Page 6 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

When in doubt, take a few deep breaths in and out. Imagine light filling you from the top down, until you warm from the inside. If that fails, get in the tub with a whole Lush bath bomb and try again later.

—Evie Oxby, “How I Survive My Own Life,” Medium

Trying to ignore her jackrabbiting heart, Beatrice found the antacid she suddenly needed, then forced herself to wander the aisles like a tourist would, inspecting the locally made bread and homemade jams. Out of nowhere, she was ravenous and wanted some of everything.

Isn’t that what they said happened when you had a narrow escape from death?

Fight, fuck, or feast? She didn’t want to fight anyone on her birthday, and fucking was obviously right out.

So feast it would be.

She chose three kinds of marbled cheese, a loaf of still-warm olive bread, and a bottle of red from an island winery.

Too impatient to wait, needing to chew something right now , she tore off a piece of the bread and shoved it into her mouth.

It was so good, she had another bite, then another, as she continued to add treats to her basket: chocolate caramels wrapped in cellophane, green olives packed in oil, one tiny red velvet cupcake.

In line, the woman in front of her chatted with the checker as though they had nothing better to do all day. Beatrice gritted her teeth and took a breath. This was a small town, after all.

Finally, she checked out, only slightly embarrassed that a third of the bread was gone.

On her way to the exit, she passed an old-fashioned message board hanging next to the manager’s desk.

A little box on the desk held the three-by-five cards that the board was covered with. The charming level climbed to eleven.

Perusing the board, Beatrice learned that Mrs. Muggins was selling tomatoes.

Someone named Jax wanted to give saxophone lessons, and a drummer was willing to trade grass for gas for a ride up to Vancouver.

Were these cards left over from 1987? They were piled two and three deep, push-pinned on top of each other, so she moved some aside to peek underneath.

She uncovered a card that read, Room for Rent, daily, weekly, monthly. The handwriting was spidery and the email address had AOL in it, so the owner must be more than a hundred.

“Oh, my freaking god. Who are you?” exclaimed a voice at her elbow.

Beatrice jumped.

The voice was attached to a girl who looked like she’d fallen out of a manga book about a haunted candy factory.

Thin and very pale, she wore a black dress, pink-and-white-striped stockings, and heavy black shoes decorated with cat faces.

Her dyed-black hair was pulled back in two messy side braids, and her winged eyeliner, while professionally applied, was so thick it made her blue eyes look smaller than they were.

She was trying to look about eighteen, so she was probably quite a bit younger than that.

“Pardon?”

The girl blinked. “Holy shit. This is— wow .”

“I’m guessing I have a look-alike in town.”

“Wow. Yeah. What do I do here?” She looked at the card Beatrice had just uncovered. “Oh, you don’t want to stay at that place.”

“No?” Beatrice turned the card over in her fingers. Nothing on the back. “Serial killer?”

“Worse.”

“There’s a worse?”

“She has birds. Like, seventy of them, all in her living room.” The girl picked up a pen attached to the desk below the board and fiddled with the chain.

She darted a look up at Beatrice and back down at the pen.

She frowned, as if trying to decide something, and then spoke all in a rush.

“I mean, I can get behind a myna or a crow. I’d just about die to see a sandhill crane.

Or a spoonbill! But people keeping that many birds in a house? Honestly, it doesn’t seem sanitary.”

Okay, so maybe this girl had been treated badly by the bird lady? Beatrice stuck the card back on the board just where it had been, under a card offering training sessions for prospective midwives. “I’m going to trust your judgment because you’re rocking those shoes.”

With a satisfied sparkle in her eye, the girl self-consciously touched her nose piercing. Probably new. “Thank you.” She clicked the pen rapidly six or seven times. “Thrifted.”

“Which makes you stylish and clever.”

The girl grew at least two inches at that, which warmed Beatrice’s cold Los Angeles heart a corresponding number of degrees.

“You should stay at my house.”

Beatrice raised an eyebrow.

The girl smiled. “My mom’s house, I mean.”

“Thank you, but I don’t actually need a place to stay. I was just browsing the board. And I’m pretty sure your mom doesn’t want you foraging for random people at the grocery store.”

She tilted her head, her smile wide. “I’ve foraged for stranger things.”

“Impressive. But truly, I’m fine. Don’t need a room.”

“You never know. You might find you want to stay with us for a while.” The girl stuck out her hand. “Minna.”

Her hand was cool and the tiniest bit sweaty.

“I’m Beatrice. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too. And I mean it.” Minna reached up and scrabbled through the cards. “Ah. Here. She keeps hiding it, and I keep uncovering it. This is us.”

The writing on the card was in fine black ink, the letters round and self-consciously old-fashioned.

Minna’s work, Beatrice would guess. Private apartment, water view.

Good muffins. No pets on premises normally but please feel free to bring yours, especially dogs that like treats.

The listed phone number would probably ring in Minna’s pocket.

For a strange moment, she wished she could make this girl’s day by accepting the offer. “I’m assuming you’re the property manager?”

A wild look of pleasure crossed Minna’s face.

“Exactly! It’s just an extra room, but it has its own entrance and bathroom, and I’m in charge of cleaning it and making the muffins—I swear I’m really good at both things, and I even wear a hair net when I’m baking, just in case, because hair in food is disgusting, and I always bleach the sheets, but then I hang them in the sun because it smells so good.

I get to keep any of the money that comes in. ”

Minna’s earnestness was adorable, and Beatrice knew better than to say so. “Very savvy.”

The girl pulled her cell out of a rhinestone clutch. Her fingers flew over the screen. “Okay. Just told Mom I’ve booked the room.”

Whoops. “I’m so sorry, I admire your eagerness, but I’m staying at the Skerry Lodge. Can’t get out of it, and believe me, I tried. If I could, though, your place would be my first pick.”

“Oh, no . How long are you staying?”

“Just two nights.”

“No, you have to stay longer.”

This girl needed something Beatrice couldn’t give her. She looked at the ground. “Well. Thanks? It’s been lovely talking to you.”

“Why did you come here? To the island?”

“My husband wanted to play the golf course.”

Minna swiveled her head. “Where is he?”

“Not here.”

The girl’s eyes traced Beatrice’s face as she touched her own cheek. “You’ve always had that dimple?”

“Of course.” The dimple was so deep that she knew it was visible even when she wasn’t smiling.

“I can’t believe you have that. This is em-effing wild .

” Then the words tumbled from Minna’s mouth without stopping.

“Where are you from? Seriously, you’re just here because of golf ?

How long have you been married? Oh, my god, do you have kids ?

Have you ever done the 23andMe thing? Are your fingers double-jointed? ”

Only her thumbs were double-jointed. But this strangeness had gone too far, and Beatrice wasn’t going to tell this girl about her bendable digits. “Um, I really have to go—”

“I mean, just the thumbs. Are your thumbs double-jointed? You really have zero idea. Will you trust me?”

Hang on. What the hell? Beatrice’s thumbs twitched.

What would a teenage girl need a total stranger to trust her about? For that matter, why on earth would Beatrice trust a girl who might be struggling with mental health issues, a girl who had imprinted upon her like a hatchling duck? “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.” A pause. “Almost.”

While it was pretty unlikely that a fifteen-year-old wanted to take her out back and mug her (Minna would have youth on her side, but Beatrice had decades of accumulated feminist rage on hers), trusting any stranger wasn’t a good idea, even on an idyllic little island.

Which was why Beatrice was flabbergasted when her mouth said, “Okay.”

Minna smiled. “Get ready for a miracle. Follow me.”

A miracle.

Gossip traveled fast in this town—Minna might have even seen the blade that could have killed her, what, just thirty minutes before? Minna would probably lead her to another competing psychic. Once you had a sucker on the hook, you had to keep them wriggling.

Even so, Beatrice followed. Or rather, she race-walked to keep up with Minna’s speedy gait.

Two blocks away from the market, Minna stopped in front of a shop.

It was old-fashioned looking, as if at one time it had been a mercantile and sold things like horehound candy and blackstrap molasses, but in the windows were brightly colored sweaters, piles of yarn, and several spinning wheels that looked right out of Sleeping Beauty .

The hand-lettered sign moved gently in the breeze— Which Craft.

“Here we are.” Minna spun to face her. “Oh, my god, I forgot to say Happy Birthday to you.”

Beatrice almost dropped her grocery bag. How could this girl be the one to give her the first birthday greeting of the day? How did she know?

Pulling open the door, Minna said, “Here we go!”

Inside, a woman with short dark hair and tattoos snaking up and down her arms sat at a long bench, whittling something. As she looked up at them, slices of thin wood curled at her feet. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded rusty, as if out of practice. “Fuck me .”

“Right? Where is she?” Reaching back, Minna grabbed Beatrice’s hand.

And for some reason, Beatrice didn’t pull away. Something was happening, or was about to happen, and excitement—no, make that straight-up fear—sluiced through her veins, sharp and electrifying.

The whittling woman jerked a thumb toward the back.

“Thanks, Reno.” Tightening her fingers around Beatrice’s, Minna pulled her past colorful rows of fabric bolts and tables piled high with skeins of yarn. “Mom! Mom! ”

Another woman bustled out of a back room, wiping her hands on a canvas cobbler’s apron. “Minna, baby, you don’t need to—”

Beatrice’s whole body froze in place. Her feet stopped moving, and her heart slammed in her chest so hard, it almost hurt.

A mirror.

She had to be looking into a fucking mirror.

There was the same dark hair with the same thick silver stripe on the right side, although this woman’s hair was longer than hers.

And she was perhaps a touch taller than Beatrice, but maybe she was wearing heels—Beatrice couldn’t look at her feet, though, because she was too busy looking into the woman’s round brown eyes, and they were her eyes, and how was this possible?

This was so far past doppelg?nger—sure, this could happen, but oh, it felt too bizarre.

Too surreal. This was her own face , including the dimple.

Did she need to sit down? Was it dizziness or just exhaustion that made her feel like she didn’t remember how to speak, how to say anything at all?

The woman had frozen, too, her hands paused in midair, as if she’d been about to reach for a hug from Minna but had stopped halfway through the plan.

Her mouth opened once. Then twice. Finally, she gasped, “Beatrix.”

Beatrice finally found four words that she remembered, but she couldn’t say them louder than a whisper. “That’s not my name.”