The Memory of Butterflies: A Novel

by Grace Greene

  She shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind.” Her voice didn’t have an echo when she was facing outside, but when she turned toward me and spoke into the interior of the building, each word hit the surfaces above and around us and rebounded.

  “I called Braden when I went to my room. He said his father doesn’t want us to see each other. He said he confronted his father about the stuff he’d said.”

  I shuddered. “Let’s talk.” I nodded toward the corner, to the one room with walls. “Less echo in there.”

  She didn’t move. I walked over and put my hands on her shoulders. She didn’t pull away.

  “I know you are hurting right now, but believe me, it won’t be long before this will be a distant memory. You’ll have a different perspective and life experience to add to it.” In my heart, a tiny hope bloomed. If she would respond to reason, then perhaps the rest need not be said.

  “I wanted him to meet me here. For us to run off together. Get away from this town. He was all for it. He said John would bring him.”

  Inside, I trembled. Outwardly, I forced myself to show calm. “Ellen, this is unnecessary. Such a mistake. Is he coming?”

  “No, he called me back while I was on my way. He said he couldn’t go. That he’d thought about what his father said and that it wasn’t right for us to be together.”

  I bit my lip. My hands were still on her. I felt some sort of deep energy, something more than distress or tension, like a deep-seated earthquake whose reverberations were about to rewrite a region.

  “Is it true, Mom? Mr. Bell said he was my father despite what you’d said. He told Braden you’d denied it but that my birth was nine months after . . . The timing was too exact . . . That he’d known you’d never . . . That he was your first.” She shook off my hands and stepped away. “Mom, I know what you told me about Mr. Bell, but is it true? Did you lie to me? Is Spencer Bell my father?” She nodded toward the window, casting a quick look past me toward it. “Who’s buried in my father’s grave?”

  She’d been staring out there when I’d arrived. At the cemetery. The deep emotion shaking Ellen rushed into me, through me, and my teeth rattled. I made a last effort to control myself, to keep my voice low and calm.

  “Spencer Bell is not your father. I promise you. I swear it to you, Ellen.”

  Her hands continued covering her face, but her posture sagged. I tried to pull her toward me. Her hands came away from her face. Her eyes looked haunted, but she held her ground.

  “Why would he say such things, Mom? Why would he tell Braden that?”

  “Come with me.” I tugged her arm again. “We can sit in here. I see Roger’s chairs in there, and the echo isn’t so bad.”

  Ellen walked into the room, but as I entered, I stopped. An object had been set in the sill of the framed window opening—the butterfly pot. Below it, on the floor, was an open duffel bag and a backpack, both belonging to Ellen.

  She saw me looking.

  “I packed a few things, but I don’t . . . won’t . . . Do you think maybe I can camp out here? Or maybe in the cabin until the house is done?” She picked up the butterfly pot from the windowsill and hugged it to her.

  “This is your room, sweetheart, but it’s not suitable for living in yet. We can go home and talk about decorating it. I was going to surprise you when you came home for the first college break, but this is a better idea.”

  “That’s over. Everything has changed. I’m not going.”

  Roger’s lawn chairs were leaning against the wall. I opened them and placed them near the window.

  “Sit here.”

  I was out of options. That last suggestion about discussing decorating had been silly and pointless. It wasn’t going to be simple, and I knew it. No matter how difficult, no matter the cost, I had to do this for my daughter.

  She sat in the chair, moving like she was in pain. Given time, her youth would restore her. It couldn’t help but do that because it was the nature of youth and health and regeneration. I sat in the other chair. I didn’t know where to focus. On Ellen’s face? The present and future? Or out the window to the past, to my history?

  Someone was sitting on the cemetery wall . . . a small figure. I gasped.

  I blinked and saw it was a trick of the light. A cloud perhaps, a moment of darkness, but then the sun was bright again. A breeze rustled the branches overarching the cemetery. When the true shadows moved, it became clear no one was up there. But the butterfly pot was now back in the open window space.

  “Mom?” Ellen touched my shoulders.

  My hands were pressed over my heart, and my chest hurt.

  “Mom?” She shook me. My head jolted, and she stopped. “Sorry, Mom. You scared me. You weren’t breathing.”

  I gulped. “I’m fine. I’m breathing.” I dragged in a deep breath to prove to both of us I was all right.

  Ellen retrieved the pot from the sill and took her seat again. “We’re both having bad days, I think.” She gave me a small, brave curve of the lips that barely qualified as a smile.

  I stared at her, memorizing her face, and thinking I’d rather die than . . . I’d heard it said a hundred times at least. I’d rather die than—fill in the blank. Today I understood it could be a real thing—not light words for drama queens or throwaway party conversation. Because, in my cowardice, I would rather die here on the spot than say aloud, “There was a child. Spencer Bell was her father. I lost her when she was five months old. I wanted to go with her. But someone had to stay here and take care of Gran.”

  Had I said the words aloud? I thought I might have. I’d tried to watch her face, but there was a big blank space in my memory. Had her expression changed? I had no idea. It was all a blur. Beyond her, the cemetery pulled at me like an irresistible magnet that overruled all other attractants. The shadows played across the stone where the cemetery was perched on the hill. That figure again. Small. Childlike. I leaned toward the window, touching the opening. There it was. I was on my feet now, and the wood beneath my fingers evaporated. It was just gone and I was stepping forward . . .

  “Mom!” Ellen yelled.

  I snapped back. I was still seated. I hadn’t gone anywhere. The wall was there, and solid. Ellen was in my face, her hands pressed hard against my cheeks.

  “I have loved you from the first moment I saw you,” I whispered. “So did Gran. Please always remember that.”

  She dropped her hands and stepped away. “What did you say?”

  “I have loved you—”

  “Not that. Before. A moment ago you said something about losing a child.” Her voice sounded harsh. Her words were like slaps. Incomprehension and disbelief clouded her eyes.

  I cleared my throat. I had to do this because I loved my daughter. I had to do this one thing and then I’d be done. I could move on then. But first, this.

  “I was planning to go to college, but Grand died.” I faltered, coughing. I tried again, doing my best to sound sane and reasonable despite the pounding of my heart and the ringing in my ears.

  “You know I couldn’t leave Gran because her health was poor, and she needed my help. I didn’t know the truth of how my parents had died, but now I understand why she avoided people, town, and society. Others knew and might ask questions. She wanted to avoid that.”

  “You said something about a baby. About a baby dying.”

  I closed my eyes. How could something hurt so badly after all these years?

  “Yes, we lost her,” I said. I forced the words out. “When she was five months old. SIDS, I think. She didn’t wake from her nap. That was all.”

  “A sister? I had a sister?”

  She was struggling to understand, to put the pieces together in a way that made sense. I shuddered. “Her name was Ellen.”

  My daughter grabbed my shoulders and shook me, then she dropped to her knees and forced me to meet her eyes.

  “Her name was Ellen? She died? Then who am I? Did you name me after her? Was she older than me? How could that be? Mr.
Bell said—” She pushed away from me. “I saw the baby book. The sketches. That’s me, right? Tell me, Mom, that’s me?”

  I shook my head, and the room seemed to spin ever so slightly, each movement delicate, slow, and infinite. Not with the brute force of an earthquake but with the deceptively delicate movement of butterfly wings whose fluttering could ultimately impact global events, the words I had guarded so carefully for so many years were about to reach into our world and change it forever.

  “No,” I said.

  Ellen stumbled and reached for the chair, and the butterfly pot fell with a crash, the blue shards scattering and beyond repair.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Emotionally and physically devastated, I tried to explain, but each word I spoke was strained and stretched as if pulled from the lips of the condemned.

  “You were left on our porch with a note,” I started. Then the words came out in a rush, tumbling one after the next . . . That I hadn’t wanted to do the wrong thing . . . That I was simply trying to protect her . . .

  But there was no way to explain it that didn’t sound self-serving.

  “You’re not my mother?”

  I stared at her and patted my heart but couldn’t speak.

  “Mr. Bridger left me at your house? I was staying at his house—the one beyond Elk Ridge? My parents left me there?”

  I nodded. “I tried to find Mr. Bridger, but he was already deceased by the time I located the hospital. I didn’t know where to find your other blood relatives . . . or your father or mother. I was afraid if I went to the authorities, they’d take you away and put you in foster care or . . . Meanwhile, Gran . . . and I . . . we had such emptiness in our hearts . . . and you . . . felt like a gift from God. People assumed . . . and I let them.”

  “I knew I’d seen those butterfly windows before.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. It sounded more like a hiss. “I knew I remembered them despite what you said.”

  “You might have. You were young, but . . . it’s possible.”

  With the force of an overzealous prosecutor, she said, “Liam Bridger. The man who’s working on the porch posts. He grew up at the Bridger house. Does he know my parents?”

  “He’s Mr. Bridger’s son.”

  “His son,” she said as she paced.

  “His only son.”

  “Are you saying he’s my father?”

  I looked away.

  “Does Liam know?” Her voice rose higher with each word. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know the truth?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but other words entered the room before mine could.

  “Do I know what?” Liam said. “What’s wrong?”

  Ellen turned to look at him. Surprisingly, I felt grateful relief. Now he could take over.

  “Do you have a daughter?” Ellen asked him.

  His voice, still coming from behind me, sounded hesitant. “I did. Her name was Trisha. She died many years ago.”

  She came up close to me and asked in a breathless voice, “What have you done?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on here,” Liam said, “but you shouldn’t talk that way to your mother.”

  Ellen shouted, her tone ugly. “She isn’t my mother! And you . . . Why didn’t you take better care of your daughter?”

  I wanted to intervene. I tried. I raised my hand, but my arm seemed to be moving within a different sphere of time from everyone and everything around me. My hand dropped back into my lap, giving up. Outside, through the window, the shadow had re-formed on the stone wall.

  From a distance, Liam’s voice said, “My daughter died in a flash flood in New Mexico. She was with her mother while I was . . . away.” He paused. “Why are you asking about Trisha?”

  “Because it seems like maybe she didn’t die. It seems like maybe your father left me on the Coopers’ porch fifteen years ago, and Hannah Cooper decided to keep me because she’d killed her own baby.”

  “Killed . . .”

  She shook her head and waved her arms. “Not killed, then. Not killed. Lost. She lost her baby. Lost, lost, lost. Like it’s misplaced. How do you misplace a baby? But I guess you can, because my parents lost me and she”—Ellen pointed at me—“got a do-over.” She stared at me. “What did you think I was? Some kind of toy? A doll you could play pretend with and never need to tell the truth?”

  Ellen backed away from both of us. She was hitting her fist against her chest. Her dark eyes were flashing. “I just found out my life is a lie, and I don’t know where I belong. Do I belong anywhere?” She pointed at me. “Because it can’t be with the woman who stole me from my real family.”

  Liam finally moved into my view. I saw his boots, his jeans. His T-shirt. I stopped looking when I reached his chin. I looked away, to stare at the floor. He bent over and picked up a blue glazed fragment from among the many scattered on the floor. He turned it over, examining it, then knelt in front of me.

  “Hannah? What’s happening?”

  His eyes were kind. They were dark. Dark and warm like the eyes of my daughter, Ellen. I tried to smile in reassurance, to touch his cheek, but nothing moved. Not my lips. Not my hands. I shook my head. That was all I could manage.

  I’d handled this poorly. Back then and again today. Well intentioned, but badly done.

  I turned away to look out the window again. Ellen might be lost, but so was I. Lost.

  Ellen. Trisha. Hannah. Even my mother, Anne Marie, before me.

  Focusing on Liam, I said, “I don’t have your father’s note. It burned in the fire.”

  He frowned. “What note?”

  “No, it didn’t,” Ellen said. “It was tucked into the baby book. Stuck between the pages. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.”

  Not me. Gran must’ve put it there.

  I put a hand on Liam’s arm and stood. My fingers hurt. They felt torn. Like when I’d dug up the concrete block and rolled it up the hill and into the cemetery to secure the grave. I examined my fingers, but there was no dirt and no blood. I faced Ellen.

  “No matter how you feel right now, you are still my daughter. You will always be my daughter. What you choose to do is up to you, but it won’t change what’s here.” I touched my heart. I turned my full attention to Liam. “I owe you an apology I can never give. Your father put Trisha into my care long ago. Maybe I should’ve made different decisions, but nothing can change that now. I regret you didn’t have her in your life. She’s been a blessing to me. A gift.”

  The expression on his face, though silent, shouted of shock and confusion. Soon there would be anger.

  “If you choose to speak to the police,” I said, “I won’t blame you. I probably broke several laws not reporting her as abandoned. Anyway, I’ll be easy to find if they want to arrest me.”

  He waved his arms. “Hold on. What are you telling me?”

  “Liam, Ellen needs a place to go. She won’t want to come home with me.”

  His frown was deep. The lines carved in his face seemed to have no bottom.

  “I’m sorry.” I tried again. “Ellen needs a place to stay for a while. I thought you and Mamie . . .”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this . . . saying this . . . ,” Ellen whispered. “You think you can steal my life and then give me back and walk away?”

  I faced her. “Then come with me. We’ll work this out when you’re ready.” I held out my hand.

  She pressed her lips together so tightly, they almost disappeared. Her shoulders hunched up around her neck, and her arms crossed in a defensive posture. Her hands were tucked securely out of my reach.

  I moved toward her, and she began shaking. I stopped.

  “Hannah,” Liam said, apparently waking up to the possibility that his daughter lived. “Is this really Trisha?”

  I kept my focus on Ellen. “Roger will be happy to put you up for a few days. You know he thinks of you like a daughter. But I recommend you go to Elk Ridge and take this time to get to
know your father.”

  I turned to Liam. “Yes, she’s Trisha.” I closed my eyes, unable to look at Liam’s face as the truth dawned on him. “I know you will, but as her mother, I have to say it anyway—treat her well or you’ll deal with me.”

  I walked away, yet I watched surreptitiously from the corner of my eye. Liam moved a few steps toward Ellen. He spoke softly. Her arms relaxed, her shoulders dropped, and she stood taller. She nodded.

  I left.

  I didn’t remember the drive home to Rose Lane.

  Suddenly, I was just there, sitting in the car in my garage. The keys were in my hand. My purse was in the passenger seat. I grabbed it and hugged it to me. My arms felt empty.

  Had it been right to leave her there? Did I have a choice? No.

  In the house, I sat in the dark kitchen. Food and drink had no appeal. I went to the living room hoping to find comfort in the pottery made by my grandmother and her mother and hers. They were still beautiful pieces, I acknowledged as I stared at them, but when I touched them, I found them cold—made of old clay and antique glazes—and empty, literally and emotionally.

  Rest. I needed rest. I tried lying down on my bed but couldn’t settle, so I wandered. I no longer felt connected to any of this. To anything. I puttered around the house. My nerves kept me from being able to relax, and by midnight I accepted Ellen wasn’t coming home and no one was going to call. Had I really thought she might? Apparently, because my disappointment was sharp and real.

  Fitful dreams, nightmares, in which I admired the posts that Liam was carving, rocked my attempt at sleep. As I touched the figured wood, the abstract shapes reassembled into butterflies. Liam laughed, and suddenly, Ellen was there beside him, laughing, too, as Liam said, “Surprise, Hannah! It’s all about the butterflies!” They haunted my sleep. Not surprisingly, I left my bed and didn’t return.

  This house had been for Ellen and me, our home together, after we’d fled the fire.

  Ellen was at the Bridger house tonight. Liam had his recently discovered, long-deceased daughter, Trisha, back with him. Maybe together they could find some healing. Mamie was there, and Ellen had met her, so that was good. I was pretty sure Liam and Ellen wouldn’t be eager to spread the story. But Mamie? Only time would tell.