Nora held her hand over it, ready to cup her fingers and trap it beneath them. Ready to catch one final keepsake. One that wouldn’t disappear in flames.
Her hand wavered. The butterfly fluttered its wings.
“Do you want it?” Owen asked.
“Yes.” But she couldn’t bring herself to pinch its thorax. To see its life seep away and watch it become still. “I think . . . I think I’d like to remember it just like this.” She slid her finger toward its legs, then lifted it between them, shifting so that she faced Owen. Her eyes met his over the blue pansy. “Some things are better left to memories.” They couldn’t always be caught and mounted, a token of things that had been.
The butterfly lifted from her finger just as they pulled onto the expanse of dirt that circled the main house. A half dozen children, Sita among them, spilled from the door.
“Akka!” Sita darted toward the cart. The weariness stooping her shoulders had lifted in the days since they’d arrived. Her bright smile and dimples flashed without reserve now, and she ran and played and danced without concern.
Owen hopped from the cart and came around to help Nora down. With his hands spanning her waist, he set her on the ground, and a gaggle of children surrounded them. Sita’s warm hand slipped into Nora’s, and she tugged her forward, chattering about a caterpillar she’d discovered. A mosaic she’d made out of beads. A friend she’d made.
Nora smiled down at her, feeling more than seeing the soft edges of memories hemming Sita’s thick braid and shining brown eyes. A dream floating away. One that wouldn’t be caught and pinned down.
With her free hand, she reached for Owen’s, and he rubbed his thumb over her skin. As though knowing her thoughts—the crushing sense of loss—he leaned toward her. “Just enjoy this moment, Nora.”
Beside her, Sita hung on to Nora’s hand and hopped down the path after her new friends. She was all vibrant color and unrestrained joy. A butterfly who had escaped. A drifting dream.
Three days later, Nora’s clothing was ready. She wished she’d ordered more than two simple skirts and three bodices. More than two sets of underclothes and a nightgown. Because then she’d have more time in this place of rescue and peace. More time with Sita.
Sita walked beside her now, down the palm-lined path. They’d finished breakfast, and Aneeta had shooed them from the house, telling them to say good-bye in private, away from dozens of prying eyes.
“Must you leave? Can’t you stay?” Sita clasped Nora’s hand.
“Our ship leaves from Madras next week, and we must get the next train from Madurai if we’re to make it in time.”
“What if you just stayed? There are so many insects in this area. Beautiful Lepidoptera. I could continue assisting you.”
A macaque scampered in front of them and launched himself up the trunk of a palm. Settling atop a tight bunch of coconuts, he screamed down at them. Nora tugged Sita farther along the path. “I wish I could, but it’s time for me to go home.”
“I will remember you always.”
“And I you.”
Nora was well-acquainted with grief. She recognized the symptoms—the heaviness in her limbs and thickened throat. The leaden way she walked beside Sita, as though she couldn’t take another step. The way her heart—an organ she was certain had little to do with her actual feelings—tightened and then seemed to shatter within her chest.
She recognized them and was helpless to resist.
She stopped in the middle of the dusty road and drew Sita to her. She rested her chin on the child’s head and sniffed to stem the tears. “You have changed everything. For me. For your sister’s baby. For yourself. You are brave, and I’m so proud to know you.”
Sita tilted her head, peering up at Nora from eyes that had seen too much. “Let’s not cry today.”
Nora dashed away the tears that had slipped down her cheek and smiled. “All right. What shall we do?”
A mischievous grin appeared on Sita’s face, and she splayed her hands above her head. “Let’s dance, Akka.”
Nora laughed and matched Sita’s pose. Sita began to sing a beautiful song in a language as different from English as India was from Nora’s own country. A song that told a story in words Nora couldn’t understand, about joy and beauty and life.
A song of friendship and love.
A song that pierced Nora’s spirit and made her forget her grief.
They danced beneath the shade of palm trees, Sita’s sweet voice punctuated by an irate monkey’s shrieks. They moved—Sita gracefully, Nora less so—in tandem.
And as they swiveled their hips and waved their arms, Nora impressed Sita’s smile onto her heart and into her mind. She never wanted to forget its brilliance. Never wanted to doubt, for even a moment, the value of what she had learned and discovered in this faraway place.
Nora stood at the ship’s railing as it slipped from the Madras harbor and began its three-week journey to England. They’d stay with Owen’s widowed aunt in London for a week before boarding another ship to New York. She’d be home soon.
She had sent a letter to her mother from Madurai, telling her she was headed home, but not explaining why so soon. Hoping she wouldn’t ask.
Small fishing boats slid past them, the rowers balanced on flat feet and pushing shirtless bodies against the long oars. The city disappeared into the smoggy horizon, and Nora, blinking eyes gritty from lack of sleep, turned away from India.
“Are you okay?” Owen touched her arm. The skin beneath his eyes sank into dark circles, and worry lines pulled his mouth taut.
She nodded. Then shook her head. “In truth, I don’t know. I can’t help but feel I’m leaving too soon. I want more time to work. More time with Sita and Swathi. I want to stay more than I want to go home. Everything feels a little undone.”
Owen chewed on his lower lip, then turned back to look toward the city. When she joined him at the rail, eyes trained on the city of Madras fading on the horizon, he asked, “What do you see?”
“Water. And just past that, a mind-bogglingly complex country full of paradox. Colorful insects that capture the imagination. Children who capture hearts. A place that has captured me fully.”
“You should be a poet.”
Her quiet laugh danced around the edges of her mouth. “I think I’ll stick with science.”
“You accomplished so much here. I see a land where you learned your worth as an entomologist.”
She tilted her head. “You see that?”
“You discovered a new butterfly species in this place. You learned to let go and dance.” He glanced at her, and his eyes softened with the memory.
Nora flushed, remembering the way she’d moved beneath the heavy sky to music that pulsed just below her skin. Even now, she swayed just a bit, as though she could hear Sita’s song in the sea breeze.
Owen cupped her cheek, his thumb rubbing the planes and angles of her jawline. “I see a place where you made a stand and realized some things are more important than your career. A place where you learned to let your guard down and allow something more than science and work and insects—and yes, even that journal—fill your heart.”
Warmth filled her belly and swept through her. She leaned into Owen’s hand, then turned and pressed her lips to his palm, breathing in the earthy scent of India’s land and air.
He bent to whisper in her ear. “India is the place you loved me first, and for that, it’s my favorite place of all.”
She wished for a lonely shola forest. She wished for a waterfall that sprayed her face with cooling mist. She wished for a few more moments alone with Owen in a bouncing mattu vandi before life went back to normal.
As she leaned as close to Owen as she dared in so public a setting, her heart soared upward, a small piece breaking away and staying behind in this land of unfinished work and intoxicating dreams.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Nora returned home in the middle of autumn, when a muted palette of yello
ws and reds colored the mountains and hills of upstate New York. Ithaca was flush with students still excited about the new school year, and their hurried pace and chatter pierced Nora with longing for that simplicity. She wished she could join the people walking past her house and through the cemetery on their way to comparative literature and biology classes. But she couldn’t. Not only because she’d expected to be away until February and had no commitments, but because India had changed her.
“Tell us again how everything with Owen happened.” Rose leaned forward in the iron chair set beneath their garden arbor, her round eyes sparkling with the thrill of romance.
Nora wanted to tell her and Bitsy about Frederic and Sita and Swathi. About Muruga and Pallavi. About the hypocrisies of the mission board and her love for an Indian child. But she couldn’t. Those stories were sacred, and she didn’t want to minimize their impact by sharing moments, piece by piece. It was a story that needed to be told in its entirety, so until Nora’s mind didn’t race with worry every time she said Sita’s name, and until she could speak about Muruga’s attack without her teeth chattering, she would only tell them about Owen.
She didn’t think she’d ever tell them about her butterfly and the precious few days she’d thought she would make her mark as a scientist.
Nora crossed her ankles, luxuriating in the waft of lilac that caressed her nose every time her skirts rustled and released the scent of the sachet they’d been folded away with. India had wended its way through her very marrow, and she missed the languid days, the scent of spiced tea waking her up every morning, and monkeys calling to one another. But she didn’t miss the smell of four unwashed men. “I’ve told you this story already.”
Bitsy leaned her elbow on the small round table and flicked her wrist, her fingers resting in an elegant pose. “You know Rose lives for romance stories. She reads through those sentimental novels faster than she can eat a chocolate bar. And she’s always stringing together fairy tales, as though life works like that.”
Nora indulged Rose with a smile. “Thankfully, neither Owen nor I struggled with seasickness. We were able to stand at the railing and listen to the ocean break against the ship. I should have hired a companion, because we spent too much time together. There may be scandalized Englishwomen still clucking their tongues over the forward Americans.”
Rose leaned farther toward her, and even Bitsy showed a gleam of interest.
“When we arrived in London, we stayed with Owen’s aunt again. On the way to India, we only had two days, and Owen spent much of that time with family. But this time we had a week, and his family might as well not have existed. I didn’t have the proper attire to go out and do the usual things, but we rode through Hyde Park and spent hours talking over books in his uncle’s library, and stole kisses in the garden.” Nora blushed as she remembered those kisses. “He told me he loved me.”
Rose clasped her hands together and pressed her fingers to her lips. “Is that why you came home early? To be married?”
Nora blinked. “What? No. We haven’t discussed that at all.”
Rose showed no signs of having heard Nora’s response. She swayed in her chair, looking for all the world as though she were about to swoon, and a featherlight smile spread her lips. “It’s so romantic. Just like a fairy tale. You fell in love in an exotic location, far from home, while walking on a jasmine-scented cloud.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Bitsy laughed. “I’m sure it was nothing at all like that. Nora is entirely too practical to walk on jasmine-scented clouds.”
Nora smiled when Bitsy winked at her, but it had kind of felt like that. India, and everything that happened there, spoke to her in whispers that caressed her memories, wrapping everything in exotic perfume and sultry, cicada-song nights.
She ran her fingers over her lips, remembering the press of Owen’s. She hadn’t seen him since they’d parted ways at Grand Central Station—he to spend time with his family in Manhattan before returning to Cornell, and she to continue the journey home—and she wondered if he’d truly been a part of that hazy dream.
She’d abandoned her sensibility on the shores of New York when she’d left four months ago, and now that she’d returned home and stepped into that coat again, it felt snug and ill-fitting. Maybe India had changed her. Or maybe it just revealed to her that she’d been wearing a costume for years.
“What is he doing?” Bitsy asked. She studied the back of Nora’s house, a speculative gleam in her eyes.
Nora turned but saw nothing amiss about her home’s gray clapboard siding. “Who?”
“Lucius.” Bitsy jerked her chin upward. “He just peeked out your bedroom window, then drew the curtains. It’s suspicious.”
A flame, set by Lucius’s bonfire, flickered in Nora’s stomach, burning off all thoughts of dreams and Owen. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
When Bitsy and Rose stood, she waved them back to their seats, then strode across the garden and into the house. As she marched up the back stairs, she formed all kinds of arguments in her head. Most started with I have no insects for you to destroy, but when she opened her bedroom door, her rehearsed lectures hadn’t prepared her for what she saw.
Lucius stood before her dresser, picking through her jewelry box. He held up an emerald ring that had belonged to her great-aunt, turning it this way and that before slipping it into his pocket. When he lifted her cicada brooch, Nora’s entire body went rigid. That brooch, given to her by her father and adored by Sita, didn’t belong in Lucius’s rough fingers.
She marched across the room. “What are you doing?”
Lucius jumped, and the brooch fell to the floor. When she bent to retrieve it, he beat a hasty retreat to the door.
She snapped upright. “Stop. I want answers. Why are you rifling through my jewelry? Why have you stolen my ring?”
He turned and faced her, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and heaved a great sigh. “I need money.”
Money? Her mother’s inheritance should have taken care of them for years. The house had no mortgage, and they didn’t lead an excessive lifestyle. “Why do you need money?”
“Do you not remember that I lost my position? I haven’t been able to contribute anything in months.”
Nora’s heart sank to her stomach. “And my mother’s money?”
Lucius’s lips flattened. “That is none of your concern.”
“You’re stealing my jewelry. I think it is my concern.”
“You seem to have forgotten that everything in this house belongs to me, but here, take it.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out the ring.
Nora held out her hand, making him cross the room. When he laid it in her palm, she said, “You may own the house, but this jewelry belongs to me.”
He lifted a shaking hand and scrubbed his face with it. When he dropped his arm, his eyes were on the ceiling and a twitch quivered his jowls. “I’m not going to beg you, Nora, but my only other option is asking your mother to sell off some of her jewels. I wanted to spare her that stress. You know she isn’t strong.”
Nora, in the process of taking inventory of her jewelry, froze. Her mother, though no longer bedridden, had only left the house twice since Nora’s return. She retired early and slept late, didn’t eat much, and constantly complained of headaches. Stress, any stress, triggered dizzy spells that put her in bed for the rest of the day. Nora didn’t think her mother would respond well to Lucius’s request for her jewels.
“Is Mother aware of your financial straits?”
“Of course not. I didn’t want to lay that burden on her. Had you been receptive to courting Mr. Primrose, this would have been resolved with a wedding.”
“I was never going to marry someone who thought so little of my work and sex.” Especially after experiencing Owen’s support and encouragement.
Nora sifted through her box, testing the weight of the pearl necklaces, gemstone rings, and gold bracelets. She never wore them. Couldn’t stand jewelry, really. Her
tastes ran toward simplicity—neutral shirtwaists and skirts, simple hats, sensible shoes. The only piece she wore regularly was her Lalique brooch. She lifted her hand to her ears, where the earrings she’d bought in India with Owen dangled. And these. Now she also wore these.
She refocused on the jewels in the box. Her father had left her mother in Nora’s care, and even though Lucius had turned up to take over that role a year later, Nora believed it still to be her responsibility. She’d failed so many people. She couldn’t bear the thought of failing again.
She plucked the brooch from the box and flipped the lid closed. “Take whatever you need from there to pay your bills.” The brooch was a reassuring weight in her palm. She held it up. “Except for this and my earrings. Don’t ever touch those.”
Nora tucked the blanket over her mother’s lap, then joined her on the swing on the front porch. The day had wound down, and people passed the house on their way home from jobs and classes, waving at them as they gently swung.
“I missed this,” Nora said.
Contentment shadowed her mother’s smile. “I missed you. I do hope you got that out of your system and you’ll stay home from now on.”
Nora didn’t tell her about Lucius’s ultimatum—that she was to live with his sister if she wasn’t awarded the scholarship. The board wasn’t hosting the scholarship contestants’ lectures until February, when she and Owen were initially expected home. Her mother didn’t need to fret and worry until they made their choice and Nora knew if she was to stay or go.
“I met a woman in India who’d lost her son. Her husband seemed to think my absence caused you great distress.” Nora kept her eyes focused on the progress of a boy jogging down the street after his nurse, a toddler hanging on to his hand.
“He was correct.” Her mother grasped Nora’s hand.
A young man, wearing the pin of a newly initiated Delta Upsilon member, crossed the street before them and took the porch steps two at a time. He doffed his hat and held a letter toward Nora. “From President White.”
A Mosaic of Wings Page 27
