Page 9 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

For betrayal: light a black candle. Carefully gather your reserves along with your herbs and crystals. Then cry for a while before you do anything else. This part is very important.

—Evie Oxby, Instagram post

Both of Beatrice’s legs were asleep. She hadn’t noticed them getting tingly, just as she hadn’t realized the sunset she’d been watching had turned into dimness and then dark.

Night had fallen at some point as she’d sat on the hotel room’s balcony, her wine untouched beside her.

In the dark, a couple’s laughter drifted up to her from the beach below, their forms as invisible as the scent of brine.

All Beatrice could see in front of her eyes were Cordelia and Minna’s faces.

She tottered to her feet, zombie-walking back into the hotel room as the feeling returned. At some point, she’d need to connect to the internet. Perhaps that point was now? It was a small task; she knew that. It wasn’t insurmountable. Was it?

Don’t be an idiot. She took a deep breath and punched the digits into her phone to connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi. It rattled to life, filling with pings and bloops as messages landed, and before she could chicken out, she opened the messages app.

Most of them were from her father. Happy birthday, honey!

Honey, I’m sorry I’m so late texting you, but I was at the store buying every single treat you’ve ever loved.

Button? You having fun?

When you get home, we’re having Frito pie for dinner!

Did you make it all right?

Tell me you’re there safe, okay? You know I worry.

Beatrice closed the sliding door but immediately opened the window to let out—something—she wasn’t sure what. She just needed more of the cold night air to breathe, to suck into her lungs.

The right thing to do would be to call him. Beatrice knew that.

She dialed Iris instead. “It’s my birthday.”

“Fuck.”

“I forgive you. As usual.”

A heavy sigh. “Well, why would this year be any different? Thanks. I’ll make you dinner when you get home. How’s it going?”

“Hm.” Despite the sentences flapping around in her throat, the words got stopped up just behind her teeth.

But Iris knew her well. “You did it. You got your tarot read.”

“Um.”

“I knew it. Tell me.”

Beatrice didn’t even want to say it out loud. “So… at Grant’s birthday party, I talked to Evie Oxby. She predicted that I would experience seven miracles and then I would die.”

“I’m sorry—what? You’re just telling me this now?”

Wincing, she said, “Then the tarot reader said the same thing. And that the first two miracles would happen today.”

“I—I don’t—” There was a long, long pause. Then, “The hell ?”

“This really is your fault.”

“Oh, my god, the two miracles happened?”

Gah. “I almost died. But then I didn’t.” Beatrice explained the woodchipper blade and the push from someone who wasn’t there. Iris’s gasps grew louder with every word. “If I hadn’t fallen to the ground… I mean, it was just luck, right? Very good luck.”

“And an invisible push? That sounds pretty miracle-ish to me, but okay. What about the other one?”

“I found… a twin sister?” No, it wasn’t in question. “I have a twin sister. I found her.”

Iris, who’d never run out of words once in her whole life, was silent.

“And a mother. And a niece.”

“But—but your mom died when you were little.”

“That’s what my father always said.”

“ No. Mitchell wouldn’t lie like that.”

Sudden tears were hot in Beatrice’s eyes. “I’m so angry at him, I can barely think about him, even for a second.”

“How could this—no, your father is the best man I know. He’s the best man any of us know.”

It was true. Everyone loved Mitchell. Honestly, it was probably why she’d fallen for Grant.

Both men’s friendliness was flavored with the same exuberant kindness, the attention to detail, the ability to listen wholeheartedly.

Beatrice’s stepmother had often begged him to just thank a checkout clerk once in a while instead of getting their life story and inviting them over for barbecue.

He exhausts me, Beatrice, he really does.

When Naya died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder two years before, it was the first time Beatrice ever saw her father unable to smile.

“Well, it turns out he’s a pathological liar.”

“There has to be something you don’t understand. Maybe he thought she died? But no, not if you have a twin—Jesus. Maybe your mother survived the cancer and then stole your twin sister away from him, and he could never admit—no, that would be fucked, too. Holy shit. What’s she like ?”

Beatrice described Cordelia’s knitting and Minna’s cat shoes and Astrid’s crimson lipstick, and all the while, her father’s betrayal twisted, knifelike, somewhere in the region of her solar plexus.

“I wish I still smoked. This is a such a cigarette conversation, isn’t it?” In the background, Beatrice heard Iris open what would be her seventh or eighth Coke Zero of the day. “Are you scared? Do you want to talk about it?”

Beatrix, you’re going to die. Soon.

“I don’t believe any of it.”

“Except for the two miracles.”

“I think they’re more like coincidences.”

“Mmm. What are you going to do next?”

The words came to her quickly. “Hide in my room until I leave.”

“Sure. Okay, yes. And see your sister again? And your niece?”

Holy shit. “Or… I could leave early!”

“Aren’t you there for just two nights?”

Somehow, impossibly, it was still only Friday. She had tomorrow and tomorrow night, and then on Sunday morning, she’d leave. She and Dad were courting one of their biggest client prospects ever on Monday morning, which was something she refused to think about now. “Yeah.”

“So you see them tomorrow.”

“Or I just sleep all day.”

“Sleep in if you need to. Then see them.”

“I really can’t stand you sometimes.”

“Irrelevant. Tell me more about how it felt to see your sister.”

Beatrice did, and then, exhausted, she did her best to convince Iris that she was okay. Because she was. If okay meant still awake and breathing. And true, she wanted to keep breathing. The awake part, though…

So she got into bed a good two hours before she normally would. Her Kindle held nothing she wanted to read, so after flipping between the pages of four different books, she let it drop from her hand to the lavender-scented sheets.

The dark room filled with the violent sound of crashing waves.

Sleep felt impossible.

In one day, Beatrice had somehow lived through an accident that should have killed her.

She’d found blood relatives she’d never known about.

Someone had told her she was dying. And she’d learned that the man she had loved most had betrayed her, utterly.

(Grant’s betrayal could have felt like practice for this. But it didn’t.)

In travel bag of daily vitamins was a blister pack of sleeping pills.

They were Grant’s, left in her bag from their last trip together.

He rarely took them, and she never had, not before tonight.

She cracked one of the blisters and popped a pill into her mouth, letting its bitter promise dissolve under her tongue.

If she hadn’t caught Grant and Dulcina, they would have all come to the island together.

Still in blessed ignorance and not wanting Grant to tease her mercilessly, she never would have talked to Winnie on the ferry.

She’d have been so busy organizing the trip details, she wouldn’t have gone to the general store at the exact right time to meet Minna.

She wouldn’t have met Cordelia. It was totally possible the men would have golfed while she and Dulcina found somewhere to get a massage, and then they all would have gone home on Sunday.

She would have walked the short distance from her house to Dad’s.

He would have hugged her before making her a cup of tea and telling her about the latest financial scandal he’d picked up from watching Bloomberg .

The men in her life would have remained good men, and she would have remained unenlightened.

That would have been really nice.

The sleeping pill worked faster than she thought it would. One moment her heart was pounding with confused rage, and the next, she was being dragged gratefully under, to a sandy floor where the waves far above crashed so loudly she could barely hear herself cry.