Page 66 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
I would try to be myself with them. Truly myself.
I would try to be brave.
I would try to be open.
Okay, this was definitely the most difficult spreadsheet she’d ever made, even harder than the taxes she’d filed for the ex–gambling addict who’d come clean after forty-one years of dodging the IRS.
If I have one week left.
She took what was perhaps the deepest breath of her life.
I would ask each of them (Cordelia, Minna, Reno, maybe even Astrid) to spend as much time telling me their stories as they could spare.
I would listen.
I would—
She deleted the words in the box.
Then she typed the full phrase.
I would let myself love them.
Her chest thudded—was this a heart attack? Would she even live to type another line? Would she ever get used to this fear?
Then:
If I have one day left.
But her fingers gave up. Beatrice couldn’t fill in the boxes to the right.
Nothing came except stupid words likeMaybeandIf I could just, ridiculous words she erased, one by one, words with no attached phrases.
She couldn’t do it.
Beatrice closed the laptop and then her eyes.
What if…
She let the big thought come.
I got myself into this mess.
All of her best thinking had gotten her to this exact place. She’d worked her whole life to do the right thing, making sure her sums were correct, but now, after all that careful work, she’d lost her husband. She’d lost her home. She’d lost the person she’d thought her father was.
With all of the best, most thoughtful plans she could make,thiswas where she’d ended up. In a houseboat that for all she knew leaked like a colander in the winter.
Alone.
For a person who needed proof, this seemed pretty indisputable. Her old way of thinking and living hadn’t worked.
Up till now, she’d needed proof to believe in something. But what if wanting proof that something existed was simply a differentkindof belief, just the belief it didn’t exist?
What would happen if, instead of insisting on evidence, she did the opposite?
For once in her goddammed life, what if she decided to believe in things until they weredisproved?
Miracles—she’d seen four of them happen right in front of her.
