Free Miracle by Deborah Smith Page A

“Tell me what she did with rats.”
    Sebastien described last Saturday’s events in great detail,and as he did he again felt the peacefulness that had fallen over him as he sat with the girl. He could easily recall the gentleness of her hands on his as she guided the tokens between his fingers, her head so close to his that her hair had brushed his cheek. He could hear her voice as she relaxed and it became husky, with a pleasing and sultry tone to it.
    He told himself that his fascination with her was merely vanity; when she looked at him he saw the yearning in her eyes. He told himself that he would like to indulge her yearning out of pure masculine lust.
    He talked to Tom until the boy fell asleep, glanced through the cubicle’s glass wall to the nurses’ station beyond, and when no one was looking he held the boy’s thin, unfurled hand for a moment. He left the token in it, the same token Amy Miracle had given him.
    Sebastien was the son of a woman who had prayed to the Catholic saints but had kept a keen eye tuned to the more ancient reassurance of her Celtic heritage. Mysterious forces worked in her world, swirling around people and changing their lives. He honored her memory by choosing to believe that he had given Tom a bit of Amy Miracle’s magic.

    Amy knew there was trouble when she got home from work one afternoon and Pop was wide-awake, waiting for her in the kitchen. She was tired and covered in the fine red dust of the vineyard. Laying her sweat-stained straw hat on the kitchen table, she waited nervously. Maisie stood in the corner, her back against her homemade ceramic chickens on the wall. Pop slumped at the kitchen table, one hand clenched and the other wrapped around a can of beer.
    “Charley came by,” he said slowly.
    Amy stiffened. “I guess he told you.”
    “That you’re not gonna see him anymore.”
    “Yeah. That’s right.”
    “You think you’re gonna live off me the rest of your life?”
    “No. I’ll get a job over in Athens. And I’ll find someplace to live there.”
    Pop lifted his hand from the beer, made a fist, and flattened the can with one violent smash. Foam spewed in all directions. “What the hell kind of job can you do? You only open your mouth when somebody forces you to. You’re so damned lazy—”
    “I had a paper route from the time I was eight till last year. I’ve been a baby-sitter more nights and weekends than not since I was old enough to get the jobs. I’ve found summer work ever since I turned fifteen. I do everything you tell me to do around here. That’s lazy?”
    “You think any of that counts for shit? You gonna pay your bills over in Athens with that kind of work?”
    “I’ll find jobs. I’ll work twenty hours a day if I have to.”
    “You’ll end up broke and begging me for help! I won’t be responsible for you! To hell with it! You get your ass over to Charley’s tonight and make things right!”
    Amy began to tremble. “No.”
    He leapt to his feet. Veins stood out in his neck. Maisie clasped her chest. “Do it, Amy, please!”
    Gripping the edge of a counter for support, Amy shook her head. “No.”
    Pop’s face contorted with a fury she’d never seen before, because she’d never had the nerve to back-talk him before. “You’re outta here! You’re out today!”
    “Please, Zack, don’t do this,” Maisie whimpered.
    “You promised that I’d have a year after I turned eighteen,” Amy reminded him, horrified.
    “I didn’t think you were gonna go piss-head crazy on me! What’s happened to you? Get out on your own and see how you like it! You’ve got a little money in the bank! Go live on it!”
    “You promised!”
    Pop hurried out of the kitchen, hunched in a way that said his back hurt. The cramped posture made him move with apelike menace. “Out! Out! I’ll show you!”
    Amy and Maisie ran after him. Maisie made a keening sound of fear as Zack lurched into the living room and snatched his revolver from the coffee