The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin: A Novel (20 page)

Seth folds his cupcake wrapper into a small square. He turns it over and presses the sharp corner into his thumb. “We’re both tired from working in the fields today. Or maybe it was a shadow.”

It’s the closest he’s come to admitting that he’s seen the peculiar things that happen around Antoinette. I think about the snowdrops in the night garden. The cut that disappeared from my finger. The bird that hopped into the sky after Antoinette’s touch.

“It wasn’t a shadow,” I say, “and I’m not
that
tired.” Then I blurt out what I’ve been thinking for the past several months: “What if Antoinette’s causing these things to happen?” I know I’m grasping at straws, but if Antoinette made those things happen, then maybe she can fix me.

MaryBeth returns holding a tray with a pitcher of sweet tea and three glasses. She sets the glasses in front of us and pours the tea.

Seth and I fall silent. I’m embarrassed by my outburst.

“I’d stay to chat,” MaryBeth says, “but without Eli, I’m the only one keeping an eye on things.” She hugs Antoinette before she leaves.

When Seth speaks, his voice is filled with pity, and that hurts more than his words. “She’s just a little girl, Rose. She’s not causing anything.”

“I’d think you of all people would believe,” I say in a stubborn last-ditch attempt to persuade him.

“That’s not fair,” he says. “There’s a difference between faith in God and believing that Antoinette can do miracles.”

Why? I want to ask. But I don’t say anything, and we finish our cupcakes in silence.

THE BACK OF
my legs stick to the wood bench running along the gazebo, which Seth painted purple and yellow last week. The colors are happy, but they don’t help my mood. A bucketful of strawberries sits at my feet. Antoinette is in the middle of the gazebo, stretched up on her toes, twirling.

Seth sits beside me. He hasn’t said much since we left the Bakery Barn. I can’t blame him. I don’t know what to say either.

My chest hurts.

I pluck a strawberry from the bucket, pop off its stem, and bite into it. Fresh strawberries are my favorite part of June. I study Antoinette as she dances, trying to see past her awkward movements. Seth’s right—she’s just a little girl.

“Earlier, at the Bakery Barn . . . I mean, it’s obvious Antoinette isn’t making these things happen,” I say.

Ever since Dr. Ketters told me to institutionalize Antoinette, I’ve been looking for some great good to balance out all of the heartache. I used to imagine Antoinette listening to one of Mozart’s symphonies and then picking out the melody on the piano at Seth’s house. I’d dream of her taking my old paints and producing a perfect replica of the striped fields behind the house.

“I just want to believe something good will happen.”

“It already has,” he says. He nods toward Antoinette, who is waving her fingers before her eyes, giggling.

He picks up a strawberry and turns it over before dropping it back into the pail. He and Lily used to spend hours picking strawberries. I haven’t seen him eat one since coming home.

“Do you miss her?” I ask. I don’t want to embarrass him, so I look at my feet. My ankles are swollen, one of the perks of a damaged heart. I make a note to take a water pill when we go inside. Then I steeple my fingers and press them into my chest, trying to dispel the pressure that started building earlier at the Bakery Barn.

“Every day,” Seth says softly.

It’s getting hard to breathe. “You should call Lily,” I say. I haven’t talked to her in years, but I’m still her big sister. The need to watch out for her never left me.

“Maybe someday.” Seth straightens and stretches his arms over his head.

“I don’t understand.”

He stares out over the hills. His hair falls over his eyes. “Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to stay away from them. She has a new life. I don’t want to disrupt it.”

It’s dusk; the fireflies are out. We should be in the night garden. This past spring, Seth helped me fix it up. The weeds are gone and the trellis is heavy with moonflowers and climbing hydrangeas.

Antoinette stops dancing. I hold out a strawberry. “Want it?”

My chest squeezes again. I should go inside and lie down, but Antoinette is happy, and I love seeing her that way. I want to prolong this moment.

She bites into the berry and red juice trickles down her chin.

I laugh. “Between the cupcake and the strawberries, we’ll have to hose you off before we go inside.”

When I lean forward to wipe her mouth, my chest tightens. It feels as if someone is crushing my heart. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, focusing on expanding my rib cage and filling every inch of my body with air.

Seth touches my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

I force my eyes open, but I keep taking slow, deep breaths. The pressure builds, and I shake my head. My nitro pills are at the house.

Antoinette comes closer. My focus narrows to the strawberry she holds. I stare so hard I can count the seeds running up its side.

I breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

“What can I do?” Seth asks, an edge of panic in his voice. “Your lips are blue. Should I call the paramedics?”

I try to say
Call 911
, but my mouth isn’t working.

Antoinette drops the strawberry. It rolls toward the stairs, leaving a trail of red juice.

I need to go to the house. I try to stand, then stumble to the ground.

Seth yells my name, but I block out everything except my daughter. I fight to keep my eyes open, wanting her face to be my last sight.

She crouches beside me, and her long blonde hair touches the back of my hand. Her face is too serious for a five-year-old. My vision starts to fade. I open my eyes wider.

Antoinette caresses my cheek. I remember how strong her grip was as a baby. How could I have ever wished her to be more than she is? I want to tell her that she’s perfect, but the pain has crawled into my jaw. Suddenly we’re both mute.

Then Antoinette hums, and I feel like I’m being turned inside out. The pressure in my chest builds to a single concentrated point, and then it explodes outward. I arch my back and scream.

Antoinette hums faster.

I burn with pain.

Just when I think I will burst, everything stops. I lie still for a moment, afraid to move. Then I feel Antoinette’s hand against my cheek.

I open my eyes. She’s smiling at me.

“What happened?” Seth is beside me. He tilts my face to his. “The color is back in your face. Your lips aren’t blue.”

But I don’t speak. I’m focused on my daughter.

I put my hand over hers. “Did you do this?”

Antoinette gives me one more brilliant smile before her eyes roll back, and she collapses. Her arms shake, and her heels thud against the gazebo floor.

“Oh God,” I say.”What’s happening?”

Seth doesn’t hesitate. “We need to get her to the hospital.” He scoops her up and runs to the truck. I hurry after him, my heart beating as easily and smoothly as it did when I used to run through the fields with Lily.

“I DID THIS
to her,” I say. I lean over Antoinette’s bed in the emergency room. Seth and I stand on either side of her, keeping watch. She had a grand mal seizure. The medicine that stopped it made her fall asleep.

“You didn’t do this,” he says. “The doctor said seizures are common in children with Antoinette’s disabilities.”

Antoinette’s seizure lasted thirty minutes. Far too long, the ER doctor said. The longer a seizure lasts, the greater the possibility for brain damage.

An IV snakes out of the back of her hand. The nurse had to bandage Antoinette’s arm with surgical wrap to keep her from yanking it out.

“The flowers. The bird. And now me. Antoinette’s disability didn’t cause her seizure, healing me did.”

Seth says, “You couldn’t have known,” and I know he believes now. Antoinette saved me.

When we arrived, Seth told the doctors I had been having chest pain. They did an EKG, an echocardiogram, and drew blood to check for cardiac enzymes. Everything was normal. The echocardiogram—my second today—showed my ejection fraction at sixty percent.

Better than normal.

But at what price? I brush Antoinette’s hair from her forehead. I don’t know how, but I’m convinced she healed me and that the effort caused her seizure. Which means that I can’t ever let her do this again. A broken body I can bear, but a broken heart, well, even Antoinette can’t fix that.

Chapter Thirteen

Lily couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Rose explaining how Antoinette’s healing ability worked.

“She can control it,” Rose had said. They were sitting on the porch swing with Antoinette between them. As Rose spoke, the tight lines around her mouth disappeared, as if talking about it removed a weight she had been carrying. “She doesn’t help everyone, only people she
wants
to heal. And she can’t heal herself. She touches the person, and then she hums. I don’t know how she actually changes things.”

“How does it feel?” Lily asked.

“It’s like being turned inside out,” Rose said. “Like your bones and muscles are stretching, and your skin can’t contain them anymore. You want to burst apart and come together at the same time.”

“Does it hurt?” Lily asked.

“Sometimes,” she said.

Only three people knew about Antoinette’s ability. Rose, Seth, and now Lily. Eli Cantwell suspected. Before they went inside, Rose made Lily promise not to tell anyone what Antoinette could do. “It’s the only way to keep her safe,” Rose said. “Healing everyone who needs help will kill her.”

Despite her promise, Lily wanted to call Will, but how could she explain what had happened tonight? He wouldn’t believe on faith alone.

Sleep was impossible. She kicked back the quilt and stood, putting on the jeans she’d worn earlier. She needed to see Seth. He had known about this from the beginning. What had he said in the truck her first day home? Antoinette was different.

What she’d learned earlier went way beyond different.

Before all of this, she had been afraid to be Antoinette’s guardian. Now she was terrified.

She tiptoed out of the house and into the night, pausing to slip on the garden clogs she had left by the back door. She trembled as she hopped the white-plank fence between Eden Farms and Seth’s property.

His farm bordered theirs. He owned twenty acres, but his house was only a short distance from the fence line. The moon was bright, but she didn’t need its light to find her way. It was
his
home. Her feet knew the way.

The scent of honeysuckle drifted on the night breeze, and cornflowers bloomed around her feet. It was too early for them, and she wondered whether Antoinette had been here recently.

A page from her flower book came to her. Cornflowers meant “hope in love.” Ridiculous. She didn’t love Seth. At least, not anymore. She crushed a blue flower beneath her heel. “I don’t love him,” she said out loud. She was wading through flowers when his house came into view.

Before Seth’s family bought the house, the front porch had sagged in on itself. The white paint was dirty and peeling. Seth’s father restored the farmhouse. He shored up the porch, extending it until it wrapped around the first story. He sanded off the chipped white paint and repainted with a soft butter yellow. He removed the overgrown yew bushes that obscured the front of the house and planted pale pink Sharifa Asma roses in their place. He did everything except make the house a home. Given Seth’s dark memories of childhood there, Lily was surprised he hadn’t sold it long ago.

It was late, but the lights were on. She squared her shoulders as she climbed the porch stairs and knocked on the door. A full minute passed before Seth appeared to open it.

“Lily,” he said, his eyes wide with surprise. “Is Rose okay?” He walked onto the porch and shut the door behind him. He wore a pair of faded jeans and nothing else. His stomach was taut. She could count each of his muscles. His brown hair was messy. It curled around his face, tousled by sleep.

“She’s fine. Everything’s fine. I need to talk to you.” Lily couldn’t stop moving. She tapped her fingers against her thigh as she paced back and forth on the porch.

“At midnight? Couldn’t it wait till morning?” He leaned against the porch railing and yawned.

“No. It can’t.” She pointed at him. “Why didn’t you tell me what Antoinette could do?” Her voice was loud.

“Would you have believed me?” he asked, infuriatingly calm.

“You should have told me.” She poked him in the chest. “You said Antoinette was different. This is
way
beyond different.”

He caught her hand before she could jab him again. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” she said after a long pause. “Maybe.” This close, she felt the heat from his skin. She could map the tiny lines at the corner of his eyes and around his mouth—could see all the ways his face had changed over the years.

He didn’t let go of her hand.

“For what it’s worth, I told Rose you needed to know, but even if she had listened to me you wouldn’t have believed. I was with Antoinette every day for over a year. Strange things happened around her all the time, but I never thought she was
causing
them until I saw her heal Rose.”