Page 12 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Minna muttered, “Emphasis on the latter.”
No.
Her mother was dead. Had always been dead. Beatrice had been furious for so long about the cancer that had taken her mother when Beatrice was less than a year and a half old. It hadn’t beenfair. She’d been robbed of something that all her friends had: a mother to soothe their bumps and sing them to sleep at night. She didn’t even have a single memory of the woman she’d lost. Sometimes, at Christmas, she’d smell a cranberry candle mixed with the smell of cinnamon, and something would twist inside her, something that felt like the memory of something maternal. Or was it just a manufactured scent meant to evoke that exact sentiment? She’d reach to grasp it, but it would slip away from her, and then Dad would yell from across the office that it was time for their daily chess match, and the warm feeling would evaporate back into a dull resentment at death for stealing something she needed.
But her mother was alive.
Cordelia stayed in her chair, her fingers now clicking the needles, but their motion was smooth, as if she didn’t want to frighten Beatrice.
Too late. Beatrice was crashing onto the shores of panic. “Why are you so calm? Why aren’t you freaking the fuck out, too?”
Cordelia paused. Then she said, “Mom said you’d died. But she’s not always the most… trustworthy.”
Minna snorted, and Cordelia shot her a glance before continuing. “I’d have been able to feel it, if you were really gone. I’ve always felt that we’d find each other someday.”
Had Beatrice felt the same thing? Was that where her ribbon of loneliness, the one at her core, came from? “But still—thiscouldbe the wildest coincidence to ever happen, that we were born close to each other and look so much alike.” Okay, that was completely ridiculous. “Do you know your father’s name?”
“I don’t. She would never tell me.”
“My father is Mitchell Barnard. He said my mother’s name was Astrid Evanora Holland Barnard.”All of this will be explained in a way that makes sense.It had to be.
“That’s exactly right. Our mother’s name is Astrid Evanora Holland.” The knitting needles went still in Cordelia’s hands. “Mitchell? Mitchell Barnard. Huh. Now I know my father’s name.”
Beatrice tugged at the neck of her shirt. “Holy fuck. Oh, shit.”
“This is a miracle.” Cordelia’s eyes blazed. “A miracle.”
Miracle number two.
Beatrice’s breathing was high and tight in her chest, and the more she tried to get one good, full breath, the harder it seemed. Had her heart ever banged so loudly before? Was it too fast? Oh, yeah, it waswaytoo fast. It hurt, in fact, bands of heated pain tightening around her chest.
“You okay?” Cordelia’s voice sounded far away.
“Fine.” Her voice was a wheeze.
“How about sitting down again?”
Reno, who had been silent, stood and reached for her arm, but Beatrice shook her off.
“No.” She didn’t need to sit. She needed to—what? Figure out why her father had lied to her forher whole life? The one person she trusted most in life, her rock—he’d lied, this whole time. Struggling to raise her voice over the pounding of her heart—surely they could all hear it—she said, “Sowasthere an accident?”
Cordelia lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know. I’m inclined to say no. That they just separated us like those half-heart necklaces.”
“Dad wouldn’t have just let a child—you—go. It doesn’t make sense.” But did any of this make sense? The tightness in herchest clamped again, and she dropped back into the chair she’d vacated. Darkness moved in at the edges of her vision, and her breathing sounded like a fish lying on a dock, the desperate flapping of her gills trying to get oxygen. A high whine started at the back of her head, as if someone had turned on a saw.
She turned her head to find the noise, but instead of ascertaining the source, she saw Cordelia’s knitting drop to the floor as Cordelia leaped toward her. “What? What’s going—” But her voice wasn’t really working, and her lungs cramped…
Hands touched her shoulders then, Reno’s low voice saying something in her ear. Beatrice was gently folded in half as her head was urged down between her knees.
“Take a breath. There you go. Just give it a minute.”
The whine ceased almost immediately. It took a bit longer for the darkness to recede, but clearheadedness came right on its heels. The stubbornness that flooded through her veins felt like ice-cold water, exactly what she needed.
She sat up. “I’mnothaving a panic attack.”
“Of course you aren’t,” said Cordelia.
Great. She was being patronized. “I’ve never had one, but I know all about them.” Grant got them sometimes, usually after he lost a game of golf. “That wasn’t one.”
