The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  “I drank myself damn near insensible,” Sophia says grimly. “It was like being back in hell.”

  “I took her out to the fire escape to get some fresh air, and she ended up telling me all about the Garden.”

  “I’d never really told anyone before.”

  “Why not?” Victor asks. From the corner of his eye, he sees Eddison’s pacing stop.

  “At first, there didn’t seem to be anything to say. I didn’t know his name, I’d been so panicked on leaving that I didn’t pay any attention to what was around me. I didn’t know where the estate was. All I had was a tattoo and a growing fetus and a crazy story. I thought if I went to the police, they’d be just like my parents: assume I was drunk or high or screwing around and lying to avoid consequences.”

  “You went back to your parents?”

  She makes a face. “They kicked me out. Said I was an embarrassment. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was nineteen and pregnant and didn’t have anyone to help me.”

  Eddison perches on the very end of Victor’s bed. “So Jillie is the Gardener’s?”

  “Jillie is mine,” she retorts, baring her teeth at him.

  Eddison holds up both hands in a placating gesture. “But he is the father.”

  Sophia deflates, and Inara leans against her for comfort. “That was the other reason not to say anything. If he’d found out about her, I could have lost her. No court in the world would have let her stay with a heroin-addicted hooker when she could live with a wealthy, well-respected family. At least when social services took my girls, I could work to get them back. If he’d taken Jillie, I would never have seen her again, and I don’t think Lotte would ever have gotten over it. They’re my girls. I had to protect them.”

  Victor looks at Inara. “Isn’t that what Desmond was doing? Protecting his family? You didn’t think very well of him for it.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You know it isn’t,” she says dryly. “Sophia was protecting her children. Innocent children who don’t deserve to suffer for what happened. Desmond was protecting criminals. Murderers.”

  “How did you escape?” asks Eddison.

  “I was going to have to take a pregnancy test,” Sophia replies. “I’d been gaining weight, and I was sick sometimes after lunch. Lor—our nurse brought the test to me, but got called away to deal with an injury before she could watch me take it. I just panicked. I ran around looking for any way out I might have missed in the past two and a half years. And I saw Avery.”

  “Avery was already in the Garden.”

  “He’d discovered it just a few weeks before. His father gave him a code but he had trouble remembering it. He was very slow when he put it in. That day I hid in the honeysuckle and watched him fumble through it. He even said the numbers while he pushed the buttons. I waited for a bit, then punched it in myself. I’d almost forgotten that doors could open normally.”

  Victor rubs at his cheek. “Did you tell any of the others?”

  She starts to bristle, but then her shoulders slump. “I guess I can see why that’s a question,” she admits. “After all, by not going to the police, I left them there to die, didn’t I? But I did try.” She meets his eyes firmly. “I swear to you, I did try. They were just too scared to go. I was too scared to stay.”

  “Scared?”

  “What happens if you only almost escape?” asks Inara, but it feels more like a reminder than a question.

  “It had been less than a month since a girl named Emiline stayed out during maintenance,” Sophia says. “She tried to tell the gardeners what was going on, but the Gardener must have smoothed it over somehow. The next time we saw her, she was in glass. Escape is a hard thing to attempt when you see it punished like that. But you blame me for leaving them behind.”

  “No.” Victor shakes his head. “You gave them the chance. You can’t save someone against her will.”

  “Speaking of which, Lorraine is here.”

  Sophia turns to Inara with dismay. “Oh no. Still?”

  Inara nods.

  “That poor woman,” she murmurs. Inara gives her a sideways look but says nothing. “I was on the street with other whores longer than I was in the Garden, but I’ve never seen a woman so thoroughly broken as Lorraine. He loved her and then he didn’t and it was never any fault of hers. Hate her if you have to, but I just feel sorry for her. More than the rest of us, maybe, she never had a chance.”

  “She’s never going to be in glass now.”

  “She was never going to be in glass back when I knew her. Does it change anything?”

  “Inara?” They all turn to look at Eddison; as far as Victor can remember, it’s the first time Eddison has called the girl by name. “Did you get kidnapped on purpose? Is that what you’ve been hiding?”

  “On purpose?” gasps Sophia, shoving off the bed.

  “No, I—”

  “You did this on purpose?”

  “No! I—”

  Victor tunes out Sophia’s rather impressive lecture, turning sideways to look at his partner. “How did you get from complicit to getting caught on purpose?” he asks, mind racing. If Eddison is right, this could change everything. There’d be no saving her from the senator, or the courts. To go to such lengths without going to the police? To be deliberate in the middle of such dangers is one thing, but to choose to go there? To knowingly endanger herself and, perhaps, those other girls?

  “If she wasn’t hiding that she was part of it, what was she hiding?”

  “I was hiding Sophia!” snaps Inara, grabbing her friend’s arm and tugging sharply. With a startled “oomph,” Sophia falls back onto the bed. “On purpose, really, do I look that stupid?”

  “Do you want me to answer that?” Eddison asks with a grin.

  She glowers at him. “I was hiding Sophia,” Inara repeats more softly. She glances at Victor. “I appreciate that my word may not be worth particularly much, but I swear to you, that’s the truth. I knew if Sophia’s name came up, so would the truth about Jillie, and I couldn’t . . . Sophia worked so hard to get her life back together. I couldn’t be the thing that turned that upside down. I couldn’t be the reason she lost her girls. I needed time to think.”

  “About what?” Victor asks.

  She shrugs. “I needed to see if there was a way to avoid tying her back to the Garden. Hiding the book would have been the easiest, but that . . . well. So then I thought, if I could just delay long enough, I could call her, warn her, but she . . .”

  “You didn’t expect her to come.”

  Inara shakes her head.

  “But you knew about the Garden,” Eddison insists.

  “Not that it was them.” Inara cradles the sad little dragon in both hands. “When her memories of the Garden started bleeding, it was at the sight of the costume wings, nothing more. None of us who worked that night said what the clients looked like; why would we? And they were fundraising for Madame Butterfly, the theme made sense. I didn’t know.”

  Victor nods slowly. “You knew about the Garden, though, so when you woke up there, you didn’t panic.”

  “Exactly. I tried to watch for Avery’s codes, but he was more careful. Well, it had been ten years, after all. I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find another way out. I even tried breaking the glass up by the trees. Didn’t even crack.”

  “And then Desmond.”

  “Desmond?” asks Sophia.

  “The Gardener’s younger son. I tried . . .” Inara shakes her head, shoving her hair out of her face. “You know how Hope can get the guys she’s fucking to do anything for her? Like they’d walk through a burning building if she mentioned her favorite necklace was in there?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “I tried that.”

  “Oh dear.” Sophia bumps her shoulder into Inara’s, a smile lighting up her tired features. “You being you, I can’t imagine that going well.”

  “It really didn’t.”

  �
��He did make the call,” Victor reminds her.

  “I don’t think that was because of anything I did,” she confesses. “I think that was mostly Avery.”

  “Wait, what now?”

  “They couldn’t co-exist in the Garden. Maybe not ever, but especially not there, and not with their father’s pride at stake. They were competing for his love. Avery did something drastic, and Desmond did something drastic in response. They both lost.”

  “But you won.”

  “I don’t think anyone won,” she says. “Two days ago, there were twenty-three of us, including Keely. Now there are thirteen. How many do you think can actually adjust to Outside?”

  “You think there will be suicides?”

  “I think a trauma doesn’t stop just because you’ve been rescued.”

  Eddison stands and takes the scrapbook from Victor. “I need to get this back to the scene techs,” he tells him. “Need anything while I’m out there?”

  “Check and see if anyone has gotten in touch with the MacIntosh family lawyer. Geoffrey and Desmond aren’t in any condition to need one yet, but Eleanor should have counsel. Check on Lorraine, too. See if the psychologists have made a preliminary determination.”

  “Roger.” He nods to Inara and leaves the room.

  Inara quirks an eyebrow. “You know, a few more days of being trapped in a tiny room with him, I might even start to think of him as a friend.” She smiles at Victor, sweet and somewhat insincere but still real. It quickly fades. “So what happens next?”

  “There’ll be more interviews. Many more interviews. You’ll be included in those, Ms. Madsen.”

  “I figured. I brought a suitcase for each of us.”

  “Suitcase?” echoes Inara.

  “It’s in the trunk; I borrowed Guilian’s car.” She smiles and gives Inara a small shake. “Did you think I was going to give up on you? We kept all your things and your bed is still there. I told you Whitney and I started an account with the ridiculous amount of money you had lying around. It should have some decent interest in it. And Guilian says you’re welcome back at the restaurant.”

  “You . . . you kept my stuff?” she asks weakly.

  Sophia gently tweaks Inara’s nose. “You’re one of my girls too.”

  Inara blinks rapidly, her eyes bright, but then tears spill over her lashes and down her cheeks. She touches a fingertip to the damp skin with astonishment.

  Victor clears his throat. “The carousel’s over now,” he tells her quietly. “This time your family is waiting for you.”

  Inara sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to collect herself, but Sophia’s arms wrap around her, carefully easing her down to her lap. She dissolves into silent weeping. Only the tremors wracking her body and her uneven breathing give her away. Sophia doesn’t stroke the dark, glossy hair. That’s too much like the Gardener, Victor imagines. Instead, she runs one finger along the curve of Inara’s ear, over and over again, until Inara gives a watery laugh and pushes herself back to sitting.

  Victor holds his handkerchief across the space between the beds. She takes it and mops at her face. “People come back?” he suggests.

  Her voice is soft with wonder. “And other people expect them to.”

  “You know there’s one more thing.”

  Her thumb rubs against the sad, little blue dragon. “You have to understand, she isn’t real. She never was. I wasn’t a real person until I became Inara.”

  “And Inara can be the real person. You’re eighteen now, if you were telling the truth.”

  She gives him a wry look.

  He smiles, then continues. “You can legally change your name to Inara Morrissey, but only if we have your current legal name.”

  “You survived the Gardener and his sons,” Sophia points out. “Even if your parents do come calling, you don’t owe them anything. Your family is here in the hospital, and in New York. Your parents are nothing.”

  The girl takes a slow breath, lets it out even more slowly, then does it again. “Samira,” she says eventually, her voice shaking. “The name on my birth certificate was Samira Grantaire.”

  He extends his hand. She looks at it for a moment, then rests the clay dragon on her thigh so she can lean out and accept the grip. Sophia has her other hand. “Thank you, Samira Grantaire. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for taking care of those girls. Thank you for being so incredibly brave.”

  “And so incredibly stubborn,” adds Sophia.

  The girl laughs, her face bright and open and tear-streaked, and Victor decides this is a good day. He’s not naïve enough to think that all is well. There will still be pain and trauma, all the wounds of the investigation and trial. There are dead girls to mourn, and living girls who will struggle for years to adjust to life outside the Garden, if they even can.

  He still counts this as a good day.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sometimes I think this part is harder than writing the whole rest of the book.

  But there are so many people to whom I am deeply indebted for the existence of this book. To Mom and Deb, for answering disturbing and bizarre medical questions for research, and thus saving me from getting put on Lists for asking Google terrifying things. To Dad and my brothers, for continuing to support this strange, difficult dream of mine. To Sandy, for not giving up on the quiet, creepy little monster that didn’t seem to have a home. To Isabel and Chelsea, for being early readers and having a reaction other than “What the hell is wrong with you?” To Tessa, for having the patience and talent to talk me off the ledges I keep finding myself on. To Alison and JoVon, for taking a chance on it, and Caitlin, for asking so many fantastic questions and herding me—however hysterical I got—into finding ways to better this book.

  To the friends who’ve forgiven me for being profoundly antisocial while working on this, and the coworkers who are probably sick of hearing me talk about it, and the managers who are so excited to get it in.

  To you, for sticking with me this long.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2012 Arabella Blizzard

  Dot Hutchison is the author of A Wounded Name, a young adult novel based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the adult thriller The Butterfly Garden. With past experience working at a Boy Scout camp, a craft store, a bookstore, and the Renaissance Faire (as a human combat chess piece), Hutchison prides herself on remaining delightfully in tune with her inner young adult. She 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 check her out on Tumblr (www.dothutchison.tumblr.com), Twitter (@DotHutchison), or Facebook (www.facebook.com/DotHutchison).