The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  “One of the officers who stayed at the station ran the names Desmond gave over the phone. Keely’s name they recognized because she was so recently missing, but when he ran some of the others, FBI flags came up on the search. His supervisor contacted us and we met them back out there. Cassidy Lawrence, for example. She went missing almost seven years ago from Connecticut. There’s no reason to say her name with Keely’s unless there’s actually a connection between them.”

  “So Lyonette was part of why we were finally found?” she asks with a faint smile.

  “Yes, she was.”

  They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the man on the bed breathe in and out.

  “Inara . . .”

  “The rest of it.”

  “Hopefully this is the last difficult thing I’ll have to ask of you.”

  “Until you ask me to take the stand,” she sighs.

  “I’m sorry, I truly am, but what happened next?”

  Fucking Sirvat.

  The Gardener pulled the remote control thing out of his pocket and punched a series of numbers into the tiny pad on it. “Sirvat, please go into the room right by the door and get some towels and rubber tubing.”

  “The one by Zara?” she asked.

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  A slow smile spread across her face and she spun away with a laugh. Sirvat had been there about a year and a half, and as long as I’d known her she’d been solitary and just . . . odd.

  The Gardener adjusted his belt to put pressure on the wound in his side and stroked his son’s hair, telling him to stay awake, asking him questions and begging him to respond. Des squeezed my hand in response to some things and he was still breathing, but he didn’t try to talk, which I thought was probably for the better.

  “When we get the towels tied on him, will you let us take him out the front?” I asked.

  The Gardener just looked at me, nearly through me, seemingly weighing his Butterflies against his son, even now. Finally, he nodded.

  Then I smelled it and froze.

  Danelle was the next to smell it, her nose wrinkling. “What is that?”

  “Formaldehyde,” I hissed. “We need to get away from that room.”

  “What room?”

  The Gardener paled even more. “No questions now, ladies, come.”

  We had to drag Desmond across the sand, the Gardener stumbling and swaying after us. We splashed through the waterfall—anyone who tried to go behind it and stay dry got pushed in by Bliss—and crowded into the cave.

  Over the sound of the waterfall, we heard Sirvat laughing, and then . . .

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to describe the explosion,” she tells him. “It was just massive, all this sound and heat. A few of the rocks came down from the top of the cliff, but the cave didn’t collapse like I was half afraid it would. There were flames and glass everywhere and all these stupid little sprinklers misting straight into steam. Air poured in from the shattered roof and the flames leaped toward them. Smoke poured out, along with the real butterflies, but even with that, the smoke was so thick we could hardly breathe. We had to get out of there.”

  “You went through the stream?”

  “Until we reached the pond. Our feet got cut up pretty badly from the glass, but the flames were spreading and the water seemed like a better option. The front half of the Garden was just this huge blaze. I asked the Gardener . . .” She swallows hard, looks at the man in the bed. “I asked Mister MacIntosh if there was an emergency exit, any other way to get out, but he said . . . he never thought anything would happen.”

  She twists her hand in his grip until her other hand can reach underneath the bandages to touch the scabs. He gently pushes it away.

  The flames were spreading so fast. Panes of glass shattered overhead, raining down on us in chunks and shards. Willa dodged one but stepped directly into another that cut her head almost in half. We could see the flames beyond the glass, eating into the outer greenhouse.

  The Gardener shook his head, leaning on Hailee for support. “If it reaches the room with the fertilizers, there will be a second explosion,” he said, coughing.

  By now, most of the girls were crying.

  I tried to think of any possible way we weren’t trapped and fucked. “The cliff,” I said. “If we break some of the glass on the wall, we could go out onto the roof of the halls.”

  “And what, slide down the breaking or broken panes of glass for the outer greenhouse?” muttered Bliss. “And still probably break ankles, legs, spines when we land?”

  “Fine. Your turn.”

  “No fucking clue. Your turn.”

  Desmond chuckled, then groaned.

  Pia screamed and we spun around to see Avery behind her, his burned and blistered forearm across her throat. A chunk of glass quivered in his shoulder, soot and gashes streaking down his cheeks. He laughed and bit her neck as she struggled against him.

  “Avery, let her go,” the Gardener moaned.

  Despite the roar of the flames, we heard her neck snap.

  He threw her body to the side and then jerked back from a sharp crack. I turned to see Bliss with the gun up, her feet planted, and she shot him again. He bellowed with pain and threw himself forward, and she squeezed off two more shots until he finally fell face-first in the flowers.

  One of the larger trees, all its branches aflame, snapped near its roots and crashed into the wall with a terrific groan. Glass shattered, metal panes snapping under its weight, and the black roof that ran between the two sections of greenhouse collapsed beneath it. We could see the outer greenhouse through the dancing flames.

  “I still have nothing,” Bliss said, and choked on the smoke. “Really, it’s still your turn to think of something.”

  “Fuck off,” I muttered, and she gave me a weak grin.

  I hooked my ankle around Ravenna’s knee and pulled her to take my place pressing against Desmond’s chest. With how much we were moving him I didn’t think it would do any good, but I couldn’t bear not to at least try. He’d tried, even if he hadn’t succeeded. We could try.

  And I didn’t want him to die. Not when he’d finally given us a chance to live.

  I ran to the fallen tree, tugging away the larger chunks of glass and the more jagged branches. Pain seared through my hands, but if there was even the chance of this being the way out, I had to try. Then Glenys and Marenka were helping me, and then Isra joined us, and we tried to dig a way around the trunk. We were able to clear one side of it, and with all four of us pushing and straining from the other side, we managed to push the trunk just far enough into the outer greenhouse.

  Marenka tugged a piece of glass from my arm and flicked it away. “I think I know a way to carry him through.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  She lifted Desmond by the shoulders, hooking her hands under his armpits. I stood between his legs and hooked my hands under his knees. It wasn’t graceful, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but we were more or less single file.

  Bliss led the way through, Danelle and Keely close behind her. Isra stayed back, pushing aside more debris as it fell, the Gardener beside her. Not helping, because he couldn’t, really, but getting the more frightened—or frozen—girls to follow us. The smoke was getting worse, getting thicker, and we were all choking on it. Figures moved beyond the outer greenhouse and suddenly a great crack ran along one of the six-foot panes that butted the floor. Someone was swinging an ax at it. We held back, waiting to see if they would get through, and after a few more hits, the center of the pane shattered. Using the ax head, a fireman knocked the rest of the glass out of the pane and threw down a heavy folded tarp over the chunks.

  “Come on,” he—she?—yelled through the mask.

  Other firemen followed, and two of them took Desmond from us. It wasn’t particularly fresh, but we got the first free air we’d had in forever, and the few girls who weren’t crying already started as they stepped onto crisp autumn grass and felt
the cold air wrap around us. Some of them fell to their knees in shock and had to be dragged away.

  I was trying to count heads after they took Desmond, and I could see Isra doing the same thing in the outer greenhouse, both of us trying to figure out how many we’d lost before we reached this point. Then there was this . . . this . . . whump and another explosion billowed out from one of the rooms and the last I saw of Isra, she was flying sideways in a ball of fire, three of the others still clinging to her, the Gardener on the ground with flames dancing over him. I tried to run to the girls, but one of the firemen grabbed my wrist and yanked me away.

  “And then the ambulances, and the hospital, and the room where I met you,” she sighs. “And that’s it. The whole story.”

  “Not quite.”

  She closes her eyes, bringing the hand with the little blue dragon to her cheek. “My name.”

  “The Gardener has his name now. Is yours really so terrible?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  He stands and brings her to his feet. “Come on. One more thing to see.”

  She follows him out the door, passing by a frowning Eddison talking to a scene tech in a windbreaker, and into the door across the hall. This time he takes her all the way to the bedside before she can see who it is, and when she does her breath hitches.

  Desmond’s eyes open slowly, unfocused from drugs, but when he sees her, a faint smile curves his lips. “Hey,” he whispers.

  She has to shape the word several times before her voice catches up to the impulse. “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No . . . no, you . . . you did the right thing.”

  “But I should have done it a lot sooner.” His hand moves atop the blanket, plastic tubing curling under the tape keeping the needle under his skin.

  She moves as if to take his hand, but her fingers clench into a fist before they touch him. She stares at him, mouth slightly open, her lower lip quivering with shock.

  His eyes slowly close as he falls still. Asleep or unconscious is anyone’s guess.

  “He’s still weak,” Victor says quietly. “He has a long recovery ahead of him, but the doctors say he’s probably out of the woods.”

  “He’s going to make it?” she whispers. Her eyes gleam wetly, but no tears fall. Clutching the little blue dragon in one hand, she folds her arms across her stomach, a sense of protection she shouldn’t need anymore. “He’ll be tried as complicit,” she says eventually.

  “That isn’t up to us. There may be a deal of some sort for him, but—”

  “But he should have called six months earlier, and soon everyone will know it.”

  Victor scratches at his scalp. “I admit, I thought you’d be more relieved to see him alive.”

  “I am. It’s just . . .”

  “Complicated?”

  She nods. “It might have been kinder to leave him without the consequences of his cowardice. It was far too little and far too late, but he finally did the right thing, and now he’ll be punished for taking so long. Maybe he could have died brave, but he’ll live a coward.”

  “So it never became real?”

  “Real enough to leave scars. So not very real at all. How could it have been more?”

  “He’ll very likely stand trial to some degree. You will probably be called to testify against him.”

  Still looking at the young man in the bed, she doesn’t answer.

  He’s not sure there’s anything to say. “Inara—”

  “Inara!” calls a female voice from the hall. “Ina—yes, I see your badge, you arrogant bastard, but that’s my family in there! Inara!” There are sounds of a scuffle, then the door slams open to frame a woman of average height and maybe thirty years old or so, faded auburn hair threatening to tumble from a scraped-together bun.

  Inara freezes partway through turning to the intruder, her eyes impossibly wide. Her voice creeps out as little more than a breath. “Sophia?”

  Sophia runs into the room, but Inara meets her halfway, and the two of them cling to each other with white-knuckled grips. They sway from side to side from the force of the embrace.

  The Sophia? The apartment mother? How did she even know Inara was here?

  A thunder-faced Eddison stalks into the room, glaring at the woman as he passes. He thrusts a plain black scrapbook, thick with pages, into Victor’s hands. “It was in a locked, hidden drawer in his office desk. The techs were running the names when they found something interesting.”

  Victor almost doesn’t want to know, but this is his job. Tearing his eyes away from the two women, he sees a green sticky note fluttering from the edge about two-thirds of the way through. He opens to a few pages before it.

  A young woman with terrified, tearful eyes stares back at him from a photo, shoulders hunched and hands partly raised as if caught in the process of trying to hide her naked breasts from the camera. Beside it, a picture from behind, showing fresh wings. Beneath it, those same wings in a fresh display case, the crisp edges of the wings blurred by the glass and colorless resin. In the empty space, there are two names—Lydia Anderson, on top, and below, Siobhan—in a firm masculine hand, followed by “Gulf Fritillary” and dates four years apart.

  The next page has a different girl, and the one after, the one with the sticky, has only two pictures. And only one date. Beneath the picture of an auburn-haired beauty with wary hazel eyes, the writing says—

  “Sophia Madsen,” Victor reads aloud, stunned.

  The woman looks at him over Inara’s shoulder. She says the next line for him. “Lara.”

  “How—”

  “No one would have talked of a Butterfly escaping if one never had,” Inara mumbles into Sophia’s hair. “It would have hurt too badly.”

  “The escape was real. You . . . you escaped?”

  They both nod.

  Eddison scowls. “The tech analysts typed in the name and it hit against our list of Evening Star employees. They sent someone to the restaurant and both listed residences, but she wasn’t there.”

  “Of course I wasn’t,” retorts Sophia. “How could I be there when I was already on my way here?” She pulls back from Inara. Doesn’t let go, just steps back enough to take all of her in. Sophia’s shirt is worn and overlarge, the gaping neck sliding down one shoulder to reveal a bra strap and the edge of a faded wingtip, stretched with gained weight. “Taki saw you on the news, being brought into the hospital, and he ran to the apartment to get everyone. They called me, and oh, Inara!”

  Inara wheezes in Sophia’s renewed embrace, but doesn’t ask her to let go.

  “Are you all right?” asks Sophia.

  “I will be,” Inara replies quietly, almost shyly. “My hands are the worst, but if I’m careful, they should heal.”

  “That’s not all I’m asking, and I am asking. I have my own place now, I can break the apartment rules.”

  Inara’s face lights up, all the uncertainty and shock vanishing. “You got your girls back!”

  “I did, and they’ll be so glad to see you. They’ve missed you as much as the rest of us. They say no one reads to them as well as you do.”

  Eddison doesn’t quite manage to turn his laugh into a cough.

  Inara gives him a sour look.

  For his part, Victor’s almost relieved to see her sidestep the more probing question. At least she does it with everyone. He clears his throat to get their attention. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to insist on an explanation.”

  “He usually does,” Inara mutters.

  Sophia just smiles. “It’s pretty much his job. But perhaps . . .” She glances over at the boy in the bed, Victor’s eyes following. Desmond hasn’t so much as twitched in all the noise. “Elsewhere?”

  Victor nods and leads them out of the room. In the hallway, he can see Senator Kingsley standing alone in front of the door to the Butterflies’ room, taking deep breaths. She should look softer in just the blouse and skirt; instead, she just looks scared. Victor wonders if h
er suit is like Inara’s lip gloss, a way to armor up against the rest of the world.

  “Do you think she’ll go in?” Inara asks.

  “Eventually,” he answers. “Once she realizes this isn’t something she can be ready for.”

  He takes them into a room in the buffer zone between the Butterflies and the MacIntosh family. It’s private, at any rate, and one of the guards shifts down to make sure they’re not disturbed. Inara and Sophia settle side by side on one of the stripped beds, facing the door and anyone who might try to enter. Victor sits on the opposite bed. He’s unsurprised that Eddison decides to pace, rather than sit.

  “Ms. Madsen?” Victor prompts. “If you please?”

  “You do like to get right down to it, don’t you?” Sophia shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but no, not yet. I’ve been waiting longer than you have.”

  Victor blinks, but nods.

  Taking Inara’s hand, Sophia wraps both of hers around it, holding tight. “We thought something from before had caught up with you,” she says. “We thought you ran.”

  “It was a logical assumption,” Inara tells her gently.

  “But all your clothes—”

  “Are just clothes.”

  Sophia shakes her head again. “If you were going to run, you would have taken your money. Whitney and I started an account for you, by the way. We didn’t feel comfortable with that much cash sitting around.”

  “Sophia, if you’re trying to find a way this is somehow your fault, you’re not going to find it from me. We were all running from something. We all knew that. We all knew not to question it if someone disappeared.”

  “We should have. And the timing . . .”

  “There was no way to know.”

  “The timing?” Victor asks.

  “The event that the Gardener—Mister MacIntosh—”

  Sophia gives a startled laugh. “He has a name. I mean, of course he does, but . . . how bizarre.”

  “The event at the Evening Star,” Inara continues. “I didn’t say anything about Mister MacIntosh being creepy, just about the run-in with Avery. But then we came home with all those costume butterfly wings.”