The Memory of Butterflies: A Novel

by Grace Greene

  Was that why I threw a few things in a box? Was it because I couldn’t stand being here alone? Or was it because if the sheriff was going to roll up in his cruiser to arrest me, I didn’t want it to be here where neighbors would come out and stand in the street to watch and be concerned and curious?

  I loaded the box and a pillow and blanket into the back of my car.

  Ellen had always liked a nightlight. Me? I’d never been afraid of the dark. Sometimes darkness felt like protection, especially for the secrets dwelling within me.

  I parked in the cleared area. Dawn had preceded me by an hour, but the trees blocked much of it, and the light was dim. Still, a couple of workers had gotten an early start as some trucks were parked in the lot. Not Ellen’s car.

  Looked like today was another drywall day. I stepped out of the car. Bright lights were hooked up inside. The noise of the stapling was loud, and the rhythmic punctuations filled the air. I took my box from the back and carried it around behind the house and to the cabin.

  Once inside, I could collapse. The sleep I hadn’t gotten during the night slammed me. I put the blanket in the corner chair. The chair was large and well stuffed, and I curled up in it. I thought briefly of securing the door, but it was only a half thought that briefly brushed my consciousness but then lost its grip and flitted by.

  “Hannah?” Roger said.

  His tone was hushed. I’d slept through whatever construction noises penetrated the cabin walls, yet Roger’s whisper woke me. I sat up abruptly, touching my face and brushing my hair aside. I put my legs on the floor but was tangled in the blanket and couldn’t stand right away. My neck hurt. The position had been awkward. My brain was fuzzy.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Is something wrong?” He knelt at my feet, helping to work the blanket free.

  Was something wrong? It all rushed over me, and I put my head back, unable to stand.

  Roger pulled a stool next to the chair. “Talk to me, Hannah. Tell me what happened.”

  I coughed and cleared my throat. Roger handed me a bottle of water I didn’t remember having. I’d brought it from the house? Or no, it had been in my car. Now, somehow, it was in the cabin with me.

  “I . . . I . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know where to start.” I tried to sit up, to lean forward, and my head spun. “How do you know something happened?”

  “Well, you’re sleeping in a chair in a cabin on a construction site when you have a nice house in Mineral.” He tried to grin, but it was brief and grim. “I saw your car, and no one had seen you, but Liam . . . He suggested something had happened but wouldn’t say more. I thought this was the place—if you were here and you must be—then this was where I’d find you.”

  “Liam’s here?”

  “He was, but he didn’t stay.”

  “Was Ellen with him?”

  “No.” His eyes narrowed. “Why would Ellen be with him? Did something happen with Liam? Should I fire him?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know how to start telling you.”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  I wanted to laugh, but it didn’t come out that way. It sounded like I was choking instead. Roger handed me the water bottle again. I tried to focus on him, on his face. Had his anger with me passed? Was he still angry? I couldn’t think clearly enough to figure it out.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Only since this morning.”

  “Maybe we should go get a bite to eat. It’s noon.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’m really worried now. You always have an appetite.”

  I knew he was trying to normalize the moment, to inject some levity, but he didn’t understand how far we’d traveled since yesterday. This was a strange new world.

  He said, “What about graduation? Does Ellen need a ride there or is she meeting us?”

  Roger was confused. He was the least likely person I knew who’d ever be confused, but this time there was plenty of reason. I had to explain this to him.

  “I won’t be attending.”

  Roger started to argue and I raised my hand to still his voice.

  “Let me tell you why. Ellen and I had a talk. She heard some nonsense from her friends, and the parents of her friends, that Spencer Bell was her father.”

  “I remember him from the night of the accident.”

  “Yes, him.”

  “You’ve never been willing to talk about Ellen’s father. Not that you seemed particularly stricken about the loss—it was long ago, and you’re a very practical, levelheaded person. But you didn’t want to discuss it, and I didn’t think it was my business unless you wanted it to be.”

  “Spencer isn’t Ellen’s father.” Poor Roger’s world was about to change, too, through no fault of his own, but because he cared about Ellen and me. Roger was yet one more person I’d wronged, at least by omission. It hurt so much that I felt numb, thank goodness. Otherwise, how could I bear it?

  “Spencer was the father of the first Ellen. We, Gran and me, I mean . . . we lost her when she was still an infant.” I watched his face. He was speechless now. “Ellen, the present Ellen, turned up on my front porch when she was two years old or a little more, courtesy of old George Bridger.”

  He pulled his hand away. He moved back and sat straighter.

  “I didn’t intend to keep her, but Gran . . . Anyway, one thing followed another, and before long . . . we had our Ellen back.” I clenched my fingers together. “When all this came up with Spencer Bell, I told Ellen the truth. It was time. I didn’t want her to derail her life, her future, because of my choices, my lies.”

  Roger was all about integrity. The woman he knew as Hannah Cooper had lived a well-constructed life. Practical and levelheaded, he’d called me. But herbs and vegetables—good things—started life in the mud. Why should people be different? The messiness of it, the lies, would trouble Roger, and I knew that. Perhaps that was part of the reason I’d always kept him at arm’s length emotionally.

  “I’m sorry, Roger. I don’t know what will come of this. I understand you might not want to be my friend, but please finish my house.”

  He blinked. His jaw moved, but it was a long moment before he got out the words. “All this, and you’re worried about the house?”

  “I need the house. Regardless of whatever else happens, a half-built house does me no good at all.”

  Did I sound too practical? Every trait had a good and bad aspect. The same was true for Roger, though likely his sins had been less heinous than mine. He frowned, trying to process what he’d learned. I wished I could smooth those lines away, but I was busy growing my own, and to touch him would be like making promises, perhaps suggesting bargains that would hurt him.

  Roger stood. Without a word, he went to the door, opened it, but then he paused. He faced me, the light behind him throwing his own face into shadow, and asked, “The first baby. What happened to her? Where is she?”

  A familiar darkness closed in. It shielded me and allowed me to speak. “She went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I buried her in the cemetery.”

  He closed the door behind him as he left.

  I started shaking. Whole-body shaking. An earthquake that I alone felt. I gripped the blanket, holding it tightly around me, but I wasn’t cold. The blanket was for holding me together lest the many parts of me go flying, scattering into the world to be lost. My body wouldn’t need a burial. That was a good thing, as there’d be no one left on this earth who cared enough to dig the hole.

  I’d shattered once before—that night in the cemetery. Suddenly, my fingers began stinging again. I held out my hands. They were clean, and yet the dirt was still there, staining my flesh for all to see—all who knew the truth. Now there were more who knew. Word would get around. Soon others would ask.

  If I was lucky, I would lose my daughter for the second time, but I’d still have the Hollow. It was a strange world in which I could consider such a loss to be “lucky
.” But if Ellen was safe and well and moving forward with her plans, I could accept it. I could live an acceptable life alone with minimal interaction with the world. In fact, it might be a nice change to live without my heart being torn between hiding the past and wanting to live and love in the present.

  Once upon a time, I’d dreamed about the future. For years, I’d imagined how my life would be after Ellen left for college. Accordingly, I built my plans. Now I tucked them away forever. The best I could hope for was a completed house and that the law would allow me to stay in Cooper’s Hollow.

  I remembered the broken pot. Later, after all the workers had left, I crept out of the cabin and into the house to retrieve the pieces. They were all gone. Swept away, and gone with the trash. Not one tiny piece remained.

  Days had passed since I’d told Ellen the truth. The windows and exterior doors were installed and the remaining drywall was hung, taped, and mudded. Each day, after the workers left, I emerged from my cabin and walked through the emptiness.

  These looked like rooms now. I could see how the furniture would lay out and the colors I might choose for the walls. There was a part of me that still cared. Still hoped. I hated and loved that part all at the same time and didn’t try to do otherwise. I was in limbo, and I was content with that because I knew it could change for the worse at any moment. As of now, Ellen could return to me. Liam might forgive me. Roger would build my house. I was home again in Cooper’s Hollow. So long as I was here, there was a sliver, a tiny window of hope, that things would come right again.

  I paused and looked across Cub Creek to the cemetery. It remained untouched by the changes in the Hollow or the recent events in my life. None of the construction crew had been near it, not for a shady lunch spot or to recline on the wall. Why had I ever thought they might? People did vandalize old cemeteries, but what was I protecting? I’d been protecting Ellen from the truth, but the cemetery? Gran and Grand were gone. Ensuring respect? Yes, that was part of it. But not of the empty graves. They’d served their purpose. But of Ellen, the first Ellen, my precious baby Ellen . . .

  I hadn’t seen the figure on the stone wall again. After all the years of tender care I’d given the cemetery, now I wanted to avoid it. I was almost afraid of it.

  I was also clearheaded. I’d slept myself out despite the awkwardness of the chair. First and foremost, I needed food and a shower. I would pick up fresh clay at the shop, then return to Rose Lane after dark. Clay—I needed to dig my fingers back into it.

  My fingers burned and stung from phantom abrasions, memories of that night long ago. The clay, cool and moist, would soothe them.

  At the house, I closed the blinds and kept the lights turned down low while I cooked myself a proper meal. I slept for a few hours on a real bed where I could stretch out. I awoke before dawn. While the coffee brewed, I added more candles and water bottles to the box in the car. I watched the sun rise as I drove back to the Hollow.

  I’d picked up a bucket and filled water containers at Cub Creek Pottery the evening before. That would be my best option for handwashing after working with the clay. I could’ve worked at the shop. For that matter, I could’ve slept at the shop at least as comfortably as I could at the cabin, and there I had a proper sink and toilet. But in the shop, nothing stirred me. Never had. The work I did there felt utilitarian, an occupation to show the world I was useful, had a purpose, and could earn some money, because otherwise the world got curious and then suspicious.

  Making pottery and managing the store had been part of what I’d done to occupy my days while Ellen attended school, worked her hourly jobs, participated in after-school activities. Together, we’d attended church and involved ourselves in activities there and in the community, and I’d made plans for my future and the return to Cooper’s Hollow. I’d thought I was waiting for Ellen to graduate, for us both to be ready to move forward to this next stage of our lives. Maybe I hadn’t been honest with myself. Everything I’d done, all the efforts to rebuild and move back to the Hollow, seemed to have had the opposite effect, zeroing in on the core problem, almost tempting fate.

  I unloaded my car and set up the bucket of washing water with a bag of rags handy in the corner. The clay went on the table, with my tools next to them. But then my resolve flagged. It was early in the morning. I didn’t think anyone was on the jobsite yet. I picked up my cup of coffee and walked over to the house.

  From the cabin door, the view of the back of the house was nearly unobstructed. The full-length windows were arrayed like a gallery across the central portion of the back wall, and in their midst was a four-panel French-door arrangement. The deck was nearly completed now, except for the steps. I stole a quick look across at the cemetery, but then turned away and touched the side of the building to brace myself for the big step up.

  I wandered through the rooms knowing each by heart. The study here. Beside it was Ellen’s room. The kitchen was on the far side of the great room. And so on. Gran wouldn’t have known what to do with all this space, but I thought she might’ve enjoyed trying to figure it out. I stopped by the fireplace hearth. The fireplace was like a marker, the one corresponding feature between old and new, like an anchor holding steady in the same spot. A few feet from here was where Gran had her bed, and around the corner from there would’ve been my room. Most of the original house would’ve fit in the great room.

  I’d never felt cramped in our small house. In the new house, no one could feel cramped. Space, or the lack of it, mattered not at all. It was who you were with, or weren’t with, that made the difference.

  This house, under construction, felt like a waiting space. A space that was growing and becoming but that hadn’t arrived in its own time yet.

  I stopped short. The front door was open. Liam was standing on the porch with a chisel, seeing me as I saw him. He must’ve noticed my car and known I was here somewhere, and when he’d opened the door, he must’ve realized I was inside the house, not hiding in the cabin, yet he’d stayed. Did that mean anything?

  “Hannah.”

  “Liam.” I cleared my throat. I couldn’t stop myself from immediately asking, “How’s Ellen?”

  He scratched his jaw. He looked freshly shaved. When he stared at me, I could see Ellen’s dark eyes focused on me through his.

  “She’s good.” He stared down at his boots and then slowly raised his face. “I don’t know what to make of any of this. Why, Hannah?”

  About twenty feet separated us. It was so early the light outside didn’t really penetrate, and I knew I must be in shadow, a silhouette at best, to Liam. I moved toward the door, toward Liam and the morning light.

  “You don’t look well,” he said.

  There was something different about him. He looked like a man who’d gotten very good news. He stood taller, his hair was neater, and his shirt was tucked in. Little things. Small touches that contributed to the overall impression.

  “How is she?”

  “I told her she should talk to you. She isn’t willing yet. But soon, I’m sure.” He went silent, and his jaw tightened. He hit his fist lightly against the post he’d been carving. “I don’t understand this, Hannah.”

  “You know most of it. What specifically do you not understand? That I kept your daughter as my own?”

  He leaned against the post. “Actually, no. I’ve got that figured out. Don’t misunderstand, you were wrong to hide the truth for as long as you did, and it was wrong of you to keep Ellen away from her family and me.”

  “Ellen. You called her Ellen.”

  “That’s what she wants.”

  “I see.” A tiny spark wanted to light in my heart. I tamped it down. Too soon.

  “What I don’t understand is why, after all these years, you told her.”

  His question stopped my breath. I thought I was prepared. Apparently not, because my knees gave way, and Liam was there, suddenly, with his hands on my arms, supporting me.

  “Steady, there,” he said.

  I
touched my face. It felt numb.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I thought I could do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Face you.”

  “Well, sit down before you fall down.”

  There was no chair or stool, so Liam helped me to the floor, the front door threshold. I leaned back against the lintel and clasped my knees.

  “Sorry, I’m not usually such a delicate flower. I seem to faint a lot these days. I really created a storm, didn’t I?”

  Liam shook his head. “Part of me is angry, but at the same time, I’m almost grateful to you. I was . . .” He sighed, then looked at me. “I was in jail, picked up for a parole violation just before Sheryl brought Trisha—Ellen, I mean—to my father’s house. I was headed back to prison, and Sheryl was angry to be on her own again.”

  “Prison,” I echoed.

  “So she dumped Ellen at the house with my old man, who’d never been a good father to me, in a house I can’t begin to imagine the state it was in.”

  “He did his best by her, I think. It was over the winter, and we didn’t know she was there. He didn’t bring her to us until May.”

  “Sheryl left her there in November.”

  I nodded, my heart twisting. I wouldn’t tell him the toddler’s skin had been chapped and her body was filthy. I couldn’t do that to Mr. Bridger and worsen the memory his son already had of him. “When I went up to the house looking for him,” I said, fudging the facts a bit, “it was messy—you know how he kept house, I’m sure—but her clothing was clean and folded and her room was tidy.”

  “That so?” He looked away and pressed a knuckle to his eye. He wouldn’t look back at me. Because I was such an accomplished liar and owed him more than I could ever repay, I added, “She looked good. Well cared for.”

  He nodded. He blinked and pressed the back of his hand to his eye. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear it. I always believed Sheryl took our daughter with her when she left. No one knew Trisha wasn’t with her. Not me, that’s for sure. I was doing time when they told me my father had died and when Sheryl’s car was found.”