The Butterfly Tattoo

by M. D. Thomas

  The woman’s breathing slowed as her eyes darted between her ribs and Sarah’s face, her eyes wide with fear and pain.

  She’d worried she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But she hated the woman so much, hated what she’d done to Lee, that she’d felt a thrill pulse through her body as the small rip appeared in the middle of the butterfly, bisecting what should have been a line of symmetry but was only a jagged smear of blue that separated one badly inked set of wings from another.

  When the woman’s breathing was almost back to normal, Sarah slipped the gag from her mouth yet again. She expected more pleading or perhaps curses again, but the woman wouldn’t even look at her. Maybe she’d finally broken. “How do I find him?”

  Nothing.

  Again, Sissy. Cut her again…

  Sarah clenched her jaw, contemplated the knife in her hand, then made her voice as cold as possible. “The next time I come in here, you’ll tell me how to find him. It’ll be your last chance.”

  You should’ve cut her again, Sissy…

  Sarah tossed the knife in the kitchen sink, then turned around and leaned against the counter, scrubbed her good hand across her face. It wouldn’t matter. She doesn’t know anything. If I cut her again she’ll just start making stuff up to stop the pain…

  She knows! You just have to be harder, Sissy. Think of my son. My Lee…

  Sarah’s fists tightened, the pain in her injured hand flaring. He’s mine! Not yours. He is not Adam! My Lee…

  She had to get away.

  You can’t leave her here alone again. That slant-eyed husband of yours—

  It doesn’t matter! She doesn’t know anything. She’s useless—

  She isn’t. You need to cut her again. She—

  SHUT UP! Sarah beat her good fist against her head until her knuckles ached. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!

  Panting, Sarah cradled her throbbing hands against her chest and rocked back and forth. I need to see Lee. I need to…

  Go on, Sissy. You killed my son so go ahead and fail your own…

  Sarah fled the house, hoped seeing Lee’s open eyes again might calm her, might drive the voice out of her head.

  Forty-Two

  JON

  Jon spent the night on the couch.

  He woke—only a little stiff, only a little hungover—and pretended Elle wasn’t in the house. He passed Sarah in the bedroom, in the hall, in the kitchen. Never said a word. Left the house at the usual quarter past seven and drove through a deluge, passed more than a few flooded and barricaded streets on the way to Rainbow Pines. He talked to Lee, eyes still open, and then struggled through the rain to an office that was half-staffed at best. He worked on an overdue project for three hours and then asked his boss if he could take the rest of the day off because of some intestinal distress that was still left from calling out sick the afternoon before. His boss—a hypochondriac who was especially fearful of vomiting—told him not to come back until he was better and promptly brought out the bottle of hand sanitizer he always kept near at hand.

  Driving through rain so heavy he couldn’t see more than fifty feet, Jon went to the nearest hardware store and bought a pair of bolt cutters. They were bigger than he expected, perhaps more than he needed, but he didn’t want to go after the chains around Elle’s wrists and ankles with an inadequate tool.

  The decision to free her was obvious after he’d seen Lee. His son’s open, unseeing eyes had bored a hole straight through him, set free all of the unease and doubt and guilt he’d felt ever since finding Elle in the house. He’d left Rainbow Pines the night before filled with the clear understanding that what they’d done had to come to an end. It was what Lee would want.

  An umbrella provided little protection as he left the hardware store, and he soaked his shoes and socks when he missed the jump over a particularly wide puddle. Dripping, he listened to the car radio as the weather woman said the rain would end soon, but god it was coming down hard right now and if you lived on low ground and weren’t flooded already, then you’d best leave it right away because holy shit this was a thousand-year storm.

  Sarah’s car wasn’t in the driveway where it had been that morning.

  She’s taken Elle somewhere…

  Calm…

  Jon sent the garage door up from two houses down and pulled inside, rain streaming down the windows as the wipers flicked the last of the water off the windshield. He grabbed the bolt cutters and got out of the car, feet squelching as he hurried inside, one terrible possibility after another running through his head.

  Forty-Three

  HARVEY

  Harvey sat in the Cherokee outside of the station, the rain pounding against the roof, Robertson forgotten. His phone sat on his lap, open to the Wikipedia entry about Vaughan. With all the rain falling, the page had taken a long time to load, the reception flitting between no service and a single bar, but once it was all there Harvey had learned that a guy named Arky Vaughan had indeed played for both the Pirates and the Dodgers before retiring. Those were the only two teams. Not long after he retired, Vaughan was fishing with a friend in a Northern California crater lake when their boat capsized and both of them drowned.

  What’s it all mean, Harvey? Does it even matter?

  Harvey let it go, gave up the new information to his subconscious to figure out.

  He glanced at the kid in the mirror—he was balancing the ball on the back of his glove—then scanned through the stations on the radio. Nearly all of them were talking about the rain, about cresting rivers and high ground, but eventually he found the local ESPN station, turned up the volume as the talking heads argued about the Nat’s chances of a pennant. He figured the kid would like that.

  The Rainbow Pines parking lot was a sea of puddles large and small. He parked in a big one near the front, unconcerned about the water that lapped over the tops of his shoes when he got out of the Cherokee.

  The receptionist with the pretty eyes gave him a warm smile as he approached, his presence now familiar. “Still coming down out there, huh?” she asked as she handed him the visitation log.

  “Cats and dogs,” Harvey said, channeling Harv as he handed back the log. “But the weather geeks are saying it’s almost over.”

  “Thank heavens,” the receptionist said. “My husband was joking about needing to build an ark.”

  “Might want to tell him not to put the hammer and nails away yet. The flooding is only gonna get worse,” Harvey said with a smile as he left, the kid trailing behind him.

  There were two ways to Nonno’s room—one that went past the cafeteria, one that went closer to room 198, the boy's room. Harvey took the former, his thoughts bouncing from Nonno lying on the sidewalk to what the kid might want to how he’d get Nonna the money she’d need.

  When he made it to Nonno’s room, he found the door open and the bed empty. Nonna sat in a big chair in the corner, her hands folded in her lap.

  “Hi, Nonna,” Harvey said as he went to his grandmother and kissed her on the cheek. The kid went to an empty corner and began to toss the ball. “Is Nonno already in therapy?”

  Nonna raised her eyes and for a second Harvey was sure she didn’t recognize him. Then her face crumpled. “I tried to call you, Harvey. I tried. But it was already too late. He’s gone.”

  “How?” Harvey asked, his voice a croak.

  “A head bleed from the fall,” Nonna said, her own voice hollow. “They checked him at the hospital, but it must have been too small to detect. One minute he was lying there just fine, and the next he was—.”

  She started to cry.

  The fall, Harvey thought as he stared at the kid in the corner. He was no longer tossing the ball in the air, instead he stared at Harvey, his eyes calm. Because I left him…

  Harvey fell to his knees, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, Nonna. It’s all my fault. I—”

  Nonna leaned forward and took his head in her hands, her flesh cold and dry. “Don’t you dare say that, Harvey. Don’t
you dare…” Then she collapsed against him, sobs wracking her body as Harvey took her in his arms.

  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, Harvey thought as he held Nonna. This wasn’t supposed to happen…

  Nonno lay on a gurney in a room a few halls down, a sheet tucked neatly across his chest and beneath his naked arms. There were no signs of any life-saving measures, no lines going into his body, no breathing tube in his mouth. But instead of looking lifeless, his face looked almost vibrant, more alive than he’d appeared before death, as if in dying some part of the disease that’d robbed him of the last two years had finally been cast out.

  The kid entered behind Harvey as usual, but instead of planting himself in a corner, he walked around to the head of the gurney and looked down at Nonno.

  Harvey stared at the kid in surprise. The uniform and the glove were gone, the kid dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

  Why did he change? Why, after wearing the uniforms for so long?

  For a moment Harvey thought the kid would finally speak, but he said nothing as he gazed down at the body.

  Nonna, her cheeks damp with tears, stepped forward and took Nonno’s right hand in her own, caressed the wrinkled, spotted skin between his fingers and wrist, oblivious to the presence of the kid. “Not long after he found out he had lung cancer, he told me he had to go first because he knew that if I died before him, he wouldn’t be able to bear the pain, that he was too weak live without me.”

  Harvey stepped up beside her and put his arm around her. It was hard to talk. “He was never weak. Do you remember that fishing trip he took me on when I was twelve?”

  Nonna nodded but didn’t look up.

  “We were on the lake in that little green canoe he had and this crazy storm came out of nowhere. We started for the shore, but the canoe flipped. I could swim, but the waves and the clothes I had on made it hard. But it didn’t matter, because Nonno grabbed me and swam me all the way to shore. It must’ve been a quarter of a mile or more. And he pulled me all the way in.”

  Nonna finally looked up at him, her watery eyes wide.

  “He never told me that,” Nonna said, disbelief filling her voice. “He said he didn’t bring the canoe home because it fell out of the truck crossing the mountains on the way back and broke in half.”

  Harvey surprised himself by laughing. “That was his idea. He made me promise never to tell you, because he was sure you’d never let me go fishing with him again.”

  Nonna laughed too, her tears falling harder at the same time. “That rascal. I should’ve known it would never fall out of the truck with as much rope as he used to tie it down.”

  At the head of the gurney, the kid’s eyes finally left Nonno’s body and met Harvey’s. His eyes had always been calm before, deep and dark and placid, full of peace. But looking at Harvey they danced with excitement, as if there was a light inside of him that was shining out. And beneath that gaze, in that moment of reminiscence, all of the pieces—the kid’s uniforms, Arky Vaughan, Harvey’s own past—clicked together in Harvey’s mind and he knew what the kid wanted.

  Harvey watched as the kid left the head of the gurney and went to the hall door. The kid turned around and beckoned to Harvey. Follow me, the gesture said. And Harvey knew he didn’t have a choice—he'd abandoned Lee Young once and now he’d lost his grandfather because of that decision. He wouldn’t abandon the kid a second time and risk Nonna.

  “I’ll give you some time with him,” Harvey said, patting Nonna gently on the shoulder. “I have to take care of something.”

  “I love you, Harvey,” Nonna said as she reached out and squeezed his hand, then let go, her fingers drifting back to her husband.

  “I love you too, Nonna.”

  When Harvey stopped at his side the kid looked up at him, his eyes deep and liquid, as if he were thinking, “It’s time…”

  I’m ready, thought Harvey.

  Forty-Four

  ELLE

  The pain reawakened her belly. She’d never been so hungry before, never realized that nausea and hunger pangs could leave her writhing, could be more painful than the fiery line of the cut across her ribs.

  And on top of the screaming need for food was still the burning desire for booze.

  How long before she comes back? Elle wondered as she stared at the ceiling, trying to gauge how long ago she’d heard the garage door. How long before the cravings go away?

  She was stuck in a loop—the desire for food and booze the only thing that could overwhelm her fear, and the fear the only thing that could overwhelm her desire for booze and food.

  Over over over.

  Have to lie to her… have to keep her away from me for as long as possible…

  It was the only way.

  Her last chance.

  The garage door rumbled again.

  The noise sent a spike of fear through Elle, made her tense so hard she felt the wound on her ribs break open again, felt warm blood trickle down her side. And despite the fear and the pain, she fantasized the shrew would bring food, envisioned being spoon-fed like a baby.

  Her entire body was quivering when the door opened. But instead of the shrew carrying a knife or a plate of food, the heel-licker came in. Elle was so startled that it took her a moment to notice he was carrying bolt cutters. When she did notice them, she howled around the gag and jerked at the ropes even though it burned her wounded wrists and ankles, made her side blaze with pain.

  “Calm down,” the heel-licker said as he closed the door. “You need to be calm.”

  Elle went limp even though she wanted to scream and thrash, certain it was a trick the shrew had planned. She couldn’t stop herself from whimpering.

  The heel-licker sat on the side of the bed, the bolt cutters resting casually between his legs. She wondered if he was about to start lopping off her fingers one joint at a time instead of the chains. I should’ve been afraid of him the whole time… the two insane fuckers probably cooked it up from the beginning… make her fear and hate the shrew, make her believe the nutless wonder was sympathetic, then switch roles on her in an effort to get her to talk.

  He reached out and Elle flinched as he touched her side. He pulled away, staring at the fresh blood on his fingertips. “She cut you… ”

  He stared at the blood a moment longer and then rubbed the fingertips clean on his pants. When he spoke his words were slow and quiet. “I’ll let you go. But I need you to understand what you did to my son. I need you to see Lee with your own eyes.”

  Elle nodded because that was what he wanted.

  Forty-Five

  SARAH

  Sarah was rearranging Lee’s blankets for the fifth time when she heard the door open behind her. She spoke without stopping—her movements more erratic than the injuries to her hand could account for—determined to finally get it right. “Time to roll him again?” There were so many things to worry about with her Lee

  my Lee, not yours… mine…

  and bedsores were always at the top of the list.

  “We need to talk.”

  Sarah turned at the unfamiliar voice, expecting a new nurse or orderly, saw the man in the suit who’d stopped by the room the night before. The man whose grandfather was in the facility. The man’s eyes had a wildness in them that instantly put Sarah on alert.

  “Excuse me?”

  The man didn’t speak as he closed the door softly behind him, pausing oddly as he did so.

  Sarah’s nervousness notched up a level and she moved closer to Lee’s bed. “I’m sorry, but you need to leave.”

  The man said nothing as his eyes darted back and forth between Sarah and Lee and the other side of the bed.

  Sarah didn’t like it. She reached for the buzzer on the side of Lee’s bed.

  “Don’t,” the man said as he drew a gun from beneath his coat.

  Too slow, Sissy…

  Sarah froze, unable to take her eyes off the gun, her thoughts racing but getting nowhere. “I’ll scream. I’ll scream
and they’ll come.”

  “Not before I kill him.”

  She withdrew her shaking hand. She wouldn’t have if he’d pointed the gun at her. But he’d pointed it at Lee. She thought of charging him, screaming as she attacked to alert the staff, but she felt an awful certainty he would brush her aside like an annoying bug and then there would be no one to protect Lee. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

  The man’s eyes flicked across the bed again. “I’ve got to take your son.”

  The words hit her like a blow to the head. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  Because you were too weak, Sissy…

  “I’m sorry, but I have to. It’s what he wants. Away from the bed.”

  Sarah’s knees trembled. “No. Please. You can’t. I won’t let you take him,” she said, moving toward the bed. The buzzer was forgotten. Screaming was forgotten. Her world had been reduced to the man and her son, and all she had left was to put herself between the two, to try and act as a barrier between them.

  The man’s face hardened. He started toward her side of the bed and Sarah huddled over Lee. She wanted to scream, no matter what he’d said, but her throat had locked up and all that emerged when she tried was a low keen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he approached, the gun still aimed at Lee. “But I don’t have any choice.”

  She knew she should attack him but she couldn’t risk Lee. What good would it do if he just shot Lee after he’d dealt with her?

  He must have seen right through her because he used his free hand to brush her lightly away from the bed. The pain in her right hand flared as she bumped against the wall, tears streaming down her face.