Finally, I shoved my chair back from my computer desk. If anything, Jess’s words further fueled my grief and pain. And I really just wanted to get past both, to get back to normal.
Or as close to normal as I could ever come.
~
Two full days passed before I brought myself to upload the pictures from the butterfly field, and much to my warring chagrin and delight, the images turned out even better than I’d expected.
I was absorbed in the process of enhancing one of the pictures when my doorbell rang.
After saving my work, I scooted away from my desk and crept to my front door, where I darted a covert glance through the edge of a window. I wasn’t expecting any packages or groceries today.
My heart pounded, the opposite of what I wanted it to do.
Harvey stood on my porch, looking as relaxed and nonchalant as if he belonged there.
He’d come back? After my embarrassing breakdown? My rude departure?
As I inched the door open, I practiced a cool, pleasant expression and stance.
“Lila, hey.” He smiled. “I’m not interrupting laundry day, am I? ’Cause I know I can’t compete with that.”
I fought a smile and let my gaze slide past him to the sleek silver car in my driveway, which explained why I hadn’t heard his bike.
Slipping a strand of hair behind my ear, I wondered what to say. Apologize? Ask him why he was here?
He shifted his hand and I caught sight of something resting in his cupped palm. A monarch butterfly.
My previous concerns fled. “How did you get that?” I stepped onto the porch for a better look and felt a pang of remorse when I saw that the left bottom wing hung ragged, broken.
My brows pushed together. “The poor thing can’t fly. Do you know what happened to it?”
“No, I was just working on a motorcycle in my driveway when this guy flopped onto the grass a few feet away, trying to fly but only kinda hopping and, I don’t know”—he scratched his jaw—“looking really frustrated, if you can believe that.”
I could.
Harvey shook his head. “It’s gotta stink to have a broken wing and not be able to do the thing you were meant to do.”
“It’ll adapt.” Poor thing, it doesn’t have a choice.
“Anyway, I figured you’d know what to do with him.”
“Her.”
“Her?”
I leaned in. The more I studied the butterfly, the more my voice softened. “It’s a girl. You can tell by the black veins on the wings. Boys have a dot on the veins in each lower wing, about here.” I pointed. “And girls don’t.”
“Oh.” His forehead wrinkled. “Okay. Either way, I figured I’d bring it—her—here because I didn’t think she’d survive very long on her own.”
True. My heart twinged with regret.
“It’s a shame.” He moved his finger near the damaged wing as if he wanted to touch it but knew he shouldn’t.
I drew the edge of my lip between my teeth, then released it. “So if it weren’t for the butterfly, you wouldn’t have come back?”
He looked at me, something guarded in his eyes. “Did you want me to?”
I broke eye contact and wondered how to reply. I watched him with the butterfly, his movements so careful, so caring. “I asked you first.”
“Fair enough.”
I waited.
“I don’t know if I would’ve come back.” His shoulder hitched. “On one hand, I hated leaving you so upset, but on the other, I figured coming back might make you more upset.” He paused. “But when this butterfly flopped next to me and said, ‘Take me to Lila,’ I couldn’t ignore it. Kinda seemed like a heaven-sent sign.”
My heart faltered and I warded off a shiver. “The other day—that wasn’t your fault. Not at all.” It took everything in me to level my gaze at him. “I’m sorry if I made you think that. It was just the remembering and talking about my family. It—it threw me. I just needed some time alone.”
“Sure, that makes sense.” He sounded uncertain. “Do you need more time? Do you want me to go?”
“No, I’m glad you came back.”
He looked relieved, then raised his palm. “So should we bring the butterfly inside? To your butterfly room?”
Into my sanctuary? I hadn’t let anyone in there since . . .
I shook my head and caught the scent of blossoms on a breeze. “She’ll like being outside better. I have plenty of flowers out here for her, and I’ll bring her in later.”
Something about seeing the butterfly nestled in his large callused palm—the clear contrast of tiny and delicate with big and strong—touched me. The only other man’s hands I’d ever studied had been my father’s, the skilled hands that saved lives. They just couldn’t save his own.
“Come on.” I led Harvey to a patch of marigolds, where he crouched on one knee and nudged the butterfly onto a flower. As soon as the monarch’s feet touched the petals, her straw-tongue proboscis unrolled and prodded for nectar.
“Whoa, that’s cool,” Harvey said. “They can’t bite with that thing, can they?”
I laughed, a refreshing release after the past couple of days. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Are you serious?”
“Kinda.” He cocked his head. “I mean, it sorta looks like a wicked little stabbing tool, a venomous needle.”
I gaped. “Are you telling me you’re afraid of butterflies?”
“Of course not.” He looked insulted, but I suspected he was only pretending. “I picked it up, didn’t I? Just don’t ask me to pick up any spiders.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like them.”
“Really? I know girls who don’t like spiders.” Well, one girl anyway. Jess. She didn’t even like typing about them. “But never any guys.” Flawed logic, since I didn’t know any other guys.
“Well, now you do. I don’t like spiders, and I’m not afraid to admit it.” His lip curled slightly. “But when you think about it, a butterfly’s just a glorified spider with wings.”
“It is not.” I crossed my arms so firmly, I almost threw myself off balance. “In fact, there are so many differences that I don’t even know where to begin. Butterflies have six legs, not eight, and butterflies are lepidoptera, not arachnids.”
“Leopard doctor— What?”
I rolled my eyes and enunciated slowly. “Lepi-dop-ter-a. They can’t bite, they can’t spin webs, they don’t eat bugs, and they aren’t deceitful, hiding and waiting to take advantage of unsuspecting prey—”
“Okay, okay.” He kept his eyes on the monarch, its wings opening and closing in a contented manner as it feasted. “Doesn’t sound like you’re much of a spider fan, either.”
“Well, they wouldn’t be my first choice for a pet, but I still find them fascinating. It’s not their fault they’re so sneaky. That’s how they survive.”
Harvey shifted on his feet and looked suddenly uncomfortable. He turned his full gaze onto me, which did funny things to my composure.
His mouth moved, but it took a moment for words to come. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” He cleared his throat, and his obvious nervousness made me uneasy.
“About?” My toes scrunched themselves into tense mounds.
“About Sally—” His gaze caught mine, darted away, then returned, resolute.
Suddenly, somehow, I knew I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
Chapter 8
Too bad I didn’t have a chair to drop into. After glancing around, I settled for sinking onto my front step.
“Lila?”
“Go ahead.” I tried to feign indifference, tried to stop my mind from racing.
“Okay, thanks.” Harvey sat beside me and pulled in a heavy breath. “The butterflies were just an excuse.”
He waited, as if that should mean something to me.
“An excuse? I don’t understand. An excuse for what?”
He stared straight ahead. “The real reason I came h
ere was to convince you to come to my sister’s wedding, even if it was just me hiring you for a butterfly release. At least you’d be there. Because that’s the best gift I could give her.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Ever hear of something called a wedding invitation? Not that I’d want to go to some stranger’s wedding—”
“That’s just it.” He rapped his knuckles against the step distractingly. “She’s not a stranger. You met her when you first moved here. You were friends.”
My lips parted, but he rushed on. “You met her at the grocery store, and from what she told me, you hit it off, started hanging out together. You even invited her over—”
“Wait—” My mind swam, a terrible thought surfacing. “You can’t mean . . . not Sarah Sanford.”
He nodded.
And just like that, it clicked. Sarah! Sneaky Sarah. Gossipy Sarah. How had I not suspected?
Because he was just as sneaky as his sister. Disappointment struck me. I turned on him with a frown. “Then why in the world were you calling her Sally?”
“I’ve always called her that,” he said softly, almost apologetically. “Growing up, I had a real problem pronouncing r’s. And even though it sounds old-fashioned, Sally’s a legitimate nickname for Sarah. My grandma was the one who started me using it.”
I thought about that for a second. “Harvey has an r.”
“Exactly.” His lip twitched. “I was known as Havey for years. I may never fully recover.”
His amusement vanishing, he met me with a pleading look and returned to the topic I didn’t want to discuss. “Sally feels terrible about what happened.”
“She should.” I jumped up, the memories slamming into me. She’d seemed so sweet, so kind and caring. She’d helped ease me out of my shell. I’d taken a risk by opening up to her and, most of all, allowing her into my home and my butterfly room.
“She took my grief and she—she turned it into gossip—turned me into a spectacle. She’s the reason the whole town calls me the—you know.” The butterfly recluse.
Harvey remained seated through my outburst, the epitome of calm, collected pity. “The whole town doesn’t call you that. Do you think maybe you’re exaggerating just a little?” He pinched his fingers a centimeter apart. “That’s an awful lot of blame to put on one person.”
My temperature rose and my face flushed. “That one person did an awful lot of damage.”
“She talks too much.” Harvey spread his hands. “Way too much, with no filter. It’s always been her greatest fault. But she’s got the best intentions, and she never meant to betray your trust or turn your story into entertainment. She just knows a lot of people, so when they asked questions about you, she probably said more than she should’ve. But she never said it spitefully, and what she didn’t say, they probably filled in with their imaginations.”
“Excuses. It’s not that hard to keep your mouth shut. I do it all the time.” Before you came along, anyway.
He laughed.
“This isn’t funny.” I aimed my finger at him.
“Lila.” He said my name with such frustration, yet fondness, that it threw me. “You’ve gotta learn to laugh at yourself, at least once in a while.”
I sniffed. “Seems I have enough people laughing at me without me adding to it.”
“Sometimes, it’s laugh or cry.”
I blinked rapidly, closer to shutting down than crying.
“I wonder . . .” He drummed his fingers against his knee. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but was Sally maybe an easy excuse for you to give up on the world?”
My mouth made ridiculous sputtering sounds. Not my finest moment.
“I get that things can feel overwhelming or that people can be difficult, but hiding doesn’t change anything. You can’t blame everything on her. Prove the gossips wrong, or at least—don’t care so much about what others think.”
Harvey stood and took my trembling hands. “You don’t have to live hidden from the world.”
“I like my world here.” I swept my hand to indicate my home and yard. “I’m content in my world here.”
He nodded. “I believe you. I just want you to know that there’s more.”
“You want me to forgive her.”
“She’s sorry, but you never gave her the chance to tell you. You cut her out of your life and she—” he gave half a grin—“she’s not as persistent as me.”
“No one is.”
“Thank you.”
Though some part of me liked the feel of his touch, I eased my hands away. “You should have told me you were her brother from the start.”
“Maybe. But if I had, would you have talked to me?”
“Probably not.” And what a shame that would have been.
His voice lowered. “She did send an invitation, by the way. When she didn’t get the RSVP, she figured you were still mad at her.”
And I was. I am. I blinked, vaguely recalling tossing away an envelope that had come in the mail from her.
“My sister’s pretty tough, but that hurt her.”
I stepped away, needing the distance, my mind muddled by his words, which made me out to be in the wrong if I didn’t reach out and forgive.
But what if I didn’t have it in me? How could I forgive her when I couldn’t even forgive God?
And there it was, the deeper truth, the root of my pain: I still blamed God for what had happened to my family.
Harvey’s eyes flickered compassion. “Life can be better, but you have to choose it. Don’t throw away your friends. You don’t have to be alone.”
He glanced at the butterfly, which was no longer sipping nectar. It hung onto the flower in the sunshine, needing nothing more.
He gave it a nod. “Take care of little Glory—that’s short for ‘glorified spider,’ by the way.” He winked. “And I’ll be back to check on her soon.”
I barely blinked as he climbed into his car and disappeared down my driveway. But when I did, my eyelids forced a hot trickle of tears down my cheeks.
~
You don’t have to be alone.
What he’d said sounded so simple, but it wasn’t. Allowing people back into my life would open me up to all sorts of disappointment and pain.
They’d all leave sooner or later. And with my luck, probably sooner.
I was used to living alone. I was okay with it.
Or I’d thought I was. Till Harvey came into my life and stirred everything up.
Inside my sunroom, I introduced Glory to Wingly. Hello, nice to meet you. Let me show you around. It’s not so bad living here.
I settled Glory onto a milkweed plant and sighed. Why did I surround myself with butterflies? Why?
Because they were company. Safe, quiet, can’t-hurt-me company. I wouldn’t get a phone call out of the blue announcing they were all dead.
When one butterfly died or left, I had plenty more to transfer my affection to. And yet—by attempting to protect myself from pain, was I keeping myself from happiness?
My gaze wandering to the screen door, I reflected on my most recent happy moments—visiting the butterfly field, playing in the hose water, watching Harvey chase butterflies—and I groaned. All those moments included human interaction. And, specifically, they included Harvey.
Harvey, brother of Sarah-the-betrayer.
He’d asked me, very reasonably, to forgive her. But how did I even begin . . . ?
If my mother were still alive, I’d ask her. She’d always given the best advice, even if I seldom followed it. Her suggestions usually included some form of turning to God, and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t feel like doing that.
Wants and feelings come and go, changeable as the wind.
My hands fisted. I like the wind.
But it can blow you off track. Think with your brain, not your emotions.
Where the thoughts came from, I wasn’t sure. With a shudder, I wandered from the room and eventually found myself pacing near the garage door.
Why, God, why? Why did You take them? I still need them. I love them. I clutched my head. I miss them.
I sagged against the garage door, and it squeaked open. I stood and stared into the dimness at my car, fighting an urge that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
At last, I gave in and retrieved my Bible from its banishment. I supposed it had sat out here long enough—since the last time I’d seen Sarah, at church, when I’d overheard the insensitive whispers and endured the strange looks.
The fact that she’d convinced me to go to church in the first place had been huge. After losing my family, my relationship with God had been strained, at best, but . . .
“You can do it, Lila,” she’d said. “I know you want to. You just need someone by your side to help make it easier. I’ll go with you. I’ll even drive.”
Highly uncomfortable with the entire idea, I considered it anyway, for her sake, and tried to show interest. “I’ll think about it. But if I decide to go, I’ll meet you there.” That way, if it ended up being too much, too difficult, I could bail and drive home.
As if I could run away from God.
I didn’t really intend to go, but I woke early on Sunday morning and, try as I did, I couldn’t fall back asleep. No amount of tugging the covers over my head blocked the encroaching light or my thoughts. The day stretched ahead of me, my conscience prodding.
Scrounging every drop of courage, I showered and dressed, drove to church, and sat beside Sarah. I tried to talk to God, but never quite got there.
I kept feeling eyes on me, even thought I heard whispers, but told myself I was being overly aware.
Mentally exhausted by the time church ended, I was relieved that I’d made it through without fleeing.
Beside me in the pew, Sarah nudged me a little too hard, and I almost flinched.
“There’s a big potluck brunch in the basement,” she whispered. “Want to come with me and meet some of the people? You’ll love them. And they always have the best donuts.” She nudged me again. “Dibs on the sprinkled ones.”
Her eyes twinkled with hope. I averted mine to the tips of my black, pinchy-toed shoes. “I’m kind of tired. Maybe next time?”
She patted my arm. “Sure. You did great today. This was huge.” She walked me out to my car, gave me one of her smothering hugs, and trotted back to the door. “They better not have eaten all the sprinkled donuts!”
The Butterfly Recluse Page 5