Page 48 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
The effort Cordelia put into pulling herself together was visible, her face relaxing and softening, her body language easing. “Okay, while some psychics can predict the future, it’s only ever a guess. A suggestion, one that can be refashioned.”
At Cordelia’s calm words, Beatrice felt her own heart rate steady. Her sister helped people die, right? No wonder she was good at the whole calming thing. “Refashioned. Like, undone?”
Cordelia pulled the book closer to her on the table. “That would imply a prophecy or a vision could be erased, and while it can’t, itcansometimes be turned into something else. We might be able to bend it a little.”
Beatrice released a tight, stale breath. “So maybe I’mnotgoing to die? Or can we find a way to block the miracles? Not that… not that I believe any of this.”
Cordelia’s smile wobbled. “Well. I hate to break it to you, but yes, you’re going to die just like the rest of us, but maybe we can do something about the timing. Because I’m not going to be okay with losing you after I’ve only just found you.” She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.
Beatrice’s fingers worried at the edge of the paper cup. “You do this all the time, though, right? Help people die?”
“Not you. I refuse to help you with that, just for the record. Okay?”
“But how do you do… wait, whatdoyou do, exactly?” And why wouldn’t she do it for Beatrice? Was there something scary or bad about whatever it was she did?
Cordelia touched the book’s cover with just one fingertip, tracing a decorative fold in the dark leather. “It’s just about being present. Not letting anything else get in between the dying person and what’s really in the room with them at that moment. Allowing whatever love is there to flow without interruption, ideally.” She cleared her throat. “It’s also about helping them understand what leaving this plane might feel like and sound like. Hospice often works with the families, and so do I, of course, but my job is to be there at the end, even when no one else might be.”
An image of Naya’s last few moments rose in Beatrice’s mind. “How do you handle the rage?”
“Same as any other emotion. I let it move through and blow on out to the other side.”
Beatrice’s fingers tightened on the hanky as she remembered Naya making those terrible deep dry gasps that sounded like painful snoring. Her father sobbing. The hospice worker saying it was normal, telling them that Naya couldn’t feel pain anymore. The snow globe from their Bryce Canyon trip on the shelf above Naya’s head, the souvenir mocking them with the memory of happiness. The hospice worker saying,Beatrice, put down your phone and be here with her now.Her father begging,Please, Button, just hold her hand.But the hospice worker herself had said it—Naya was beyond pain, so she was beyond knowing who was in the room with her, which meant Beatrice could keep poking at her phone, keep looking for a solution for the terrible snoring sound. She could keep reading about agonal breathing, trying to findanysource that said it was reversible, that Naya could be saved. She’d come through so much already. She could do it one more time, and Beatrice would figure out how to make it happen.
Only she hadn’t. The snoring had stopped, and Naya was just… gone.
Now, she tucked the handkerchief into her pocket so she’d quit messing with it.
Her sister’s gaze was kind. “You’ve watched someone you love die.”
It took Beatrice a second to find her voice around the heat in her throat. “Naya. My stepmother. I’m still so angry.”
“At what?”
Such a dumb, impossible question. But she had a dumb, impossible answer to it. “At life. For the whole death thing.” She ripped another piece of sharp plastic from the coffee cup’s lid. “My mother died when I was little. It was the truest thing about me. I was a motherless girl, and I was so mad about it for so long. I did everything I could do to understand it, to figure out what cancer was, and why it had taken her from me. The things that were important to me—I didn’t get to keep them. I think I was just starting to get over it, honestly. My husband’s kids weren’t going to be some magic fulfillment for me, and we’d tried to have a baby, but it didn’t work out. So maybe I was just about to accept that and—oh, shit, what am I saying?”
Cordelia waited.
“I guess I was about to accept that it was all going the way it was supposed to go. I didn’t have a mother and I wasn’t going to be one. It didn’t have to mean I was broken. But then—Astrid is alive, and itdidn’tgo the way it was supposed to, it just got fucked up, and now, if I end up believing in magic and miracles, I have to also believe that I have no time left?” The steaming fury built up into a scream inside her brain. “I just can’t.”
No to magic.
No to predictions.
The butter hadn’t flown. That could have been an accident.Wasn’t that the only “magical” thing that had actually happened? She could have imagined the tug in her chest when Minna had written her name with the wordlovearound it. In fact, she was feeling that same warmth now, just thinking about Minna’s sweet face. Grant’s house hadn’t burned down. A butter dish crashing to the floor in another room, something that no one had actually witnessed happen? That was nothing. She hadn’t even asked if they had a cat. Theytotallyhad a cat. She was sure of it.
Cordelia patted the back of her hand. “We’ll figure something out. Together.”
She wasn’t getting it. “I don’t believe in any of it.”
“Okay, the truth is, you don’t have to believe any of it—it’ll still work.”
Great. Yet another assumption, shot down. “You don’t have to have, like, complete faith in magic?”
“Pffft. Please. Who has that?”
“I used to, when I was a kid.” Beatrice wanted to turn the book toward her, so that she could see the symbols scratched on the pages Cordelia was turning. “I used to stand in the backyard, convinced if I tried hard enough, I could fly.”
“Now,thatwould be a miracle.”
