Page 40 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Angels? I don’t know. Maybe? For sure, though, our loved ones are watching over us. I adore that about them. Unless I’m naked and doing something I don’t want them to see. Then, I gotta admit, yes, the idea creeps me out. But they get it. I hope.

—Evie Oxby, Out magazine

Her father didn’t even try to bluster his way through his disbelief—how could he, when he had the proof in front of him?

Silently, they read their letters.

My darling Button,

Now, I don’t expect to go anywhere for a while yet.

I have a feeling I’ll beat this. But in case I don’t, I know one thing, and I know it truly and surely and deeply—I know it in exactly the same way I fell in love with you about three seconds after I fell in love with your father.

You are my daughter. Yes, your birth mother loved you—of course she did.

Sometimes I swear I feel her near me, her hand on top of mine as I touch your hair, like she’s a ghost, but alive?

I know that doesn’t make sense. Anyway, you having had a birth mother doesn’t mean you can’t have two moms, and thank you for letting me be that to you.

You are the delight of my soul, the lyrics to my song, the brilliant burst of color in everything I see.

No matter where I am when you read this, I’m with you.

(Because you will read this someday. Isn’t it silly that I believe that?

But I do.) Tell your father nothing bad will happen if he widens his own beliefs.

Contrary to what he thinks, it won’t kill him.

If I’m not around, tell him to get a girlfriend.

He’s not the kind of man who should live alone.

Cheese sticks and apples with peanut butter shouldn’t make up more than one meal a day.

And you, my love: perhaps your beliefs are already widening?

The truth isn’t relative, but it’s more expansive than some people think.

My deepest truth is that I have loved you with my whole heart.

I always will, for eternity. Can you feel me now?

I’m right here. I’m always here. Love, Naya.

There was no use in trying to stop the tears, so she didn’t bother. “She said to stop eating cheese and peanut butter apples.”

Thickly, her father said, “Oh, yeah? She said for you to fall in real love.”

Beatrice’s heart thunked. “Well, she said for you to get a girlfriend.”

“Is this… is this real?” His hands shook as he held up the paper. “Honey, what’s happening?”

She took a deep breath. “I was told by a psychic—”

“Your mother ?”

“Someone else. Listen, Dad. I was told that I was dying, and soon, but that I’d experience seven miracles first.”

He puffed out his cheeks. “Impossible. We know that’s impossible. You’re not dying .”

“What are the odds of me tripping over a bottle that your dead wife cast into the ocean a thousand miles and almost thirty years ago?”

He opened his mouth.

“And do not say that I could have set this up. Because you know I didn’t. And I’m sure she put something in your letter that only you could know was true.”

A slow nod. Then he said, “I’m not saying I buy into any of this, but out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, what number miracle would this be? If it were one?”

“Five.”

“Five.” His voice was strangled. “And then you… We have to get you to a doctor.”

“I had a physical recently. Fit as a fiddle.” A seagull swooped at a group of sandpipers with a scream. “I didn’t believe in miracles before I got here, Dad. But there are just two left.”

He kept his gaze on the seagull. “Your mother and all her magical nonsense. You were better off without her.”

“Maybe she should have taken both of us.” It was a low blow, and she regretted the words as soon as they left her lips.

“Does she know about this miracle stuff?”

This was just too hard. “It’s probably time you went home.”

“Jesus, as if I would. What kind of doctor did you get that physical from? Some quack on this undeveloped island? We’ll get you a better one, they can find what’s wrong, if there’s something wrong, and fix it. The best treatment in the world. I’ll start making calls this afternoon.”

And because Beatrice knew exactly how her father ticked through life, she knew that, by the end of the day, he’d have his own spreadsheet started.

Management of Beatrice’s Optimal Health or something.

Every potential step would be plotted out.

Within a month he’d be one of the leading experts on middle-aged female life expectancy, and the knowledge would give him a bit of peace.

But… would it?

When Naya was dying, her father had abandoned his spreadsheet with its lists of medications and the best internists ranked by country.

He’d sat by his wife’s side, leaving only to bathe and take an occasional walk outside. He was with her, fully, in every moment of those last six months.

Beatrice had been the one lost in spreadsheets, unable to let go of the hope that they could beat it. If she, the last person to believe, let go of that hope, if she stopped searching for a miracle cure, then Naya would die. So she couldn’t let the hope go.

She’d failed, of course.

Dad’s face was still animated. “And I’m not going anywhere until I talk to my ex-wife, until I explain to her that the only truth is verifiable and provable. She’s been running from reality for too long.”

Cordelia’s little face in the mirror. “You already know what’s real, Dad. That’s why you broke that mirror.”

He had the grace not to ask what mirror, but he grabbed a fistful of sand and thrust it at her. “No, this is real.” He grabbed a small piece of driftwood and pointed at the water. “This wood is real. That ocean is real. Real is what you can see and what you can touch.”

“What about love? How do you prove that?”

Her father scowled. “I love a good pastrami sandwich, too. I don’t need to prove that.”

Beatrice touched his letter, still gripped in his other hand. “So I could rip this up? You don’t need this proof?”

“ No. ” The look of grief that smashed across his face would have knocked her to the sand if she hadn’t already been sitting on it. He dropped the stick and clutched the paper with both hands, bringing it to his chest. “Please, no. This is mine.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Her chest ached like she’d run uphill in a snowstorm. If she died— only two miracles left —her father would be so very alone. He’d barely recovered from losing Naya.

Picking up the driftwood he’d dropped, she wrote Naya’s name in the sand, curling the Y’s tail to blend with the N.

Minna had said, A sigil is what you create it to be.

Beatrice could receive miracles.

She could also do magic.

Around Naya’s name, she drew the shape of a bottle, then she connected the letter M and the letter B in long loops around it. Three hearts, one for each of them, and then a large circle to enclose them all, to keep them close together.

She closed her eyes and imagined the ache in her chest moving into the sand, filling the ridges the stick had left.

The scent of gardenia filled the air.

Beatrice’s eyes flew open.

Naya had filled the house with gardenia candles, and wore gardenia perfume every day. Her garden had been full of them, and when the bushes bloomed, she could always be found lying on a blanket next to them with a book, her nose constantly twitching rapturously.

Beatrice’s father sat up straight, sniffing the air. “That’s—do you—?”

“Yeah, I smell it, too.”

“But—is that another miracle?”

Slowly, Beatrice said, “No. Miracles are unearned gifts.” She touched the piece of paper she’d rolled and stuck halfway back into the bottle. Then she pointed at the sigil. “That’s magic.”

“So it’s not real. She’s not here.”

I’m always here.

“I think she is. I think the gardenias are a sign that she sent because she saw my drawing.” Beatrice pulled out her phone and took a picture of the sigil. Then she turned the phone around and held it up, grabbing a quick selfie of the two of them, her father managing a small smile.

He drew a shuddery breath. “You’ve changed.”

“I’m just trying to learn new things.” A wave of light-headedness washed over her, and she changed the subject. “How’s Grant?”

“He looks fine when I see him, which isn’t often. I’ve only glared across the street at him a couple of times. How are you doing with the idea of him? The marriage?” He waved the letter in the air. “Et cetera.”

“I’m furious with him. But I’m not brokenhearted.”

“What? You should be!” he blustered. “If you’re not wrecked to leave him, how could you have loved him enough to marry him?”

“It made sense. I do love him, as a person. Statistics show that marriage reduces things like depression and emergency room visits. People who marry have greater longevity and enjoy better physical health, on average. Plus, you liked him a lot. I figured it was time.”

“Statistics? You can’t be logical about love .”

Down the beach, the lone fisherman was packing up his poles. Beatrice leaned sideways and nudged her father’s shoulder with her own. “Well, you always made logic look pretty good.”

“Blaming me, then?” But there was a smile in his voice. “I’m looking into a condo in Lakewood. Get a little farther away from him. No need to be on his street if you’re not there. Might even start thinking about retirement.”

Beatrice took a breath. “What about looking up here for a place? Cheaper cost of living, I’d think.”

He blinked once. Twice. “But… don’t you hate me?”

“At the moment, yeah. A bit.”

“So…”

“So what? I’m trying to believe in more things than I used to. I believe you love me, even though you had a really shitty way of showing it. And I love you, even though you fucked up.”

Her father’s smile bloomed slowly, and then all at once. “Oh, honey. But oh, lord, if I lived on an island with your mother—yeah, there might not be enough room in the whole Pacific Northwest to…” He trailed off.

“Fair enough.” She would let him do what he needed to do, when he needed to do it.

“So.” He got that nervous look, the pinched one he’d always gotten before she’d driven anywhere in her first car, a beefy Volvo he’d bought for her. “Do you think I could come to that party with you tonight? She always told me I’d go bald early. I want to show her I look good this way.”