She eased down the stairs and walked to the tree. She sat down and listened to the bees as they darted in and out of the tiny white blossoms.
Sit, she thought. Stay still.
For a moment, her body was quiet. Then a twitch started at the tips of her toes. She tried to pin her arms down, but the twitch burst out of her body, and her hands flapped over her head.
Disappointment filled her.
Everything was changing.
She looked at the anemones. One plant had leaves that were yellow, but the veins were neon green. That was not normal. The leaves should be a nice even green.
Antoinette wiggled her toes deep into the ground and listened, straining to hear. The flowers were silent.
She pushed her hands wrist-deep into the dirt and closed her eyes.
Nothing.
No, no, no! She whipped her head back and forth and slumped over, her face on the ground. Mulch scratched her cheeks and her forehead. She still couldn’t hear the plants, couldn’t feel them. The despair that had been building in her since she had failed to heal Lily’s hand finally erupted, and she screamed.
Then Will was there. He slid his hands under Antoinette’s arms and picked her up. “I’m taking you to your mother.”
Antoinette stiffened until she was board flat, but Will was strong. He carried her to the swing and settled her into her mother’s arms. Then he stared into her eyes. “Her pupils aren’t fixed,” he said. “It isn’t a seizure.”
Antoinette could have told him that. A seizure didn’t fill her with emptiness. A seizure would mean there was still hope, a chance she could heal her mother.
Chapter Twenty-Three
You worked at the market every day?” Will asked Lily on the way to the commercial fields, Antoinette with them. “No running around the farm? No chasing boys? You know there are laws against child labor.” He carried a pitchfork, leaning on it as he walked.
Farming was a never-ending battle against decay, even in winter, when everything was dormant. There were fences that needed mending, barns that needed painting, or glass panes in the greenhouse that needed to be replaced.
The garden show was on Sunday. Broadleaf weeds dotted the house garden. Overnight, wild onions had sprouted among the daffodils, and dandelions dotted the night garden. Lily added weeding to her long list of chores.
But first she would turn the compost heaps at the end of the peony rows. Instead of one big pile, her father had built several small white containers and placed them among the rows of flowers, where microbes would transform shredded paper, coffee grounds, and kitchen scraps into the gardener’s version of black gold.
“It’s wasn’t as boring as it sounds,” she said. “It was peaceful. Fun.” She didn’t add that Seth often joined her in her work.
Antoinette moved down the path in front of them. Since healing Lily, walking had been harder for her. Her knees frequently folded as if about to drop her in the dirt; yet today she stayed upright. Lily walked with her good hand out, ready to catch her if she fell.
“You have a peculiar idea of fun—” Will broke off and started coughing. Lily thumped him on the back, surprised she could feel his spine beneath her hands.
“That’s enough. You can stop hitting me now.” His face was pale and his chest heaved.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked. “Really okay, I mean.” Remission didn’t mean his lung cancer was cured, only that there was no evidence of the disease at the moment.
He grinned and gestured to the sky. “It’s all this fresh air. My lungs aren’t used to it.”
She didn’t believe him and was about to say so, when a sharp pain shot through her left hand. Yesterday she found out that it was indeed broken. An x-ray showed a fracture at the base of her fingers. The doctor wrapped her hand in an ACE bandage and told her to set up an appointment with an orthopedist in a few days.
Will noticed her massaging her hand. “It hurts?”
She nodded.
“Are you taking your pain meds?”
“They make me groggy. There’s too much work to be done.” She took the pitchfork from him and opened one of the compost bins. A rich earthy smell wafted out.
“Let me do that,” Will said, reclaiming the pitchfork and jabbing it into the bin.
“Not like that,” Lily said. She showed him how to dig down to the bottom of the bin and turn the compost over. “Rose and Seth will be here soon.” Rose wanted to have a picnic. They didn’t have time for it, but Lily couldn’t say no to her.
“Your boyfriend doesn’t like me, Lils,” Will said as he worked. Over the past few days, he had relaxed. He no longer wore pressed khakis and starched shirts. Though his jeans were too expensive for farmwork, he almost looked like he belonged.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Will shrugged. “Could’ve fooled me. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Not that I blame him.”
Antoinette stomped her feet and flapped her hands. She turned in a slow circle. Her legs trembled, and her fingers flicked back and forth. The movements seemed random, like she couldn’t control her body.
A stone formed in the pit of Lily’s stomach as she watched her niece. “Antoinette’s getting worse, isn’t she?”
Will wouldn’t look at her. That alone told her she was right.
She turned his face to hers. He hadn’t shaved, his skin was rough. “You’re my friend. I need to know.”
“Friend?” He leaned into her hand.
“Why would you think you weren’t?”
He turned his face a fraction of an inch. His lips grazed her palm.
Lily went still. She felt her face flush, and for once she couldn’t find anything to count. “Will, I don’t—”
“Are we interrupting?” Rose asked as she and Seth crested the hill to the commercial fields. Seth carried a picnic basket with one hand and helped Rose walk with the other.
Antoinette shrieked when she saw her mother. She stumbled across the grass and held her hands up. It was eighty degrees out, but Rose wore a long-sleeved yellow cardigan.
Seth set the basket down and swung Antoinette into his arms. “Your mom’s tired. You’ll have to make do with me, kiddo.” His voice was light, but he frowned at Lily’s hand on Will’s face.
Lily pulled away from Will. “We were just turning the compost piles.” Without thinking, she grabbed the pitchfork in her left hand, then flinched when she squeezed her fingers shut.
Rose took the pitchfork. “The healing faded fast.”
Lily turned to Will. “You didn’t answer me. Is something wrong with An—”
“Antoinette and I are going for a walk,” Seth interjected. He directed a sharp look at Lily.
She flushed, knowing he was right. This wasn’t something Antoinette needed to hear.
“Come on, kiddo. Let’s go find some fun.” Seth tossed Antoinette into the air. She flung her head back and giggled, her face bright with joy.
“I don’t know,” Will said when Seth and Antoinette were out of earshot. He was calm, and Lily wondered if this was the way he delivered bad news to his patients. “This is all new for me. It’s not like there’s a medical category for child miracle workers.”
“But if you had to guess?” Lily asked. “What does the doctor in you think?”
Will stared at the sky for so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, she saw resignation in his eyes. “How long do the healings normally last?” he asked.
“They used to last months,” Rose said quietly. “But lately they’ve been fading faster and faster.” She gestured toward Lily’s hand. “This is the shortest I’ve seen.”
Lily was still thinking. Antoinette’s seizure after healing the bird hadn’t been as large as it had been after healing her hand. Was the seizure larger because of the complexity involved? Maybe the difficulty overwhelmed Antoinette’s small body until she seized.
Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Nature abhorred a vacuum. Maybe Antoinette pulled the illnes
s or the pain from the injury into her own body. After all, it had to go somewhere. It couldn’t just disappear.
She watched Seth and Antoinette. He held her under her arms as he spun with her—they were a picture of happiness. When they stopped, Seth pretended to stumble, but even as he fell he cradled Antoinette. Their laughter carried over the farm.
“Keep in mind this is just a guess,” Will said. He looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. “I’m way out of my league here, but the worsening seizures, the diminished effect of the healings—it all says something is going wrong. How quickly things might get worse, though, I can’t predict.”
As he spoke, Seth returned with Antoinette on his shoulders. He swung her down but didn’t set her on the ground. Instead, he held her in his arms.
“You don’t know how strong she is,” he said to Will. There was pain and anger in his voice. “You don’t know a damn thing about her.”
“Lily asked for my opinion,” Will said, “and I gave it. I’m not saying I’m right, but when the body is fatigued or under stress, it doesn’t operate as well as it should. High blood pressure, the ability to fight off common colds, certain types of cancer . . .”
“He’s right,” Lily said. “Something’s wrong.” She unwrapped her ACE bandage to reveal the deep purple bruise at the base of her fingers.
“Damn,” Seth said softly. He set Antoinette down and turned to Lily. “Can I look at that?”
When he took her hand, electricity skittered over her skin.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Not as much as it did at Cora’s when I fell, but more than it did last night or even earlier this morning.”
He ran his thumb across her palm. “I want to do something. Anything. But I can’t.” He spoke softly, so that only she heard. “Things like this shouldn’t happen to kids.”
“No,” she said. “They shouldn’t.”
THE KITCHEN LIGHT was on, illuminating the hallway with a soft yellow glow. “Will?” Lily said. “Are you still up?” It was past midnight.
The kitchen was empty. She was about to switch off the light and go to bed when she looked out the back door. In the starlight, she saw Will sitting on the porch swing. He tilted his head back, and every once in a while he’d raise a finger and drag it along the sky as if tracing the constellations. His dark hair blended into the night sky.
A bottle of beer sat on the small table next to him. He took a drink, then shoved his feet against the porch floor, making the swing rock.
Lily bit her lip as she studied his profile. He looked older than he had a week ago and weary.
A light flickered in the fields, drawing her attention away from Will. A thin beam shone beneath the drying barn door. She knew Seth must be out there preparing for the garden show. She should be helping him, but she didn’t think he wanted company. Like the rest of them, he was upset at the downturn in Antoinette’s health. She knew him well enough to know that at times like this, he wanted to be alone.
She opened the door to the porch and stepped out.
“I was wondering when you’d stop watching me and come out here.” Will said. “How’s Rose? I figured you’d call me if you needed help.”
The past two nights, Lily had sat beside Rose as she fell asleep. They talked about their childhood, Antoinette, or nothing at all. “She’s finally asleep.”
“You’re doing good, Lils.” He held up the beer bottle. “Want a drink?”
When she shook her head, he lifted one shoulder. “Suit yourself. You know I’ll do what I can to help, don’t you?”
“I know.” She sat down beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Rose is getting worse. It’s taking longer for her to fall asleep, and when she does, she wakes a couple of times every night. I don’t know what else to do for her.”
Will took another swallow. “Do you remember when I was in the middle of chemo? I hated sitting in that open room, tethered to an IV, staring at the other cancer patients. We were all hooked to the same drug cocktail, but most of them had twenty or thirty years on me. Every time I looked at them I wondered whether I’d live to see forty or fifty.
“Then you started coming with me, and I had someone else to focus on. One time you counted the number of chairs in the room while the nurse was flushing my port. ‘Twenty-two,’ you said. ‘That’s a nice even number.’ Then you counted the ceiling tiles, the nurses behind the desk, the number of patients in the room.
“I don’t think you realized you were doing it. When you finished, you looked at me and said, ‘Everything’s even, so we’re good.’ You seemed so sure of yourself. So grounded. I held on to your belief that everything would get better when I couldn’t believe for myself.” Will squeezed her good hand. “That’s what you can do for Rose. When she loses hope, hold on to it for her.”
“But things aren’t going to get better for Rose.” Lily stared into the dark. Crickets sang and somewhere an owl hooted. The light in the drying barn flicked off. She squinted, trying to make out Seth as he left, but the night was too dark and she couldn’t see anything.
“The point isn’t whether she gets better,” Will said. “The point is whether she goes through this alone or has someone with her who loves her, someone who tells her everything will be all right after she’s gone. Love her enough to believe that for her. And if you can’t believe it, fake it, because most of the time, things work out all right.”
Lily looked at him. “How did you get to be so smart?”
He took another drink. “Perception, Lils. It’s my gift and my curse. For example, I know you still have feelings for your farm boy.”
“Seth?”
“The very one.” Will saluted her with the bottle.
She straightened. Her cheeks flushed, and she was grateful for the dark. “I don’t—”
“No sense trying to hide it. But he’s not right for you.” He grew serious. “Where was he these past six years? Where was he when your parents died? He could have found you, but he didn’t. That has to mean something.”
Will was silhouetted in the light from the kitchen. He drew a finger across her cheek. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he said.
He was right. He had never left her. And now, he was here again, right when she needed him. She was a tangle of emotion. Though the night was warm, she shivered. “Don’t.” She took his hand, willing him to stop talking.
“Having cancer taught me one thing,” he said. “I want my life to count for something. For me, that means spending it with you. We’re good together, Lils. You just have to let it happen.”
Everything he said made sense. But still she couldn’t forget Seth. “I wish it was that easy,” she said.
Will took another swallow of beer. “It is. Life doesn’t stand still. You have to move with it. Look at me. A few days ago I was at home in Covington. Today I’m here with you. Easy as wishing.”
Even in the dark she could see his smile. It filled his face. “How long can you stay?” she asked.
He lowered the bottle and looked at her. “As long as you need me,” he said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The land was silent. Antoinette cocked her head to the left and listened. Cicadas buzzed. Crickets sang. Wind rustled the leaves on the birch trees. But the music was gone. For the first time, she did not want to be outside.
Her mother walked beside her. Lily and Will walked ahead of them. “It’s a lot of work for a garden show, Lils,” Will said.
Antoinette didn’t hear Lily’s reply.
If Seth were here, he would play for her, play until she forgot that she had become deaf to the land. But she hadn’t seen him since yesterday when he twirled around with her in the flower field.
Her mother bent down. “Do you remember when you were a little girl?” she asked. ”I’d catch fireflies in mason jars for you. Remember the time the whole barn was lit up with their glow? We must have had thirty jars.”
Antoi
nette remembered. The barn had glimmered with their light. Her mother wove a crown of daisies for her. “You’re my fairy princess,” she had said, and Antoinette believed her—that night anything felt possible.
“You’re still my princess,” her mother said.
At the split in the drive where one path led to the house and the other to the drying barn, someone called Antoinette’s name.
At first, she thought it was the crickets, but then it happened again. She stopped and looked up.
Eli Cantwell stood behind the iron gate at the end of their driveway. “Antoinette!” he yelled again.
Antoinette felt her mother stiffen. “Ignore it,” she said. “He’ll leave if we keep walking.” Her mother motioned for her to move forward, but Antoinette planted her feet.
“Who is it?” Will asked, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes.
“It’s Eli,” Lily said. She put her good hand on Antoinette’s back. “Come on, you need to keep walking.”
Antoinette didn’t budge.
“I know you’re there,” Eli yelled. “Please, Rose. MaryBeth’s worse. Let her help us!”
“Wait here,” her mother said. She walked down the drive to Eli.
The wind carried bits of their conversation to Antoinette.
“She’s just a little girl,” her mother said.
“I know what I saw!” Eli sounded angry.
“You’re confused,” her mother said. “You need to leave us alone.”
“Please,” Eli’s voice cracked. “MaryBeth’s all I’ve got.”
Her mother wrapped her hand around Eli’s. “If Antoinette could help you, don’t you think I’d let her?”
“Please.” Eli stared at Antoinette as if she were a savior or a saint.
But Antoinette had never been either of those. She looked at Lily’s injured hand. She remembered the sparrow falling from the sky.
This time when Lily gently pushed her forward, Antoinette turned from Eli and kept walking.
ANTOINETTE SHUFFLED THROUGH the cedar shavings and dried flower petals on the barn floor. Twice a year Seth spread shavings throughout the barn—their scent kept flies away. As she walked, she kicked up puffs of sawdust that drifted through the air like dandelion seeds.
The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin Page 21