Wonders can occur even after the last spark of hope has died ... When they were growing up, Dahlia and Sunny were more than cousins. They were best friends, bound by a shared love for making music, combining soulful lyrics with soaring melodies to create something pure, powerful, and radiant. But already a darkness was descending on Sunny that would plunge her into a nightmare of solitude and schizophrenia. Now twenty-five years have passed, and Dahlia's dream of making it in the L.A. music business ultimately rests on one song she and Sunny wrote a lifetime ago. Dahlia will do anything to get her cousin's signature on a contract, but the world Sunny inhabits is a place of madness and despair. Yet, remarkably and unexpectedly, a selfish, desperate desire will lead Dahlia somewhere she never imagined she'd go, and alter her life -- and her heart -- in the process.

Some Kind of Miracle

Chapter One

Most of the guests arrived at about four, parking their cars up and down Moorpark Street, slowly trailing in, carrying bouquets of flowers or white bakery boxes tied withstring. Dahlia looked at the clock on the mantel again, relieved that it wasalready five-thirty and there hadn't been even the tiniest incident yet. Shewas sure the success of the day was thanks to the fact that all the fingers onboth her hands were tightly crossed. For an hour and a half, she'd kept herhands in her pockets so nobody could see them, because her mother alwayslaughed when she did superstitious things like that. But this time it wasactually working.

Thanks to her crossed fingers, any outsider who happened to look in thewindow might think this was an ordinary family gathering. No Sunny locking herself in the bathroom screaming out death threats to everyone at theparty by name, no Sunny keening and wailing about how some unidentified "they" were after her. No Sunny frantically rushing around the housedestroying every breakable item in her path. Today there was just the music.

Just Dahlia and Sunny sitting at the baby grand piano singing their bestsongs, surrounded by friends and family. Everyone seemed to love the newone they'd finished writing just that morning as Sunny belted out each versein her big, husky voice. And every time she came to the chorus, Dahlia chimed in, harmonizing in her pure, childlike voice, their sound enchanting the friends and family who swayed to the music, smiling.

Most of them were gazing at Sunny, probably wondering how a pink-skinned, blue-eyed blonde like her could have been born into this olive-skinned, dark-haired family.

"Recessive genes," Uncle Max said with a shrug when anyone asked him.

"The milkman," Aunt Ruthie joked with a grin when anyone asked her. Dahlia didn't get why everyone always laughed at that.

Sunny was seventeen and curvy, and her long, wavy hair was as white asthe piano keys she stroked and pressed and cajoled until glorious tunes rosefrom them. Tunes she fashioned from her tormented psyche. And always, from the moment her graceful fingers began to play until the last song wasover, nobody who was listening ever yawned or stole a glance at the clock, wondering when she would finish. They were much too caught up in thespell of the songs, the way she delivered them and the way their melodiestransported her. But Sunny never saw their awestruck gazes, because she wasfar away in what she sometimes called the "secret garden" of her songs.

"Music isn't just something I play or write," she told Dahlia many times. "It's a place where I get to go." And it was clear when the others watched theway she threw back her head and closed her eyes as she played and sang thatshe was unquestionably elsewhere, gone into some parallel world where noneof the rest of them could travel, including the twelve-year-old Dahliasinging along, pale and dark and looking particularly frail because of theinevitable comparison to the dazzling Sunny.

Usually when the song was over and Sunny turned to discover the relatives fishing in their pockets and purses for handkerchiefs to wipe their tearyeyes, she laughed an embarrassed laugh at their emotional reaction and toldthem they were "too cute." Today while the girls were singing their original"Stay by My Side," Dahlia spotted Aunt Ruthie making an O with herthumb and fore finger and holding it up to Uncle Max to say, "So far sogood," and she was sure everyone else in the room was thinking that samethought.

Unfortunately, it was only a few minutes after the performance, whileDahlia stood at the buffet table hoping nobody noticed she was sneakingslices of corned beef from her own plate and feeding them to Arthur the dog, that the shrill cry went up from Aunt Ethel warning the others that theywere on the brink of another Sunny emergency. And Dahlia hated herselffor uncrossing her fingers so she could eat.

"Maxieeeee!" Aunt Ethel squealed, causing everyone in the room to lookup from his or her sandwich. "Naked" was the only word Dahlia's mother'ssister could get out as she dropped her paper plate on an end table andheaded for the screen door to the front porch.

All the family members left their own plates behind, rushing outside tolook west toward Coldwater Canyon, where Sunny was now sprinting awayfrom the house wearing only the red rubber band that held her white-blondhair in a ponytail. All of them lined up on the porch looking down the widestreet after her except Sunny's older brother, Louie, who could chronicle hisentire life, after the age of five, around landmark Sunny emergencies andwas no longer fazed by them. Louie stayed inside, filled his plate from thetray of sweets, and turned on the TV to watch a baseball game.

Now Sunny was halfway down the block dodging traffic, and Dahliawas relieved that the most anyone in the family could see of her was her verywhite back and her pretty white tush bouncing along as she moved downMoorpark Street, the long ponytail swaying from side to side against herwhite shoulders. Many of the astonished drivers who had just passed Sunnynow drove by the family, red-faced and tugging at their rearview mirrors toget another look.

Dahlia saw Uncle Max hurry back inside the house, letting the screendoor slam behind him. An instant later the door flew open and he bolted outonto the porch, now hanging on to the floral-print throw Aunt Ruthiealways flung over the couch when company came, in case anyone spilled foodfrom the buffet ...

Some Kind of Miracle. Copyright © by Iris Dart. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from Some Kind of Miracle by Iris Rainer Dart
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.