Chasing Butterflies

by Beckie Stevenson

  She flinches, and then I see tears wobble in her eyes. “I didn’t act crazier than I was,” she finally whispers. “I was crazy.”

  “You weren’t. You were just a bit clueless or something.” Clueless? What am I even saying?

  She rolls her eyes at me. “I was taken to an institute. I stayed there for six months. You can check if you like.” I shake my head. “They said it was my past that was making me the way I was.”

  “You were fine,” I insist, but I think I’m really trying to convince myself at this point. “There was nothing wrong with you.”

  “There really was. But there isn’t anymore,” she says simply.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, hating how I know deep down that she’s telling the truth. I took her virginity when she was ill. I should’ve known better. I should have stayed away from her. “I’m sorry,” I finally say as I open my eyes. “I just thought you were naïve since Joanna kept you locked away like a little prisoner.”

  “You were right,” she says, nodding. “I didn’t have a clue how to act my age. The only things I could go off were the books I read and some of the stuff I overheard other girls saying at school. I think my naïvety masked my actual illness to a point, but that wasn’t your fault either. You couldn’t have known.” She shudders and then looks toward her kitchen. “I don’t like using the word illness. I wasn’t ill. I was just struggling to cope with what I’d found out. My brain couldn’t handle what I’d been through. It couldn’t comprehend what my eyes had seen. The things I’d witnessed when I was a little girl were things no child should ever have to hear or see. I helped to bury a dead man when I was six years old, Gabriel.”

  I stare at her and clear my throat. “I don’t know what to say,” I confess. “I don’t know why I came here. I just needed answers, but I have a feeling you’re not going to give them to me.”

  She frowns. “Answers to what? You haven’t asked me any questions.”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I mean, I’m not sure.” I sigh and say, “I’m drunk.”

  “I gathered.” She folds her arms over her chest and then walks into the kitchen with me following right behind her. “I’m hungry,” she announces, pulling some pasta from the fridge. “If I heat this up, are you going to eat some?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “It might help sober you up,” she tells me.

  I don’t say another word as I watch her pull some plates from the cupboard. While she’s preparing the food, I walk out of the kitchen and look around. Her apartment is absolutely huge. It’s even got stairs to a second floor where I’m guessing the bedrooms are. She has floor-to-ceiling windows that line the back wall of her open-plan living and dining room, and the kitchen is a little U-shaped room off to the side that has glossy cupboards and top-of-the-range appliances.

  “Looks like dancing with your knickers on for men to drool all over pays pretty well,” I say as I walk back into the kitchen.

  She smiles, but it’s forced and fake. I don’t like it. “Yep, I guess it does.”

  Do you fuck them too? Is that what really pays for all this stuff?” I don’t know why I asked that. I guess there must be something else she’s doing to be able to afford living in a place like this, but I don’t want to know who she’s fucking. The thought of her being with someone else like that makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  “Yeah, I fuck them,” she says, sounding as pissed off as I feel. She pours two glasses of water and then dumps them onto the counter. “I fuck them really good. I suck them too, and if they show me enough money, then I’ll let them stick it in my ass as well.”

  I deserved that, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her think that her talking like that is bothering me. “I might have a spare tenner,” I tell her. “What will that get me?”

  “Nothing,” she says, serving the pasta onto the plates. “I’m way out of your league.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’ve already fucked you, isn’t it?”

  She raises her eyebrows at me as she hands me a plate of steaming tomato and cheese pasta and a glass of water. “You’ve changed,” she says.

  I follow her as she walks to her glass-topped dining table. “Well, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” I reply.

  She narrows her eyes at me as she pulls out two white placemats and then sits down, handing me a fork.

  We eat in silence, the awkwardness of our stupid little spat hanging in the air between us. I watch her eat, and as she chews, she watches me. It’s like a game of cat and mouse. Only I don’t know which one of us is the mouse.

  Yara

  I know Gabriel is drunk and angry. I know he doesn’t really mean half the things he’s saying, and even if he manages to remember any of it in the morning, I know he’ll regret it. Even so, his words hurt. Not because of what he’s suggesting, because—if I’m honest—what I’ve actually done is far worse than sleeping with a few men for money. It’s how he’s saying it.

  He’s looking at me and speaking to me like I’m no one to him. Like I was never anyone to him. And that hurts worse than his words ever could.

  But what confuses me is that he seems to be hurting too. It’s been five years, and while I wake up every single morning desperately clinging to the dreams I have about him, I never once thought it would be the same for him. Maybe I’ve been naïve about that too.

  “I’m sorry for saying that bit,” he whispers.

  I look up from my food, surprised to see that he appears embarrassed. He drops his fork on the plate and roughly rubs his hands all over his beautiful face. “I’m sorry too,” I say. “I’ve never really let anyone stick it in my ass.”

  His mouth twitches as he picks his fork back up. When he starts eating again, I shove my fork back into the pasta and shovel a huge bite into my mouth. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up spilling my guts to him. Gabriel’s the only person I’ve ever felt I could talk to. He’s the only one that knows my secrets…well, most of them anyway.

  There’s always been something about him. I used to wonder whether it was just because he was the first person that actually spoke to me—aside from my Granny. And he looked at me…like really looked at me.

  “Were you ever planning on coming back to Eleze?” he asks.

  The fork freezes on its way to my mouth. I can’t go back there. I’ve thought about it. Wanted it even. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t go back and see the house where my secret is still buried. I don’t want to walk through the house where my mother was raped. I don’t want to enter the bedroom where my Granny died.

  I decided five years ago that my life was going to be all about making new memories. The past was the past, and nothing I could ever do would change that, so I’ve learned to just accept it.

  I shake my head at him. “No.”

  He nods as if expecting that answer.

  “I wish I could,” I confess, “but I just can’t. There are too many bad memories there for me. Too many things that I want to avoid.”

  “Was I one of those things?”

  “Yes.” He winces, then lifts the glass to his mouth and drinks while watching me. “Did you ever tell the police what I told you?” I ask.

  He puts the glass down and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “No. I thought about it a few times, but I didn’t. I haven’t told anyone else…not even Jonny.”

  I feel my shoulders instantly relax. I’ve kind of been looking over my shoulder for the last five years, wondering if the police would find me. “So he’s still there then? Under the patio?”

  He nods and pushes his empty plate to the middle of the table. I put my fork down and take a sip of my water. I can feel his eyes on me the whole time, watching me. It’s like he’s waiting for me to just unload everything or give him some big explanation as to why I left. Maybe he deserves something. “I told you a lie earlier on.”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “Go on.”

  “I’m not completely cured,”
I tell him, shivering as I say it. “I’ve still got secrets that haunt my every waking moment.”

  “What did you do to him, Yara? You told me you’d killed him. You told me you helped to bury him, but I don’t know how you could have killed him. You were just a young girl. I know why, and I don’t blame you for one second, but why wouldn’t you tell me how you did it?”

  When I glance at the clock behind his head, I see it’s almost three in the morning. “I need coffee,” I say as I stand up. I grab the plates and walk into the kitchen, dumping them in the sink. I place my hands on either side of it, and as my head drops forward, I take a couple of deep breaths.

  “Thinking about it is hard,” I call out to him. “Talking about it is even harder.”

  I hear him come up behind me and freeze when I feel the heat from his body against my back. “I know,” he whispers. He leans around me and flicks the switch for the kettle.

  My breath catches in my throat when his arm accidentally brushes against mine. I gasp involuntarily and then I feel him completely freeze. I shut my eyes, trying to ignore my heart that feels as if it’s going to pound right out of my chest, and pull a big breath deep into my lungs.

  I’ve craved his touch. I’ve often dreamt about him making my skin tingle just like that. I’ve ached for him for years. And now he’s finally here, within touching distance, I can’t do anything about it.

  “It was a knife,” I say to distract myself from thinking about Gabriel in that way. I reach up and pull two cups from the cupboard and add some coffee. “Straight through his heart.”

  He steps back and leans against the counter. “You stabbed him?”

  I lift the kettle with shaking hands and pour some water into the mugs. Adding milk, I slowly stir it until it’s all mixed in. “Do you want sugar?”

  “No thanks.” He leans around me and picks up his cup. I still can’t bring myself to look at him, so I carry on staring at the cupboards in front of me as I drink mine.

  “You remember me telling you that they fought and then they went downstairs?”

  “Yes,” he whispers. I hear him take a sip of his drink, and then I shut my eyes tight.

  “They were still fighting when I got down there. I got hit in the face quite hard, and I remember feeling the blood trickle down my eye until I couldn’t see out of it. I remember feeling shocked at how the blood felt. I didn’t expect it to be so warm.” I shiver as I drag the memory back from deep where I’ve buried it. But blocking it out is exactly what my therapist said was to blame for my craziness. “There was more shouting and fighting. Things were breaking all around me. At one point I staggered back and knocked some things off the counter where they were waiting to be washed.”

  I can see Gabriel’s shadow when I open my eyes. He still hasn’t moved, but I can see his arm moving as he drinks his coffee. I hope he’s sobering up. “I’m following,” he says as if to to urge me on.

  “I was frantic.” A tear drops down my cheek. “I was screaming at them to stop. I was crying and shouting with all my might, but they weren’t stopping. I could tell that this fight was a bad one. They’d never fought like this before. Usually it was just a smack or a slap. This was more like wrestling.”

  I quickly wipe my face with the back of my hand and sip some more coffee. Pushing my hair back, I finally turn around and my eyes find Gabriel’s. He looks tired and sad.

  “Granny was suddenly on the floor,” I whisper. “Grandpa had his hands around her throat and her eyes were wide and scared. She was making a funny noise, scratching at him and poking him in his eyes, but he wasn’t budging. He held on tight and kept swearing at her, and I knew I had to do something. Granny reached out to me, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to help her. Then I saw the knife that had fallen on the floor in front of me.”

  Gabriel tips his mug back and finishes the rest of his coffee before putting it back onto the counter. He steps forward and cups my face in his big, warm hands, and I feel myself relax into him.

  “I picked the knife up,” I say, trying not to look at him, “and I gave it to her. I put it in her hand, knowing she was going to use it to hurt him. I was six, but I knew what I was doing. I knew as soon as her fingers wrapped around the handle that she would stab him.”

  His thumbs brush the tears from my cheeks, and then I feel his hands urging my face upward.

  “I stood there,” I whisper through a sob as my blurry eyes find his face. “I just stood there and watched as she stuck the blade right into his heart, and I remember feeling relieved…even glad.” I sniff and try to pull away from him, but he doesn’t let me go. “See? I was evil even then.”

  Chapter 25

  Gabriel

  Yara is crying and shaking so violently that she staggers on her feet. I pull her close to me and stumble back, not having the most stable of footing. As I crash into the cupboards, the force of our combined weight makes my knees buckle and I slide toward the floor, pulling her down with me.

  She curls into a little ball and cries while I hold her. Even after all this time, I know exactly how to hold her. She might have the body of a woman now and a face like a model, but deep down she’s still the same Yara. It still feels so right when I hold her like this that I can’t stop myself from wishing I could do it forever.

  I clear my throat and place my hand on the back of her head. “It wasn’t you, you know.”

  “I know,” she sniffs. “But if I hadn’t given Granny the knife, he’d still be alive.”

  “No,” I say sternly. “You once told me that thinking about what might have happened is pointless and a waste of energy.”

  “I did, huh?”

  “Yes, and they were the wisest words anyone has ever said to me. I still think about you saying that even now. If it’s done, it’s done. There might have been several different outcomes that night. Joanna might have managed to grab the knife herself. Your grandfather might have found the knife and stabbed her, and then you’d have been stuck with him. Things happen. And once they happen, they’re done. You can’t undo them. You can only live with them and move on.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts,” I say interrupting her. “You gave her the knife, but it was her choice to stab him. Also, you were a child, Yara. She was the adult, and she knew what would happen once she pushed it into his chest. There’s a reason she went for his heart, and it wasn’t just to temporarily stop him from choking her.”

  I feel her shaking in my arms again, so I pull her even closer and rest my chin on her head. I can feel a headache starting to form because I’m sobering up. Glancing at the clock, I realise I’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours.

  I sigh, knowing having all this bottled up inside her for all these years was definitely the reason she found herself needing help. And how could Joanna treat her the way she did when she wasn’t even at fault? “Your Granny shouldn’t have buried him in the garden. She should have called the police, and she certainly shouldn’t have blamed you for it afterwards. That was wrong, and that definitely wasn’t anything to do with you. She punished you for that your whole life and that’s so unfair. Cruel, really.”

  “I think killing him made her mad,” she whispers.

  “I think it did too.”

  “And I think because she was mad, it made me mad too.”

  “Yes,” I whisper, “it probably did.”

  I let her cry some more without saying anything else. I know it was hard for her to relive that, but I still don’t understand why she left me. And I have a horrible feeling in my stomach that I won’t ever find out. Yara still has secrets. I don’t even know what she’s been doing for the last five years, but seeing where she works and how she lives makes me think I don’t want to know either.

  When her tears finally subside and she stops shaking, I stand up, pulling her up with me and leading her into her living room. She stops me when I’m next to her sofa and blinks up at me. “Thank you,” she says.

  I nod and
then sit down, rubbing my tired eyes. “Didn’t you ever talk about this with someone when you were at the institute?”

  “No,” she says, sitting on the other end of the sofa. “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then they’d know what I’d done, and I didn’t want to go to prison.”

  “You didn’t do anything, Yara.”

  “I have now though,” she breathes, “by not telling them about it.” Folding her hands in her lap, she twirls the diamond around her finger and looks out of the huge windows at the sky that’s starting to turn pink. “I could have told them years ago, but I didn’t. It’s withholding information, and I’m sure it’s a crime.”

  “Is this why you’ve never come home?”

  “No,” she says sadly. “I lived in that house for years knowing he was there.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because of you,” she whispers. “I can’t go home because of you.” I suck in a quick breath, feeling like I’ve been punched. “I’m surprised you’re still there,” she tells me.

  I stayed so I’d be there when you came home. “I had to stay,” I say. “I couldn’t leave my mum all alone. Plus, I’ve got my own business and I get a lot of work around our area.”

  “Your own business?” she asks, sounding interested. I look at her eyes as they dance over my face.

  “Yeah. I’ve got my own landscaping business and I mix it up with my carpentry, so I end up crafting weird summer houses and tree houses and stuff like that. I only started it up a short while ago, but it’s doing well. I’m completely booked out for the first half of next year.”

  “Wow.” She smiles, and I can tell she’s genuinely pleased for me. “That’s really great. How’s your mum doing?” she asks, sounding nervous.