Page 37 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

It’s not a bad thing that I can’t pick who comes through to me. Sure, I’d be a better medium, but I’d probably be a worse human.

—Evie Oxby, Come at Me, Boo

Beatrice’s dreams were full of screams, breaking glass, and flashes of light reflected against the sheen of monsters’ teeth. As she gasped awake, she could still see the sewing scissors rising into the air before plunging into Astrid’s left eye.

But between the nightmares, she surprised herself and slept, the bed warm, the sheets soft, and the water below a rhythmic lullaby.

In the morning, when she rolled to her side to squint at her cell phone, she found a text from Reno. Ten okay?

Apparently, what happened in this town was you worked a protection spell (against what, exactly, undead hotheads?) one night, and then got right back to work the next morning.

Beatrice could respect it even if she didn’t understand it.

She had, of course, asked Cordelia to explain why, exactly, a chair had sailed through the window after what was supposed to be a spell of protection.

She hadn’t felt very safe in that moment.

We’re just trying to prevent anything worse.

Glass is easy to replace. The answer had been both unsatisfying and chilling.

Now, at the café, Fritz made her an extra-hot cappuccino without being asked. “Justin said he’s going to Cordelia’s to fix a smashed window this morning. I thought the Un-alive party was tonight. Did you kick it off early?”

That had all been real, then. The chair through the window. The blood on the threads. “Is that how Holland parties normally go? Chairs through windows?”

“Not normally, but that was before you came to town, raising our Holland quotient.” They dropped a wink before turning to the espresso machine.

Fritz thought Beatrice was one of the Hollands.

She had no idea how to feel about that.

“Beatrice!” Keelia raced in from the street. “Oh, thank god, someone said they saw you come in here. We need you.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Fritz called, “I’ll keep your drink warm.”

Winnie’s fortune-telling annex was draped with dark velvet curtains, and as they pushed into the dimness, Beatrice could just make out the form of an older woman sitting at the table with Winnie.

“Come in!” Relief laced Winnie’s voice. “Mrs. Jumai, this is Beatrice, the one who wrote—the one who received the message.”

Mrs. Jumai resembled an old chair, creased and wrinkled and smooshed with a few too many pillows. She wore a beige blouse and brown slacks, and she wore slippers instead of shoes, as if she’d left her house in a hurry.

“You? You wrote this down?” The woman tried to stand but only got halfway up before her pins started to wobble.

Winnie said, “Mrs. Jumai, how about you just stay where you are? I’ll trade places with Beatrice.”

It was obvious that Winnie, with her rapid blinks and intent gaze, was trying to telegraph something to Beatrice, but if Winnie was trying to psychically communicate with her, it wasn’t working.

Clueless, Beatrice sank into Winnie’s seat and tried to pull her face into something appropriate. “So. You’re saying this had specific meaning for you?”

Mrs. Jumai pushed a wrinkled piece of paper across the table to her.

K is here with me. We are together. At the same time, I’ve never left your side, nor has he. He knows his blue handkerchief will always catch your tears. He still loves salt and vinegar chips dipped in Nutella, and he says you never have to let him go. I’m sorry I said you did. L.

The woman’s eyes overflowed with tears. “I need to know if you—no, I will do anything. I will give you all the money I have in the world—”

“Oh, hey.” This couldn’t be good.

“Anything.” Mrs. Jumai fumbled with a chunky golden bracelet at her wrist, but it appeared to be stubbornly resisting her efforts, so she grasped the diamond-encrusted ring on her wedding finger.

The woman tried to slide it off, but it looked as if it hadn’t moved over her rheumatic knuckles in years.

Meanwhile, her movements got jerkier and more frantic. “My ring? You’ll take my ring?”

“I will absolutely not take your ring.” Maybe a distraction would work. “Mrs. Jumai, can you tell me what this note means to you?”

Mrs. Jumai stopped pulling at the ring and touched the paper again.

“ K is for my Kumail. Leukemia. He was thirteen. Two years after he died, my husband said I had to let Kumail go or he would leave me, too.” A sob broke through.

“I tried. I really did. And then my husband died last winter, and I can’t let either of them go, and this says… does this mean I don’t have to?”

Beatrice reread the words. You never have to let him go. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t know. I don’t know how those words came to me. I wish I did.”

“Do it again. Please. Do it again?” Mrs. Jumai tugged at her ring again.

The thought of that howling dark wind rose in Beatrice’s mind. “I can’t.”

“You must. I have to apologize to my husband.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Look. Let’s be logical about this.” Even with the panic flopping around in her stomach like a hooked carp, Beatrice was pleased to hear her accountant’s voice emerge. “If we look at this paper, we can extrapolate several things. Shall we go through them point by point?”

A hiccupped sob sounded like agreement. Hopefully.

Reading upside down, Beatrice touched the words on the paper. “This says they’re together. That by itself means something incredible. Life after death. A continuation of the soul.”

“I already believed in that.”

It must be nice to be so unsurprised. “Okay then, it also says that not only are they together, which is amazing, but they’re with you. That chip and Nutella thing—”

“Why didn’t the message talk about my white chocolate chip cookies? He loved those. The Nutella thing was always so disgusting,” said Mrs. Jumai.

“No matter what, it’s confirmation for you, that this is your message.”

A nod. “And the handkerchief. I cry into it every day—it was the one I made him take to his T-ball practice before he got sick. He always laughed and stuffed it in his back pocket.”

“Wow. Okay.” Chills spread over Beatrice’s arms. “Here it says you don’t have to let your son go. By extension, if they’re together, you don’t have to let your husband go, either.”

Impatiently, Mrs. Jumai said, “I see that. I get that. But I want more .”

Suddenly, Cordelia and Astrid’s rule about not reaching to close ones made sense. When did the desperate craving for more leave? Did it? Could it?

“I lost my stepmother two years ago,” Beatrice said. “I know it’s not losing a son—no loss in the world can compare to yours—but I miss her every day. Before she passed, she told me grief is unexpressed love.”

Touching her ring again, Mrs. Jumai sniffed. “What does that mean?”

“I think she meant we only grieve the people we still want to show our love to but can’t, because they’re gone. And when that love we still carry around can’t be used, can’t be given to them, it hurts.”

Winnie, who’d been standing motionless behind Mrs. Jumai, made a soft noise in the back of her throat.

Beatrice leaned forward. “I get a lot from thinking about her saying that. I’m so sad that I can’t tell her I love her every day, like I used to. But if I didn’t feel sad about that, it would mean I’d spent all my love and didn’t miss her anymore. Would we want that?”

The woman wiped her tears from her face with the back of her sleeve. “Never,” she whispered.

“I don’t need to do another reading for you.

They don’t need me to.” She recalled an Evie Oxby technique she’d thought was particularly smart.

The bereaved, she said, would know exactly what their loved one would say.

Possibly, they’d be able to tune to the right “radio station” and hear them.

And if they didn’t, if it came from their own mind, that was okay, too, if it brought comfort.

“Ask yourself what they would tell you. Right now.”

“Me?”

“What would they say?”

Mrs. Jumai closed her eyes. After a moment, the deep line between her eyebrow eased, and her eyes flew open. “Oh! I’d forgotten something that Leon always said to me. I’d forgotten it till right this minute.”

“What was that?”

“‘Woman, unless you’re running from a bear, there’s no need to be in such a bloody hurry.’” A smile bloomed below her damp cheeks. “Oh, I’d forgotten that. I swear, I can hear him right now, telling me to slow down. There’s no hurry to get to my boys.”

“So now you know they’re together in the afterlife. And you know you’ll join them, but only when the time is right.” Beatrice could barely believe she was saying this, that she was believing it, but she was. And she had one more thing to say. “Don’t hurry. They’ll wait for you.”

Winnie sighed. “That’s beautiful. And it’s not accidental that you remembered. That’s a gift they just gave you.”

Mrs. Jumai touched the paper. “ This is a gift. You must let me pay you for it. Both of you.” She looked tearfully at her wedding ring. “The proper way. Do you take Visa?”

“No.” Beatrice shook her head firmly. “But I do like white chocolate chip cookies.”