The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

  “He smiles more when he’s with you,” Teelia said, nodding in the direction Seth had gone. She stood at Lily’s shoulder, and they both watched Antoinette.”You’re good for him. And unless I’m wrong, he’s good for you. You’re lighter around him.”

  “I thought you had to go fix a fence,” Lily said. She was trying to suppress her feelings for Seth. The last thing she needed was Teelia stirring them up.

  “What’s a fence compared to true love?” She grinned.

  “Teelia, you’re hopeless,” Lily said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Seth hadn’t overheard. Then she dropped the truck’s tailgate and hopped up.

  “I know what I see,” Teelia said. “He’s changed since you came home. He’s smiled more in the past week than he has all year.”

  “I’m here for Rose,” she said, pitching her voice low. “And Antoinette. I have to focus on them, not on reviving my love life.”

  At the sound of her name, Antoinette cocked her head. She looked like she was listening for something.

  “Who says you can’t do both?”

  “I do,” Lily said. She had never been good at dividing her focus. With her good hand, she opened the long silver toolbox attached to the truck bed and fished out several bungee cords which they’d use to tie down the metal pen.

  The alpacas stretched toward Antoinette. One with a particularly long neck leaned down and nibbled her hair. Antoinette hunched her shoulders and giggled.

  “Shoo!” Teelia waved her hands, and the alpacas drew back. “Seth needs someone who knows his burdens. I warrant he doesn’t talk much to anyone.”

  “Not my business,” Lily said, though she figured Teelia was right. She looped one of the bungee cords through an eye hook in the pickup bed. It was hard doing things one-handed. The cord slipped out of the hook several times before she was able to secure it.

  “Maybe it should be,” Teelia said. She smiled as she turned and started to walk away. “I’ll be out to the farm later to set up. Think about what I said.”

  Lily watched Teelia until she became a small blue smudge on the horizon. It wasn’t as if Lily hadn’t thought about resuming her relationship with Seth. Of course she had. But there were other people to think about too, like Rose and Antoinette . . . and Will.

  “This thing is awkward.” Seth startled her, and Lily dropped her head, hoping her thoughts didn’t show on her face.

  He heaved the collapsed pen into the truck, then grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead, revealing his taut brown stomach. Lily quickly looked away.

  She threaded the cord through the metal pen, then secured it back to the eye hook so it wouldn’t fall out on their drive back to the farm. Using her good hand, she tugged on the cord until she was sure it wouldn’t tumble out.

  “You and Will seem close,” Seth said as he sat down on the tail gate. He lifted one shoulder and let it drop as if he didn’t care. But that was the thing about growing up together: even after being apart for so long, Lily knew what each twitch of his eyes or shrug of his shoulders meant. He feigned indifference when he was afraid of getting hurt, something he had done when they were kids.

  “We’re friends,” she said, then hopped down from the truck and walked to the fence. Antoinette flapped her hands as Lily passed, thin strands of hair floating around her head like a halo. Four alpacas nosed at Antoinette over the white-plank fence.

  Lily rested her elbows on the top rail and watched the animals. They had giraffelike necks and stocky bodies covered in thick fleece. A brown alpaca stretched its neck across the fence and nuzzled her hand.

  “That’s an awfully good friend to drive all the way down here to help you out.” Seth plucked a piece of grass and moved to stand beside her. He twisted the grass tight around his finger.

  “He is,” she said, all the while thinking, But he’s not you.

  She shoved the thought aside. It didn’t matter that she felt like she was falling when she stood next to Seth. Or that a deep ache opened up inside of her when she pictured him lying next to another woman. She was here for Rose and Antoinette. Nothing else.

  Seth stretched his arm out toward a little white alpaca. It head-butted his hand, then closed its eyes as he scratched behind its ears. “You wouldn’t expect something so strange-looking to be so gentle.”

  Lily felt him watching her, and her blood roared in her ears.

  “Seminary was a mistake,” he finally said. “I knew that within weeks of arriving.”

  “What was the first clue?” Lily asked, eager to keep their conversation away from their past relationship.

  He sighed and uncurled the piece of grass from his finger. “It wasn’t just one thing. It was several little things . . .” He pressed his lips together and looked up at the sky as if searching for the right words. Finally, he shook his head. “I was there for the wrong reasons. I didn’t want to study the laws in Leviticus or learn how to lead a congregation or counsel newlyweds. I wanted to know why life is so messed up. Why good people get hurt.”

  Lily didn’t have an answer. She suspected no one did.

  In the middle of the herd, a baby alpaca rested its long neck over its mother’s back. Mother and baby were both white, making it impossible to tell where one stopped and the other began.

  Antoinette rocked back and forth on the ground beside Lily. She made an odd buzzing sound and poked at the dead grass. Then she waved her hands in front of her eyes and screamed, “Aey! Aey! Aey!”

  Automatically, Lily said, “End on four, remember? Do things in even numbers.” Antoinette gave four loud shrieks and calmed a bit. She pounded the ground again, but this time she looked forlorn, not angry.

  “Did you find the answers you were looking for?” she finally asked.

  “No,” Seth said, “but I’ve learned to live without knowing. ‘He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust.’ I could’ve just read the Gospel of Matthew and saved myself a lot of heartache.” He laughed, a sharp, brittle sound.

  “It wouldn’t have been enough for you.” Lily knew him well enough to know that. There had been a restlessness about Seth when he was younger. A need to understand the whys of life that mirrored her need for order and control.

  He rested his hand on the fence next to hers. “I used to worry about my dad—that I’d turn out just like him. I think that’s what started everything. I wanted to know why he was so short-tempered. I needed there to be a reason, because if there wasn’t one, it meant he didn’t love me—or Mom—enough to stop hitting us. It also meant I wouldn’t know how not to be like him.”

  He shrugged. “Now I know it’s random. Sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes people make bad choices, but that fact doesn’t negate the great good in the world.”

  He smiled, and his arm brushed hers. Lily couldn’t tell where he stopped and she began. “A wise woman I know once told me that. I should have listened to her all those years ago.”

  “You’re nothing like your father,” she said.

  He smiled, but it was a small, sad thing. “I wish I had realized that before I let you go. Maybe if I had, you’d be leaning on me instead of Will.” He cupped her cheek and tilted her face toward his. “I tried to forget you.”

  Lily wanted to close her eyes and lose herself in the kiss she felt coming. She wanted to run her fingers across his back until the electricity tingling along her skin exploded, but she remembered losing him the first time. The urge to count had overwhelmed her. She couldn’t step outside without first counting one hundred twenty-two heartbeats. She couldn’t bear to get stuck like that again, and now she had Antoinette to think about too. She couldn’t let Rose down a second time.

  “I can’t,” she said. It hurt as she placed her hand on his chest and pushed. “Not unless I know it’s real. Not unless I know you won’t leave again.” She turned away and walked to the truck without looking back.

  ROSE’S JOURNAL

 
; April 2013

  time is slipping away from me. This morning I woke to a note from Lily saying that she and Antoinette were at Teelia’s with Seth. Lily and Antoinette have made their peace with each other. It’s what I wanted, so I’m surprised that when I think of them together, I feel hollow inside.

  “You okay?” Will asks. He pushes a wheelbarrow loaded with steel pails, pruners, and gardening gloves.

  I have stopped in the middle of the path leading to the fields. I shake myself and start walking again. “Sorry. My mind was elsewhere for a moment.”

  His smile is too kind. “You should try music. An iPod? Put the little buds in your ears and the world fades away. At least for a little while.”

  I appreciate his thought, but that’s the problem. I don’t want the world to fade away.

  Will looks uncomfortable with the wheelbarrow. The land dips, and the wheelbarrow lists left. The steel pails clang together.

  “There’s an art to it,” I say. “You have to distribute the weight evenly in your hands. It’ll tip if it’s unbalanced.”

  “Now you tell me,” he says as he wipes his hands on his pants. “I thought working the ER was hard. It’s nothing compared to farming.”

  I hear birds call from the woods, and I’m glad of their voices. Without Antoinette, everything is too quiet.

  “Can I ask you something,” I say, “as a doctor?”

  “You can ask,” he says. “I might not have an answer.”

  “Is this my fault? Did I make Antoinette this way?” My words come out in a rush. “If my heart had been stronger. If she hadn’t been born so early . . .”

  Will sets the wheelbarrow down and takes me by the shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault. Millions of babies are premature. Some have trouble. Some don’t. You couldn’t have done anything to prevent this. You have a beautiful daughter, and a sister who loves you. I’d say you’re one of the lucky ones.”

  “I don’t feel lucky.”

  “You’re surrounded by people who love you. There’s not much more you can ask from life.”

  “More time would be nice.” I laugh and wipe the corner of my eyes. My cheeks are wet. When did I start crying?

  “No matter how much time you have, it won’t be enough,” he says.

  I feel a catch in my chest, and I know he’s right. “The tulips are at the edge of this field.”

  Will follows my lead, sensing that I need to change the subject. “Tell me again what we’re doing,” he says as we resume walking.

  “You know Lily’s obsession with the language of flowers?”

  “It’s kind of hard to miss.”

  I laugh. He’s good at helping me forget.

  “Lily used to leave bouquets around the house for me,” I explain. “Ivy for friendship. Sweet basil for good wishes. I had to guess what she was saying. I want to do the same for her.”

  He bumps my shoulder. “She thought about you all the time. She had boxes under her bed filled with pictures of the two of you as girls. One box held baby pictures of Antoinette.”

  “How do you know what she kept under her bed?”

  “I have my ways.” He grins.

  I laugh. It’s been a long time since anyone has made me feel this good. Will has only been here a week, but I feel like I’ve known him much longer. “I bet you do.”

  We stop at the edge of the tulip row. The green buds have split open to reveal a flash of white petals. Will rubs his hands together. “Now I know how Lily got so tough. Farmwork isn’t easy.”

  “She’s softer than you think,” I say as I take a pail from the wheelbarrow. I hook it over the spigot at the end of the row and turn on the water.

  “I know. I sat with her when she cried because she missed home. After your parents died, she didn’t sleep for a month. And when she finally did, it was only because I slipped Ambien into her hot chocolate.”

  Regret sits heavy on me. “She did that? Cried that much, I mean?” The pail is full. I try to pick it up, but the weight jerks my hands to the ground.

  He takes it from me. “Where do you want it?”

  “Just there, at the top of the row.”

  He sets the pail down among the tulips. “She missed your parents—and you—a lot.”

  “I shouldn’t have been so stubborn,” I say as I kneel in the dirt.

  “Maybe you should tell her that.” Will hands me a pair of pruners.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” I run my hand down a tulip stalk and clip it near the base. I put it in the pail and cut another. “I was mad. Not just at her. At everything. Mom and Dad dying. Me being sick. Antoinette.”

  I sit back on my heels. “Not asking her to come home sooner is my biggest regret.”

  Will shoves his hands in his pockets and looks out over the fields. “You can’t hold on to the past,” he says. “Life continues whether you want it to or not.”

  A car door slams in the distance. I look up to see Lily helping Antoinette from the truck. Seth walks to the back of the truck and drops the tailgate.

  “Speaking of regret,” I say, “does she know how you feel?” I nod toward Lily.

  “What?” He sounds surprised and embarrassed at the same time.

  “I’m dying, not blind,” I say. “If she doesn’t know, you should tell her.” I cut another tulip. The bucket is half full. Some flowers stand straight up and some drape over the sides. I’m already breathing hard from just this small amount of effort. I had planned to give Lily the flowers today, but I’m too tired. I’ll have to store the tulips in the commercial freezer and fashion the bouquet tomorrow.

  “I’m not the one she wants.”

  “Sometimes we don’t know what we want until we’re about to lose it,” I say. “I used to feel trapped on the farm. Now I can’t bear the thought of leaving.”

  As I did earlier, he changes the subject. “So why white tulips? What do they mean?”

  I look down at the bucket. “Forgiveness. Something I should have given Lily a long time ago.” I don’t mention the other meaning. Until we meet again. This is also my way of saying good-bye.

  Will takes the pruners from me. “Let me help.” He kneels among the tulips, cutting flowers until the pail overflows.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Thursday afternoon, the kitchen in Cora’s restaurant smelled like garlic, oregano, sweet basil, and thyme. Cooks clanged metal spoons against copper-bottomed pots and speed-chopped onions and tomatoes. Antoinette used to love the room, but not today.

  Today she wanted to go home.

  She had tried screaming, but Cora ignored her. Now she stood in the middle of the kitchen and spun like a top. The room blurred into a whirl of color and scent. When she stopped, her knees bobbled and the walls shimmied.

  “Slow down,” Cora said, without looking up from a pot of marinara sauce. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  Antoinette didn’t care if she hurt herself. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go home and lie down next to her mother. She’d curl into a ball and push herself into her mother’s side. They’d sit together all day, Antoinette memorizing her mother’s heartbeat until it was so much a part of her, she’d never forget it.

  She needed to find Lily—she would understand. Antoinette looked around the kitchen, but aside from Cora there was no one else she knew.

  Lily had already delivered the fresh lavender Cora needed to make bread and cookies for the garden show on Sunday. That meant Lily was probably in the dining room setting out extra flower arrangements. And wherever Lily was, Will was sure to be close by. He wasn’t as good at deciphering her desires, but he usually figured things out. Between the two of them, they would realize that she needed to go home.

  Antoinette tugged Cora toward the door that led into the dining room.

  “Wait a minute, I need to check this.” Cora left her pot and turned to a plump man searching for something in the walk-in freezer. Cora stared at food the way Antoinette stared at flowers. She would be a while.


  Antoinette didn’t want to wait. When Cora’s back was turned, she headed for the dining room. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, and the room was empty.

  Antoinette started toward the hostess stand. Maybe Lily was out front in the parking lot.

  She had her hand on the door when Cora ran into the room. She pulled Antoinette back. “Don’t you ever do that again! You scared me, running off like that!”

  Antoinette yanked free. She scanned the room but didn’t see any sign of Lily or Will. I want to go home!

  “Let’s go back to the kitchen. I should have chocolate cake in there for you.”

  Antoinette didn’t want chocolate cake. When Cora reached for her hand, she growled.

  Cora held her hands up. “We don’t have to hold hands, but you need to come with me. I promised your aunt I’d look out for you. I can’t have you wandering off.”

  Antoinette stomped her feet. No, no, no. She was not going back to the kitchen. She would find Lily; then they would go home, and she would sit with her mother for the rest of the day.

  She whipped her head back and forth, then she screamed as loudly as she could.

  “What’s going on?” Lily ran into the dining room with Will. “We heard her screaming from the back room.”

  Cora blew out a breath. “I don’t know. She wandered out here and wouldn’t go back to the kitchen with me.”

  Even though Lily was here now, Antoinette couldn’t stop screaming.

  Lily knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

  Home, Antoinette thought. I need to go home. She balled her hands into fists and hit her head. Home, home, home!

  “Antoinette.” Will touched her arm. “You need to stop.”

  No. She needed to go home. She shook her head and stomped her feet. Then she pointed to the door.

  “Home?” Lily asked. “You want to go home?”

  Antoinette flapped her hands. Yes, yes, yes! She knew Lily would understand.

  “Will and I haven’t finished the arrangements yet,” Lily said. “It’ll just be a little longer.”