The Wish Collector

by Mia Sheridan

Angelina and John, she and Jonah, the mystery, the curse, the riddle . . . Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. I just regret. I've made a career of it, here, behind this wall. If Angelina lingers, she lingers for him. For the soldier man. Vague knowledge drifted just out of her reach, as nebulous as early morning fog. She let it go, not attempting to grasp it . . . The note. John's betrayal . . . Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. My mama, she didn't know how to read, but oh, did she know how to sing. Clara’s eyes widened as she stood up straight, blinking into the quiet street in front of her. She didn’t know how to read.

“You have to allow her to love all of you.”

“It’s always about you, Jonah. It’s always been about you. The world will react the way the world will react. That’s not your business. You have faith in your own worth and the world won’t matter.”

He was beauty and pain, glory and suffering, vengeance and grace, and all things made stronger and more meaningful because they have an opposite.

Because broken people tended to break things, didn’t they?

“They would have done anything to have the ability to leave this plantation together,” she mused softly, to herself maybe as much as to the man sitting on the bench willing to watch her walk away. “To walk through the streets hand in hand, to claim their freedom.” Her eyes moved to him. “And you, you dishonor them and yourself by staying locked away by choice.”

“Wearing your mistakes and regrets on the outside where others can judge them. But, man, the problem is not that others judge you harshly, it’s that you believe what they say.”

Ruben gave him a fist bump and Eddy stopped on his way out. “If anyone understands the desire to end your own life, it’s me. We met at the edge of a bridge, remember? You helped me believe that life is worth living again.”

You give those people too much importance and not enough to the ones who matter.