The Wishing Well

Word Count: 694



         “Here is the key to your new house.  Enjoy.”  Sally, the realtor said, smiling as she dropped it into Dad’s hand.

         “I’m sure we will.  Thanks, Sally, you really handled everything—it’s like we never lifted a finger.”

         Mom rolled her eyes and hissed at me, “Well, of course he’d say that.  After all he didn’t lift a finger.  He didn’t even pack his own clothes.”

         “Well, I’m going to stake out my room so Reed can’t get it.”  I snatched the key, unlocked the front door and dashed up the stairs. 

The new house was great.  Since moving up from New Orleans three years earlier, we’d been living in a cramped cape cod style house, on a dead end street.  The picture window looked out across the street at a shallow, muddy swamp.

It was so awful, in fact, that for a minute I didn’t think Mom was going to get out of the car when Dad pulled into the driveway.  She’d been born and raised in New Orleans, so just moving to Connecticut was a culture shock.  Finding she was now living in what she obviously equated with a trailer park overlooking a swamp was too much.

We’d found the new house by accident.  She and Dad had been looking for a while.  But nothing made Mom happy.  We had been out shopping, were late picking my brother up from Little League, and decided to take a shortcut.  I’m sure Mom had been speeding, but slammed on the brakes when she saw the For Sale sign posted on the white picket fence standing between the road and the house.

It was an old gray farmhouse, with black shutters and a bright red door.  Maple trees with trunks at least thirty inches thick line the front of the house, with several more on the near side of the house. 

Mom swerved off the road, parked and jumped out, with me right on her heels.  We went to the side where a back door opened from a single story addition.  We peeped in the window and saw a long narrow room with exposed beams, and across the room was a picture window that looked over a terrace.

We ran around to it.  The space between the addition and the main house was paved in flagstones to form a large, square terrace, reached by two short sets of steps.  It was edged by a white rail fence and there beside the back stairs was a well with a little roof—just like a wishing well.  It was built from stones, with the wood shingle roof supported by white posts, and there was a fitted cover inside made of ancient wood.

Poor Reed.  We left him at the ball field and went straight to the realtor’s office.  And before Daddy knew it—he was away at Army Reserve training—we had a new house. 

I loved my new room.  It was smaller than the one in the cape cod—but had two windows and a nice view of the grape arbor and apple and pear trees in the back yard.  This was a great house!

I could hear Mom and Dad walking around downstairs talking.  And I was just beginning to wonder where my dumb brother was when I spied him.  He came running around the driveway side, up the steps to the terrace and scrambled up the side of the well.  Mom and Dad must have seen him, or at least been coming out onto the terrace. 

I heard Mom yell, “Reed, get down this minute...”    Then there was a crash and a scream.  Reed had jumped from the top of the wall into the well, and the wooden lid hadn’t splintered into several pieces, letting him slip through. With a loud splash and another scream (this time it was my mom), Reed found himself in the water at the bottom of the well.

Except for a few scrapes and bruises, he was fine.  But the wishing well was never the same.  The only way the firemen could get him out was to cut off the roof supports, and removed it—rope, bucket and all.