The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

  I want to be here, Lily thought, though she didn’t say it out loud. Her dreams seemed small next to her sister’s.

  “Promise me, you’ll be there when I turn thirty,” Rose said as she stretched out across the wide wooden beam. “Wherever we are in the world, we’ll spend our thirtieth birthdays together. First mine, then yours.”

  They hooked their pinkie fingers and swore to be together. Rose might have meant they’d be together on their birthdays, but Lily had meant forever.

  Yet here it was. Rose’s thirtieth birthday. They were apart and neither of them had the life they imagined.

  Lily had arrived in Redbud early that Friday morning. She checked into her hotel room, but instead of leaving the room and driving to Eden Farms she stood at the door, twisting the knob first left, then right, counting each turn. She was stuck. It was late afternoon before she could stop.

  When she finally left the hotel, she drove north, to Richmond. She ate at a diner that looked like a 1950s museum. Her legs sweated against the red vinyl booth. She drank her sweet tea and picked at her country fried steak. Then she walked around town, ducking into antiques shops and candy stores until it was too dark to do anything except drive back to the hotel.

  The following day, she drove even farther north, stopping in Lexington at the Kentucky Horse Park. She bought a ticket and watched the Parade of Breeds. She looked at the statue of Secretariat and measured her steps’ length against Man o’ War’s impressive twenty-eight-foot stride.

  Finally, on the morning she was heading home to Covington, she gathered her courage and drove to Eden Farms. She pulled off on the side of the road and stared at the blue clapboard farmhouse where she grew up. The house stood well back from the road, the drying barn several yards to its left. Oak and birch trees arched over the drive that split in front of the house. One path led to the house and the other to the drying barn.

  Their land was wedge shaped, with the widest portion of their fifty acres in the back. Most of it was cleared, but a thick stand of woods made up their back border. The commercial fields were behind the house, and on the right side were two ornamental gardens—the house garden and the night garden.

  The Hastings family property bordered theirs on the left, but Lily forced herself to ignore it. After Seth completed his sophomore year in college, he decided to enter seminary. When he did so, he made it clear that there wasn’t room in his life for both Lily and God. Besides, the last she had heard, he didn’t live there anymore. He was probably off somewhere, saving the world.

  Lily turned her attention back to her home. She wanted to climb the back porch and knock on the door, but her knees locked. She stayed where she was, on the side of the road.

  As a child, she had been captivated by the Victorian language of flowers. Her interest had started on a trip to the library, where she found a heavy book with a thick white cover. Each page had an artist’s rendering of a flower with the meaning the Victorians assigned to it written in script below.

  She flipped through the book until she found lily. There were seven entries. White lilies meant purity. Lilies of the valley meant return of happiness. Water lilies meant eloquence. Her name could mean something different every day of the week.

  She spent hours memorizing the meanings for each flower. When it was time to return the book, she hid it under her bed and told her mother she lost it. Twenty years later, she still knew that white daisies meant innocence and ivy meant friendship.

  Honeysuckle meant the bond of love.

  She looked down at the honeysuckle growing along the fence line and broke off three long strands of the vine. She braided them together and twined the garland through the white fence.

  Then she drove home without looking back.

  It was hard to believe two years had passed since that day. As Lily sat among her folded jeans and T-shirts, she prayed that the courage she had lacked on Rose’s thirtieth birthday would sprout up inside of her like that honeysuckle, spreading until it was impossible to ignore.

  SHE SNAPPED THE book shut when Will knocked on her open bedroom door. He cocked an eyebrow and held up a bottle of wine. “Merlot. An excellent packing wine. Cherry undertones with a hint of wood smoke.” He poured two glasses, then sat in the plush chair next to the window. “Your bedroom is surprisingly drab, Lils.”

  Lily accepted the glass he held out to her. He was wrong. Her mother had made the blue-and-white star-pattern quilt covering the bed. The oil painting hanging on the opposite wall was from Rose—a yellow lily resting on a porcelain plate. “Bright. Like you,” Rose had said when she presented it to Lily. A pewter mug filled with dried rosemary—for remembrance—sat on her dresser. Sheet music, rolled into a tight scroll and tied with a black ribbon, leaned against her mirror. And a tiny purple baby cap hung from the knob of her top dresser drawer.

  Her room wasn’t drab, wasn’t boring. It held the most important parts of her life. Will just didn’t know where to look.

  “Talk to me, Lils,” he said. “You’re troubled. I can see it on your face.”

  The afternoon sunlight slanted across the floor. The tiny room was stuffy. She set her book on the bed and her wineglass on the nightstand, then crossed the room and opened the window.

  The ever-present sounds of traffic and birdsong drifted in with the breeze. She pressed her forehead against the screen and watched cars drive past. “I’m fine,” she said. Every three seconds, a sculpture in the artist’s yard squeaked.

  “Yeah, and I’m a monk.” When she didn’t respond, he grabbed the book from her bed. “What has you so fascinated?”

  “It’s a book on the Victorian language of flowers,” she said as she counted the cars parked on the street. Ten.

  “What?” He leafed through the pages.

  “The Victorians. They assigned a meaning for every flower. They’d send each other bouquets with hidden messages.” Her fingers twitched, and she laced them together. Rose was the only person Lily allowed to look through the book without her. “Sometimes I think of people as a flower. Rose was—”

  “Let me guess—a rose?” Laugh lines framed his mouth.

  Lily shook her head. “Oak-leaf geranium. It means lasting friendship.”

  He flipped through the pages until he found the flower. “Pretty,” he said. “What about me? What flower am I?”

  Her face heated, and she bit her lip. “Give me the book.”

  He drew back until he was just beyond her reach. “Come on, Lils. Play along. You need to relax a little. This day has been hard enough.” He stopped flipping pages. “Here I am. A red rose. Passionate love.” He grinned, and her heart turned over.

  “Put the book in my suitcase when you’re finished,” she said. She had to focus on Rose, not the way her skin tingled when Will looked at her.

  “I’m teasing. Let me help. I know this isn’t easy for you.” He tossed the book on top of the stacked T-shirts, then walked over to her.

  Her back was to him, and he put his hand on her shoulder.

  “I have to pack,” she said, without turning around.

  He squeezed her shoulder slightly. “Sometimes it’s like there’s a wall around you. You need to let people in. Talk to me.”

  She shook her head. Her heart was still bruised from the last time she let someone in. Besides, if she started talking, she would crack right down the middle. The only way she’d be able to help Rose was to stay strong. That meant she had to focus on the business at hand. Packing. “I have to get home. Rose needs me.”

  Will sighed. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” As he walked back to his chair, he stopped. “What’s this?”

  She looked over her shoulder. He nodded at an old shoebox sticking out from under her bed.

  “Nothing.” She reached for the box, but he was faster.

  “Friends shouldn’t keep secrets.” He let the lid slide to the floor. “Pictures.” He ran his fingers across their tops. “Hundreds of them.”

  “Four
hundred twenty-two,” she murmured. She reached for the wineglass on her night stand and took a drink, focusing on the burn in the back of her throat. There were seven similar boxes under her bed.

  Will flipped through photos until one caught his eye. He held it up. Three young women stood in shirt dresses, their arms looped around each other as they smiled at the camera. He pointed to the blonde in the center. “Is this Rose?”

  Lily shook her head. “My mother, Portia. Rose is just like her.” Rose and Portia not only looked alike, they each saw the world the same way—a patchwork of colors and shapes.

  As in everything else, Rose and Lily were opposites when it came to their parents. Rose was their mother’s daughter, but Lily took after their father, Wade. Rose and Portia knew purple irises rising from a semicircle of yellow pansies would look beautiful next to the gray drying barn. But Lily and Wade knew the exact amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous to feed the plants. Gardening was a synthesis of art and science.

  The science came easily to Lily. She and Wade plotted the commercial fields. They worked compost into the soil, transforming it from thick clay into light loam. Before planting, they measured the ground’s pH, making sure it was a perfect neutral 6.5 (unless they were planting azaleas or hydrangeas, in which case they added coffee grounds and pine needles to lower the pH to a more acidic 5). They mapped out a field rotation schedule to build up fertility and mitigate pests. They debated the merits of buckwheat or clover as cover crops.

  The art of gardening was another story. Lily and Wade ruled the commercial fields, but Portia and Rose designed the display gardens. They filled the house garden with crimson William Shakespeare roses, English lavender, and yellow coreopsis. They trained wisteria over the gazebo, and then encircled it with pink hydrangeas. It shouldn’t have matched, yet it did.

  But Lily’s favorite was the night garden planted against the stacked stone wall on the side of the property. Everything there was white. Astilbe and sweet alyssum. Foxglove and columbine. The flowers glowed as the sun set. Standing in the garden when fireflies came out made Lily believe in magic.

  That’s why Eden Farms was successful. Everyone played their part.

  “I see Rose in your mother,” Will said, yanking her back to the present, “but I also see you. Here, in the sharp line of her jaw. She looks stubborn as hell.”

  He handed Lily the picture, and though she didn’t say so, her heart warmed at the thought that something of her mother lived on in her.

  She studied the women standing next to her mother. It had been years, but she recognized them immediately. The plump woman on her mother’s left was Cora Jenkins, who owned the Italian restaurant in town. Teelia Todd, whose family owned an alpaca farm, stood to Portia’s right. The three women had been inseparable when Lily was younger. After her parents’ car accident, they had promised to watch over the girls and the farm. But Lily hadn’t talked to either woman since her parents’ funeral six years ago.

  “Mom was stubborn,” she said. “She had to have the last word in every argument.” It was strange for Lily to realize she was now older than her mother had been when that picture was taken. Gently, she placed it back in the box.

  Will selected another photo and held it out to her. A young man with brown hair curling around his ears leaned against the hood of an old Ford pickup. He was smiling, but his eyes were dark, and his shoulders were tense. “Who’s this?” Will asked.

  “Seth Hastings. Just a neighbor.” She glanced at the rolled sheet music on her dresser as she took the picture from Will.

  Another photo had been stuck to its back. It fluttered to the floor, but Lily ignored it as she slid Seth’s picture inside the box.

  “Should I be jealous?” Will asked as he retrieved the picture that had fallen to the floor.

  Of what? A ghost? Lily thought.

  Will turned the other photo right side up and cradled it in his hands. He drew a sharp breath.

  At the sound, Lily glanced at the picture. It was summer, and a little girl sat on the porch. The girl’s head lolled back, and she gazed up and to the right, fixated on something over the photographer’s shoulder.

  “My niece, Antoinette,” Lily said, before Will could ask. She went back to her suitcase, hoping to put an end to the questions.

  Being around Antoinette made the need to count worse. Much worse. She counted her T-shirts and jeans, making sure she had six of each. Fancy clothes would be wasted at Eden Farms. She tucked the Victorian flower-language book under a yellow and white shirt.

  Shoes. She needed shoes. She fished around in the back of her closet until she found an old pair of garden clogs.

  “You never talk about her,” Will said.

  Shame rose up in Lily, but she was going home. It was time to face her mistakes. She dropped the shoes on top of her suitcase and sank onto the bed. “I stopped going home after Rose realized Antoinette had problems.” The words came out in a rush, and her ears burned.

  Will frowned. “Why?” he asked. “I thought you loved it there.”

  She took the picture and clasped it in her hands. “I do. I did.” If she closed her eyes, she could see the farm glittering with starlight. Her mother’s face, lined, but still youthful. Rose as a child, long-legged and graceful, running through the stream that rimmed their property, the tips of her blonde hair dripping wet.

  Then Antoinette’s face flared in her mind, and Lily began to count. She reached thirty-two before she forced herself to stop.

  She looked down at the photo of her niece. The girl’s eyes were too far apart, and her head looked too heavy for her neck. “Our parents died in a car accident. The day of their funeral, Rose asked me to move home and help with Antoinette and the farm.”

  Lily’s chest tightened. She could still see Rose’s face, a mix of fear and sorrow, as she had begged Lily to stay. But being around Antoinette . . . Lily sighed. “I couldn’t do it. And when I realized I was wrong, it was too late. Rose was so angry.”

  Will looked down at his wineglass. It was almost empty. He poured some more and cocked his eyebrow as he held out the bottle to Lily. She shook her head.

  “Surely she would have forgiven you—”

  “I called to apologize, but Rose wouldn’t answer the phone,” she said. “For the first month, I called every day. I left message after message.” She shook her head. “Nothing. Rose was angry. I can’t blame her. Antoinette is her daughter and I . . .” The words stuck in her throat.

  The first time Lily held Antoinette, it had been in the neonatal intensive care unit, and her niece was only two hours old. At a little under three pounds, Antoinette was barely longer than Lily’s hand. When Lily came home on visits, she used to carry Antoinette through the fields, naming the flowers and telling her their meanings.

  Life continued that way until Lily returned home when Antoinette was two. That day, Lily and Rose sat side by side on a bench next to the library playground. The sun was a ball in the sky. Everything was gold. Antoinette turned in circles on a small patch of grass and waved her fingers in front of her eyes. It wasn’t a random gesture. Not like she was moving for the fun of it. Her movements were methodical. Like she was counting each flick of her fingers.

  Oh, God. She’s like me, Lily thought, stunned at the realization. “Something’s wrong,” she said when she found her voice.

  “What?” Rose followed Lily’s gaze. “Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s just playing.”

  Lily shook her head. She stared at Antoinette, counting each twitch of her fingers.

  “She’s fine,” Rose said, biting off each word.

  “No,” Lily said, unable to tear her gaze away from Antoinette. “She’s not.”

  The little girl’s head lolled to the left. She moved her hands back and forth. One, two. One, two. She didn’t stop, even when Rose scooped her up.

  “Nothing’s wrong with her,” Rose said as she walked back to their car.

  Lily looked up at the sky and counted the clouds. She d
idn’t know anything about being a parent, but she knew about being different.

  That night, when their mother asked Lily to stay, she said she had to work the next day. Then she drove home, counting the entire time.

  Now she looked at Will. His blue eyes were intense. “What if I’m not strong enough to handle Antoinette?” Her fear was that she would take one look at her niece and become paralyzed, would start counting and never stop. She would disappoint Rose all over again.

  She reached for her glass and drained it.

  Will took her glass and set it on the windowsill.

  “Do you know why half of medical school is spent in residency?” he asked.

  Lily looked out the window. It was getting late. Clouds drifted in front of the sun and the room grew dark.

  “You can read every anatomy and physiology book on the planet, but until you’re standing next to a patient who’s having a stroke or bleeding out, you don’t know how you’ll react. You’re thrown into it, and you figure it out as you go along.”

  Will leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “You’ll do the same.”

  Chapter Four

  Something wild was in the air. Antoinette felt it as soon as she clambered out of the van. The temperature had dropped and wind rushed through the trees. Her mother always said April weather could turn on a dime. An hour ago, the sky had been a crisp blue. Now it was so dark it almost looked like nighttime.

  Seth had parked right in front of the Bakery Barn. Years ago, Eli and MaryBeth Cantwell had turned the run-down barn in the middle of Main Street into a bakery. A small roof jutted over the entrance, and baskets filled with yellow pansies and blue violas hung from the white beams. Several metal tables sat on the concrete patio in front of the bakery. They were all empty.

  The air smelled like lightning, and the scent made the tiny hairs on Antoinette’s arms stand. When the rain came, the land’s song would change. Right now, Antoinette heard the low moan of a cello, an eerie sound.

  Antoinette flapped her hands. Change, change. She wanted to stand outside in the rain, listening to the land’s music. She imagined water streaming down her back, flattening her hair against her head, her whole body bright with sound.