Finding Miracles Read Online Free

at the university. “Meredith told me later that he actually knows a lot of English. I guess he’s just really shy.”
    Oh yeah? Pablo didn’t seem to have that problem with me.
    “How did Nate’s project go?”
    “What project?”
    “Mil, the project you had to go home to help him with!”
    That’s the problem with lying. You have to remember stuff that didn’t happen so you can report on it when asked. “Oh, you know, the usual. ‘The Earth is a planet revolving around the sun.’ Hey, my dad needs to use the phone.” Dad was standing at the door, waving a hand that he’d be back. But Em had already hung up. “It’s okay, Dad, I’m done. Really.”
    Actually, Dad didn’t need to use the phone, but could he come in? “Nice place you got here.” He was looking around, like my room was for rent or something. Dad had been the one who had redone the attic just the way I wanted, putting in the seat at the dormer window and a skylight, which had not been easy to do on our old roof.
    Dad tested my book stand. “Hmm,” he worried. “I should probably bolt this thing to the wall. It could fall on you if you leaned over to get a book from the bottom shelf.” Dad demonstrated. (The stand did not fall over.) I love Dad, but he has got to have the worst worst-case-scenario imagination going. Not that you can tell just looking at him. Dad’s got these cowboy looks, tall and lanky with a strong jaw, like no problem, he can handle any outlaw possibility in the world. But he worries! My New York cousins say he’s got a Woody Allen mind trapped in a Clint Eastwood body.
    Dad was now kneeling in front of the stand, rocking it back and forth. “What I could do is reinforce . . . Nah, wouldn’t work.”
    I sat down on my bed and waited. “It’s fine, really it is.”
    “Well, anytime you need it bolted down, okay?” Dad stood and looked around for anything else he could offer to do for me.
    Mom had obviously suggested Dad try talking to me. But Dad is not a big talker that way. Oh, he can discuss wall joints and two-by-fours and whether you want paneling or drywall. I think that’s why we gravitate toward each other. We have a certain understanding that words are not always the best way to communicate about the things that matter deeply to us.
    “I guess I better be heading back to my dungeon.” Dad’s workroom was in the basement. He had trudged all the way up three flights of stairs to “talk” to me. His current project was a cherry footstool for my grandmother, Happy, whose birthday was always a big deal. This would be her seventieth, so an even Bigger Fuss would be expected.
    “Dad.” I called him back as he was turning to go. “I did want to ask you . . . about when you . . . you got me.”
    “Sure, Mil.” Dad waited.
    “This new guy in my class.” Dad nodded. So Mom had said something to him. “He and his family are refugees. Mr. Barstow explained about Latin American dictatorships disappearing people and stuff.”
    Dad shook his head the way people do when they feel bad about the state of the world. He often said he couldn’t bear the thought of how many people were living subhuman lives under oppressive regimes.
    “Is that what might have happened like . . . to my birth family?”
    Dad sat down on my bed. Suddenly, he looked so tired. “You know, honey,” he said, his voice sad and gentle, “we don’t really know.”
    “How about my papers and stuff?” Maybe there was more information in The Box they kept in their bedroom? My hands had begun their tingling. Conversations like this always set my allergies off.
    Dad was shaking his head. “I wish there were more answers for you,” he said when my face fell. “Maybe, who knows, maybe your birth family opposed the government and maybe...”
    “It’s okay, Dad,” I said. We both knew
maybe
s didn’t add up to a story I could hold on to.
    “I hate for you to lose sleep over this, sweetie.” Dad was already worrying about me.