MIRACLE JONES—IT WAS so hard to understand her, how she fit into the story. Jasper’s warning lit the fuse. A need flared inside me. I had to find her. Know her. But there was something more to it too. Some deeper connection.
I should have reached out to Zora, asked her for help. Instead, as I left the prison, I searched the internet for an address and phone number. When I found it, I didn’t call first. Despite not sleeping a minute the night before, I drove almost two hours and pulled into a neighborhood, counting the houses until I reached number twelve. It was a nice little cottage with a view of the bay between the two homes across the street.
As I stepped out of the rental, I looked around. She’d grown up in that neighborhood. Lived in that house. Jasper’s warning turned to dust. I didn’t even think about how amazing the footage I’d taken the night before would look on the screen. Instead, I felt alive with an uncanny excitement, though I couldn’t explain why.
I stepped up to the door and knocked. No one answered, so I tried again, leaning close to see if I could hear anyone inside. It was quiet, so I turned to leave. That’s when I saw the woman standing in the middle of the street, staring at me. She looked like someone’s great-aunt.
“Can I help you?” she asked, clearly suspicious.
“Oh, hi,” I said, moving closer. “My name is Theo Snyder.”
Not even a hint of recognition crossed her face. I thought that might be for the better.
“I’m looking for someone,” I continued. “Miracle … um … Jones.”
The woman squinted. “Are you from the Daily Whale?”
“What? No,” I said, having no idea that she meant the local paper. “I’m a documentarian. I made the movie The Basement.”
Her eyes brightened. “The one on Netflix?”
“Yes.”
“That was so scary. I’ve watched it three times. In fact, we acted out one of the scenes in my drama class.”
I forced a smile. “That’s great.”
“Are you making a movie about Miracle?”
I paused for only a second. “I am. Do you know her well?”
The woman approached quickly. “I’ve known her since she was a baby. My name is Virginia Harris, but you can call me Ginny. Do you want to come over? I can get you some orangeade. The stories I could tell you.”
I smiled. “That sounds delicious.”
I followed Ginny Harris inside her house. She spoke to me for an hour, telling me secondhand stories of Miracle’s childhood.
“Meg told me the story of how little Miracle learned about her abandonment,” Ginny began. “In the sixth grade, if I remember right. She had just bought those fancy new shoes she loved so much …”
As she spoke, my mind shot the footage. Another scene slapped into place on the sprawling storyboard in my head.
ACT TWO/SCENE 1
INT. GROCERY STORE—DAY
A YOUNG MIRACLE JONES stands beside her stalwart mother in the produce section. The nine-year-old girl is small for her age, and the woman speaking with her mom looks her up and down, as if the little girl’s very existence defies reality.
When she was young, Miracle loved her name. Her mom, Meg Jones, would take her to the grocery store on Coastal Highway during the off-season, after all the tourists had left. They’d run into neighbors, business owners, the guy behind the deli counter with the amazingly bushy gray eyebrows—everyone in town, really. They would all make a big fuss, talk about how big she’d gotten. How good she looked. What a smart little girl she was. And they all pronounced her name as if it belonged to a queen or a movie star.
By the age of nine, when the comments did not slow, Miracle felt the first gnawings of suspicion. On the surface, she remained that happy-go-lucky kid who smiled and spoke to every adult who passed. Her maturing mind, however, plucked certain words from the comments—big, good, smart. Something about them clung. Why shouldn’t she get bigger? Every kid did. Why would they comment on how a kid looked, right in front of her? When they said smart, they always sounded a little surprised.
Then there were the semiannual doctor’s appointments—the way her height and weight were charted with agonizing care, the questions about her appetite and her general thoughts concerning food. For a time, Miracle considered this normal. The more she played with other children, however, the more she wondered. She sensed the differences. At times she would glance over her shoulder, as if the shadows of her past were ready to pounce.
At the same time, she would not let herself believe that her parents held the answers. Miracle never noticed her mother’s furtive glances, her near-hidden grimaces. The way she swept her small daughter away from certain conversations before they moved too close. Before they homed in on the truth. Because Miracle’s infamy hung over all of them like a threat. One that her mother and father knew they had to address but couldn’t figure out how, or when.
With middle school fast approaching, she and her mom took a mother-daughter trip all the way north of the canal to the Christiana Mall. Miracle walked through the vast building with her eyes wide and her hand clutching her mother’s.
“Are those trees real?” she asked.
Her mother, Meg, laughed. “They are.”
“This is amazing!” Miracle said with every ounce of her beautiful innocence. Her sheltered naïveté.
“It is,” Meg said, smiling.
Their day could not have been more perfect. Miracle moved among the racks of clothes, in awe but restrained. Often her mother had to talk her into purchases, especially if she noticed the price tag beforehand. When they entered one of the shoe stores, though, her manners could barely slow her reaction to seeing the platform flip-flops that had been all the rage among some of her classmates over the summer.
“Oh, Mom,” she said. “I …”
“You like those,” her mother said.
“I do.”
The shoes were expensive. Meg hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Miracle said. “I don’t need them.”
Her head down, she moved away from the shoes. She didn’t pout, nor did she act the martyr. Even when she was a small child, Miracle had never seemed to ask anything of anyone. Instead, she tended to spread her smile and joy freely, without a thought toward compensation.
Meg’s hand rose, as if to stop her from walking away. Miracle turned back, the lines of her face set. Later, her mother would tell the story over and over again. How, in that moment, she thought of her daughter’s birth. Her amazing story. Strangely, it was in that instant, over a pair of shoes Miracle would outgrow in a matter of months, that Meg saw the resolve and understood how her daughter had survived.
“I’ll pay for them,” Miracle said.
“You don’t have any money.”
“Mrs. Harris asked me if I could weed her flower bed. She said her back hurt.”
Meg laughed. “Did she?”
“Yeah,” Miracle said. “I already said I’d do it. She said she’d pay me.”
“You don’t—” Meg tried to protest.
“I will,” Miracle said, her face as serious as stone.
Her first day of middle school, Miracle came down the stairs, her new clothes perfect, her shoes a treasure. She laughed and spoke quickly, filled with a nervous energy that would last until later that day. The day the mouth of a preteen preempted all her parents’ planning.
It started with a question, but Miracle didn’t ask it. No, the question came from someone else. Her name was Madison. She was probably more popular than Miracle. Miracle thought she was prettier. But none of that really mattered. In truth, she was just the first one—the student with the weakest filter, really. Or the most insecurities.
That day, Miracle stood by her locker, talking to two friends. One was Gemma. They stayed friends all the way through high school and beyond. Miracle never remembered who the other one was. It made no sense to her; she could recall so many exact details from that moment. The lockers were a vibrant blue color, both dark and bright at the same time, like the paint was still wet. The hall smelled like hand sanitizer and chocolate cake—her locker was the closest one to the cafeteria. She wore black tights and a white top and those horrible platform flip-flops that, for some reason, everyone loved. She was so excited, and sort of nervous about school. Everything felt new and scary and full of a potential that she didn’t really understand. Then Madison walked up.
Miracle could remember what Madison wore, too. Down to the exact shade of her hemp surfer’s choker. She could still hear the sound of her footsteps. Clack, clack, clack, like a horse on an old cobblestone street. The way she smelled, like that Paris Hilton perfume. And the way she smiled at Miracle. Like she had just pulled up a crab trap full of a dozen keepers.
“Hey, Gemma,” Madison said, but she stared at Miracle.
All three said hi to her.
“I like your necklace,” Miracle even added.
Madison smiled and told them where she’d gotten it. The other girl seemed to drift out of the moment. Maybe she left. Maybe Miracle just didn’t notice her again.
“I saw it there,” Gemma said.
“I like your shoes,” Madison said to Miracle.
“Thanks.”
Madison’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Miracle in “that way.” Kids love attention until the first time someone at school looks at them that way.
“You’re adopted, right?” she blurted.
Somehow, in her sudden panic, Miracle noticed Gemma’s eyes widen and took a step backward. More of a shuffle.
“Yeah,” Miracle said, the words sticking in her suddenly bone-dry mouth.
“And your mom left you in a bathroom sink.”
As if for the very first time, the Miracle Baby blinked. As she stared at Madison, frozen, the lines of the girl’s face seemed to melt away. But her eyes pierced Miracle. Violated her. She felt sick and exposed and, worst of all, unsafe for the first time in her life … that she could remember, at least.
“What?” she whispered.
That’s when Gemma pushed Madison. Right on the chest, below her throat. Miracle never forgot. In that moment, when she felt the first tremor of the quake that would pulverize her childhood, her friend stood up. Gemma actually hit another girl, which in anyone else’s story might be the absolute best moment of the sixth grade. For Miracle, it was something else. A tether that seemed to keep her present, despite the sudden darkness flooding her insides. It also would become a source of guilt. She’d never thanked Gemma for that. Because, like Gemma, Miracle acted as though it had never happened. Like it was just some horrible dream.
The instant her friend’s hands hit Madison, Miracle’s day might as well have ended. She could remember almost nothing as she haunted the halls of her school, drifting from one classroom to the next. Maybe friends asked if she was okay. Maybe rumors started to drift, slower before cell phones but no less indomitable.
One memory, however, clung from that day forward. It was a feeling like every inch of her being had become suddenly, excruciatingly alive. The thin fabric of her white top hung like chains. The thongs of her shoes, the ones she had loved so much before, threatened to sever her toes. Her eyes burned, boring into every perceived intention around her, leaving the rest of the world dull and out of focus.
Somehow, the day ended. Miracle wandered home from school, making it to her neighborhood. Without even a hitch to her step or a turn of her head, she walked past her house, continuing to the thin beach that ran along the coast of the bay that backed up to the houses across the street. Slipping out of her sandals, she let the coarse sand scratch the bottoms of her feet as she moved south.
Small docks ran out into the bay behind a few of her neighbors’ tiny yards. Soft little waves rolled up onto land, hissing against the beach. An old dinghy, white and blue paint flaking off the sunbaked sides, knocked against one of the half dozen crab traps attached to the pier. Until that moment, the sound had been as much a part of Miracle’s life as bedtime and the summer tourists. That day, it raged inside her skull. Tears came to her eyes as she hurried away, following the contour of Rehoboth Bay until the houses slipped out of sight.
At one point, the gravel gave way to stones. The stones became dark, slick rocks. Miracle picked her way among them until she was utterly alone. Then she climbed atop one that jutted out. The surface was wet and the air so briny that the salt seemed to cling to her face, burning her hot cheeks.
There she sat, solitary, staring out at the water. She paid no mind to the beautiful sunset. She didn’t hear the distant calls as gulls fought over the overturned remains of a horseshoe crab. Nor did Miracle watch the fishing boats chugging in through the inlet. Instead, she pulled her knees up and let the dampness soak through her pants, cooling her skin as Madison’s words repeated over and over again among her storming thoughts.
And your mom left you in a bathroom sink.
Miracle reached down and found a smooth stone nestled among the crags. With a shout, she sent it rocketing over the waters, as far as she could. It hit the surface, skipping once before cutting through the sparkles and sinking to the dark, silty bottom.
“That’s not right!” she cried out. Then, more quietly, “That can’t be right.”
“Hi, Miracle!”
Mrs. Harris waved from her back porch as she cut through the woman’s yard. Miracle tried to smile and wave. Mrs. Harris put her hands on the perfectly white railing and leaned forward.
“Are you okay? Your knee’s bleeding.”
She glanced down, noticing the tear in her leggings. There was blood, too. She had caught her leg on a rock while climbing down and never noticed.
“I’m good,” she said, her voice empty.
“Do you need me to call your mom?”
“No thanks, Mrs. Harris.”
The second she left her neighbor’s yard, Miracle knew the older woman would do just that. News passed quickly through their tight-knit neighborhood, especially if it involved the handful of children living there. The retirees watched any activity out their windows like it was television. So, by the time Miracle reached her driveway, Meg Jones stood in the threshold, her hip propping the storm door open.
Liar.
The word flared in Miracle’s head like an eruption. It burned so hotly from her eyes that she looked away, trying to hide it from the only mother she had ever known.
“What happened?” Mrs. Jones asked.
“I’m fine,” her daughter snapped back.
“You’re hurt. And your clothes.”
Miracle looked at herself again. Muck stained her top. Her leggings were torn. Her feet were bare. She glanced over her shoulder–casually, really–when she remembered that she’d left her favorite shoes back by the rocks.
Then Miracle stormed past her mother, into the house. “I said I’m fine.”
The next morning dawned with a deadly tease. Miracle opened her eyes to the rising sun, and for one glorious but fleeting second, the words had never been said. Her usual smile greeted the day. For a flash, her life was as it should have been. As if her past belonged to someone else.
A tick of the clock and it came back like an electric shock. Her stomach flipped, and the pain turned the skin of her face cold and wet. She sat up, swallowing down the nausea, and felt the first tickle of a new thought. One that ticked the back of her internal dialogue. Taunting her. Asking her, softly, if this was all just a bit too much. If it was worth fighting.
But Miracle was still young then. She still owned that famous resilience. Rising through the weight of it all, she pulled her thick, dark hair back into a loose ponytail. Standing in front of her mirror, she stared at the ends, which curled almost into bananas. Normally, that drove her crazy and she would straighten her hair before heading downstairs. That morning she simply closed her eyes and moved away. She spent a fraction of her normal time picking clothes for the day, settling on a T-shirt and sweats from the surf shop in Bethany Beach. Slipping on a pair of low-top white Converse, she made her way out into the hallway, pausing only at the top of the stairs, and only for a moment, before making her way to the kitchen.
The instant Miracle walked into the room, her mother seemed to react. As if she somehow knew.
“I can make you toast,” her mother said, standing with her back to the sink.
“No thanks.”
Miracle moved to the table, still not making eye contact.
“You’re not wearing your new sandals,” her mother said.
Miracle just stared at the floor, somehow fighting back the tears that threatened to sweep her into the bay. A crack formed in that moment, a fissure that would build slowly for years. “I lost them,” she blurted out.
For a second, Miracle did not lift her head. Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to blink. Refused to let them out, to let them trail down her cheeks. Then she looked at her mother. Meg stood, as she had most of Miracle’s life, with a solid purpose, like a farmer ready to seed, or more accurately, a young yet grizzled crabber preparing to check her traps. For the first time, though, Miracle noticed the sun damage. The gray hairs pushing a pale dye job up from the roots. She saw the glasses precariously clinging to the reddened end of Meg’s Roman nose.
That was the first of the changes. As she turned her eyes away again, Miracle thought about her brother. He was fifteen years older, living upstate and working as a civil engineer. Whereas Miracle was birdlike in bone structure and energy, her brother was a country boy with a slow drawl and a slower temper, the first to smile from his comfortable seat in front of the television. He had that same nose. So different from hers.
Her next thought hit like sharpened glass.
I’m not a part of them.
It was too much, at least for that moment. Without a word, she rushed out of the kitchen.
“Are you leaving?” her mother asked. “It’s early. What about breakfast?”
Before she finished, Miracle was already out the door, heading to school as if it might be better there.
Overnight, her school had transformed. The halls were darker, lonelier. The shadows deeper, more dangerous. The eyes that watched her walk the halls seemed to taunt her with the kind of crushing silence that only a middle schooler can truly understand. Every glance cut through her skin, setting her nerves on end and making Miracle want to jump out a window.
The day inched on, and it only grew worse. She felt fat, ugly, weird. Her mind convinced her that every whisper shared some piece of her past. A heartbreaking truth that left her raw and exposed. Worst of all, she had no idea what those truths might be. Not really. For though Miracle knew she was adopted, she had never asked for anything more.
As she stood alone in the hallway with her head almost tucked into her open locker, she wondered—for the first time in her life—why. Her parents had been open. She’d never felt they wouldn’t answer anything she asked. But she never had. Never wanted to. Instead, she had felt a stable contentedness. And that had been torn from her, as it had to be. For it wasn’t real. And lies can last for only so long. Though Miracle didn’t make the connection that day, she would in later years. In fact, she would spend a lot of moments, the lonely moments that speckled her daily life, contemplating the difference between resilience and denial.
The tardy bell for third period rang. She heard it. She knew she had to get to math class. But as the seconds passed, a fury built inside her. It raged harder than the Atlantic during the worst nor’easter of her life. Without realizing it, she held her breath. Her fingers gripped the edge of her locker door, then slammed it so hard that the entire row rattled. Spinning, Miracle sprinted down the hallway, away from her math class. Her hand struck the exit door by the tech closet. Pain shot up her forearms, but Miracle didn’t care. She didn’t even feel it over her anger.
Once outside, she ran. Panting, her face burning, she didn’t slow until she reached her front porch. Steps from her door, she planted her foot. One hand grabbed the support post. Struggling to catch her breath, she doubled over. Her resolve faltered. Exhaustion, and possibly fear, tempered her fury. The confrontation she so suddenly needed seemed even more dangerous. So much so that Miracle took a step back down the stairs.
That’s when the door swung open. Meg Jones stood with her back straight. Her chest out. Her eyes sharp, as if she somehow knew what the day would bring.
“Are you ready to talk?” her mother asked.
As anger often does during the crushing moments of life, Miracle’s rage vanished as quickly as it had erupted. The strength left her, slackening the muscles of her back and draining the blood from her face. Meg saw the change. She had been waiting for it, maybe since the day of Miracle’s adoption. She did not hesitate, nor did she question. She simply swooped to her daughter and held her as she cried.
Often, through the years, Miracle would think back to that day and wonder. Should the moment have been different, more like one of those movies her mother watched on the Lifetime channel? Meg could have taken her by the hand and walked her out to the park by the water. With the sun shining down on them, her story could have been told in a hushed whisper and a voice trembling with emotion. Or maybe Miracle could have rushed home from school to find her entire family waiting, sitting in a circle. Meg’s empathetic eyes taking in her daughter’s fears, her pain, just before the love in the room surrounded her in a warm embrace.
Those moments in life, the pivot points where the future is written less by choice than by circumstance, never happen like that. They are neither planned nor perfect. Instead, much as Meg did, people stumble through them, making it up as they go. As each word slips out into reality, the doubts immediately follow, flooding our best efforts, making them brittle and thin. Afterward, every second can be picked raw, but it changes nothing. The path is set. The future hits like a tsunami, washing everything away without warning.
For Miracle, there was no family meeting. In fact, there was no conversation. Instead, Meg pulled back from her daughter and nodded. Without a word, she turned and hurried into the house. Confused, fighting to catch her breath, Miracle followed. In the living room, her mother reappeared, holding a folded piece of paper in her hand. It was an old, yellowed clipping. When Meg handed it to her, it felt brittle in Miracle’s fingers.
Their eyes locked through films of unshed tears. Meg’s mouth opened. Words might have tried to push their way out. She took a step back, and the change Miracle saw in her mother was more frightening than whatever words might be on the paper. Until that moment, and to everyone who knew her, Meg Jones was unflappable. Dressed in her customary shades of brown and her trusty angler’s vest, she stood solid and firmly rooted in reality. She took in others’ pain but never showed her own. Till now.
Suddenly, she spun and hurried from the room. Shocked, Miracle watched. As the seconds ticked past, the news clipping between her fingers grew heavier. Her eyes lowered and she saw the tail end of a headline. MIRACLE BABY. Standing alone in her living room, or what she had always considered her living room, she peeled back the corners of her past. As she read, as the weight of it settled over her, she knew she would never truly be Miracle Jones again.