The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin: A Novel (16 page)

When she realized she was counting, she shook her head and forced herself to stop. Instead, she focused on the spruce pines edging the parking lot. Three trees stood in front of their van. On all three, the needles along the lower branches were brown, most likely caused by a fungus. If the branches weren’t cut all the way back to the trunk, the fungus would spread and the trees would die. Even with immediate pruning, it might be too late.

“I don’t know what got into her,” Rose said as she walked beside Lily.

Antoinette sagged in Lily’s arms, heavy as a bag of wet potting soil. Her behavior wasn’t mysterious to Lily. The girl didn’t like her.

“Let me take her,” Rose said. Her cheeks were pale, and though she tried to hide it her breathing was labored.

Lily wanted to hand Antoinette over, climb in the van, and speed back to the farm. Instead, she hoisted the girl up to get a better grip, and said, “We’re fine.”

Antoinette let her arms flop back and her head nod forward.
Someone so small should not be this hard to carry
, Lily thought.

They were at the van when a white truck turned into the lot. The sound of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 poured through the windows. Seth. Rose had called him to take over the booth after Antoinette’s meltdown.

Seeing Seth made Lily’s skin feel like it was on fire. She thought she had stuffed her feelings for him so far down that they had died, but the moment she saw him at the farmers’ market, everything came roaring back.

If Teelia was right and he was troubled . . . Lily tried to suppress her concern but couldn’t. From the day Seth’s mother showed up at their back door, holding his violin, Lily and Seth had been inseparable. She could no more turn off her feelings for him than she could turn off her need to count.

Lily had been eight years old the day Seth’s mother unexpectedly showed up at their house. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, stringing green beans, when they heard a knock on the door.

“Who could that be?” her mother said. She dropped the beans she had been holding into the bowl and went to the door.

Lily shrugged and kept stringing beans. She loved snapping the tops then zipping the string free.

Snap. Zip. Snap. Zip. It sounded like summer.

“Margaret,” her mother said. “What a surprise.”

Lily looked up. The only Margaret she knew was Seth’s mother, but that couldn’t be right. She never went outside. Lily got up from the table and went to the door. To her surprise, Seth’s mother stood on their porch.

Lily stared at her. Margaret was nothing like Lily’s mother—she was darker and a head taller. Though she shared Seth’s dark eyes and angular face, she seemed insubstantial, as if the wind might blow her away. Once, Lily saw her standing on the front porch of the Hastings’ family farmhouse. When Margaret noticed Lily, she jumped like a startled jackrabbit and hurried back inside.

Now Margaret stood in their kitchen, holding Seth’s violin case. “I can’t stay,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Would you mind if Seth stored this in your drying barn? His father taught him to play several years ago, but now . . . well, his dad wasn’t feeling so good the other night. A little woozy, I guess. Anyway, he accidentally stepped on Seth’s first violin.”

She smiled and gave a small laugh, but her lips were so tight they were colorless. “I . . . I didn’t want Seth to stop playing so I bought him this one myself.” She held out the violin she carried. “Sometimes his dad gets a little . . . clumsy. I’d hate for Seth to lose this one too.”

Lily’s mother didn’t blink. “I’ve read that plants respond to music,” she said. She wiped her hands on the blue-and-white dishcloth hanging on the stove handle. “Maybe he could play for them? It would be better than just storing it. And he’d be helping us out. The harvest was low this year, music might boost production.”

That was a lie. The harvest had been so big they had to hire high school students to help out.

A look of gratitude flashed across Margaret’s face. “If it’s no bother—”

“No trouble at all.” Lily’s mother took the violin. She paused a moment before adding, “Of course, he’d need to be over here more. He wouldn’t be home as much.”

Lily didn’t know how it was possible to look pained and relieved at the same time, but Seth’s mother did. Her shoulders relaxed and color returned to her lips, but her eyes filled with tears as she whispered, “Thank you.”

After that, Seth came to the farm every day. He played warm-up scales in the drying barn, then went out into the fields and played.

Three weeks later Lily noticed Seth had a bruise. He was running scales in the drying barn while she sat on a straw bale, looking through her Victorian flower book. She stopped at a drawing of rose acacia with soft pink flowers. It meant friendship, but so did ivy. “Acacia or ivy?” she asked Seth without looking up. “Both mean friendship.”

Seth didn’t stop playing. He was used to her calling out plant names. “I don’t know what acacia looks like,” he said as he climbed the scale.

She got up and brought the book over to him. “Here’s a picture.”

He flicked his eyes over to the book. “Pretty,” he said. “Use that one.” He played down the scale now. When he raised his arm to move the bow, his sleeve fell back. A green-and-yellow bruise encircled the top of his arm.

“What’d you do? Walk into a wall?” she asked. She put the book down and pushed his sleeve up. “It looks like a handprint.” She touched his skin, trying to fit her fingers into the four long bruises that wrapped around the top of his arm.

“It’s nothing,” he said, pulling away.

Lily was only eight, but she knew a hand-shaped bruise wasn’t
nothing
. “Was it one of the boys at school?” They teased her for counting; maybe they bothered Seth too. But even as she asked, she realized the handprint was twice as big as her hand.

“Oh, your da—” she started as understanding clicked into place. Her mother’s lie about the harvest. The fear in Margaret’s eyes.

Seth snapped open his violin case. He put the instrument away without wiping it down. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. His eyes were hard, and he held himself tall and rigid. He glared at her, as if daring her to let the tears stinging her eyes fall.

Lily didn’t say anything. She grabbed his hand and led him to the straw bale where she had been sitting. When he sat down next to her, she opened her book to the page for ivy.

Acacia was pretty, but ivy was permanent. The dark green leaves weren’t flashy, but ivy grabbed on to walls and fences and wouldn’t let go. Even if you cut it back, shoots popped up in unexpected places. It took years to root out ivy. “This one,” she said, pointing to the picture. “This is friendship. It lasts.”

LILY WAS STILL
thinking about Seth when they got back to the farm from the market. People hadn’t been as willing to report abuse back then, especially in Kentucky, where folks tended to mind their own business.

Lily knew the instability in Seth’s childhood had created his need to understand
why
life was hard. They spent hours sitting in the rafters of the drying barn, pondering God’s existence. And if he did exist, why did he let bad things happen?

They never found the answer to that question.

Would things have been different for Seth if someone had reported his father? Maybe, but “different” might not be better. Most likely, Seth would have been carted off to a foster home and who knows what would have happened there.

And despite the pain his father caused, Seth still loved him. Lily thought that was why Seth had never stopped playing the violin. It was one good thing they shared.

“Earth to Lily,” Rose said when they parked. She waved her hand in front of Lily’s face. “You’ve been lost in thought the entire drive home.”

“It’s nothing,” Lily said. “Just remembering the way things used to be.” She glanced over her shoulder at Antoinette in the back seat. “Want me to carry her in for you?” She didn’t actually want to touch Antoinette, but she wanted to talk about Seth even less. She used to tell Rose everything, but she had only been home a short while, and the bridge between them still felt tentative.

“Could you? She’s so big it’s hard for me to carry her.” Rose smiled apologetically. “I lose my breath easily nowadays.”

As Rose made her way to the back porch, Lily opened the van’s back door and reached for Antoinette. The little girl shrank away from her touch, but she didn’t resist when Lily picked her up. Lily carried her stiffly. “Don’t scratch me this time. Okay?” she said. The porch steps creaked as she climbed them.

Lily eased Antoinette onto the swing next to Rose. Antoinette leaned into her mother much like a sunflower turning toward the sun.

“Sit with us,” Rose said. She patted the seat next to her.

Lily shook her head. The urge to count had been pounding through her since they left the market. She needed to get inside before it exploded, forcing her to number the wooden slats of the porch floor or the pebbles in the gravel drive. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I need to make a phone call.”

After the words left Lily’s lips, she realized they were true. She wanted to talk to Will. She had dreamed about him last night, something vague and troubling she couldn’t quite remember. When she woke, the room seemed full of his voice.

Rose looked hurt. Lily could tell she was trying hard to mend things between them, and just like always Lily was running away. She paused before slipping inside. “Tonight,” she said. “I promise. We’ll sit on the porch and tell stories, just like we used to when we were kids.”

Rose looked up. Her face was earnest, and her blue eyes were clear. “Antoinette will love you. You’re too much alike for her not to.”

Lily pictured sitting on the swing with her niece. Antoinette would smack her hands against the armrests while Lily counted the stars. Both of them trapped. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said as she stepped inside.

She went upstairs and walked down the hall toward the guest room. Once there, Lily sat on the corner of the bed, took out her cell phone, and called Will.

He answered on the first ring, as if he had been waiting for her call.

“Will.” She closed her eyes as she said his name.

“Bored out there already?” he asked. “How is it in Sticksville?”

She sighed into the phone. “Everything feels . . . off.” She thought about the strange things that had happened since returning home. Seth’s presence. Flowers blooming at odd times. Antoinette. She was in a category all by herself. Lily ran her hand over the scratches on her arm.

“Why? Did you lose a tractor-pulling contest? Maybe I should come down and cheer you up. Adding a little Will to your life makes everything better.”

She laughed in spite of everything. “Yeah. That’s all I need.”

“If it’s that bad, come home. We miss you here. Your plants are droopy. I didn’t have anyone to talk to last night. And get this, our neighbor even asked where you were. I didn’t know Soup Can Artist could talk.”

The allure of her house was strong. After this morning with Antoinette, Lily wanted to jump in her car and drive there right away. Covington was two hours north. She could be there before dinner.

But the thought of disappointing Rose again made her stomach tighten. She traced her toe along the grooves in the hardwood floor. “Rose wants me to be Antoinette’s guardian,” she said. “I don’t think I can do it.” Shame made her whisper the words.

Will tapped his fingers against the phone. When he spoke again, his voice was steady and calm. Far from the animated Will she knew. “Lils, I’ve treated kids with special needs in the ER, and what you’ve got to remember is that they’re still just
kids
. People get all tied up believing that they’re different. That they don’t want the same things we do. But that’s not true. They want friends. A family. They want to be loved. To be accepted. Just like everyone else.”

Lily pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. A dull throbbing rose behind her eyes. “Tell me I can do it,” she said. “Tell me I’m strong enough.”

“Lils, you cleaned my incisions after surgery. You sat with me during chemo. You saw me almost completely bald. If you can do that, you can handle one small girl, even if that girl is a little different. Trust me. When have I ever been wrong?”

She laughed softly. “Do you want me to list each time?”

Will didn’t play along. “I mean when it counts. Have I ever been wrong when it comes to something like this? Something that matters?”

She paused, thinking back over the years. “No,” she admitted. “You haven’t.”

ROSE’S JOURNAL

June 2007

I’M THINKING ABOUT
Lily when the phone rings. Antoinette giggles at the shrill sound and kicks her heels against the wood floor. She sits at my feet as I clean up from dinner.

I don’t answer the phone.

There are two dishes in the sink—mine and Antoinette’s. I dunk my hands into the lukewarm water and brush the bread crumbs away. Mom would be appalled. “A growing girl needs more than a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner,” she’d say.

I shy away from the thought. Thinking about Mom and Dad makes me feel bruised inside. If I had accepted Mom’s offer to come with me when I took Antoinette to the specialist in Cincinnati, they’d be alive today.