Free Luanne Rice by Summer's Child Page A

she had to do was stay well enough to have
her surgery. One more surgery, and she would be fine.
    Sometimes
thinking made her feel better—dreams of birds, or of Nanny, or of her birthday.
Her best friend Jessica … she thought of Jess, joking that they had almost the
same birthday. Only why didn’t it feel like a joke? To Rose, it had seemed
true—and how wonderful that would be, if it was. Very slowly she sat up again,
swung her legs over the side of the bed. She looked down at her hand, gripping
the mattress. Her condition had left her with slightly clubbed fingers—another
way she was different. Today they didn’t bother her—it was her birthday, she
thought, getting out of bed. The spell had passed. Padding barefoot down the
hall, she smelled fresh orange juice.
    “Good
morning, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Happy birthday …”
    “Thank you.
I’m nine now,” Rose said, smiling.
    Her mother smiled
back. She tried not to show that she was checking Rose for symptoms, and Rose,
for her part, tried hard not to exhibit any. She knew she should tell her
mother that she’d just had a blue spell, but she also knew that might make her
mother cancel the party.
    But she
made it through the once-over, drank her orange juice and ate her cereal, took
her vitamin and antibiotic—counting down to the surgery, preventing any
possible heart infections that would delay things. Her mother was playing music
on the CD player: one of Rose’s favorites—“Aurora,” by Spirit. It made her
happy just to hear the song, and she knew her mother had put it on because she
loved it so much.
    “Should we
save these for the boat?” her mother asked, standing there with several wrapped
packages.
    Rose rubbed
her hands together and bounced in her seat. Her mother’s smile widened, as if
she were happy just to see Rose so excited. “Do we have to?” Rose asked.
    Her mother
shook her head. “Not at all, honey. It’s your birthday—you can open them all
right now.”
    So Rose
did. Her mother had wrapped every package differently—with beautiful papers of
pink roses and blue ribbons, of birds flying in formations shaped like hearts.
Rose undid the bows, pulled off the paper, and found four new books, a
telescope, a diary with a lock and key, and the new needlepoint square.
    “Mama,” she
said, unrolling the canvas. It wasn’t framed yet, like the others. Rose felt
the square in her hands—the fine meshwork around the edges, the soft field of
yarn creating a picture straight from her mother’s heart—the latest in the
story of Rose’s life, to hang on her bedroom wall. “It’s beautiful.”
    “Do you
like it?” her mother asked, leaning over, arm across Rose’s shoulders.
    “I love
it,” Rose said, gazing at the images of Cape Hawk: the great sweeping bay
backed by the tall cliffs and pines, the grand white hotel … and in the
foreground, two girls—unmistakably Rose and Jessica—riding on the back of a
white whale. “Me and my best friend,” Rose said.
    “Everyone
needs a best friend, sweetheart,” her mother said.
    “Will she
come today?”
    “Jessica?
Her mother said she would. Now, let’s get ready. The boat leaves at nine sharp,
and we don’t want it to leave without the birthday girl.”
    Rose
nodded. While her mother quickly did the dishes, she walked down the hall to
her room, to change into her party clothes. She placed the canvas on her bed,
staring down at the smiling faces—Rose and her two best friends: one old, one
new. Closing her eyes, she stood by the window and wished, wished …
    Her
birthday had always brought many different wishes, most of them secret. In past
years she had wished for her father to magically appear in her life, to love
her, to want her, to want to be part of their family. She had wished for a
grandmother to appear in the garden and make the flowers grow. She had wished
for a healthy heart … not just so she could run and play, but also so her
mother wouldn’t have