A Stroke Of Magic Read online

  Because it was all too likely it was a maternity shirt, and no way in hell was I going to hand it to my mother, I set the box down beside me. “I’ll try it on later and model it.”

  We finished with gifts. My brothers and my sister had banded their resources together to buy me some new art supplies—always a welcome choice. Using my foot, I pushed the box from my grandmother farther back, so that it sat beneath the frame of my chair, then grabbed a folded blanket and shoved it over the top.

  That moment earlier, when I’d almost confessed all? I’d had second thoughts. Better to wait and do it slowly. Like, maybe tell them from the hospital when I was in labor. My stomach twisted and a wave of nausea had me clamping my mouth shut.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, jumping up and running to the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub, willing my stomach to settle. I hated this, the loss of control. My body did what it wanted to do, when it wanted to do it, and that freaked me out.

  Hushed voices drifted in—my grandmother’s and my sister’s voices, to be precise, and they must have been right outside the bathroom door. Maybe it was rude to listen, but it’s not my fault they chose that particular spot to chat. So yeah, I eavesdropped.

  “Have you told her yet?” asked Grandma Verda.

  “No. Miranda said to wait. That I’d know when the time was right.” This came from my sister.

  “Elizabeth! She needs to know. It’s been almost a month since you gave it to her. You know how unpredictable it can be. How much longer are you going to wait?”

  “Shh. She’ll hear you. I’ll tell her, but not yet. Miranda said she’d come to me.”

  My mind worked through what I’d heard, but it was like trying to decipher Russian. Gave me what? And who was Miranda? I started to stand, but a soft knock on the door stopped me. “Yes?”

  “Alice? It’s me, Elizabeth. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. You can come in.”

  She entered and closed the door behind her. Kneeling in front of me, she grasped my hand. Like me, she had our mother’s brown hair and eyes. But she had been blessed with the curvier body, and was about two inches shorter than my five feet eight inches.

  “Shouldn’t the morning sickness be over with by now? I thought once you hit your second trimester you’d be feeling better,” she said.

  “That’s what all the books say. My doctor says it’s different for everyone. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” She hesitated a beat. “You’re going to need to tell everyone soon. You can’t keep it quiet that much longer. Grandma already knows.”

  “I sort of figured that one out. Did you tell her?”

  “Nope, not me. But she’s known almost since the beginning, I think. She was making baby booties a few weeks ago.”

  Baby booties? Great. Grandma Verda was not normally the stay-at-home-and-knit sort of gal. If everything earlier hadn’t been enough to seal the deal, that was. Really, I was lucky she hadn’t told my mother yet. “I heard you guys talking. Who’s Miranda?”

  Elizabeth’s cheeks paled. “You must have misunderstood. We were just wondering if you were okay or not.”

  “I distinctly heard the name Miranda. ‘Fess up, sis.”

  “That’s just someone Grandma wants to introduce you to.”

  I stared at her. That wasn’t what I’d heard, was it? No. But prying secrets out of my sister before she was ready to tell was an impossible feat. “I don’t believe you, but it doesn’t matter. I should get back out there.”

  She left and I splashed cold water on my cheeks. I kind of wished I’d made my birthday wish earlier, when I had blown out the candles on my cake. Nothing crazy. Just a simple one. I whispered it now: “I wish everyone would go home.”

  A warm shiver slipped across my skin, followed by the sensation of butterfly wings flapping around in my belly. Then came tingling, as if someone were running her fingers ever so lightly up my spine, that made me shiver again.

  Whoa. Okay, that was more than a little strange. I sat back down and waited to feel it again. Nothing. No more butterfly wings. Goose bumps appeared on my arms, though, even under the heavy weight of my sweater, and I tried to rub them away. I’d read enough books to realize I’d just felt my baby move, and instead of the happiness most women probably experienced at that moment, I was flat-out terrified.

  For the first time since the little line had turned pink, I truly understood that another person lived inside of me. I didn’t have a husband, or even a boyfriend, to lean on. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know how to be a parent, or how to do all the things I was going to need to do. Right then, in a millisecond, my world shifted again. I ignored the tears weighting my eyes. I ignored the shivers that refused to stop.

  Somehow, I needed to find control. And with that control, maybe I wouldn’t be so freaking afraid of what was going to happen. I forced myself to breathe slowly, and, bit by bit, the fear receded and my shivers abated.

  I stared at the door. I didn’t want to walk through it. Yet again, I wished everyone would leave and go home. My family meant well, and I loved them, but I needed some space. I wanted to curl up on my couch with a blanket and close my eyes. I wanted to pretend that my life wasn’t on the wickedest, tallest, topsy-turviest roller coaster ever invented.

  Because I had zero choice, I pulled myself upright and returned to the oh-so-fun birthday celebration. Elizabeth and our mother were cleaning up the food and dishes, my brothers were taking down the streamers and balloons, and my father was straightening the living room. My grandmother and Vinny were standing by the front door. When Grandma Verda saw me, she beckoned me over.

  “We’re going to take off. Vinny’s tired,” Grandma said, patting her beau’s arm as she did. The older man smiled but didn’t say anything.

  I gave her a kiss on her soft cheek. “It was nice to see you.”

  “We’ll get together soon. You, me, and Elizabeth.” Another sharp-eyed stare. “We need to talk. When you’re feeling better.”

  She didn’t say anything about her present, or the pregnancy, and I was grateful for it. It didn’t matter that she knew. I wasn’t ready to confront her.

  Once they drove off, I went to help my mother and sister with cleanup duty, but they were already done. As were my brothers and father, with their tasks. In fact, less than fifteen minutes later, after more kisses and hugs, I was completely alone.

  Wow. My family had never before fled so quickly from anyplace, especially not all at once. This was one wish I appreciated coming true.

  With my soft, fuzzy blue blanket and a big fluffy pillow, I curled up on the sofa. Closing my eyes, I pushed everything else away. Sleep was my savior. When I slept, no worries, no sickening fear of how I was going to manage, no remembrances of the man I’d thought I loved revealing himself to be a complete jerk, intruded. It was just me, warmth, peace, and bliss.

  I’d barely closed my eyes when I caught a whiff of something. Flowers? Being prone to allergies, I didn’t tend to keep flowers around, so I was probably imagining things. But then the scent grew stronger and tickled my nose. A tingling, almost prickly sensation crept from my head to my toes, as if my body were telling me to pay attention. But to what?

  I opened my eyes. A pale light shimmered in the middle of the room. Tightening my hold on my blanket, I sat upright. The light grew brighter and colors bled into it; a soft rainbow shimmied and danced all around. And just as in my dream, excitement ran through me. This wasn’t scary, not one little bit.

  Entranced, I watched and waited. In my dreams, she stepped right out from the center of the light and walked toward me. Anticipation had me scooting to the edge of the couch, my eyes never leaving the light. A warm breeze, filled with the scent of flowers, touched my cheek. And then, suddenly, there she was. She had long, billowy chestnut hair, dark brown eyes, and she wore a dress that seemed to capture the colors that swirled around her.

  She smiled, and the light grew even brighter, but I could
still see her clearly. Rationally, I knew I should be afraid. What was happening in front of me should have had me running from the room screaming. Instead, I felt weirdly at ease—comfortable, even.

  “Hello, Alice. I’ve waited such a long time for this.” Her voice skimmed over me, through me, and the sound of it was as joyful as ringing bells.

  “Are you an angel?” I asked.

  Another laugh. “Not hardly. I am your great-great-great-grandmother. We need to talk about something vitally important.”

  My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  “I won’t be able to stay long. Listen carefully, and take my words to heart. Your daughter is special. She’ll need to be raised in a home of pure love, and she’ll need the guidance of one particular man. Your soul mate. It is of the utmost necessity that you find him before she is born, so you can secure her future. Your future.”

  I tried to process everything she said, tried to make sense of her message, but at that moment, I couldn’t. “Who are you? How do you know these things?”

  “I already told you. I am Miranda, your great-great-great-grandmother. Your sister and Verda have the answers. Talk to them, but don’t forget what I said, Alice. You need to find your soul mate—there’s no time to waste!”

  Then, as if someone had pulled the plug, she, the scent of flowers, the breeze and the colors disappeared, gone as quickly as they’d appeared. I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them again. Yep, everything seemed to be pretty much back to normal, as if I’d imagined the entire episode. Except for one tiny thing. My heart thumped, my breathing came fast and uneven, and goose bumps coated my skin. A rose petal floated in the air directly in front of me, as if held up by an invisible hand, and slowly weaved its way to the floor. When it landed, I leaned over, picked it up, and then stroked my finger along it, feeling its velvety smoothness, proving to myself it was real.

  My baby moved again, another flutter of butterfly wings. As if she were equally entranced by what had just happened. Something so odd. So mystical. Awe-inspiring, even. And she’d called herself Miranda.

  I trembled as I mentally replayed the whole scene. Soul mate? My daughter?

  I had questions. Tons of them. And I knew who to get the answers from. My sister and my grandmother had a heck of a lot of explaining to do. It appeared Grandma Verda was right—we would be talking soon.

  Tonight, if I had any say in it.

  Chapter Four

  “Elizabeth, it’s Alice again. You need to call me back ASAP. No matter what time it is,” I said into the phone. This was the third message I’d left for my sister in the past several hours, and honestly, annoyed didn’t begin to express my feelings. “It’s about Miranda, who appears to be a ghost, and who said you and Grandma were the people to talk to. Call me back.”

  Not knowing what else to add, I hung up the phone and returned to my prior position of staring at it. As if by sheer force of will I could make it ring. It so wasn’t happening. I’d even tried wishing she’d call me back, but no dice. If wishes were real, why were mine so fickle?

  Tiredness seeped in and I yawned, but I didn’t allow myself to give in to exhaustion. As much as I wanted to sleep, I needed to be awake and alert when my sister finally phoned. But I needed to do something. Sitting around doing nothing made the entire situation worse.

  Grabbing the remote, I flipped on the TV and channel surfed for a minute. When nothing caught my interest, I shut it back off. I hadn’t called my grandmother yet. I thought about doing so now, even though I’d wanted to talk to Elizabeth first, but one glance at the clock changed my mind. While my grandmother often stayed up late, Vinny was always in bed early. He’d had a heart attack not that long ago, and I didn’t want to disturb him. But, dear God, I wanted answers.

  Now that several hours had passed, I’d begun to doubt what I’d seen. What I’d experienced. Maybe I had fallen asleep and dreamed the entire episode. But then, just like before, I saw the rose petal now sitting on my coffee table. I picked it up again, holding it between my thumb and index finger. How could it feel so normal? You’d think something appearing out of thin air—on the heels of a ghostly woman—would somehow feel different. But it just didn’t.

  It bothered me, and not just because of how it had appeared, but because in the several hours since it had showed up, it hadn’t changed. Fresh and soft, supple even, as if it had been plucked from a rose mere seconds earlier and wasn’t several hours old. All things being normal, it should have been drying out by now, the edges curling up, the texture becoming brittle. But it wasn’t. Not that any of this was normal, but this one little detail bugged the hell out of me.

  I sat on the couch, tucking my legs underneath me, resting my head on the cushion, not really lying down but not fully sitting up, either. My finger and thumb still pinched the petal, so I dropped it into the palm of my other hand. Deep red against the pale white of my skin, it stood out, and as I watched, it seemed to lose shape until it was no longer the petal from a rose. It pooled in my palm, warm and liquid, then spread, easing into the creases between my fingers, slipping through to drip onto my denim-covered legs in a plop. Then another. Like the soft sound of a slow rain against a window.

  Plop. Plop. Plop.

  The color changed from red to dark purple as it oozed into my jeans, merging with the blue fabric. This, whatever this was, felt familiar. Anger came first, then sadness, and together, they became an empty, clawing pit of emotion that I’d never before experienced yet somehow recognized. I closed my hand into a fist, the warm stickiness of the melted petal against my skin.

  Pain came, sudden and swift, down the center of my palm. Opening my hand, I saw a cut from the bottom of my thumb that stretched diagonally across, meeting my little finger. Not deep. Not jagged. But enough of an injury to explain blood. My arms trembled and my stomach sloshed.

  I tried to swallow the sickness away, to no avail. Again, I noticed the stickiness on my palm, and a tremor of fear skittered in. What was happening? Why was it happening? My brain shifted through all of the various possibilities, trying to piece it together, trying to make sense of it all. The room dipped and twirled around me; the walls elongated and stretched, morphing themselves into another shape, another place. Oh, God. Another time. Don’t ask me how I knew this, because I can’t say. I just knew.

  With a sudden yank, it was as if I separated from myself, as if two parts of a whole were split down the middle and pulled apart. One and the same, but not. I floated upward, and weirdly it seemed I was in two places at once: hovering in an unknown space, and also sitting below me, directly within my view.

  The pain in my hand disappeared, and when I looked, the injury was gone. I wanted to believe this was the dream. This wasn’t happening. But it was too real, and it was happening, to me and to the woman below me, who sat on the ground, in a tentlike shelter, with just enough light to see her clearly.

  In the space of two heartbeats, I knew she wasn’t me. “Miranda,” I whispered. Her hands, which had been slowly rubbing her rounded belly, stilled, as if she’d heard my voice. “Miranda?” I said again. “Can you hear me?”

  Long dark hair hung loose, flowing around her face like water. She tipped her head up, gaze searching, shoulders shaking. Lightning flashed bright and hot in her eyes as they explored the small space. “Mama? Is that you? You can’t stop me. He deserves to be cursed, for all he did, for all his lies. For my pain. For my baby.”

  She shook her head as if refocusing, slanting her gaze downward. In front of her were several objects lying in an uneven row on the bare ground. She picked up the object on the end—a knife—opened her hand, and lightly cut the skin from thumb to pinky, like I’d just seen on my own hand. Really it wasn’t more than a deep scratch, but the blood bubbled out and the pain returned once again and I curled my hand into a fist.

  “No,” I said. “Stop.”

  This time she didn’t hesitate, didn’t turn her head to search the shadows. She held her bleeding hand
over a bowl. Plop. Plop. Plop. It dripped slowly, not in a gush, into the bowl, and as it did, her lips moved silently. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew to the depths of my soul what she was doing. And why she was doing it. Power hung in the air, as heavy and forceful as an oncoming storm, and I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to tell her not to curse the man who’d hurt her, the father of her unborn child who hadn’t lived up to his promises, like Troy hadn’t. It wasn’t worth it, even if I understood the agony she felt. But when I opened my mouth, nothing issued forth. I’d been silenced; I no longer had a voice.

  With a shaking hand, the one she hadn’t cut, she picked up a hairbrush and pulled strands of hair from it. Holding them over the bowl, her body swayed and her lips moved. Light and color swirled around her, and I knew—just knew—that the second she dropped the hair into the bowl, the die would be cast. And that it would be a mistake of such magnitude, it could never be corrected.

  I screamed soundlessly for her to stop. The power grew stronger, rushing through the little tent like fabled giants crushing people beneath their feet. I closed my eyes. I didn’t know why I was being shown this, but I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to see any more.

  My baby moved, as if to say Hey, Mom, what do you think you’re doing? Not the flutter of nearly weightless butterfly wings, but a solid kick with way more pressure behind it than was even possible at this stage. I laughed at the surprise of it, at the strength of it, and as I did, the power in the room evaporated.

  Oh-so-slowly, I peeked through half-opened eyes. Miranda still sat there, her body tight, frozen. Her mouth hung open, her complexion drained of color, and a whipcord of tension emanated off of her. One hand remained clenched over the bowl; the other rested on her stomach. I waited…watched…compelled by the unknown to somehow comprehend. And with a slow, deliberate movement, she pulled her arm back and dropped the hair—not into the bowl, but to the ground.

  A breath of relief slipped out and I began to relax. Miranda tipped her head to the side, waiting for something. A sign, perhaps. I continued to watch, sure there was more I was meant to see. More I was meant to experience. She dumped a jug, spilling water onto her hands, washing them briskly, as if she couldn’t clean them fast enough. At that moment, my baby—her baby?—kicked again, even more forcefully than before. She gasped, cradled her arms around her stomach. Tears rolled down her cheeks, fast and furious, in a flood of emotion.