“Victor.”
He freezes, sighs, and shakes his head.
Mum watches him with amusement. “You didn’t really think you’d grow out of that, did you?”
“Did you?”
“It never worked on me to begin with.”
Eddison nudges Vic in the side. “I can believe it. Can you?”
“I absolutely believe it.”
Inara and Bliss ride with us to the airport, sitting in the back with me while Mercedes and Mum sit in the middle row. Suitcases fill the trunk space. Our stuff left Colorado last week, professionals loading it into the shipping container to guarantee even distribution. They were significantly better at their job than the ones who dropped the container off. Still, it’s going to take another two to three weeks before it actually arrives at the new house, so until then we’re living out of suitcases.
There’s an entire suitcase dedicated to Mum’s coffeemaker, the box wrapped in most of the towels we own for extra protection.
Eddison and Vic grab most of the bags between them, save for the carry-ons and the enormous orange-and-yellow knit blanket Hannah gave me when I said goodbye to my vets. She gave me her address, so I can write, and I have a feeling she’ll chivy the men into writing me occasionally. The blanket is warm and soft, eye-smartingly sunny, and she had to yank it away from the unabashedly weeping Happy when he looked ready to blow his nose in it.
Officer Clare was there, his partner watching him closely, to apologize. He’s on suspension until the department psychologist clears him for duty. Some cases hit unexpectedly, especially if your wife leaves you just before. It’s no excuse, but the situation is what it is, and it’s not my problem anymore.
Gunny looked at me for a long time, then gently folded me against him. “Armistice, Miss Priya?” he’d whispered.
Something like.
Then Corgi clapped me gently on the back and announced my smile didn’t make him want to piss himself anymore. So, you know. There’s that.
I’m going to miss them, and it’s weird, kind of, that I find that comforting, but for so long, I haven’t really missed people. I missed my agents, but I was in such close contact with them that it wasn’t really missing them so much as wishing they were nearby. I missed Aimée, but missing her was caught up in everything else about the murders, tangled and complicated and really not fair to her.
We get the bags checked, and thankfully Mum gets to use the company card for the baggage fees because holy shit, and walk in a mass toward the security line. It’s insane, which isn’t surprising for Reagan midmorning.
“All right, you three,” Eddison says, pulling out his phone and using it to point at me, Inara, and Bliss. “Stand together, give me fuel for my nightmares for years to come.”
Snickering, Inara and Bliss lean into me on either side, our arms wrapped around each other, and smile for the camera. Eddison actually shudders.
“Three of the most dangerous human beings on the planet,” he mutters.
“What am I?” asks Mum.
“Their demonic leader.” But he kisses her cheek.
“We’ll write,” Inara tells me. “We’ll definitely let you know when this one’s parents wear her down.”
“Door’s always open.”
“So’s ours,” Bliss says. “You ever want to come on a holiday, we’ve got a bed for you. We’ll take New York by storm.”
“But will it ever recover?” Mercedes asks with a laugh, wrapping me in a hug from behind.
Goodbyes haven’t been this hard since Boston, but I’m grateful. God, I’m so, so grateful to have people who mean this much to me. Mercedes passes me back to Inara and Bliss for hugs, and they hand me off to Vic. He holds me close for a long moment.
“I am so glad you’re safe,” he whispers, “and that you’re starting to be happy again. You’re one of my own girls, Priya, you know that.”
“I do,” I whisper back, giving him a squeeze. “You’re not rid of us that easy.”
Eddison pulls me a little ways away as Mum gives her round of goodbyes. Inara and Bliss are a little in awe of her, I think, less in the you-make-me-speechless way than “I want to be you when I grow up.” When there’s a good bit of distance between us and the group, he pulls me into a hug. “So this thing that I’ve been very carefully not asking,” he says quietly. “Can you live with it?”
I’ve been thinking about that for weeks, even before my birthday. “Yes, I think I can,” I answer. “Not easily, perhaps, but that might be for the best. And you told the rest of the families; no one has to wonder anymore. I can live with that.” I rest my head against his shoulder, smelling the spicy cologne he uses when he can’t be bothered with aftershave. Or shaving. “Mum and I talked it over, and we’re going to spread Chavi’s ashes. We’re thinking a lavender field, with one of the castles and the river in the background? That should appeal to Chavi. We’re going to make this a good move.”
“Okay.”
I look up at him, and his stubbly cheek scrapes against my forehead as he drops a kiss between my eyes, just above the bindi. It’s only in the past week I’ve started wearing it again, the skin fully healed. “I’m going to miss you, you know?”
“Nonsense,” he says gruffly. “I fully expect Special Agent Ken to be giving regular reports. And, ah . . . you know, I keep accumulating a ridiculous amount of paid time off. Maybe I’ll finally dust some of that off one of these days.”
“There’ll be a room. Always.”
He kisses me again, then releases me with a slight push back to the group. Another round of hugs and goodbyes, and then Mum and I are in the security line. I clutch the folded blanket to my chest, and after fighting with myself for a moment, I look back over my shoulder at them. Inara and Bliss are leaning against Vic, comfortable and casual, and Mercedes is poking a blushing Eddison in the shoulder, the girls egging her on and Vic grinning like a loon as he pretends to be the adult.
The line shuffles forward and I follow, and Mum wraps her arm around my shoulders to bring me in for a kiss on the cheek. “Ready for this, my love?”
“Yeah.” I face forward and take a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
Your name was Jameson Carmichael, and Darla Jean was your everything.
You were just waiting for her to grow up, weren’t you? Old enough to leave your tiny Texas town and never come back, go with you somewhere no one knew you were related so you could start your proper life together. You never told her that, of course. You never thought you needed to.
Darla Jean loved you as her brother but that could never be enough for you.
You’ve punished us all for it over the years, for her perceived sins. So many lives you’ve destroyed, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and friends, the pain spiraling out to all those touched by us.
My mother gardens, but then, you know that, don’t you? Because you watched us back then, in Boston, and again in San Diego. She plans her gardens, sketching out the beds so she knows what she wants to plant where, and they’re always balanced. Here are the annuals, planted fresh every year. Here are the perennials, blooming and resting and blooming again. With the proper care, they keep living, keep thriving, as others die around them.
I’ve been alive the last five years, resting or hiding or whatever we want to call it. Grieving. Now, I think, finally, I’ll know what it is to bloom again.
And all it took was your blood, warm and heavy and sticky on my hands.
Do you like that, Joshua? That in your own, special way, you might finally be the thing that helps me heal from what you’ve been doing for so long?
The knife tore and ripped each time I pulled it out of you, and I think I understand why you always sliced and slit, never stabbed. Such a terrible sound, and the feeling of the flesh catching on those points. I hope you felt each one. Your favored ones, your good girls, you studied the body to make their deaths as painless as you could, but anatomy was never really my thing. If it had been, maybe I would ha
ve realized how easy it is to slam against ribs, the strength it takes to try to drive a knife through bone. Maybe I would have learned how tough muscle is, but how easily the lung gives way to a blade, with a wet, sucking gasp that announces its weakness. Maybe I would have read somewhere that blood is darker closer to the heart, or maybe it only seems that way.
But strangely—or not—I find myself thinking of the roses. You brought so many with you, filling your car. I didn’t realize until I was outside that you had so many more you hadn’t carried in with you. You would have made me a rose bower inside the chapel.
But the roses didn’t fall around me. I bled, true enough, but not enough to fall, to pool. That was you. It was your life painting the white petals, your own little Wonderland garden, and you never expected that your rules could change, be overthrown.
There were things I wanted to ask you, but even at the end, didn’t dare. You could have woken up, after all, could have said something that made it obvious—more obvious—that I knew who you were.
That’s okay, though, because you know what I realized, Joshua, there in the cold and the falling snow and the blood warm and wet and heavy on my clothes just like that long-ago morning with Chavi?
I realized your answers couldn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter why you did it, why you chose them, chose us, chose me. It doesn’t matter how you justify it, because the answers were never going to make sense to anyone else anyway. They were yours. And they were wrong.
They were always, always wrong.
You were one of the sick, terrible things in the world, Joshua, but no more.
My name is Priya Sravasti, and I am no one’s victim.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To all the people who have stuck by me and supported me as I spent most of a year freaking out about how this book was doing its best to kill me by way of a nervous breakdown: thank you. I could not have done this without my cheering sections, all the people who kept telling me not to get discouraged, everyone who listened to me panic and complain and just generally lose my mind.
To JoVon, who bought the book when it was nothing more than a very different synopsis, and Jessica, who absolutely believes in it, and Caitlin, who deserves a freaking medal for our edit process. Caitlin, you have a gift for making the impossible seem manageable, and your calm confidence definitely pulled me through. Agent Sandy, for finding a home for the Butterflies that opened its doors to more of the story.
Isabel, Maire, Kelie, Roni, Pam, Allyson, because there wasn’t a single part of the process you didn’t hear about and yet you’re somehow still my friends. A massive thank you to my family for being so excited about every milestone and success, and understanding when I spent Thanksgiving staring at edits. Everyone at Crossroads, for talking up The Butterfly Garden and celebrating with me whenever we had to order more into the store (and for never telling me to shut up when I couldn’t stop talking about how much everything was stressing me out).
You know, I’m sensing a theme here.
And to everyone who’s read and loved The Butterfly Garden, everyone who’s shared a review or talked about it online, everyone who’s picked it for book club or pushed it on friends, thank you. Thank you for your enthusiasm, for your support, and for staying with me this far.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2012 Arabella Blizzard
Dot Hutchison is the author of The Butterfly Garden and The Roses of May, the first two books in The Collector Trilogy, as well as A Wounded Name, a young adult novel based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hutchison loves thunderstorms, mythology, history, and movies that can and should be watched on repeat. For more information on her current projects, visit www.dothutchison.com or connect with her on Tumblr (www.dothutchison.tumblr.com), Twitter (@DotHutchison), or Facebook (www.facebook.com/DotHutchison).
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