The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin: A Novel (21 page)

He made sense, but Lily was angry. For once, she didn’t want logic. She wrenched her hand free.

“She’s a little girl who’s losing her mother,” Seth said, still unruffled. “The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

His calm manner made her angry. Her face flushed as she turned away from him. “Of course it matters. I didn’t know what I was doing before. Now . . .” She waved her hand in the air, searching for the right words, but they didn’t exist. “I’m in over my head.”

“No you’re not. You can do this.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.

A sense of betrayal washed over her, and she fought to hold back tears. “You should have told me,” she said. “I thought I was your friend.”

“You are,” he said, and she thought she saw pain in his eyes.

“No. I meant something to you once. For that, if for no other reason, you should have told me.” Frustration and fear overcame her. She turned and reached for the porch railing as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Coming here was a mistake.” She hurried down the steps, unsure whether she meant coming to Seth’s house or coming home.

Finally agitated, Seth reached for her, but he was too late. “Lily, wait!” he yelled. But she ran home without looking back.

LILY WAS ELEVEN
years old when she realized she loved Seth. Before that, she hadn’t understood why she smiled when she said his name. Or why her heart fluttered when his hand brushed hers.

They were walking through the fields one morning at the end of a long, hot summer. His right eye was purple and swollen. As usual, he pretended nothing was wrong, and she tried to make it easier for him. “He’s drinking again?” Lily asked.

They trailed behind Rose, cutting through tall grass on their way to the creek. The sun was low, but soon it would be overhead, pulling pearls of sweat from their skin. Lily counted her footsteps from the house (forty-six) and plucked a piece of grass gone to seed. She stuck it between her teeth and chewed. It tasted both bitter and sweet.

“You could stay with us,” she said, not the first time she made the suggestion. “Mom wouldn’t care. We’ve got an extra bedroom.”

Seth didn’t say anything, but he never did. He was stuck. The best he could do was spend as much time as possible at their house, slipping home after dinner when his father passed out in the study. Most days he managed, but sometimes he made too much noise as he tiptoed into the house. Those were the nights he snuck out after midnight and ran across the field that separated their houses. Once there, he stood outside, throwing pebbles at the girls’ bedroom window until either Lily or Rose woke and helped him inside.

As they walked, Lily held out her hand. He took it, and his hand swallowed hers. When had he grown so much bigger?

“What’s holding y’all up?” Rose yelled, over her shoulder. She had draped her shorts over the low-hanging limbs of a river birch so they wouldn’t get wet. Her legs were deep brown, and her hair was so long it reached the middle of her back. She looked more like a woman than a child, her body pushing into curves and softening in places where Lily was still narrow and flat.

Seth glanced at Rose, then dropped his eyes to the ground, but not before Lily saw a red flush creep up his neck. For the first time she was embarrassed for him to see her body.

“Come on!” Rose yelled again as she splashed through the creek.

Seth shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked at a rock on the trail. “You go ahead,” he said, without looking at Lily.

Rose clambered up onto the flat rock that stood in the middle of the creek. Her white T-shirt was transparent. Earlier that summer, their mother had taken Rose to town and came back with two white cotton training bras. Jealousy twisted Lily’s stomach when she saw the outline of Rose’s bra through her wet shirt. She counted backward from one hundred, but it didn’t help.

Seth kept his back to Rose. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. Every few seconds his gaze slid over to Rose.

Lily wished he would look at her like that, but she knew stripping down to her skivvies wouldn’t accomplish anything. For one thing, she was wearing little-girl underwear with
SATURDAY
emblazoned across the back. For another, Rose outshone her in every way.

“Come! On!” Rose yelled again, sitting up on the rock, water glistening on her body.

“I don’t want to,” Lily said.

“Baby!” Rose called.

Lily clenched her teeth to keep from yelling. Instead, she turned to Seth. “Want to go pick some strawberries?”

He shook his head and mumbled something about forgetting to check the latch on the gate. Then he ran off toward his house, leaving Lily on the creek bank.

She wanted to dash after him, but her feet wouldn’t move. A feeling of hate surged through her body. She splashed into the water without taking her shoes off. When she reached the center of the creek where Rose reclined on the rock, her long blonde hair splayed over her shoulders, Lily grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked as hard as she could.

“Ow!” Rose screamed as she toppled off the rock and into the water. “Why’d you do that?”

Lily jabbed a finger at Rose. “His dad hit him again.” To her shame, she began to cry. She turned her back on Rose and sniffed hard while she clambered up onto the rock. She hitched up her knee and yanked her shoes off. Her mother was going to kill her for ruining another pair.

Rose stood in the middle of the creek, water rushing around her ankles. “I didn’t know,” she said.

“If you ever paid attention to anyone else, you would have noticed. It’s not like it’s invisible.”

“Oh,” Rose said as she stared at Lily. The anger disappeared from her face. “It’s like that.”

“Like what?” Lily asked, still mad. She tugged her socks off and wrung the water from them. If she laid them out on the rock, they might dry before she went home, at least enough that her mother wouldn’t notice.

Rose shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, but she cocked her head to the side and looked at Lily as if witnessing something she had never seen before.

“Why are you staring at me?” Lily glared at her.

Rose hopped back up on the rock. Her feet dangled in the water. “You like him,” she said.

“Of course I do. We’re friends.” It was true, but as she spoke, she suddenly realized it was more than that. It had happened so gradually, she wasn’t aware of it until now. Seth made her feel lit from within, as if by a thousand fireflies.

Chapter Fourteen

Lily woke with sheets wrapped around her legs. The sun wasn’t up, but she kicked back the covers and stood. An image from last night of Seth standing on his porch, yelling after her, flashed through her mind. She shoved it aside, ran her fingers through her snarled hair, and dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt.

Then she reached for her cell phone. She didn’t care that it was six in the morning. After three rings, it went to voice mail.

“Will,” she said after the beep. “It’s me. I need to talk to you. Soon.” She clicked off, then walked out of her room and down the hall.

Last night, she had to count backward from one thousand before she could fall asleep. Even then, she woke with knots in her shoulders. Farmwork might loosen her muscles; in the garden, she didn’t need to count. Death statistics didn’t roll through her mind. She was looser there, her mind not filled with numbers and calculations. With luck, she could harvest some tulips and figure out how to tell Rose that Seth would be a better guardian for Antoinette.

It had taken her most of the night to arrive at that decision, but once she had, it made sense. Seth had known Antoinette longer. He cared about her. Most of all, it didn’t bother him that she was some kind of miracle worker.

The window at the end of the hall was open and a warbler’s song drifted in. Lily started down the stairs, counting each one. There were nine, which she should have remembered. The odd number made her skin itch.

Eleven paces to the kitchen. Not good.

“You’re up early.” Rose sat at the large oak table, holding a cup of coffee. Early-morning sunlight streamed through the back door, painting her hair as white as her skin.

Lily stopped at the entrance. She couldn’t talk to Rose yet. Not before she worked out everything she wanted to say. “I’ll be back,” she said, hurrying to the stairs.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

No. She wasn’t okay. She pushed her heels back until they hit the bottom stair. She moved carefully, imagining herself as a teenager. She was on thirteen when she reached the kitchen.

She shook her head and turned around. Rose watched but didn’t say anything.

This time Lily pretended she was a Chinese empress with bound feet, taking dainty, careful steps. It worked. She entered the kitchen on twenty-two, a safe number finally, and sank into the chair across from Rose. The room smelled like fresh coffee and cinnamon.

“Counting?” Rose asked. ”Stay there. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

Lily let her. If she got up, she’d start counting again. “I didn’t think you’d be awake,” she said to fill the space between them.

Rose took a blue mug from the cabinet next to the stove. “Still load it up with milk and sugar?” When Lily nodded, Rose put two heaping teaspoons of sugar and a large splash of milk into the cup. “Sleeping’s hard for me. My lungs fill with fluid. I start coughing as soon as my head hits the pillow.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Rose sat down. “It’s been going on awhile. I’m used to it.” She handed Lily her coffee.

Lily put the mug to her lips. The confused thoughts from last night came tumbling back. Agreeing to be Antoinette’s guardian when she was just a kid with special needs had been hard enough, but adding this weird
ability
to the mix made Lily want to sit on the porch and count each blade of grass.

“About yesterday—we need to talk,” Rose said.

No. They didn’t. Lily’s foot twitched. She took a large sip of coffee.

Rose ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t want to keep secrets from you. Seth told me not to.”

He was right, Lily thought.

“It’s just that I was afraid you’d leave once you found out about her,” Rose said.

The remark hit dangerously close to home. She took another sip of coffee. “I noticed that the white tulips are budding. I thought I’d harvest some of them this morning before it gets too hot.”

“You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen,” Rose said, an undercurrent of vulnerability in her voice.

Lily had to look away. She stared out the window, noting that low-hanging fog sat over the fields. “The fog should keep everything cool.” Cutting flowers was best done in the morning when it wouldn’t stress the plant. She knew the routine by heart. Cut the buds right before they bloomed. Strip the leaves and put the stems in a clean bucket of water so the flowers didn’t wilt.

They would store some in the commercial freezer in the barn for close to a month. They had a small greenhouse where they forced bulbs and other off-season flowers to bloom in order to supply the antiques shops and restaurants that formed the town center, but most of their flowers came from the fields or hoop houses.

“Lily,” Rose said. “We need to talk about this.”

Lily tapped her fingers against her thigh. “Do you still keep a spare pair of pruning shears in there?” She indicated the drawer next to the pantry where her mother used to store twine, bits of ribbon, and anything else that might be useful on a quick trip to the garden.

“Don’t ignore me,” Rose said. “This is important.”

Rose reached out, but Lily stood and took her mug to the sink. It was still half full, but she dumped out the remaining coffee. Then she opened the drawer. It had been a mess when she was a child and it was still a mess now. “At least this hasn’t changed,” she said under her breath as she fished through metal plant labels, florist’s wire, and mismatched garden gloves.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rose walked over to stand beside Lily.

“Nothing. Things are different. That’s all.” Lily found a pair of garden shears and grabbed the first two garden gloves she saw. One was pink and the other green. They were both for the left hand. Exasperated, she tossed them onto the counter.

Rose reached around Lily’s shoulder, grabbed a right-handed pink glove from the drawer, and handed it to her. “It’s a house. Not a museum. If you wanted it to stay the same, you shouldn’t have left.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Lily said as she put the glove on.

“Then what did you mean?” Rose’s cheeks were flushed. This was the healthiest she had looked since Lily arrived.

“Everything’s different. It would’ve been nice if some things had stayed the same. That’s all.”

“From where I sit, nothing’s changed,” Rose said. “You’re still running away.”

“Give me a break, Rose.” Anxiety made her short. “You can’t spring something like this on me and expect everything to be fine. You should have told me
everything
about Antoinette when you asked me to come home.”

“How could I have told you?” Rose’s voice went up a notch in both pitch and volume. “You wouldn’t have believed me until you saw it for yourself. Seth didn’t even believe until he saw Antoinette heal me.”