A river stone smoothed with time and endless amounts of water, it was really nothing more than a regular rock. We found it on a camping trip to Deep Creek as kids. No more than four or five inches long and a dull tan with black freckles it looked more like a potato than anything else. Kate took it everywhere. She would close her eyes and stroke it three times before making a wish.
It started just before we returned home. She wished for the folks to stop and get us an ice cream for the ride home and they did.
The following week, she wished for a new notebook for school and the next day it appeared in her room. It didn't happen every time, but it did more often than not so it became our wishing stone. As we grew older it became the conduit between us. We would take turns holding it, vowing on our very lives to only speak the truth while it was in our possession, talking for hours before making our wish.
Kate was its guardian, swearing to use it only for good and only when the two of us were together. It became a regular ritual between us. We wished for things large and small, all with equal desire they would come true. Once a week, it gave each of us an opportunity to vent our frustrations and express our desire to make things right with the world.
Slowly, as I grew older, my interest began to wane. My wishes became more trivial and I had less and less time to share with her so I concentrated on making her wishes come true. It made me feel good to secretly fulfill her modest desires. The stone had changed from sharing secret dreams to open communication between us.
Eventually, we gained new obligations, leaving little time for the wishing stone. Kate went off to college and I dropped out. We saw each other at least once a month, until our parents died. She looked after me far more than I did her and the wishing stone became a thing of the past. From that moment to her last, we were joined at the hip.
Two years after our parents' death, on New Year’s Eve, it reappeared. I thought it had been lost long before and was surprised by its return. We spent the night talking, endlessly talking, and it made me feel like I was no longer lost in my grief, no longer alone.
At midnight we made our wish. Hers came true eight months later when she met Roger. I am still waiting, nursing a flicker of similar hope.
For the next twenty years, each year on New Year’s Eve, the wishing stone was passed from hand to hand, first to Kate, then Roger, then me.
During her last summer, as if a punishment for being happy, Kate was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
The last time we used the stone was at the hospital the morning she died.
On that day, all three of us made a silent wish, certain the others had wished for the same. Kate died that afternoon and I never thought about the stone again. It was the last time I believed in magic, in love or the existence of God.
