“Her?”
“It’s a girl. I know it is! Will doesn’t believe me, but I’m sure of it.”
“There are some things a mother just knows.” Myrtle nodded. She sank back in her chair. “A spring baby, how perfect. Born just as the leaves start to turn green and the first flowers are poking up through the snow.”
Myrtle stirred sugar into her tea. I took a bite of pound cake so sweet it made my teeth ache.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I asked. Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward in her chair. “When we were at the hotel in Brandenburg, I went out to the springs one afternoon on my own. I made a wish.”
Myrtle set down her spoon. “A wish?”
I forced out a little laugh. “I know, it’s silly, isn’t it? But I did. I wished for a child.”
Myrtle made a little sound, as if to speak, but no words came.
“I felt so foolish. But now… now I wonder. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, right?”
Myrtle said nothing. She just sat there, frozen, as if she were unable to move. All the color had gone from her face. She was like a wax figure.
I picked at my dense, buttery cake.
I remembered Myrtle telling me about her trip to the springs with Felix. And what she’d said after:The water gives miracles, yes, but I think it takes, too.
At last, Myrtle smiled at me, said, “March fifth. That seems far off now, but it’ll be here in no time. Think of the baby clothes we can sew! Little dresses and nightgowns. I’ll crochet a blanket for her.” She picked up her teacup, and I saw her hand was trembling.
chaptereleven
June 18, 2019
Ifilled a travel mug with coffee and set out for the airport in my sister’s yellow Mustang. The driver’s seat held the indentation of her small, muscular frame. An empty Diet Coke bottle rolled around on the passenger side floor. A hair scrunchie was wrapped around the gearshift. Swimming goggles were hung over the rearview mirror. The car even smelled like Lexie: warm and floral, with a sharp tang of the tea tree oil soap she used. Sitting in the driver’s seat, I missed my sister so fiercely that the longing for her became a physical pain, a throbbing I felt in my whole body.
I remembered watching her swim out from the beach at Lake Wil-more, standing on the shore as she got farther and farther away until she was just a tiny dot. Then she’d turn around, swim back, and once she was out of the water, I’d hug her tightly. “Good swim,” I’d say like I was proud, when actually I’d just been terrified she wouldn’t come back.
I pulled the scrunchie off the gear shift. A piece of her blond hair was tangled up in it.
I had wasted a year barely talking to her, and now she was gone forever. I’d never get that time back. I’d never get the chance to tell her how sorry I was, that I’d made a terrible mistake.
Maybe moving so far away had been a mistake, too. After high school, all I could think of was how I didn’t want to get trapped byLexie. It was too easy to get caught up in her chaos, to come running every time she had a crisis, to jump in and try to fix her messes for her. I only applied to colleges on the West Coast, telling everyone I wanted a change of scenery. I’m sure Lexie knew the truth. She knew me better than I knew myself.
I sank back in the leather bucket seat and sobbed. I screamed and pounded the steering wheel, hating myself, hating life for being so fucked up and unfair, hating my sister for finally leaving me for good. When I was emptied out, my chest hollow, my body drained, my eyes swollen, I turned on the ignition. Music blasted out from the oldies station. I shut it off, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and pulled out of the driveway and through the tiny center of Brandenburg, passing the Blue Heron Bakery, the general store, and the post office. I drove by the turnoff for Meadow Road that led out to Lake Wilmore. I crossed the train tracks where Lexie and I used to place pennies, letting the old freight cars crush them, turning them into flattened bits of copper that we pretended were gold.
There was no GPS in the car, and no maps, but I knew the way. It all came back easily. My sister’s car purred along, handling so much better than the crappy old Honda I was used to driving, as I followed the two-lane roads and passed farms, cows, houses set back from the road with peeling paint and angry-looking dogs in the yard. I opened the sunroof and the air smelled green and alive; fresh-cut grass and warm leaves reaching up to touch the sun.
I turned the radio back on and cranked the volume, listening to the music I always teased my sister for loving: Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino.
I drove the back roads until I came to a Sunoco gas station just before the highway on-ramp. I stopped to fill up the tank—Lexie was famous for running on fumes and rarely kept more than a quarter-tank of gas—then shifted to fifth gear and cruised along Interstate 93. In myperipheral vision, I was sure I caught a glimpse of her in the passenger seat.Why don’t you open her up and see what she can really do?
The speedometer hit eighty-seven before I stopped myself, tapping the brakes. I felt my sister rolling her eyes beside me.
“Shut up,” I said out loud.
Great. Now I was talking to ghosts.
On the radio, a song I didn’t recognize came on, the artist cheerily promising, “Like a rubber ball, I’ll come bouncing back to you.”
I took the exit for the airport and followed the signs to arrivals. Immediately recognizable by his Greek fisherman’s cap and gaudy Hawaiian shirt, my father was standing outside the terminal waiting for me, a small duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
I pulled up and got out of the car.
