The Butterfly Garden (29 page)

And then there was the thing that made me ever conscious of just how
not
mine the space was: the blinking red camera light above the door.

I sat on the bed, my back against the wall, and watched him bend sideways to read the spines of the books. “How many of these were my father’s choice?”

“Maybe half.”

“
The Brothers Karamazov
?”

“No, that one was mine.”

“Really?” He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Dense, isn’t it?”

“On the surface. It’s fun to discuss.”

I discussed a lot of books with Zara, but never the classics. That was something Noémie and I had done, dissecting them, getting into debates that could last for days or even weeks without ever fully being resolved. Rereading Dostoevsky kept Noémie fresh in my mind in a way that wasn’t as painful as directly reminding myself of her and the others in New York. There was a book for each of the girls from the apartment. It was subtler than Nazira’s drawings or Bliss’s figures, but the same impulse.

“Why am I not surprised that you like books with layers?” He finished his perusal and stood next to the bed, hands in his pockets.

“You can sit on the bed, you know.”

“I, uh . . . this is your space,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t want to presume.”

“You can sit on the bed, you know.”

He smiled this time and toed off his shoes, sitting next to me on top of the blankets. We’d kissed a few times since that first one, each one tentative and just a little overwhelming. His father, and to a lesser extent his brother, hovered between us whenever it seemed it might go a little further, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Actually, I wasn’t sure about much of anything when it came to Desmond.

We talked a bit about his friends, about his school, but even that was hard sometimes. I’d been in the Garden long enough that the outside world had become somewhat surreal, like a half-believed legend. Eventually, it was time for dinner, time for him to go back to the house for a while so his mother didn’t wonder where he was all the time, and we walked down the hall hand in hand. If I walked him to the entrance, would he send me away before he punched his code into the lock? I wondered whether that precaution was one his father had drilled into him. If I ran through the door, would he take pity and let me go?

Could I get the police back here for the other girls before anything happened to them?

If I hadn’t been absorbed with the problem of the door, I might have noticed right away, might have recognized how strange the silence was, but it took me a minute to realize we should have been hearing piano music down this entire stretch of hallway. I dropped his hand, not caring that he followed, and ran to the music room, terrified of what I might see.

Tereza was alive and uninjured.

But broken.

She sat on the piano bench, everything about her posture correct and perfect, and her hands were even on the keys, arched and poised. She looked like she could burst into music at any point.

Unless you looked at her face, at the tears that tracked silently down her cheeks, at the absolutely vacant look in her eyes, and understood that whatever made her Tereza wasn’t there anymore. Sometimes it happened as quickly as a blink, as a heartbeat, as anything that should have been normal from one to the next.

I straddled the bench next to her, one hand against her back. Still staring straight ahead into nothing, she shuddered. “If you can come back, please try,” I whispered. “I know it’s bad, but after this there’s nothing. Worse than nothing.”

“Do you think we would make it worse by trying something?” Desmond asked carefully.

“Try what?”

“Here, come off the bench and hold her on the very edge.” He sat down on the far end and carefully scooted over until he had the full range of keys. Tereza didn’t fight or struggle when I took her hands away. Desmond took a deep breath and started to play, something soft and gentle and full of pain.

Tereza’s breath hitched, the only sign that she heard.

I closed my eyes as the song continued, my chest tightening with tears I didn’t know how to shed. He didn’t just play, he effused, and the more he went on, the more Tereza shook in my arms, until finally she burst into heaving sobs and buried her face in my chest. Desmond kept playing, but now the song changed to something light and airy, not cheerful so much as comforting. Tereza wept, but she was
there
, still a little broken, with a few of the essential pieces missing, but responsive. I hugged her tightly, and for an agonizing moment I wondered if it would have been kinder to let her stay shattered. To let her die.

When we didn’t show up at dinner or send for trays, Lorraine told the Gardener. We were still in the music room, coaxing Tereza to play something for us, when he appeared in the doorway. I noticed him there but didn’t spare him much thought, too intent on the girl who was still shaking like a leaf. Desmond kept his voice soft, made no sudden movement, and finally she put her hands back on the keys, depressing a single note.

Desmond pressed a note lower down.

Tereza hit another one, which he answered, and gradually the notes became chords and progressions, until they were playing a duet I almost recognized. When it was done, she took a deep, slow breath, let it out, then took another.

“You get used to it,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

I very carefully didn’t look at the doorway. “Yes, you do.”

She nodded, used her skirt to wipe off her face and throat, and started another song. “Thank you.”

We listened to her for a couple of songs, until the Gardener stepped into the room to get my attention. He crooked his finger and I bit back a sigh, getting to my feet and joining him in the hallway. Desmond followed.

Desmond had saved her, but wouldn’t admit to himself what he’d saved her from.

“Lorraine said you skipped dinner,” he said quietly.

“Tereza was having a rough patch,” I answered. “She was a little more important than dinner.”

“Will she be all right?”

She had to be, or she’d be in glass. I glanced at Desmond, who took my hand with a light squeeze. “I don’t think this will be the last rough patch she’ll have, but I think this will be the worst. Delayed shock, I guess. Desmond got her playing again, though, so that’s a good sign.”

“Desmond?” The Gardener smiled, the concern replaced with pride, and he gripped his son’s shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it. Is there anything I can do to help her?” I bit my lip and he actually shook his finger at me. “Maya, the truth now.”

“It might be best if you didn’t have sex with her for a little while,” I sighed. “Spend time with her, fine, but I think sex is going to ask more of her than she can give right now.”

He blinked at me, somewhat taken aback, but Desmond nodded. “And keep Avery away from her,” he added. “He’s always liked breaking things.”

“How long?”

“Couple of weeks, maybe? Mostly we’ll just need to keep an eye on her, see how she’s doing.”

Too aware of his son to give in to what was in his eyes, the Gardener pressed a kiss against my forehead. “You take such good care of them, Maya. Thank you.”

I nodded because it seemed safer than talking.

He moved past us into the room and Tereza’s song faltered, but gained strength when all he did was pull out a chair from the corner to listen to her play.

Desmond and I stood in the hallway for several songs, waiting to see if the choppiness would return, but she sounded like she was at a recital, all smooth grace and memorization. When there didn’t seem to be an immediate threat of a new breakdown, he gently tugged on my hand to lead me down the hall. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m really not.”

His father would have insisted on my eating anyway, because skipping meals wasn’t healthy. His brother would have insisted on my eating because it would have amused him to watch me force the food past my nausea. But Desmond simply said, “Okay,” and led the way to the cave.

It was empty, everyone else still in the dining room, and when we were in the center of the damp room, he stopped, turned, and put his arms around me, holding me close. “He’s right about one thing,” he said against my hair. “You do take good care of them.”

The only reason I knew how was because of the apartment, because Sophia mothered us all in her slightly warped way. And Lyonette. Sophia took care of her girls, but Lyonette taught me how to tend Butterflies.

“It must be hard to adjust to a place like this, if you’ve been on the street,” he said. “To be safe, but not allowed to leave.”

We weren’t from the street, and we weren’t safe; I just didn’t know how to make him understand that, with the girls in glass hidden away.

We eventually went to the kitchen, once the panic receded enough that my appetite could make itself known, and as we ate bananas and Nilla Wafers, Adara popped her head in and promised to stay with Tereza through the nights. Adara’s depression gave her a different perspective than the rest of us, and she’d had to carefully piece herself back together several times before.

I kissed her cheek because I didn’t have the words to thank her properly.

Danelle volunteered her time to the cause as well, inviting the Gardener back to her room like she used to do in the days when she’d earned the wings on her face. I don’t think he was blind to the reasons for it, but I think he was touched by it nonetheless, because even if it wasn’t for his sake, it was at least for Tereza’s. Doing a good thing for another Butterfly was the same as doing it for him.

Desmond poured a glass of milk and perched next to me on the counter, passing the glass between us. “If I were to do something really pathetic, do you think you could pretend to like it to humor my ego?”

I looked at him warily. “I’d love to be supportive and say yes, but I can’t promise that without knowing what it is.”

He drained half the glass in one gulp. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

“Is it still being supportive if I say I’m scared but will come along anyway?”

“It’ll do.” He lifted me off the counter and took my hand as we walked out of the kitchen and into the Garden. It was still a little bit light out, twilight painting across the sky, and I watched the colors change. He ducked us behind the waterfall into the cave, then let go of my hand. “Wait here.”

He came back less than a minute later. “Close your eyes.”

When Desmond told me to do something—more to the point, when I actually did it—I didn’t feel like I was merely obeying. I obeyed the Gardener, I obeyed Avery.

Desmond was more careful about what he asked me to do.

The waterfall drowned out the sound of his movements, but after a moment I heard music. Music I actually recognized. “Sway” was Sophia’s favorite song, the one she danced to with her girls at the end of every visit, and she couldn’t hear the last notes without crying. Desmond took my hands, placed one of them on his hip, and stepped in close. “Open your eyes.”

An iPod and speaker sat on a safely dry portion of the floor near the hallway. He smiled at me, a little bit nervously, and gave a lopsided shrug. “Dance with me?”

“I’ve never . . . I don’t . . .” I took a deep breath, and somehow his nervous smile was on my lips. “I don’t know how to dance.”

“That’s okay. All I can do is waltz.”

“You can waltz?”

“Mother’s charity functions.”

“Ah.” He pulled me even closer, until my cheek rested against
his
shoulder, and he swayed us back and forth. He held our joined hands
against his chest, his other hand sliding to the small of my back.
Softly, almost inaudibly at first, he started singing along. I let him
lead, burying my face in his shoulder to hide whatever my face was
showing.

There’s this moment when you know that suddenly, everything’s changed. Most people have that moment many times in their lives.

I had it when I was three, and I realized my dad wasn’t like the rest of his family.

I had it when I was six, and I sat on the fucking carousel as everyone walked away.

I had it when I had to take a taxi to my Gran’s, when my Gran died, when Noémie poured me that first drink at the apartment.

I had it when I woke up in the Garden, when I got a new name that was supposed to eradicate everything I had been before.

And now, in the arms of this strange, unaccountable boy, I knew that even if nothing else changed, everything was different.

Maybe I could change him. Convince or trick or manipulate him into contributing to the freedom I wanted for all of us—but it wouldn’t be without a price.

“Des . . .”

I could feel his grin against my temple. “Yes?”

“Right now I could hate you a little.”

He didn’t stop dancing, but the smile faded. “Why?”

“Because this is royally fucked up.” I took a slow, deep breath, thought
about what to say next. “And because this is going to break my heart.”

“Does that mean you love me too?”

“My mother taught me to make sure the man always says it first.”

He leaned back a little, just enough to see my face. “Did she really?”

“Yes.”

I don’t think he could tell if I was serious or not.

The song ended, rolling over to something I should probably have recognized, and he put some space between us. “Who am I saying it to? Because you may answer to Maya, but it’s not who you are.”

I shook my head. “I can’t think like that. Not when I don’t have any chance to be that person again.”

His face fell, but honestly, what did he expect? Then he got down on one knee, holding both my hands, and smiled up at me. “I love you, Maya, and I swear, I will never hurt you.”

I believed part of that.

I didn’t want to feel guilty for it.

But I did, so I perched on his knee and kissed him, and he got so involved with kissing me back that he overbalanced and we both fell onto the damp stone. He laughed and kept kissing me and kissing me and I knew I could never believe the rest of it. Desmond wasn’t good, no matter how much he wanted to be, and better than his family just wasn’t enough. Every day he helped keep us here, he hurt me.