The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

  Lily wasn’t sure. “What about Eli? If he won’t leave—”

  “Have you seen Seth? The guy’s got arms like tree trunks. Eli might be upset, but he’s no fool.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Lily said. She squinted into the darkness, straining to see whether Eli was still there.

  Will sat down on the gazebo steps and patted the spot next to him. “The stars aren’t this bright in the city. In thirty-five years I don’t think I noticed them. Thirty-five years, and I never looked up. How sad is that?”

  “You’re looking now,” Lily said, grateful for Will’s attempt to distract her. He was right. Eli was upset, but he wasn’t a real threat.

  “Too little, too late, Lils.” He flipped his hair out of his eyes. “Did you know that when a star goes supernova and explodes, a new star is born? The force of the explosion shoves clouds of hydrogen and helium molecules together. Gravity makes the clouds collapse and rotate. Once the heat and pressure reach a certain point, a new star is created from the old one.

  “It’s a transfer of energy from one place to another—ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, just on a much larger stage. One star dies. Another is born. Energy can’t be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed.”

  He grew thoughtful. “What if it’s something like that?”

  “What?” Lily frowned, not following him.

  “Antoinette’s ability . . .” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I had the thread of a thought, but I lost it.”

  Lily sat down and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “I am too.” He stared at her for several long moments, and for the first time since she had known him he looked nervous. “Does he tell you you’re beautiful?” he finally asked.

  “Who?” Her answer was reflexive, but immediately she understood.

  “Seth. Does he know how soft your skin is?” He traced his finger across her cheek.

  Despite the tingle of electricity skipping across her skin, she caught his hand. “Don’t.” She saw expectation in his eyes, and her heart ached knowing she was about to hurt him. “I love Seth. I always have. And I love you too—just not in the same way.”

  Giving voice to her feelings unlocked something inside of her, and she finally realized how foolish she had been to push Seth away. All because she was afraid of getting hurt. It was the same thing she did the first time Rose had asked for her help with Antoinette.

  No more. Fear had already occupied too much of her life.

  Will tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then ran his fingers down her neck to the hollow of her throat. His movements were small and tentative.

  She froze, unsure whether to lean into him or turn away. “I’m not like the girls you bring back to your house.”

  He leaned forward until their foreheads were almost touching. “I know. Why do you think I’ve wanted to do this from the first time I saw you?”

  “Will, don’t.” She put her hands on his chest. “It won’t be real. It’s not fair to you.”

  “Let me decide what’s fair to me. Just once, Lils. Give me one moment when everything is perfect.”

  The wind began to blow, picking up a swirl of apple blossom petals and dusting them across his shoulders. Lily lightly brushed them off, leaving her hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be true,” she repeated. “I’m sorry. I love Seth.”

  “Ah Lils, haven’t you learned? There’s more than one version of truth. Let me have my version. Besides, I’ve been told I’m a pretty good kisser.”

  She believed him, but that wasn’t why she let him press his lips to hers. It was because she remembered his fingers on her cheek, catching her tears after Rose called that first time. She remembered the nights he held her as she cried when her parents died. And she remembered sitting with him through his chemo treatments, when his fear was so heavy she could almost touch it.

  She could give him this. She let him hold her close. He slid one hand around her hip and ran the other up her back. He was right. He was good at this.

  The kiss was long and slow and held all the words they would never say to each other.

  THE MOON HUNG in the sky when Lily left Will sitting at the gazebo. It rose above the treetops, speaking of second chances and hope. But it also spoke of regret.

  Will had kissed her. It was beautiful and bittersweet, nothing at all like Seth’s kisses, which were aggressive and passionate. When she pulled away from Will, she had pressed her hand against his lips and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  She loved Will. Through the years of silence from Rose, he had been her only friend. But when she pictured herself sitting on the porch swing at eighty, it was Seth who sat beside her, not Will.

  Lily had loved Seth from the beginning, when they were still children. He tied her life together—the good parts and the bad—and that, she realized, was worth risking everything for.

  With Will’s kiss still on her lips, she started down the flagstone path. A thin beam of light shone beneath the drying barn door. Seth must be in there, raking the cedar shavings and hanging fresh lavender from the rafters for the show tomorrow.

  “Seth?” she called as she opened the door. No one answered. She walked deeper into the barn.

  Everything was in place: the stage was set up; flowers hung from the rafters; white cloths covered the tables. But the barn was empty.

  Lily sighed. Seth probably forgot to turn out the light. She flipped the switch, plunging the barn into darkness. Once outside again, she decided to go to the creek. She was too restless to go back to the house.

  Trees overtook the fields, but moonlight flickered through their canopy, lighting her way. Still, it was dark, and she was cautious, stretching her feet in front of her, searching for the stone path to the creek.

  Reaching the water, she rolled her jeans to her knees, then waded in. The creek was stinging cold, and she gasped. The water was lower here than farther down the stream, but with the recent rains even here the creek was deep.

  She waded out to the flat rock that jutted from the middle of the creek. When they were kids, Seth, Lily, and Rose would lie on the rock, their heads touching as they watched the sky, calling out shapes they found in the clouds above them.

  Tonight the moon draped everything in blue-white light. Lily lay back and put her arm over her eyes. She was almost asleep when a splash to her left startled her. “Who’s there?” she asked as she lurched upright.

  “Lily?”

  Instead of slowing, her heart sped at the sound of Seth’s voice. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Same as you, I suppose.” He crossed the creek and stood at the base of the rock. “Mind if I come up?”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, scooting over to make room for him.

  He pulled himself up in one fluid motion. Moonlight outlined his profile, painting him black and silver.

  “I saw the light in the barn,” she said. “I stopped in, but you weren’t there.” She pressed her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. If she touched him now, she knew she would never let go.

  “I must have forgotten to turn it out.” In the dim light she could trace the planes of his face, the small wrinkles around his mouth, at the corners of his eyes, and across his forehead.

  “Rose told me what happened with Eli,” he said, placing his elbows on his knees. “I was walking the farm to make sure he’s gone when I saw you walk past.”

  “Is he?”

  “He’s gone. I checked everywhere.”

  Lily relaxed. The night was warm, more fit for August than April. She plunged her hand into the cold water, opening and closing her fingers, concentrating on the feel of the water.

  Seth ran his hand through his hair, making it wave around his face. “I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to see you again.”

  Lily raised her eyebrows. Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. She curled her hand in the water. The sho
ck of the cold kept her in the present, preventing her mind from slipping back to the summer nights they had spent here. “It hasn’t been easy for me either.”

  “I thought I could forget the past,” he said, “but I was wrong. I’ve missed you. I don’t want to interfere with your life. If you and Will are—”

  “We’re not,” she said, the words coming out faster than she meant for them to. She took a breath, deliberately slowing her thoughts. “Do you remember when we used to come here and watch the clouds? You and Rose found shapes, but I couldn’t see anything other than the two of you. I wanted to stay like that forever. How did everything end up so differently than I planned?” It was the question she had been asking herself since coming home. She didn’t expect him to answer, and was surprised when he did.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “For a long time, I never thought I’d be back here. Now I can’t imagine being anywhere else. I believe there are places that get to you. They slip under your skin and won’t let you go. Redbud’s like that for me.”

  Lily shook the water from her fingers. Tiny droplets sprayed over her face, cooling her skin where they touched. “What about people?” she asked.

  He shifted until their fingers touched. When he looked down at her, she shivered. “Some,” he said. “I think it’s like that for some people.”

  “What about for us?” The question was easier to ask in the dark, when the rustle of the trees and the buzz of cicadas covered her words as soon as they were out.

  “When I left for seminary,” Seth said, “I thought I could forget everything—it wasn’t easy for me here. Dad made sure of that.

  “But there, no one knew my family. People didn’t stare when I walked across campus. No one whispered behind my back. No one pitied me. I felt like I could leave my past in Redbud and just be me, not the boy whose drunk father beat him. For the first time in my life, I was just Seth Hastings.

  “It wasn’t until I came back for Mom’s funeral that I realized leaving didn’t free me. Instead, it gave the past that much more power over me. I could never be myself because I was always hiding part of my life.

  “I’ve tried,” he said, “but I can’t stay away from you. You’re the only person I can be myself with. I don’t have to hide from you.” He moved closer.

  “I bought into Eden Farms because I wanted to come home, but I stayed because I saw you everywhere. In the fields, I saw us running through the sunflowers down to the creek. In the barn, while hanging flowers to dry from the rafters, I would see you standing in a halo of sunlight. Sometimes it was so real I thought I could touch you. I’d sit on this rock at night and feel you beneath me.”

  Seth pressed his forehead against hers. “The best parts of my life have been with you. You see all of me and you love me anyway. Or at least you did.”

  She watched his lips as he spoke, wondering whether they would feel the same after all these years. She brushed his hair back. The thick strands slid through her fingers. Then she ran her hands over the broad planes of his back and down his arms.

  “I still do,” she said. “I never stopped.”

  It felt as if they had been slowly bending toward each other since that first day at the farmers’ market. Instead of beating faster, her heart slowed as if trying to stretch this moment into an eternity.

  His breath was hot when he lowered his mouth to hers. His lips were as soft as she remembered. He wrapped his arms around her, laid her back on the rock, and covered her body with his.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Antoinette was talking in her sleep. She woke from a dream where she rode the wind to the edge of the creek and knelt in the mud. As in real life, ferns grew along the bank, but in her dream the fronds were made of words instead of leaves. She searched until she found a word that calmed her body and made her feel whole. She plucked it and placed it on her tongue. The word tasted like blueberries, sweet and tart at the same time. “Mommy,” she said as it slid down her throat.

  Dream-talking wasn’t unusual. Everything happened in dreams, even the impossible, but this time was different. This time, her lips hummed when she woke as if the actual word had just left her mouth. A breeze blew through the open window, billowing the sheers and sending goose bumps along her arms.

  She tried again. “Mmmm,” she said. She closed her eyes, trying to remember the ease with which she spoke while dreaming, but it was too late. The word was gone.

  It was the evening before the garden show, but the farm was quiet now. Earlier that day, Antoinette had been so tired she fell asleep with her head against her mother’s knee. Vaguely, she remembered Lily carrying her to her room.

  Outside her window, crickets chirped and an owl hooted. Everything had a voice except her. Even the wind whistled as it swept through the window. She balled her hand into a fist and hit the wall. If she could speak, she could make her mother listen.

  “Let me help you,” she would say, and for once her mother would be the silent one. Antoinette would hold her mother’s hand and sing until everything was fixed. Until her heart was so strong it would never stop beating.

  Antoinette’s arms were stiff, but she shoved her covers back and concentrated on untangling her legs from the quilt. Some dreams came true. She had fixed Lily’s hand after thinking she would never heal again. Why couldn’t this dream come true too?

  The wood floor was cool under her feet. Her knees wobbled as she stood, but she was calm, still under the thrall of her dream. She didn’t twitch or flap as she walked downstairs into the kitchen, and she wondered, Is this how other people feel?

  In her dream, the words grew on ferns by the creek bank, so that’s where she’d go. She would sit there, eating leaves, singing under the moon until her throat was raw. Then she’d run home, wake her mother, and fix everything. Words had power.

  Dark shadows sat in the kitchen corners, but Antoinette didn’t care. It was easier to see without all the colors getting in the way. As she crossed the kitchen to the back door, her skin prickled in anticipation. What would it feel like to open her mouth and say anything she wanted? She flapped her hands and reached for the doorknob. Everything would change tonight.

  She stopped when her fingertips brushed the flaked paint on the door. She had forgotten the red light. If she opened the door, it would squeal. Her mother would wake, and everything would be ruined.

  Before looking up, she squeezed her eyes shut. Please, she prayed. Let the light be off. She flapped her hands twice for good measure, then opened her eyes one at a time. She let her head fall back and looked up.

  The light was off.

  She blinked hard and looked again. Nothing. The space above the door was beautifully blank. Her heart quickened, and she shrieked twice before she could stop herself. Her voice filled the empty room and echoed through the house, louder than the alarm ever was.

  She didn’t wait to find out if anyone heard her. She shoved her arm straight out and pushed the door open. It smacked into the wall with a loud crack. She stumbled through, her bones loose under her skin, her knees wobbling.

  Antoinette was at the top of the porch steps when she heard a voice from inside the house. “Antoinette? Is that you?”

  Her mother.

  In a rush, Antoinette tumbled down the porch steps, cutting her leg in the fall. Blood dripped down her shin, but she didn’t stop.

  The sky was dark and the land silent. No music rolled through her mind, but that didn’t matter. Everything would be better soon. Heat shimmered up from the ground. She easily made it to the stone path that led to the woods.

  She was at the edge of the field when the kitchen door slammed, and her mother yelled, “Antoinette? Are you out there?”

  Hurry, hurry, hurry. Antoinette walked as fast as she could. This must be how birds feel, she thought. She spread her arms wide to catch the wind.

  “I can see you Antoinette!” her mother yelled. “Come back here!”

  The woods marking the end of the fields had filled out. The t
rees’ branches twined together to form a thick screen.

  Antoinette shoved through. She lost her footing but locked her knees and didn’t fall, even when twigs pierced the soles of her feet.

  It was cooler and darker under the branches. Instead of following the well-worn path to the creek, she turned off onto a narrow deer trail. It would be easier to hide that way. She wasn’t going home until she found the ferns from her dream.

  A branch from a birch tree flicked back against her cheek. She felt blood welling along the cut, and she put her hand to her face, willing the edges of her skin back together, but she had never been able to heal herself, and this time was no different.

  “Antoinette!” Her mother’s voice floated behind her, to her right, so she went left, moving deeper into the woods, toward the sound of creek water.

  In the distance her mother called again, closer this time. Antoinette imagined her mother’s distress, and she almost turned back, but then she remembered the way her body had felt after speaking. She had to know whether it was possible.

  By the time she emerged from the tree cover and onto the creek bank, her face was covered with tiny scratches. Blood trickled from her cheek to the corner of her mouth. It was warm and salty when she touched her tongue to it.

  The creek was swollen with rain. Water rose halfway up the muddy hill. Exposed tree roots hung over the thin lip of dirt separating the woods from the water. She was farther downstream than usual, far from the flat rock that jutted from the center of the creek. She wasn’t familiar with this part of the woods, but that didn’t matter. Ferns grew all along the water’s edge; she could find them anywhere.

  Though the moon was out, its light was blocked by the trees, and she could barely see. She found moss and twisted tree roots, but no ferns. She shifted to her left, brushing her fingers along the ground, searching. She was concentrating so hard, she missed the footfalls behind her.

  “I thought I heard someone,” a man said, startling her. “God must be smiling on me. I went for a walk in the woods to sort some things out and here you are.”