Sarcasm oozes out of my mouth like molten lava. “Did you get kicked off the plane for too much luggage? Too much Kittie blasting out your ears? Punching your seatmate?”
“No, no, and no!” Riley kicks at her duffel bag, then paces up and down the hall, peeking into the kitchen where a night-light is plugged into the wall by the stove. She goes in and out of the dining room, its table and chairs shrouded in shadows.
“Tell me what happened!” I demand, following her.
Her eyes are dark and fiery as she clomp, clomp, clomps back and forth across the entry hall in her boots. A moment later I hear that shiver of music again, trembling in the distance, wafting through the air. Where’s it coming from? Seems like I should know.
“Tell me,” I say once more, slumping onto the bottom step of the staircase. She’s going to wake the dead with all that noise, but maybe Butler Reginald and Madame See are cowering behind their doors, figuring it’s safer not to get in Riley’s way.
She finally stops clomping, sticks her hands on her hips, and says in a hard, mean voice, “If you simply have to know, Tara, there was no ticket waiting for me at the airline counter.”
“But Daddy said he’d call ahead and purchase it for you.”
“News flash: Daddy is a liar. I drove two hours all the way to New Orleans and two hours all the way back for a pack of lies.”
I gulped. “Did you call him?”
She gives me her famous eye roll. “Of course I called him.”
“What did he say?”
She’s tall and tough standing in front of me, and I’m almost afraid of her. “He said he had to go somewhere on location out in the Mojave Desert to shoot some scenes for a couple of weeks and I’d — I’d just be in the way.”
“Maybe you could stay with the new wife until he gets back.”
She fixes me with a cold stare. “He took her with him.”
I’m so shocked, outrage rises up in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, hoping she won’t yell at me for saying it.
Riley’s voice goes deadly quiet. “I’ll never believe him again as long as I live. There was never any ticket. There was no real trip for me to see him. He just strings us along, thinking we’ll buy it hook, line, and sinker.”
“He didn’t even come to the funeral,” I add, and I can feel my lips begin to tremble.
“We’re not going to be suckers anymore, Tara. I won’t see him again until he comes crawling back on his knees all the way from Sunset Boulevard.”
My eyebrows shoot up. That’s impressive. Sometimes I wish I was more like my big sister. She’s so stubborn. Obstinate, Mamma always says.
Riley rolls the strap of her giant black purse off her shoulder where it lands on the floor with a thud. I wonder if she packed her entire room. Maybe she brought that blistering speaker system with her, hidden under her collection of obnoxious combat boots.
“It’s just you and me, kid,” she finally says, and it sounds like a line from some old movie.
Two seconds later, my callous and dangerous sister — who was born without a real heart — and who actually got herself a tattoo of a snake on her hip during Mardi Gras — bursts into tears.
* * *
Later, we sit in the empty great room, drinking hot chocolate from packets I dug out of one of the kitchen cupboards while Riley boiled water in a teapot.
I don’t like sitting in a house full of shadows so I turn on every single light and pretend it’s afternoon on a bright, sunny day.
The great room or parlor or front room or whatever it’s called is big and open and drafty. Parquet floors run the entire length and there’s a majestic grand piano taking up one whole end. The velvet red drapes on the picture windows are closed for the night.
Two grandfather clocks sit, one on either end, and several ornate European clocks hang all over the walls. Every fifteen minutes, one of them chimes out a different melody.
Riley sprawls over one end of a Victorian fainting couch. I sit on another sofa and listen to the whispering music I’ve been hearing all day. Turns out the music is coming from an ancient pipe organ sitting in a corner.
Riley sips her cocoa as we listen to the shivery music floating above us. “I’m pretty sure the pipes on that organ are broken. Got holes or something.”
I nod and try not to burn my tongue on my drink. “It’s like a ghost is playing that organ.”
“The air must be passing through the broken pipes and humming through the whole house.”
I give her a cautious smile. “I kind of like it. As if the house is talking to us — or singing to us.”
Riley lifts her eyebrows and actually returns the smile for a whole three seconds. Streaks of dirt run down her cheeks, like she walked all the way back from the airport crying.
The great room has an open columned archway all the way around it. Crumbling Italian columns with peeling paint. It always feels like I’m sitting inside a Roman swimming pool without any water.
Inside the hallway of columns is a picture gallery. Paintings of Victorian residents sitting in cafés and gardens. A couple of stone turreted castles with moats and fog lacing the air.
There’s a mildew smell inside the house, even though I have my nose inside my mug of chocolate. Luckily, I’d found marshmallows in the pantry, too, and I dunk them with my spoon, slurping up bites like I’m eating cereal.
I remember this room, but seems like we spent most of our time outdoors or in the kitchen. Or I read a stack of books in the swing while Grammy Claire worked in her study. The house has been shut up too long. The sweltering humidity has wormed its way into the linens and draperies, creating the strange smell.
“This is a weird house,” Riley says, staring at the ceiling. “Did Grammy Claire furnish it like this or did it come already done up?”
“I’m not sure. She didn’t spend much time here.”
“She was tied to that dumb island for some reason,” Riley adds.
Even though Grammy Claire telephoned, sent packages, and we Skyped every Sunday, I missed her all the time. I’d ask her what was so great about that island, and she’d say, “Secret research, darling girl. One day I can show you. Soon, now. Very soon.”
Now I’ll never know what she loved so much that took her away from us. Anger stabs my heart. Seems like she loved that island more than us. I want to hug her and yell at her both. And I can’t do neither.
I blurt out, “Maybe Grammy Claire brought us here so she can give us this house. In case we really do lose the Doucet Mansion.”
“The Doucet Mansion is a dump. Daddy should have sold it to the state and turned it into a historical site with tours and a gift shop. Then Mamma wouldn’t have lost the entire inheritance.”
The fear of foreclosure looms again and my stomach knots up. “Can’t imagine not living there. After seven generations.”
Riley snorts. “You’re so funny, Tara. Don’t get so hung up on ‘seven generations.’ You sound like Mamma. She’s brainwashed you good. What do you care? It’s just a house. An old, creaky, falling-apart one. Most families eventually lose them. Or bulldoze ’em.”
“But it’s still our house! And this one’s old, too! Mamma will just die if the bank takes our house from her. They’ll have to carry her out of the South Wing. What will the neighbors think? Or the Parish Ladies Club? It’s positively mortifying.”
Riley swings her legs around and gives me a piercing gaze that makes me flinch. “Don’t go all Scarlett O’Hara on me, okay? Mamma will have to just get over it.”
“But I don’t want to live all the way out here, especially without Grammy Claire.”
“Maybe we can sell it and get an apartment or a condo.”
“I refuse to live in an apartment! I’d rather die myself.”
Riley giggles, and then begins seriously laughing, holding her stomach. I’m offended. For me and Mamma both. Doesn’t she care about our long-held family name?
“You are hilarious, Tara. Absolutely hilarious.
You should have been born a hundred years ago.”
I let out a loud harrumph, but it’s not as good as hers. Tentatively, I ask, “You think Mamma’s okay?”
Riley goes back to swinging her feet, lying back on the arm of the couch, face staring at the ceiling. “Yeah, she’ll be okay. Same as usual.”
“I want her to be better than same as usual.” I slurp the last of my cocoa and set the mug on a coaster. “Riley,” I start again, real soft. “I’m glad you came back from the airport. I’m glad you’re here.”
She jerks her chin up and I know I’ve surprised her. I have never said that to my sister in our entire lives.
“I didn’t want to be alone. Even if Butler Reginald and Madame See are here.”
She shrugs again. “Um, okay.”
“Grammy Claire says I can trust you.”
Riley’s eyes get a funny look. “When did she say something like that?”
“Today — in her letters.”
“You’re getting more letters? That’s weird. How come I’m not getting any letters?”
“Maybe you haven’t been in the right place at the right time yet.”
I watch her smile again, and she looks like a grown-up, amused at what I just said. Strangely, I feel comforted. I straighten the doily under my mug and line up the table with the couch so the furniture is square and perfectly straight.
I suppress the urge to fix the rug fringe laid out over all those yards and yards of floor.
“Relax, Tara, you can fix it in the morning. Let’s go to bed. I can’t think straight any longer.”
Then I remember the strange word from Grammy Claire’s letter. “Can I borrow your phone? Mine doesn’t have Internet and I have to look something up.”
She doesn’t move at first, and she really does look exhausted after going to New Orleans and back. Finally, she digs inside her bra strap where she keeps her cell phone and moves her fingers over the screen. “What do you have to look up?”
I roll my eyes just like she does. “Can I do it? I’m not going to break your phone.”
“Nope, I can type faster than you. Tell me what I should search for.”
I relent. “The word nipwisipwis.”
“Huh?”
I spell it for her, closing my eyes as I see the word from Grammy Claire’s letter in my mind.
Riley taps at the screen, and then waits a couple seconds. Finally, she looks up at me, a strange expression on her face.
“So what is it?” I really, really wish I knew what the word meant before my sister did.
“Nipwisipwis is from some bizarre language I never heard of before. Where’d you say you saw it?”
“I didn’t.” I don’t want to tell her, but if I don’t, she probably won’t help me. “Grammy Claire’s letter.”
“Aah,” Riley says. “I get it now. It’s a language from an island in the South Pacific. It must be from the island Grammy Claire was living on. The language is Chuukese.” She tries to pronounce it and gets her letters so twisted it sounds hilarious.
We start giggling, but I stop. “So what’s the word? What does nipwisipwis mean?”
Riley extends the phone and I leap up, holding the screen close. An odd ringing starts up in my ears, but maybe that’s the old pipe organ letting loose again.
“You look strange, Tara.”
My throat tightens. “I should have known already.”
Riley’s dark eyes look hollow in the lamplight. “Known what?”
I can barely choke out the words. “Nipwisipwis means butterfly!”
Divine creation can be seen painted on the canvas of a butterfly’s wing.
~K. D’ANGELO~
Sitting on the couch, I know that I’ve just had the most peculiar day of my whole life…. Are butterflies actually following me? Do butterflies have a brain that can think and follow directions? Maybe they do in an alternate reality — or another universe, but not on this planet.
Why did my grandmother use the word nipwisipwis — from the very island where she’s been living all these years? Why didn’t she just say butterfly — why all the secrecy?
As long as you know that the nipwisipwis is the most important thing in the world right now. Above anything else! Even your very life!
Nipwisipwis are more important than my own life? Crazy! Chills race down my neck and buzz my toes and the tips of my fingers.
Maybe nipwisipwis — or butterfly — is some sort of code word.
Riley’s practically falling asleep on the fainting couch and I’m yawning so deeply my jaw cracks. We stick our mugs in the kitchen sink, and I run water to soak. We drag ourselves upstairs, and I find a bedroom made up for Riley just down the hall from my room — which obviously means she’s supposed to be here with me.
Riley flops on her bed, still fully dressed. “Tara, would you please help me take off my boots?”
“Oh, you big baby!”
“Pretty please? I’m so tired I can’t move.”
I glare at her, but the “please” gets to me. I unwind the laces around the metal hooks and pull hard. The boots come off with a popping sound and I practically fall on the floor.
“You need to do laundry,” I say, holding my nose.
“Yeah, yeah,” Riley says with her eyes closed (but I swear she’s doing an eye roll in her sleep) and she’s gone. Snoring. Spread-eagled on her stomach, toes hanging off the end of the mattress, hair gel glittering on the pillow, mascara smeared down her cheek.
I throw an extra pillow at her and shut the door.
Then I memorize how to spell nipwisipwis, take a match to the note sitting in the sink, and watch the yellow flame eat up the paper until it’s nothing but charred-up ashes. The worst part is watching Grammy Claire’s handwriting go up in flames. I’m so glad I have the letters.
After I flush the ashes down the toilet, I try to go to sleep, but I can’t. It’s almost midnight — I can hear the clocks chiming from the great room below me — and my eyes are burning just like that note.
I roll back and forth under the butterfly quilt and suddenly I hear Riley stumbling around. Her music comes on, soft, but it’s a dull thud, thud, thud. Like a pulse under my skin. Maybe she can’t sleep without Kittie. They say you can go deaf wearing earphones twenty-four seven, so I’d decided a long time ago that I would never do that. Besides, how do you properly clean earbuds?
Finally, I stumble out of my bed myself. I can’t sleep until I try that third mysterious key.
The house is still warm from the heat of the day and I’m only wearing my shorts and tank-top pajamas. I grab a robe in case I run into Butler Reginald or Madame See headed to the bathroom, and tiptoe into the hallway.
Grammy Claire’s bedroom is the farthest one down the hall, tucked in the corner. The door is closed — and locked. Grammy Claire told me in the letter — specifically — that Key Number Three is supposed to open something inside her bedroom. But if it’s inside, how am I supposed to get to it?
I stand there in the dark hall, stumped. And depressed. And alone.
I peer into the keyhole, but I can’t see anything, it’s just too small and dark.
The next instant, a creepy prickling oozes up my neck.
Someone has been tampering with Grammy Claire’s doorknob. The outside edges where the key goes are jagged and rough, like someone tried to stick something inside and jiggle it open without having the actual key.
Who would have done that? And when?
My heart races. My mind goes wild. It was probably a burglar sneaking into an uninhabited house to rob the place sometime over the past year. Or kids sneaking in on a dare. My grandmother paid a caretaker to check on the house while she was gone. Someone to mow the lawn, check the gas, throw away the junk mail.
I suck on my hair, tasting the green-apple scent. I run a finger over the lock. Someone tried to get in here without a key, and the thought of that makes me nervous.
Butler Reginald told me that he checked out the house when we go
t here so there shouldn’t be someone hiding behind the door.
I finger the Number Three Key and listen to the house creak and settle and sigh. Faint organ music whispers through the air ducts.
Grammy Claire wants me to do this. I have to find a way inside. Something important is going on and my grandmother has entrusted me with it. Me! She practically said it was a matter of life and death. Goose bumps race along my legs and arms.
Then I let out a snort and drop my piece of wet, sucked-on hair, feeling very stupid. I must really be tired! I’m holding the answer in my fist. I thought Key Number Three opened something inside the room, but it must be for the door, and I’m standing here like an idiot! Still, I hope nobody is inside ready to smash a bottle over my head.
Bending over, I stick the end of the key into the lock. It’s tricky since the tumblers are bent, but I jiggle a lot, twist the knob, and push the door open.
For a moment, I stand in the doorway and just look.
Moonlight flutters across the polished oak floors. The light creates silver ribbons on the braided rugs and along Grammy Claire’s old-fashioned headboard.
I let out a sigh of relief. I’m in. And the room looks just like I remember. It’s tidy, too, which always gives my brain a sense of relief. After closing and locking the door, I straighten the doily under the nightstand lamp, but that’s all that needs doing.
The air is musty and damp so I push aside the floor-length drapes to open the window. Cooler air rushes in, bathing my face. Crickets hum and a distant bird calls somewhere over the trees, but it’s too dark to see more than the shadows of the cypress standing at the edge of the bayou waters.
“Okay, Grammy Claire,” I whisper. “I’m here. Now what?”
There aren’t any secrets sitting on the bed. Or in the wardrobe, which is empty, except for a couple of cotton gardening shirts and a pair of work boots lying on their side on the cedar flooring. I peek inside the boots anyway. Nothin’ but dust.
I know what I have to do, but my stomach jumps into my throat. “I hate snooping, Grammy Claire, but I don’t got no choice.”
I start peeking into every drawer — which are all empty. A couple of expired roly-polies sit in one corner and a curled-up dead spider in another. I turn over the drawers and there’s nothing underneath them, either.
When the Butterflies Came Page 6
