Wish Upon a Christmas Star. Darlene Gardner

you didn’t call me.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “I’ll contact you.” She tapped a manicured finger against her lips. “Here’s the thing. I don’t want my fiancé to know about this. I don’t want anything to interfere with the wedding.”

      “Why would it?”

      “Austin’s last name is Tolliver,” she said. “His father, Samuel, is the former governor.”

      Caroline could have added that the family was rolling in cash. Maria seemed to remember the Tollivers had amassed their fortune from tobacco and horse racing. She recalled that Samuel Tolliver had provided the bulk of the financing for his campaign for governor.

      “Austin’s following in his father’s footsteps. He’s a state senator. This fall he’s running for Congress. I can’t take the risk the press will pick up on this story.” For the third time, Caroline rummaged in her handbag. This time she pulled out a checkbook. “I can pay you.”

      To find her own brother? Maria’s stomach turned over at the thought. “I don’t want your money, Caroline.” She was surprised her voice was even. “The question is, what do you want?”

      “If Mike is alive,” she said, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, “I just want him to leave me alone.”

      When Caroline was gone, Maria tried to call up the routine steps she took on missing person cases. She heard blood rushing in her ears. Her heart beat so fast she couldn’t concentrate. After all this time, could Mike really be alive?

      She got up from her chair and stepped outside, hoping the cool, fresh air would enable her to think more clearly. A chill ran through her and she hugged herself. At five-thirty, and almost the shortest day of year, it was already dark. A thin streak of light slashed through the sky.

      A shooting star!

      Shooting stars were magical, her mother had claimed when Maria was growing up. If you saw one before Christmas and wished upon it hard enough, she used to say, your wish would come true.

      The only other time Maria had spotted a shooting star before the holidays, she’d wished for Rollerblades, and they’d appeared under the tree on Christmas morning.

      What could it hurt?

      She focused on the streaking light and wished with all her might.

      * * *

      LOGAN COLLIER LAID THE tall, bulky box containing the artificial Christmas tree against the stairs and positioned himself behind it.

      “Need any help down there?” his mother called from the top of the steps.

      “I’ve got it,” he answered. “I just need you to move out of the way.”

      He shoved, inching the box a few steps at a time up the stairs until reaching the tile floor of the kitchen. Like the rest of the modest, two-bedroom house where his parents had lived for more than thirty years, the kitchen was big enough but just barely. It would be a tight squeeze to get the box past the table.

      “Can you get it to the living room for me?” His mother was a warm, cheerful blonde who got way too into the spirit of the season. On her green sweatshirt, Santa jumped his reindeer-driven sleigh over a snowy rooftop.

      Logan pushed, propelling the box across the tile floor, onto the carpeting in the living room and toward the spot where his mother always set up the tree. He’d been surprised not to see it decorated already when he’d come home last night from Manhattan, where he’d lived for the past twelve years since he’d graduated from college.

      “Tell me again why we’re putting up a tree two days before your trip.” Logan wasn’t out of breath, but neither was he breathing easy. He needed to take the time from his busy schedule to hit the gym more than just two or three times a week.

      “We’ve got to make the most of what little time we have together, honey.” She always called him that. In his early teens, it used to bug Logan until he’d found out she’d had two miscarriages before he was born and one afterward.

      He ripped open the duct tape somebody—probably Dad—had used last year to bind the box, then pulled up the cardboard flaps to reveal the tree branches.

      “You’re trying to make me feel guilty about not spending Christmas with you and Dad, aren’t you?” he asked.

      “Maybe a little,” his mother admitted.

      “Not gonna work,” Logan said. “Not when you’ll both be cruising the Caribbean.”

      His parents would leave for the trip this Wednesday, six days before Christmas. Logan had made the travel arrangements to coincide with his own return to New York City.

      “If you didn’t feel guilty, honey, you wouldn’t have bought us the tickets.” Mom stood back while he set up the base of the tree and got the lower portion in place. “You don’t have to keep treating us to trips, you know.”

      Actually, he did. Because his mother had battled diabetes and other health problems for years, his parents had made do on his father’s salary while Logan was growing up. Dad earned enough as a forklift operator in a warehouse to cover necessities but not extras. In recent years Mom had been healthy enough to work part-time as a cashier at a grocery store, but Logan had a sense they still struggled.

      “Don’t take away my fun, Mom,” he said. “I like treating you.”

      “Then I don’t understand why you can’t come with us,” she retorted.

      Logan got down on his knees and started plumping the branches. “I told you why. I have to work.”

      “You always have to work.” She positioned herself beside him and grabbed a limb, shaping one of the flexible plastic branches to achieve maximum fullness.

      “Dad’s at work right now,” he pointed out.

      “Today is only December 17,” she said. “Your father has Christmas week off like normal people.”

      “The holidays are a great time to network.” Logan had been employed by a financial planning service in New York City ever since he’d moved there. He’d steadily climbed the ranks, in large part because he understood what it took to get ahead. “We’ve got a lot going on for our clients next week. Parties. Dinners. A suite at the Knicks game. I have to be there.”

      “I’m glad you have a good job,” his mother began. Logan got ready for the “but,” certain he already knew what she’d say.

      “But don’t you think you should spend your money on the woman you’re going to marry instead of on me and Dad?” she finished.

      He straightened, went to the box and withdrew more of the tree. He got another piece in place before answering. “That woman doesn’t exist, Mom. I’m not engaged.”

      “You’re thirty-three years old, honey. That’s not so young anymore.” She sounded as though she was breaking a difficult truth to him. “Are you at least dating someone?”

      “Occasionally.” He dated off and on, when he had the time, but rarely went out with a woman for more than two or three dates.

      “Anyone special?” She asked the same questions every time he visited Kentucky or he flew her and Dad up to see him in New York. He was used to it by now. He even had a strategy to deflect the inquisition: say as little as possible.

      “Nope,” he said.

      After a few moments of silence, his mother changed the subject. They talked companionably of inconsequential things for the next hour while they decorated the tree with the ornaments and lights Logan brought up from the basement.

      After Logan topped the tree with the traditional gilded angel that had been handed down from his grandmother, they stood back and admired their handiwork. With the afternoon sun streaming through the picture windows in the living room, the tree’s