“Gracie? What are you doing here?”
She looked up with a small, hesitant smile. “I was waiting for you. I wanted to see if you were okay, but I didn’t want to bug you and make you even madder.”
“You’ve been sitting here this whole time?”
“Almost. Mom got on the phone with Aunt Vera a few minutes after you left, and then I snuck out. I followed you when you finally left your car. Are you angry still?”
“I’m not angry,” I said, slowly edging down the ladder on the heels of my feet, keeping my eyes on Gracie the whole time. And I wasn’t. Looking at her rosy cheeked, freckled little face peering up at me from below, all I felt was relief that she was still there, even after I’d yelled at her.
“Everyone would have found out sooner or later, Gracie. Because of you, it’s just a little sooner, that’s all.” I grinned at her as I stepped off the last rung, and she ran over to me, a mesmerizing smile lighting up every last inch of her face.
“If anyone deserves an apology right now, it’s you,” I said, pulling her in for a hug. “I’ve been so busy with worrying about the baby and about school, I haven’t been spending enough time with you. And I’m sorry about that. I miss you. You need your big sister.”
“It’s okay,” she said, wrapping her skinny little arms tightly around me. “I forgive you. I know you have to spend time on the baby now, too.” She pulled back and grinned up at me. “No, wait. I forgive you if . . . you let me pick the baby’s name!” She giggled, tugging at my sweatshirt sleeves as she twirled herself around in happy circles.
I laughed. “We have a few months to go, still, sweetie. And we don’t even know if we’re naming a boy or a girl yet. But you can start a list, and I promise to give your suggestions very serious consideration when the time comes.”
“Yes!” Her scream rang out through the quiet woods, and we both laughed again, listening as the echoes seemed to bounce along the trees surrounding us.
“Well, now that we’ve decided that,” I said, reaching out to grab her hand, “I think it’s time we go make some peanut butter chocolate chip pancakes, and then we build a pillow fort and watch movies all day long. Sound good to you?”
“Sounds very good,” she said, dragging me as she skipped toward the grassy field waiting just ahead of us. I moved my legs faster to keep up, but then she stopped so abruptly that I bumped against her, almost knocking her to the ground.
She turned to face me, her little forehead suddenly scrunched in worry.
“Mina,” she said, her voice hushed. “I just thought of something bad. What if when people find out your secret, they get mad and want to hurt you or the baby? Like they did to Jesus in the Bible, when they . . . when they put him on the cross to die?”
Her question felt like stepping under an ice-cold shower, every muscle and nerve and thought seizing up in shock. My breath stopped, and my heart stopped, too, I swear—either that or the second itself became some strange, mutilated section of time that didn’t have to follow any of the normal rules, didn’t have to pass to the next second in any kind of predictable pattern.
“That’s not going to happen, Gracie.” The words somehow found their way to my lips even if my brain hadn’t consciously delivered them there. “I’m going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”
She nodded, but I could tell that neither of us really believed what I’d said.
Because Gracie was right. When the news got out, some people would be angry.
Very angry.
But she was wrong about one thing—no one would hurt this baby. Not unless they killed me first. I would leave if I had to, run away somewhere no one would ever find me. I’d be a new person.
I’d live a new life, if that was what it would take to keep my baby safe.
• • •
After three back-to-back Disney movies, two towering stacks of syrup-drenched pancakes, a plate of brownies, and one very buttery bowl of popcorn, Gracie and I were curled up in her bed, my eyelids heavy from too much fatty food and too many corny love ballads.
“How did you know, Mina?” she asked, my eyes blinking back open. “How did you first know about the baby?”
I held my breath, trying to decide how much Gracie actually needed to be told. I was surprised it had taken her this long to ask, though I suppose seven-year-old brains processed the whys and hows of miracles differently than the rest of ours did.
“Well . . .” I started, flipping onto my side so I could see Gracie’s face. “One night while I was working at Frankie’s, I met an old lady named Iris. She was very strange, and very old, with bright white hair and a funny-looking ragged old jacket.” Gracie curled up closer against me, and I relaxed. I pretended that I was just telling her a made-up story, as if Iris was just another magical character from a fairy tale, and the words rolled easily off my tongue. “She didn’t quite seem real to me from the second she walked in that door. There was something different about her. Something special. She ordered a water with sugar and lemon,” I said, smiling to myself. “She asked me to sit with her for a little, and then she told me that I had been chosen. That the world needed me and this baby. I don’t know why, Gracie, but that’s what she said to me, and when she asked if I would do it, I said yes.”
Her golden eyebrows crinkled as she very solemnly considered everything I’d said. “But why did you say yes, Mina? If she was strange and you didn’t really know what she was saying?”
Nothing slipped past her—I sometimes didn’t give my little sister enough credit. “Honestly, Gracie, I don’t know exactly. Yes just felt like the only answer. Maybe because I was a little scared of telling her no. But I think also because I just needed to get away from there, and saying yes seemed like the easiest, fastest way out.”
She looked up at me, her blue eyes squinting as big, heavy thoughts shifted around inside of her head. And then she nodded. “I think I would have said yes, too.”
“You would have?” I asked, feeling relieved at her approval. “Why?”
“She said the world needed you,” she said simply. “You can’t say no to that.”
“No,” I said, leaning back against the pillows. “No, when you put it that way . . . I guess you can’t.”
I woke up to my alarm Monday morning feeling stiff with dread and exhaustion, though I was relieved that I’d managed to get any sleep at all. I’d spent most of Saturday night and Sunday working dutifully on schoolwork, burying my nose in textbooks and trying to ignore Gracie’s scary question, that terrifying vision of Jesus dying in agony on the cross. I had hoped that I could somehow shove it back out of my mind if I just distracted myself enough, pretended that it had never been there at all.
But I couldn’t. Now that the seed had been planted, the fear was there to stay.
I refused the plate of sunny-side up eggs and bacon that my mom held out to me when I walked into the kitchen, my stomach churning at even the idea of eating. But I did allow myself a small cup of milky vanilla coffee, a habit I’d otherwise cut after all the prenatal research I’d done. I squeezed my eyes shut and savored each sip, trying to visualize the caffeine slowly flowing through my body, working its glorious magic. Gracie was perched on the chair across from me, elaborating on her schedule for school that day in great detail, and I was trying my best to focus on what she was saying. Trying and failing, apparently.