Jane's eight year old son Paul had tracked dirt into the house yet again. Her husband had worked so hard outside getting the bushes replanted a week after the hailstorm had damaged them and then Paul had played around near all the loose dirt and not only knocked a bush almost out of the soil, but gotten the carpet dirty. Having to clean up the mess was annoying, especially since she was expecting her second baby any day now and was in no condition to do lots of work.
Still, just getting rid of some dirt was within her abilities. She waddled to the closet to get the broom and started sweeping away the really big hunks of dirt. But something caught her eye. There was a slightly reddish stone in the dirt. It had a metallic look and was about an inch across. It looked familiar, but she couldn't remember where she saw it.
When her husband Andrew came home he went over to the couch where his wife was staring curiously at a strange stone. He kissed her, patted her belly, and asked "What's that?"
She held the stone out to him. "Oh, just something that Paul found. It seems familiar, but I wish I knew why I thought that...."
And with that, she suddenly remembered everything. Nine years ago she had been Jon, when she had inherited a magic stone. Several careless wishes later, she was Jane and the lesbian lover of her friend Karyn. But then his mother had wished Jane and Karyn were already married.
Unfortunately, while everyone had accepted Jane and Karyn's relationship (because of a previous wish), that didn't suddenly make gay marriage legal. While the wish stone didn't normally twist wishes, in this case it couldn't grant this wish by marrying Jane to Karyn; instead it interpreted "married" as "married to someone else". And since Jane's mother had worded the wish to make Jane forget what had happened, Jane didn't even remember about Karyn or the wishing stone until now.
Jane loved her husband, and her son, and the baby inside her, but she realized she still loved Karyn too. She had to talk to her. "I wish I knew Karyn's phone number..." Suddenly the digits floated into her mind. "And I wish Karyn remembered everything she forgot, including all about the stone."
"Who's Karyn?" asked her husband.
"Oh, someone I haven't called in a long time" she answered. She leaned over to the phone near the sofa and put down the stone to dial Karyn. Ring... ring... And someone picked up the phone. "Hello?" she said. "Karyn?"
"Jane? My god! It's been years and I forgot all about you until just now. You must be married, like the wish said, right?"
"Oh, yes! Not only am I married, I..."
Then Paul ran into the room. "I want to see it!"
"Can't you see your mother's busy?" said Andrew.
Paul feigned agreement, then with a huge grin on his face swiped the stone and ran away with it.
Jane dropped the phone and chased after him.
Paul didn't know what the stone did, of course, but given that he was eight his imagination might lead him to the right answer anyway. And it did. "If Mom kept saying this is a wish stone, maybe it could give me wishes! I wish...."
