“I guess,” Wunder said, although so far Faye’s family was the only one he had seen there. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to pray.”

“I’m not here to make you pray, Wundie,” Faye said.

Now that they were there, Wunder felt like he wanted to leave. The feeling of loneliness, of separateness he’d felt yesterday came over him again. All around were hundreds of monuments marking hundreds of dead bodies, each one sealed off, each one alone. It was terrible, almost too terrible to stand.

“We’re surrounded by dead people,” Faye said, almost as if she could read his mind. She pulled the hood of her cloak up.

“We are,” he said.

“What’s even stranger to think about,” she said, “what I thought about when I saw you at the funeral, is that almost everyone buried here has a family living in this town. Branch Hill is filled with families of the dead.”

Wunder nodded, remembering. He remembered what he’d thought yesterday—that each grave was its own sad, lonely story. If each of those stories belonged to a family in Branch Hill, then his town must have hundreds of people like him and Faye, hundreds who didn’t get their miracles.

Which was further proof, Wunder thought, that miracles didn’t exist.

They were near the base of the hill now. This was where he had dropped The Miraculous yesterday.

But it was nowhere in sight.

He was turning in a slow circle, searching for it, when Faye interrupted him.

“What’s up there?” She was pointing to the treeless Branch Hill. Her cloak caught the wind, making her look like some great bird. “A grave? That wasn’t there the other day.”

At the top of the hill, there was a shining spot, a glimmer that Wunder hadn’t seen before.

“It can’t be a grave,” he told her. “There aren’t any graves up there.”

Faye didn’t respond. She was already heading up the hill. Wunder followed her, trying not to think about his lost book, trying not to feel such a terrible weight in his stomach as he realized that it was gone, really gone.

They climbed the hill, Wunder gaining on Faye and her slow gait. As they neared the top, Wunder saw that the glimmer came from a stone, like a gravestone, with silver writing on it and carvings of flowers in the corners.

“It’s that verse!” Faye had reached the stone. “‘Behold! I tell you a miracle,’” she read aloud. “‘We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. Let us, then, change together. With great love, Milagros.’”

Wunder was right behind Faye, but now he stopped. He gaped at her. Then he gaped down at the stone.

The sun shone on it, like a spotlight, and the letters seemed to glow white-hot. The words were right there for him to see.

“Wundie. What’s wrong?”

Faye had come over to him. She held on to his arm and peered into his eyes. Her bangs were pinned back.