The Memory of Butterflies: A Novel

by Grace Greene

  “Prison,” I said again. “Not overseas.”

  “Not overseas. ‘A polite fiction’ is what they call it, right? No, I was never in the service. I was in the States and incarcerated. I had a drinking problem. Made poor decisions. DUI. Breaking and entering. I’d rather not go into it further. I’d hoped no one here would ever need to know.”

  “No one does, and they won’t hear it from me.”

  “I never learned to be a grateful or a peaceful man, but when I understood my daughter hadn’t died in the flooding . . . I thanked God, probably for the first time in decades.”

  “I kept her from you . . . not deliberately, but by keeping her as my own.”

  He shook his head. “For the first time in years, I was even grateful to Sheryl. I’m sure she ditched Trisha because having a child along was inconvenient for her lifestyle. Too much partying and drugs. Yet if Sheryl hadn’t left her behind, or if the flash food hadn’t killed her, then our daughter would’ve grown up living as her mother did. By the time I was released, our daughter would have been . . . well, I don’t know, but I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have made it worse. It’s taken me several years to find my way back to a decent life.

  “If you had notified the authorities, Trisha . . . Ellen, I mean—” He shook his head with a wry grin. “She surely would’ve gone into foster care. I thought my daughter had died. That was bad, yes. But instead, she was loved and cared for. That was good, for her and for me.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever see it that way?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  Birds flew overhead, and we watched them pass. Have patience, I told myself. There is hope in patience. In the silence, I heard the distant sound of the creek and of the leaves in the nearby trees rustling.

  “I have another question,” he said.

  I braced myself.

  “If I’d come back sooner, say several years ago, would you have told me then?”

  In a quiet voice, I said, “Yes. If you had returned, and if I wasn’t worried about her safety or well-being with you, I would’ve told you.”

  “What if I’d been messed up and not managing? You wouldn’t have come forward?”

  Images flashed in my mind of what that would’ve meant. Handing over Ellen to a stranger with a drinking problem or worse? I held my breath and shook my head.

  He nodded. “I believe you. It confirms what I thought about your reasons.”

  “Liam, you asked why I told her now. I want her to go to college. I still want that. I don’t want her to make decisions based on fear, or hurt because her friends said thoughtless things. Will you encourage her?”

  “Yes, but I won’t force her, Hannah. I don’t know if I’m ready to lose her again this soon.”

  “No, please, Liam. Encourage her to go. She’ll return. Don’t make her like me. Or like you. We don’t want her making decisions that will haunt her and hold her back for the rest of her life.” I stood gingerly and touched his arm. “Don’t you see how wrong it would be?”

  He put his shoulders back, drawing away. “I see both sides, but I’ve only just found my daughter.” His gaze flicked away. “I’ve got work to do.”

  We weren’t done discussing this, but before I could tell him, I realized Roger had arrived. His car was stopped partway down the drive, and I knew he’d seen us. I turned without another word and went through the house, out the back, and into the cabin.

  I nearly barricaded the door but didn’t. I forced myself to stand and wait.

  I’d kept my secret for so long, too long. By the time I did tell, I hurt people. I’d confessed the truth to halt further damage to Ellen’s life. And now? What purpose had any of it served? Ellen had been Trisha Bridger in the Bridger house; now she was Ellen, perhaps still a Cooper, too, and I’d given her all I could, including the truth. And now she was back there again, at the Bridger house, perhaps to stay.

  Perhaps never to leave.

  Could I step away from it? Let it go? I’d done what I could. This, in a very real way, was no longer any of my business.

  Yet, would I have a choice? Someone somehow would pull me back in. I had no fight left in me, and I didn’t want to do any more damage.

  When the thick door began to move, Roger called out, “Hannah? Can I come in?”

  I gulped and couldn’t speak. He pushed the door the rest of the way open.

  Roger stared, his eyes adjusting to the dim interior light. “Hannah? I went to the house, I went to the shop, I have looked all over town. Why are you hiding in the cabin?”

  “Because I don’t want to see anyone,” I whispered.

  Roger eased the door closed. He turned back to me. “Like Liam?”

  “I didn’t know he was here. When I did, I wanted to find out how Ellen was.”

  “How do you think Ellen is?” He sounded angry.

  “Have you spoken to her? How is she?”

  “I did, but only briefly, then I went looking for you. Where have you been?”

  “Here, and at Rose Lane, and at the shop.”

  He looked around, and his tone changed. “Are you living out here?”

  I moved around to the far side of the table. If he hadn’t noticed the clay and the tools before, he did now.

  “Rose Lane is where I live with my daughter. I don’t want to spend time there right now.”

  “Are you hiding?”

  “I want to be away from . . . People talk. Right now, until I know how things will . . . resolve, I don’t want to be an object of . . . however people will view what I’ve done. They don’t know my family or me or why. I can’t stop people from talking, but I won’t add to it or give them the opportunity to butt into my life. I don’t care what they think.”

  “If that were true, then you wouldn’t be hiding and moving around town under cover of dark.” Roger leaned forward, his hands on the table. His words slammed into me. “Did you do the right thing fifteen years ago? No. But let me ask you this: Do you regret it? Would you do it differently if you could go back?”

  Would I? I already knew the answer in my heart. “I won’t lie. No, I don’t regret it. I couldn’t do it differently. I am sorry people were hurt, though.”

  “But you’d hurt them all over again if time rewound?”

  I nodded.

  “Then step out there. Don’t hide as if you believe you did something wrong.”

  “But I did. I did do something wrong.”

  “Make up your mind, Hannah. Stop hiding.”

  Hiding. I had made the choice to hide. In many ways I’d been hiding since the day a toddler was left on my porch. Or maybe since I’d lost Ellen the first time.

  “That’s why you never married,” Roger said. “You never let anyone else get close because you had a secret to hide.” He shook his head. “I thought the problem was me. It wasn’t, was it? You wanted to protect yourself.”

  “Wrong.” Suddenly, I was on my feet, shouting, “I protected my daughter. I gave my life caring for my daughter. Who are you to judge me? I always knew you’d condemn me if you knew the truth. You are so much about right and wrong. Everything for you is simple. My life looked simple on the surface. It wasn’t, but it was blessed. That child saved our lives—both Gran’s and mine—and I did my best to make sure she benefited from it. I was a good mother to her. I still am. She was repeating the mistakes I’d made, that my mother had made. I stepped up and told her the truth. I know she may never forgive me.”

  Roger’s voice dropped low. “What about your other daughter? The first one. Have you forgotten about her?”

  My arms crossed, protecting my body, the vital organs in my body, from the sharp pain, but the pain was inside, always inside, reawakened for the moment by Roger’s callous words. I closed my eyes and tried not to fold. “I’ll never forget her.”

  He came around the table. He put his arms around me. I stood like a statue and refused to accept or reject his embrace. He whispered, “Hannah, you are so focused on Ellen—and
don’t think I don’t know you’re hiding from more than public gossip—and I don’t know how it will work out. That’s yet to be seen, but the reality is that you buried your deceased child in the family cemetery without consulting anyone—not a doctor, not police, not authorities. I’m sure that’s against the law.”

  Blindly, I shook my head. My face brushed his shirt. “My daughter. She went to sleep. She didn’t wake up. I couldn’t hand her over . . . I couldn’t say the words . . .”

  “What’s to prevent the authorities from accusing you of harming her, even accidentally, like a shaken baby situation? They could say you buried her to hide your crime.”

  I pushed against him, trying to shove him away and hitting him with my fists, all at the same time. He tightened his arms around me.

  “How did she die?” he asked.

  My hands managed to work themselves up to cover my face. “She went to sleep. Her midday nap. A storm came up, and when I went back inside, both she and Gran were sleeping. I checked on her, but she was gone. Already gone.”

  The blackness tried to move in on me again, darkening the edges of my vision, both literally and in my head. I ceased struggling and was grateful his arms held me, kept me from falling. Somehow his breath was on my hair, and I pressed my face against his chest.

  He spoke softly. “I’ve made mistakes. Done things I regret. Some I was able to fix. Some I couldn’t. That’s true for everyone.” He touched my hair. “Now you, you made a big mistake and, if I’m being honest, in your situation I might’ve made the same choices. I won’t judge. It’s up to Liam and Ellen. But it’s possible there could be legal involvement—for both daughters, for both Ellens.”

  His hand touched my face, my chin, lifting my face up, and I met his eyes.

  “If that happens, Hannah, you’ll face it. Make up your mind right now. Don’t be frightened; don’t run away. Face it and deal with it as it comes. Be prepared. You won’t be able to hide here in Cooper’s Hollow, and not on Rose Lane, either. If you are questioned, make sure you don’t speak to the police without an attorney present.” He added, “It’s real life, and real life has consequences that you can’t solve by hiding. I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, Hannah, but it’s important.”

  I pushed at him again, and he relented and released me. Suddenly, I felt alone. That was what I’d wanted, right? Maybe not entirely. Not at this moment.

  “How do you know what I want to hear?”

  “It’s simple. You want to hear Ellen say she understands and forgives you and loves you and wants to come home.”

  “Close. Mostly I want her to move forward with her life. Go to college. Not to get stalled like I did, like my mother and grandmother did. If she can do that and can also forgive me, then that would make it all worthwhile. That would be a happy ending I could rejoice in. If Ellen or Liam wants to press charges, I won’t fight them. I deserve whatever comes my way. I’ve already hurt her too much.”

  “You’re right. It’s not just about you,” he said.

  Roger stared at me with his brilliant blue eyes, but I couldn’t read them. His face wore a blankness whose meaning eluded me, and he left. Left me there alone.

  Face it, he’d said. Be prepared. What did he mean? This was in everyone else’s hands now. There was nothing more for me to do except wait while Ellen worked her way through this. Worked her way through it alone? No, she had Liam. Her father. A man she hardly knew. A man who’d lost his own child years ago and now might not want to let her go. I knew how that worked. But at some point, even the Cooper women, strong-minded though they were, had to take a chance and give the good and bad the opportunity to fight it out, and have faith that the outcome would be the right one, no matter if it meant leaving oneself defenseless and leaving one’s loved ones to figure it out on their own.

  A few days passed. Each night I said a prayer for Ellen and for healing, and each morning I hoped, and feared, to see her. True to her decision, she had stayed away from the graduation ceremonies. I knew because the high school principal called me. My response to him was regretful but deliberately short on details. Ellen didn’t visit me, either, but I chose to find hope in that. I saw Liam a couple of times. I was amazed he continued to work at carving the porch posts. But he didn’t seek me out to speak with me, and I returned the favor.

  By the end of a week, I’d established a routine of sorts incorporating trips to Rose Lane and the shop with my continued, and increasingly extended, stays in the cabin. On a lovely Saturday morning, when the workmen were off enjoying their weekend, I decided to tend to the cemetery. I had avoided it since those hallucinations. They’d been caused by the extreme circumstances, and I couldn’t get them entirely out of my mind. I decided the best way to erase them was to replace them with more familiar memories of when I’d tended to the cemetery through the years.

  I carried my bucket of tools and my gloves up the slope and climbed over the stone wall. I sang softly as I pulled the new weeds from around the headstones and the crosses. I picked up the small branches storms always culled from the trees and left behind where they fell. The empty graves . . . For my father’s grave, I left the stone Grand had created. My mother’s name was on it, for one thing. For another, though he’d committed murder . . . still, my mother had loved him, at least for a time. I could believe only that mental illness had caused their tragic downfall.

  I touched the cross and hoped he’d found peace. There was some kind of symmetry in seeing his marker, even knowing he wasn’t here, but instead washed in the sea and absorbed back into the earth. The other empty grave—the one for the man who’d never existed—I removed that marker and set it aside for disposal. That fiction was over and done with.

  Grand and Gran, Grand’s parents, my mother, plus there were unmarked graves. The one I couldn’t deal with was the tiniest.

  My Ellen. The first Ellen. My sweet baby. I wrapped my arms around my knees and put my face against them. That pain, the old excruciating pain, came back, cramping in my belly and in my heart, and I understood that while the arrival of the second Ellen had given me another chance, it didn’t resolve the first loss. Nothing could.

  All the darkness came back, sweeping over me as if it had abated but had never gone away. The tide was now coming back in and with a vengeance.

  At some point, I’d stopped singing, and my vocalizations wanted to become a high-pitched wail. I struggled to keep the sound inside. I leaned forward, almost convulsed with the effort. The ground was against my forehead. I bent farther and felt the dirt and sticks against my cheek and my lips. Earth’s leavings. Nature’s gleanings. Birth and death. Birth and rebirth. But my baby was still gone, and I wanted to scream at God and beat my fists at the earth.

  “Is that where she’s buried? The first Ellen?” a familiar voice said, my daughter’s voice, but she sounded hard.

  I knew I could rise, if I tried hard enough. I could stand, perhaps blush a little at my extreme emotionalism. I could ask my daughter how she was. I’d tell her I was glad she’d come to speak with me. Except I couldn’t because I was huddled, kneeling on the ground with my arms over my head, and I knew tears and dirt covered my face and made it impossible for one Hannah to hide the other, the one who could not be consoled.

  Did it matter? Ellen had her father now. She was strong enough. I’d heard it in her voice. Strong enough to move on without me.

  I dug my fingers like claws into the earth on either side of her small grave.

  “Hannah.” A man spoke with a warning note in his voice. Liam.

  My daughter spoke again, saying, “Stay back.”

  She came over the wall. I heard the sound of her clothing moving against the stone. A stick cracked where she touched ground, and then she was near me. I felt her hand on my back.

  “Mom.” Her voice was low at first, but then she spoke more loudly. “Mom.”

  I eased my grip on the earth. I pushed against it and rose a few inches. I was being forced to return to
the present, not by Gran’s need but by my daughter, who was speaking to me and calling me Mom. She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me gently upright.

  This young woman, Ellen, knelt beside me, then reached past me to touch the concrete block covering the first Ellen’s grave. Her fingers played over the quartz and mica fragments arranged along the edges.

  She asked, her tone soft now, “This is her grave?”

  A ragged breath, a sniffle—it was the best I could do before my shoulders moved inward again.

  “I always knew it must be an infant’s grave, but I never suspected . . . Why, Mom?”

  I blinked.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  I brushed at my lips. They felt numb, and bits of dirt fell from them. “We lost her—”

  Ellen interrupted me. “You didn’t lose anyone. She wasn’t an umbrella or a book. She was a baby, and she died.”

  “She died.” I echoed her words. “My baby died.” I gasped. I’d never said those words together before. As if they belonged to one another, in a sentence together. It hurt with such exquisite sharpness, I could hardly bear it. “She’s dead.” The pain burst from me in a high moan. My hands rushed up to cover my face. My fingers dug into my cheeks and forehead.

  Ellen grasped my hands and pulled them away. “I know. What I’m asking is, why are you still so upset about it?”

  Startled, I looked up. She was staring at me, examining my face.

  “I thought it was me you were upset about,” she said. “About my finding out what you’d done, about me being hurt and angry.”

  I nodded. “I was. I am.”

  “I believe you, in part, but I don’t think that’s what upset you the most.”

  “I’m sorry. Truly. I should’ve done it better, made better decisions. I wanted to protect you.”

  “Who were you really protecting?”

  Her voice was so harsh, so angry, I was desperate to stop it.

  “You. Gran.”

  “No, Mom. You were mostly protecting yourself.”