Page 94 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
“Yourmother?”
“Someone else. Listen, Dad. I was told that I was dying, and soon, but that I’d experience seven miracles first.”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Impossible. We know that’s impossible. You’re notdying.”
“What are the odds of me tripping over a bottle that your dead wife cast into the ocean a thousand miles and almost thirty years ago?”
He opened his mouth.
“Anddo notsay that I could have set this up. Because you know I didn’t. And I’m sure she put something in your letter that only you could know was true.”
A slow nod. Then he said, “I’m not saying I buy into any of this, but out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, what number miracle would this be? If it were one?”
“Five.”
“Five.” His voice was strangled. “And then you… We have to get you to a doctor.”
“I had a physical recently. Fit as a fiddle.” A seagull swooped at a group of sandpipers with a scream. “I didn’t believe in miracles before I got here, Dad. But there are just two left.”
He kept his gaze on the seagull. “Your mother and all her magical nonsense. You were better off without her.”
“Maybe she should have taken both of us.” It was a low blow, and she regretted the words as soon as they left her lips.
“Doessheknow about this miracle stuff?”
This was just too hard. “It’s probably time you went home.”
“Jesus, as if I would. What kind of doctor did you get that physical from? Some quack on this undeveloped island? We’ll get you a better one, they can find what’s wrong,ifthere’s something wrong, and fix it. The best treatment in the world. I’ll start making calls this afternoon.”
And because Beatrice knew exactly how her father ticked through life, she knew that, by the end of the day, he’d have his own spreadsheet started.Management of Beatrice’s Optimal Healthor something. Every potential step would be plotted out. Within a month he’d be one of the leading experts on middle-aged female life expectancy, and the knowledge would give him a bit of peace.
But… would it?
When Naya was dying, her father had abandoned his spreadsheet with its lists of medications and the best internists ranked by country.
He’d sat by his wife’s side, leaving only to bathe and take an occasional walk outside. He was with her, fully, in every moment of those last six months.
Beatrice had been the one lost in spreadsheets, unable to let go of the hope that they could beat it. If she, the last person to believe, let go of that hope, if she stopped searching for a miracle cure, then Naya would die. So shecouldn’tlet the hope go.
She’d failed, of course.
Dad’s face was still animated. “And I’m not going anywhere until I talk to my ex-wife, until I explain to her that the only truth is verifiable and provable. She’s been running from reality for too long.”
Cordelia’s little face in the mirror.“You already know what’s real, Dad. That’s why you broke that mirror.”
He had the grace not to ask what mirror, but he grabbed a fistful of sand and thrust it at her. “No,thisis real.” He grabbed a small piece of driftwood and pointed at the water. “This wood is real. That ocean is real. Real is what you can see and what you can touch.”
“What about love? How do you prove that?”
Her father scowled. “I love a good pastrami sandwich, too. I don’t need to prove that.”
Beatrice touched his letter, still gripped in his other hand. “So I could rip this up? You don’t need this proof?”
“No.” The look of grief that smashed across his face wouldhave knocked her to the sand if she hadn’t already been sitting on it. He dropped the stick and clutched the paper with both hands, bringing it to his chest. “Please, no. This is mine.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Her chest ached like she’d run uphill in a snowstorm. If she died—only two miracles left—her father would be so very alone. He’d barely recovered from losing Naya.
Picking up the driftwood he’d dropped, she wrote Naya’s name in the sand, curling the Y’s tail to blend with the N.
