chance to stay
here in New Hope. To stay with William.
    “Have you packed yet?” Drew asks me. “Are
you excited? Do you think we’ll get to see the lights in Vegas? How
long will the drive take? Can I take my Barbies?”
    Her questions nearly shatter me. Even if I
could talk my mother into letting me stay here without her, I know
I can’t do it. Mom’s just a couple of orange pill bottles away from
being an unfit mother. My sisters need me.
    I can’t put it off anymore. I need to tell
Will.
    The birds sing the whole walk to his house.
Their happy tune contrasts so painfully with the dull knife sawing
through my heart that I just want to close my eyes and listen until
their hopeful song fills my ears and my head.
    Will’s car is in the driveway, and I don’t
ring the bell. I go to the back of the house and through the
mudroom door he keeps unlocked when he’s home. His grandmother is
in Indianapolis visiting her cousin this week, and he made it clear
I could come over any time I wanted. Made it clear that he’d like
me to stay over. Why haven’t I? What am I waiting for?
    The mudroom leads to the kitchen, and I find
a banana peel and an empty cereal bowl, milk lining the bottom, on
the counter. He must have made a snack after getting home from
track conditioning.
    I head to the front of the house and find
him on the couch, hair wet, bare from the waist up, and sleeping.
One hand is behind his head. The other rests on his abdomen, right
over that faint