Wunder’s father set his empty fork down again. “Someone was there?”

“The old woman,” Wunder said. “On the porch.”

“I didn’t see her,” Wunder’s father said. “That house should have been torn down years ago.”

He stood up, collected his paper plate and Wunder’s, then dumped both in the trash. “What do you say we try a different casserole?”

After dinner, Wunder’s father went to the living room and spread out his papers. Wunder sat with him, trying and failing to do his homework again, until the telephone rang.

Wunder’s father came from a big family that was spread out all over the country, and they had been calling every day since Wunder’s sister was born. His mother’s parents and her sister, Aunt Anita, lived across the state, and they had been calling every day since Wunder’s mother had asked them to leave. All of them, Wunder was sure, would want to know about the funeral.

He didn’t want to be the one to tell them about it.

He headed to his room, but thoughts of the funeral followed him anyway. He kept picturing the old woman on the porch and remembering the shadow in the window. He kept feeling the feathers of the bird and hearing the minister’s thundering words.

Behold! I tell you a miracle.

Last night, he had been so angry, angry enough to stop believing in miracles, angry enough to put away The Miraculous.

But so much had happened today that he wasn’t only angry anymore. More than anything, he was confused.

Then he opened his door, and there was the crib.

He felt only angry again.

This time, at himself. Because it was the day of his sister’s funeral and he was already thinking about miracles again.

He went to his closet and unrolled the rug enough to yank out the black-and-white leather-covered book. Then he shoved it into his backpack, which sat by his newly cleared-off desk.

Tomorrow, he was going to get rid of The Miraculous. For good.

That night, Wunder fell asleep staring at the shadows of the crib bars on the floor.

And he had a dream.

In his dream, the crib-bar shadows stretched out, longer and longer. They split and came together, crossing, weaving, interlacing—tree branches.

A darker shadow appeared, perched in the branch shadows. The shape of a bird.

Caw! the shadow bird cawed. Caw! Caw!

Wunder woke up. He didn’t recognize his room. The walls were blank. His angel statues weren’t watching over him.

And the crib-bar shadows had reached his bed. They stretched out over his whole blanket-covered body.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

But he didn’t fall back to sleep for a long, long time.

Part Two

THE STONE

Chapter 6

Wunder had been out of school since the day of his sister’s birth.

If she had been born healthy, he probably would have been back in class the next day. But on the day she was born, the doctors had told his parents that she wasn’t going to live for long. His mother hadn’t believed them, but she had wanted Wunder to be there anyway, in the hospital room, getting to know his sister.