Three Wishes

Three Wishes Plot Summary

Introduction

# Three Threads Entwined: A Tale of Sisters, Secrets, and Redemption The fondue fork caught the restaurant's amber light as it spun through the air, a silver blur of rage and desperation. In that frozen moment before impact, thirty-four years of sisterhood crystallized into a single, violent act. Cat Kettle had just hurled cutlery at her pregnant triplet sister's belly, the metal finding its mark with a soft thud that silenced the packed Sydney seafood restaurant. The Kettle triplets had been inseparable once, sharing that mysterious language of multiples, finishing each other's sentences like a three-headed creature navigating childhood. But adulthood had carved them into distinct shapes. Lyn, the perfectionist eldest by eleven minutes, commanded her catering empire with military precision while hiding panic attacks behind her polished facade. Cat, the volatile middle child, watched her marriage crumble as her husband Dan slipped into another woman's arms, leaving her childless and bitter. Gemma, the dreamy youngest, drifted through life carrying a baby she claimed not to want while running from the ghost of an abusive past. The fork that nearly destroyed them would become the catalyst for their rebirth, forcing three women to confront the complex mathematics of sisterhood when love and loyalty collide with devastating consequences.

Chapter 1: The Unraveling Begins: Dan's Betrayal and Family Foundations Shaken

The spaghetti was Dan's recipe, hearty and bland, stirred like concrete in their familiar kitchen ritual. Cat sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the sofa, while Dan hunched over the coffee table. The medical drama flickered on screen, beautiful doctors navigating complex love lives with manufactured angst. "Tell him, Ellie!" Cat called to the television. "Pete will forgive you. He'll understand!" Dan closed his eyes at the insurance commercial. "I hate this ad." "It's effective. You watch it more closely than any other ad on television." They tussled playfully for the remote, competitive and physical as always. This was them, equally and aggressively in it to win, whether skiing or playing Scrabble. The show returned, and Cat insisted the betrayed character deserved the truth. "You think so?" Dan asked, his voice carrying a weight she missed entirely. "Yeah. Don't you? I couldn't stand not to know the truth." "Cat," he said, and something in his tone made her pause. "I have to tell you something." She snorted, thinking he was mocking the show's dramatic soundtrack. "Oh my God! What? Have you done an Ellie? Have you been unfaithful to me?" "Well. Yes." The word hung between them like smoke from a house fire. Dan looked like he was going to be sick, and he wasn't that great an actor. Cat put down her fork, rage flooding her system like tequila, a glorious relief after months of trying to get pregnant. One night, he said. About a month ago. A girl named Angela he'd met at drinks after squash. It didn't mean anything, obviously. He was drunk, flattered. Maybe it was the stress with work, the baby thing. It would never happen again. He was very, very sorry. The questions poured out of Cat like blood from a wound. Did you take her bra off? What position? Did she have an orgasm? Each detail was a fresh cut, but she couldn't stop. She needed to know everything, to imagine every excruciating second. Dan begged her to stop, his face pasty white, but Cat was the interrogator now, the righteous cop slamming the criminal against the wall. The evening dissolved into accusations and tears. Cat threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall, watching it explode in a shower of sauce and ceramic. The mess felt appropriate, their marriage splattered across the kitchen like abstract art.

Chapter 2: Tangled Connections: When Love Lives Collide Through Cruel Coincidence

Three weeks later, Cat's period was late. The revelation came during drinks with her sisters Lyn and Gemma, sitting in a dimly lit pub corner. Cat touched the pimple on her chin, the one that had appeared the day Dan confessed his betrayal. "I was due the day Dan told me about his one-night stand," she explained. "I thought it meant my period was coming. But it didn't come." Gemma bounced in her chair, wine sloshing. "You're pregnant! You're having a baby!" They rushed back to Cat's apartment, squeezing together on the bathroom floor with glasses of wine, waiting for the pregnancy test results. Cat couldn't look, made Gemma check the stick instead. "Two lines I'm pregnant, one line I'm not," Cat recited, staring at her hands. Silence. Then Gemma reached for Cat's wine glass and poured it into her own. "No more of that for you." "You're kidding." Gemma shook her head, smiling widely, her eyes shiny. "Two lines. Two very, very pretty blue lines." For the first time in her life, Cat threw her arms around her sister with complete, involuntary abandon. The baby changed everything, gave their marriage a purpose beyond the betrayal, a reason to fix what was broken. Christmas Day at Lyn's harbor-side home should have been perfect. The table was set beautifully, the harbor glinting beside them. But the heat was oppressive, the air conditioning had failed, and tension simmered beneath forced cheerfulness. Then Charlie arrived, Gemma's new boyfriend, a barrel-chested locksmith with surprisingly long eyelashes. With him came his sister, a stunning brunette with long dark hair and perfect curves. "Hi," she smiled. "I'm Angela." The champagne glass slipped from Gemma's hand, shattering on the kitchen floor. Cat felt the blood drain from her face as recognition hit like a physical blow. This was her, the girl from Dan's one-night stand, the owner of the black bra, the keeper of her husband's secrets. The coincidences were staggering. Angela had been handing out Charlie's locksmith magnets at the Greenwood pub the night she met Dan. When Gemma got locked out of her house-sitting job, she'd called Cat for help. Cat had given her the number from the key-shaped magnet on their fridge, the very magnet Dan had stuck there after his night with Angela.

Chapter 3: Loss and Desperation: Cat's Miscarriage and the Search for Motherhood

New Year's Eve brought tragedy swift and merciless. Cat's body betrayed her in the cruelest way possible, the baby she'd loved for barely three weeks simply gone. The miscarriage hit like a physical blow, cramping and twisting until she silently screamed for it to stop. Neither Lyn nor Gemma felt anything as their sister's world collapsed. The famous triplet connection proved useless when it mattered most. Lyn was watching fireworks with her daughter Maddie, mesmerized by colors exploding across the sky. Gemma was kissing Charlie at a party, lost in the taste of his tongue. Dan called them the next morning. "Cat's lost the baby." They descended on the apartment like a grief-stricken army, expecting to fix things with their presence. Instead, they found Cat hollow-eyed and brittle, eating walnut bun with mechanical precision. "We'll try again," Dan said solemnly, as if babies were interchangeable, as if this specific child hadn't mattered. "I wanted this baby," Cat replied, and they nodded patiently, kindly, as if she were delirious. The medical staff had whisked away the tissue with bland efficient faces, like something disgusting that needed quick removal. Nobody cooed in wonder over Cat's baby. Only she knew how beautiful it would have been. Days blurred together in bed, Cat's body a leaden weight that needed dragging from place to place. Dan tried to be the perfect supportive husband, but his performance felt wrong. She wanted him angry and irrational, demanding answers from the doctors. Instead, he was all understanding masculine nods, two reasonable men discussing a sadly common occurrence. On the third day, Cat discovered Dan's mobile phone bill among the mail. Her hands trembled as she scanned the numbers, playing spy with sick satisfaction. There it was, a twenty-five minute call to an unknown number on Christmas Day, made at 11:53 PM while Cat slept. The number appeared eight times in December. Long conversations. Many late at night. She dialed with shaking hands. The voicemail answered in a bubbly girl's voice: "Hi! This is Angela. Leave me a message!" Cat hung up hard. Gotcha. When Dan returned from shopping, she confronted him with the evidence. The one-night stand had been a fiction. He'd been seeing Angela for weeks, calling her while Cat slept, building a relationship on the foundation of his marriage's ruins. She watched his face crumble as the lies unraveled, saw him already gone, looking back at her politely from some other place far in the future.

Chapter 4: Unexpected Life: Gemma's Pregnancy and the Promise of Adoption

Gemma discovered her pregnancy the way she discovered most important things in her life, by accident and far too late to do anything sensible about it. Four months along, her body had been sending signals she'd misinterpreted as stress or bad seafood. The doctor's matter-of-fact announcement hit her like a physical blow. Charlie Carluccio had been different from her usual string of forgettable boyfriends. A locksmith with Italian heritage and a smile that made her forget her own name, he approached life with the enthusiasm of someone perpetually on holiday. He taught her to cook while dancing around his kitchen, took her snorkeling to see stingrays, explained how lightbulbs worked with infinite patience. But Gemma's pattern was unbreakable. Six months maximum, then the icy breeze would whistle through her bones and she'd find herself looking at her latest boyfriend like a stranger. She'd broken up with Charlie over something trivial, his sister Angela's involvement with Dan providing the perfect excuse. The real reason was simpler and more shameful: she was incapable of staying in love. The pregnancy terrified her in ways she couldn't articulate. She thought of teenage parents feeding their baby breakfast cereal, killing it with ignorance and good intentions. She had no permanent address, no steady job, no idea how to keep another human being alive. The baby deserved better than a mother who couldn't even maintain a houseplant. Cat's offer to adopt the baby felt like salvation. Her sister wanted children desperately, had the stability and resources Gemma lacked. It made perfect sense, a solution that would give everyone what they needed. Gemma could carry the baby to term without the terror of motherhood, Cat could have the child she'd lost, and the baby would have a proper home. But families are never simple, and the Kettle women specialized in complications. Lyn's moral outrage, their parents' bewilderment, the weight of everyone's opinions pressed down on Gemma like stones. She tried to explain that this wasn't abandonment but love, the ultimate gift between sisters. Yet doubt crept in during the long nights, whispering questions she couldn't answer. The baby moved inside her like a secret, and sometimes she found herself talking to it, promising things she wasn't sure she could deliver.

Chapter 5: The Perfect Storm: Birthday Revelations and the Fork That Changed Everything

Their thirty-fourth birthday dinner was supposed to be a celebration, a continuation of the tradition Lyn had started years earlier. Just the three sisters, no partners, sharing cake and champagne while they pretended they were still the inseparable triplets of their childhood. The seafood restaurant buzzed with energy, their waitress treating them like beloved celebrities once she learned they were triplets. The champagne flowed, old secrets spilled across the table like wine stains. Lyn confessed her panic attacks, the way her perfect life was slowly suffocating her. Cat admitted to sleeping with her boss, a desperate attempt to feel wanted again. Then Gemma pulled out the letters they'd written to their future selves at fourteen, time capsules from an age when dreams felt like certainties. Cat's letter demanded adventure and independence, Lyn's outlined a perfect domestic future, and Gemma's bubbled with optimism about love and family. The contrast between their teenage hopes and adult realities hung heavy as smoke. The mood shifted when Lyn mentioned calling Charlie about the pregnancy. Her moral certainty clashed with Cat's desperate need for the adoption to proceed. The baby represented Cat's last chance at motherhood, her compensation for everything Dan had stolen from her. Gemma sat between them, the baby moving in her belly like a living reminder of impossible choices. Then Gemma spoke the words that changed everything: "I've changed my mind." She wanted to keep the baby, wanted Charlie, wanted everything she'd convinced herself she couldn't handle. The announcement hit Cat like a physical blow, the final betrayal in a year full of losses. Years of rage and disappointment and grief found their target in her sister's pregnant belly. The fork was in Cat's hand before conscious thought intervened. It flew through the amber light, spinning end over end toward Gemma's stomach. The restaurant erupted in chaos, blood and screaming and the terrible knowledge that some lines, once crossed, can never be uncrossed.

Chapter 6: Aftermath and Reckoning: Healing from Violence and Broken Trust

The ambulance ride blurred past in a haze of sirens and regret. Gemma lay on the stretcher, one hand pressed to the shallow wound in her belly, the other clutching her phone as she called Charlie. Her voice shook as she asked if he'd like to help her breathe through labor, as if the past months of silence could be erased with a single request. Charlie arrived at the hospital still wearing his muddy football gear, terror and confusion warring on his face. He'd been abandoned once, left to wonder what he'd done wrong, and now Gemma was asking him to step into fatherhood without preparation or warning. But love, it turned out, didn't require logic or planning. Cat's broken jaw was wired shut for weeks, a fitting punishment for the violence she'd unleashed. She watched from the sidelines as Gemma and Charlie fumbled through new parenthood, their exhaustion tempered by wonder. The yellow nursery she'd prepared stood empty, a monument to dreams that would never be realized. Labor was a journey through pain toward something unimaginable. Gemma gripped Charlie's hand and remembered why she'd fallen for him in the first place. He explained the mechanics of breathing between contractions, treated the whole experience like a fascinating puzzle to be solved together. When their son finally arrived, dark-haired and furious at the world, Charlie cried openly. They named him Salvatore after his grandfather, a bridge between their families and histories. Sal proved to be a demanding baby, crying with what sounded like grief to Gemma's guilty ears. She wondered if he could sense her original plan to give him away, if some part of him would always know he'd been unwanted at first. The family rallied around the new parents with typical Kettle chaos. Their mother Maxine arrived like the cavalry, armed with decades of experience and no patience for self-pity. Their father Frank bounced the baby and told stories about raising triplets. Even their grandmother, despite her recent trauma from a violent attack in her own home, offered advice and hand-knitted blankets. The attack on their eighty-year-old grandmother had shattered the family's sense of safety. She'd been beaten in her own home by a stranger who saw only an easy target, left on her hallway floor for hours waiting for neighbors to find her. But her recovery revealed new depths of resilience, and she used the media attention to reinvent herself, moving to a retirement village with characteristic determination.

Chapter 7: New Beginnings: Choosing Family and Forging Forgiveness

The months following the fork incident became a time of reckoning for all three sisters. Cat channeled her pain into her work, her marketing campaigns growing bolder and more successful. But success felt hollow when there was no one to share it with. Dan's departure for Paris with Angela closed one chapter of her life without opening another. She began writing, first as therapy, then as a calling. Her newsletter for teenagers navigating emotional minefields became a book, her cynicism transformed into wisdom hard-won through experience. The words flowed like blood from old wounds, finally finding purpose in helping others avoid her mistakes. Lyn learned to loosen her grip on perfection, hiring help for her business and accepting that some things couldn't be controlled. The panic attacks became manageable once she stopped fighting them, once she allowed herself to be human rather than superhuman. Her marriage to Michael deepened as she shared her struggles instead of hiding them. Gemma discovered that love wasn't about duration but depth, that staying meant choosing to stay every day, not just once. Charlie proved himself capable of the long haul, changing diapers and walking the floors at night with the patience of a man who'd found his purpose. Their relationship grew stronger under the weight of responsibility, love deepening through shared exhaustion and wonder. The family gathered to clean out their grandmother's house after she moved to the retirement village. Cat and their mother worked side by side, sorting through decades of accumulated memories. In a dusty box, they found copies of "The Kettle Scoop," Cat's childhood newspaper that had made the family laugh with its earnest reporting and wild speculation about Gemma's adoption. Their parents' remarriage surprised no one who'd been paying attention. Frank and Maxine's divorce had been a youthful mistake, their reunion the correction of an error that had taken twenty years to acknowledge. They married again on Balmoral Beach, surrounded by their daughters and grandchildren, proof that some stories deserve second chances. The sisters slowly rebuilt their relationship, brick by careful brick. Trust, once shattered, required constant maintenance. They learned to speak honestly instead of kindly, to fight fairly instead of silently. The fork had nearly destroyed them, but it had also cleared the air like a thunderstorm, leaving them free to discover who they might become when the performance finally ended.

Summary

The Kettle sisters learned that family is both anchor and storm, the force that shapes us and the chaos that threatens to destroy us. Their journey through love and loss, betrayal and forgiveness, revealed the complex mathematics of sisterhood. Three women who'd shared a womb discovered they could survive sharing a world, even when that world seemed determined to tear them apart. The fork that nearly destroyed them became the catalyst for their rebirth. In the end, they remained what they'd always been: three parts of a whole, separate but inseparable, bound by blood and choice and the stubborn refusal to let go of each other. Their wishes had evolved from the simple dreams of childhood to the complex hopes of women who'd learned that getting what you want is less important than understanding what you need. The Kettle sisters had found their way home to each other, scarred but unbroken, ready for whatever came next.

About Author

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Liane Moriarty

Moriarty reframes the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and hidden emotional complexities in her writing, skillfully interweaving them with sharp observations and engaging narratives. Her books often delve into the dynamics of marriage, friendship, and family, using witty dialogue and suspenseful storytelling to explore the secrets beneath everyday life. This approach has made her work especially appealing to readers seeking both entertainment and reflection on relatable contemporary issues. Notably, her novels like "Big Little Lies" and "The Husband’s Secret" have achieved #1 spots on the New York Times bestseller list, with "Big Little Lies" further achieving critical acclaim through its Emmy-winning HBO adaptation.\n\nIn addition to her adult fiction, Moriarty's early career began with a foundation in advertising and marketing, later transitioning to a full-time writing career. Her structured writing routine and carefully planned drafting process reflect her commitment to creating accessible narratives that resonate with a broad audience. Meanwhile, her academic background, including a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Macquarie University, provided the groundwork for her debut novel, "Three Wishes." With over 20 million copies sold worldwide and translations in forty languages, Moriarty’s work not only entertains but also invites readers to examine their own relationships and emotions.\n\nHer impact extends beyond the literary world, as her stories have been adapted into television series, broadening her cultural influence. Moriarty’s ability to connect with readers through relatable themes and her successful adaptations into other media highlight her significant contributions to contemporary fiction. This short bio encapsulates her journey from childhood storyteller to a prominent figure in literature, known for her insightful and entertaining exploration of the human experience.

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