Life Expectancy

was meant to be. I was destined for baking, not for the big top. If their blood does not run in my veins, their enduring love does, for they have all my life given me transfusions of it.
        Other possibilities-that Natalie might have lived, that even if she had died, I might have been raised by Konrad-did not bear contemplation.
        Besides, those other possible lives all fall in the category of never-could-have-been. Think about it. Grandpa Josef-not my true grandfather-made predictions not about his real grandson, who was stillborn that night, but about me, the infant that Rudy and Maddy would incorrectly believe was their own. Why would he have psychic visions of events in the life of a "grandson" to whom he wasn't in fact related?
        I can only believe that some higher power, aware of the quirk of fate that was about to occur, used my grandfather not solely or perhaps not even primarily to warn me of five terrible days in my life, but also, and more important, to ensure that Rudy would believe with all of his heart that this infant with fused toes, who would grow up to have no resemblance to his parents, was the child that Maddy had carried for nine months. Grandpa Josef told Rudy that I would be born at 10:46 p.m." measure twenty inches in length, weigh eight pounds ten ounces, and have fused digits. By the time I was handed to him, wrapped in a delivery-room blanket, Dad already knew me and accepted me as the son that fulfilled his father's deathbed predictions.
        Some guardian angel didn't want me to wind up in an orphanage or to be adopted into another family. He wanted me to take the place of Jimmy Tock, who had died on the way into the world.
        Why?
        Maybe God thought the world was short one good pastry chef.
        Maybe He thought Rudy and Maddy deserved a child to raise with the love, the sweetness, and the selflessness that they lavished upon me.
        The only full and true answer lies in mysteries so deep that I will never plumb them-unless they're revealed to me after my own death.
        One thing I said is wrong. Jimmy Tock did not die on his way into the world: a nameless infant perished. I am the only Jimmy Tock, the only one who was meant to be, son of Rudy and Maddy regardless of the loins I sprang from. I was destined for pastries and for Lorrie Lynn Hicks and for Annie-Lucy-Andy, destined for more that I do not yet know, and every day of my life I fulfill the plan even if I cannot comprehend it.
        I am profoundly grateful. And humble. And sometimes afraid.
        In 1779, a poet named William Cowper wrote: God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
        Way to go, Bill.
        From behind his slow crooked grin and his squint of amused suspicion, Punchinello said, "Tell me about it."
        "We've brought along someone who might be more convincing," Lorrie said.
        I went to the door, opened it, leaned into the corridor, and asked Charlene Coleman, the earthly instrument of my guardian angel, to join us at the table.
        Sharl ene Coleman, maternity ward nurse on the knight that I was born and still on the job at fifty-nine, has not entirely lost her Mississippi accent after all these years in Colorado. She's as sweet-faced now as she was then, and certainly as black.
        She has gained some weight, which she attributes to years of free pastries from my father. But as she says, if you want to get to Heaven, you've first got to get through life, and you need some padding for all the hard knocks along the way.
        Few women have more presence than Charlene. She is awesomely competent without being smug. She is determined without being bossy, morally certain without being judgmental. She likes herself but is not full of herself.
        At the table, Charlene sat between me and Lorrie, directly across from Punchinello.
        She said to him, "You were a red-faced, pinch-faced, fussy little bun die, but you turned out the kind of handsome that breaks hearts without trying."
        To my surprise, a blush brought color to his prison pallor.
        Punchinello seemed pleased by the compliment, but he said, "Not that it's done me any good."
        "Little lamb, never question the gifts God gave you. If we don't make anything of our gifts, that's our fault, not His." She studied him a moment. "What I think is you never really knew you were a good-looking boy. You don't quite believe it even