Fine, fine. Sorry to be snappy.

Well, okay, let’s start with Ted. For me that’s where it starts and stops, anyhow.

First, you need to understand the big difference between Ms. Grimmel and Ted was the type of sickness they had. Barbara most likely had pneumonia, or a bad case of bronchitis, which at her age, true, could have been a death sentence. With my husband, it was different.

He had cancer. In the intestines. Sarcoma.

We’d given up hope, honestly. The doctors gave him no chance at all, but Ted did the treatments anyway, even though all it did was make him sick and bald. Insult to injury, he liked to say. Well, he said it, whether he liked it is something I strongly doubt.

By then, of course, we all knew what happened with Barbara and the cat, Marmalade. We knew what the cat had done, or thought we knew. God, we all thought we were so damn smart. Me included. Unlike the others, however, I actually asked Barbara’s permission. You know, to borrow the cat. To see if there was another miracle hiding behind those bright green eyes.

Barbara said yes, of course, and it was settled.

So, the next day I went and fetched Marmalade. Coaxed her out from the crawlspace beneath the house with treats, scooped her up and carried her home to Ted, who was bedridden by this time.

Good Lord, when my husband saw what I’d brought him, there was this… I don’t know … spark of hope in his eyes. I hadn’t seen any hope coming from him in a long time. Thought it had all been burned up, driven away, lost forever. I was exhilarated … but I was also scared. What if it didn’t work? What if what happened to Barbara wasn’t a miracle at all?

What if it was something else?

What if it was just desperation? A last prayer from people who needed to believe in something. Who needed a miracle in their lives.

Barbara had sure needed one. Heck, ask Dr. Ford, he’ll tell you what happened, and you can believe every word of it because I saw it with my own two eyes. That woman was at death’s door, no doubt about it. She didn’t need a doctor; she needed that miracle I was talking about. That last prayer.

There’s a reason they call it a Hail Mary, am I right?

And I guess, if I’m being honest, me and Ted? We needed a miracle, as well.

But first, we needed to have faith.

OLIVER SHEPARD, NEIGHBOR

Look, nobody knows where the cat actually came from. My understanding and based on the pictures I’ve seen (which are staggered all over Ms. G’s house—like, everywhere—in wall-mounted frames, tacked to corkboards, behind fridge magnets, and pasted neatly into photo albums) is that the cat was nothing special. In fact, it was a bit on the mangy side. It was orange and fluffy, sure, but in some places the hair was matted and dirty since it spent a lot of time outside rolling in mud and leaves; staying cool under the porch on hot days, I guess. And one of its legs was messed up, like it’d been hit by a rock or something? Sure, it was fast as any cat when chasing something, or being chased, but when it was just walking around it gimped a little, moved with a little hitch. Regardless, Marmalade—this not-so-smart, not-so-attractive cat—had apparently been living with Ms. Grimmel for years. Everyone says the same thing: They don’t recall when they first noticed it, but at the same time, no one remembers Ms. Grimmel not having the cat around. You’d have to assume she had it since it was a kitten, right? It’s not like it just appeared from outer space or something. Look, what I’m saying … it wasn’t special, okay? It didn’t drift down from heaven on a golden cloud. On the surface, it was just another neighborhood cat, one that clawed at furniture, rubbed on your leg, meowed at bugs and shat in a box.

But after what it did to Ms. Grimmel, and then Mr. Kolchek? Well, that cat became popular as the pope around here.

After Mr. Kolchek, folks began to leave gifts for Ms. Grimmel all the time. They’d even drop off canned food, quarts of milk, and toys for Marmalade. Some days I’d go by there and see women having tea on the old lady’s porch who’d never given Ms. Grimmel the time of day before. Mr. Benson mowed her lawn every other Saturday, and when her plumbing went bad, Mr. Singer, from one street over? He spent two days running new pipe to the street sewer line, not to mention what he must have taken care of inside the house itself.

They say he didn’t charge her a penny.

Ironically, it was Mr. Singer who led the others, at the end. You could say he had a change of heart, I guess. That’s why you’re asking me about it, right?

Because I saw what happened with the little girl.

And, you know, what happened after.

…

Yeah, okay. As I’m sure you already know, Mr. Singer and my father were two of the men who did all that to the Petersons. I tried to stop him—tried to stop all of them—but there was nothing I could do. I stayed with him the whole time though, right until the end. I suppose you could say my father was one of the first ones to go mad.

Yeah, I guess you could say that.

DR. RANDY FORD, BARBARA GRIMMEL’S PHYSICIAN

I’m not sure what I can tell you that you can’t find out from the neighbors over there. I…

…

No, I haven’t been back since Ms. Grimmel passed away last year. I’ve no interest in seeing any of those people again. Not ever.

…

The night Ms. Grimmel was cured? Ha! You’ve fallen right in line, I see. This for a tabloid? Gossip pages?

…

A book, huh? I can’t see what kind of… Well, look, I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll tell you the facts of what happened. I won’t get into the… drama that followed. I want no part of it, thanks very much. And I suppose, since Barbara has passed, there’s no reason not to tell you. I doubt she’d care anyway; she told the damn story enough times to whoever would listen.

That ended up being a mistake, didn’t it? If only she’d ….

…

I’m not speculating, damn it. Do you want to hear it or not?

…

Alright, then here’s what I know.

I received a call from Ms. Grimmel early in the morning. I’d given her my personal cell phone number mainly because, in addition to having been my patient for many years—decades, actually—she was also elderly and lived alone. I’d known her husband, Meyer, and the last time I saw him he told me to watch out for her. A few months after that conversation he was dead from heart failure, something we all knew was coming. So, sure, you could say I had a personal investment in Barbara. And when she called me that day, so early in the morning—something she’d never done before—I knew it meant trouble.

I arrived at her home within the hour to find her in bed, unable to get up. Her breathing was wet and shallow. I listened to her lungs, which were full of fluid. She was pale and I don’t think she’d been eating.

“Barbara,” I told her, “I’m going to call an ambulance. We need to get you to a hospital right away.”

But she refused. She had a thing about hospitals, you see, a deep-rooted fear of them. Not that it was going to stop me, of course. The woman was dying. She needed to be on a respirator, she needed intravenous fluids. She needed, in short, a lot more than I could give her with my bag of meager tools and pills and bandages.

I went to the front porch and made my call and was assured an ambulance would be arriving within minutes. Meanwhile, I noticed a few of the neighbors were on their own porches or standing in their front yards, watching me. As if they knew something was happening. I don’t doubt Barbara had been sick for some time and neglected to tell me, and maybe some of them knew how bad it was. Perhaps one of them even convinced her to get me on the phone, finally. I don’t know.

Regardless, I waved absently to a stoic-looking woman watching from across the street, then went back inside.

Which was the first time, that I remember anyway, seeing the cat.

I only noticed her because I nearly tripped over the damn thing going back into Barbara’s bedroom. It meowed and scurried away, hid beneath the bed, and I forgot about it. I went over to the bed and spoke to my patient.

“Barbara, I know you don’t like hospitals,” I said, “but if you don’t go—and go today—you will get much, much worse.”