Where Butterflies Wander: A Novel

1

MARIE

June 8, 2024

The first thing I notice is that the paint on the house is chipped and peeling. Irritation flares disproportionate to the inconvenience, but it seems that’s how things are these days—my already short fuse shaved to a nub and the slightest spark igniting an explosion.

I now have “tools” that are supposed to help: counting my breaths, singing to myself, or gulping water before I say or do something I will regret. And I try, but there are times it feels as if I’m trying to hold back a tsunami by sipping a bottle of Evian, the anger surging so fast and with such fury it’s impossible to contain.

At the moment, I try slow inhales through my nose and exhales through my mouth.

New paint is not that big a deal. I knew there would be work to be done before we could sell the place. It’s the reason we’re here. Yes, it would have been nice to have known so I could have planned for it, but it’s not the end of the world. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Is this it?” Pen asks excitedly.

I look in the rearview mirror to see her lit-up face—connect-the-dots freckles and Leo’s hazel-green eyes—and almost smile before my heart slams shut like a fist. One, not two. Half, not whole.

I blink and look away, focusing hard through the windshield and on the task in front of me. Park. Walk in the house. Forward, not back.

Despite my efforts, my mind betrays me. Pen and Bee. Bee and Pen. Since they were born and until six weeks ago. Penelope and Phoebe—names cleverly chosen by Leo and me when we found out we were having twins. Two wisewomen from Greek mythology. Double the trouble and twice the fun. Our Honeybee and Lucky Penny, though we don’t call Pen that anymore.

“Wow, it’s bigger than I thought,” Hannah says beside me.

I look again at the house and try to see it through their eyes. I suppose it is rather grand—classic colonial architecture, two stories tall, with round columns and a wraparound porch.

“There’s a barn!” Pen says. “Are there horses?”

There used to be. When I was a girl, my grandfather had a sweet mare named Carina and a surly pony named Gus. Carina died when I was in middle school. I remember crying when my mother told me. I don’t remember when Gus died. Strange the things you remember and those you don’t.

Bee could recite the alphabet backward in 8.3 seconds, but for the life of me, I can’t remember her favorite color. I think it was red. But that might be Pen’s. Green? Was it green? Smaragdine. Why does that strange word come to mind?

“Mom?” Pen says, interrupting my spiraling and making me realize I haven’t answered.

“No, Sweet Pea, no horses.”

I pull the car beside the porch, and Pen hops out. I watch as she takes off toward the barn and realize it’s because she’s spotted a butterfly, her new, latest obsession. It flutters toward the trees, and she chases after it, skinny arms and legs flying, and the lump in my throat grows as I fight the waterworks in my eyes.

“Should I go after her?” Hannah asks, worry in her voice.

I start to shake my head but stop. Six weeks ago, my answer would have been certain. As a child far younger than eight, I ran in the birches all the time—my sister, cousins, and I playing tag, hide-and-seek, capture the flag, or whatever other game we could think of. It’s not dangerous. The trees are spindly and the land mostly flat. She might encounter a squirrel or a rabbit, or at worst, a bit of poison ivy.

But nothing’s as it was.

I stare at the back of Pen’s striped shirt as she skips toward the trail and complete the shake of my head. No. I will not let that day take more than it already has.

“Stay on the path!” I holler after her as I climb from the car.

She lifts a thumbs-up and continues on her way.

Hannah and I carry our bags up the steps, and I unlock the door.

Hannah enters first. “Whoa!” she says.

I nod and, for a moment, share her amazement, feeling like I’ve stepped through a time portal and traveled back to my youth, the place perfectly preserved from the last time I was here, nearly thirty years ago. I was fourteen, a year younger than Hannah is now. It’s unbelievable to think how much time has passed, memory a trick able to distort minutes and years to what seems like only seconds and days.

The caretakers have done a wonderful job. The air smells of lemon polish and pine, and every surface gleams. There’s a vase of wildflowers on the entry table, and the drapes have been rehung and the couch pillows put out as I requested. I inhale deeply, thinking how it used to also smell of tobacco and bacon. But my grandfather’s been gone far too long for those comforting smells to remain.

Hannah wanders into the living room, a grand space with two sitting areas and a game table. The centerpiece is a massive stone fireplace flanked on either side by bookshelves filled with literary classics along with tomes on philosophy, fishing, and war.

“No television?” Hannah asks.

A smile tickles my lips as I lower my voice to the soft tenor of my grandfather and say, “Television rots the mind and turns a brain to cheese until a person cannot think but only see.”

“Your grandfather said that?”

“He borrowed the sentiment from Roald Dahl, but yeah, it’s what he used to say.” I smile at the memory. “And if we ever had cheese for lunch or a snack, he’d point to it and say ‘Television’ to drive home the point.”

Hannah reflects my grin. “Should I start calling Brendon cheese-head?”

“Maybe.”

And I think to myself that we’ve all become a bit like cheese-heads lately, the six . . . five . . . of us constantly tethered to our electronic devices, and I wonder what my grandfather would make of this new megapixelated world.

He would hate it, and he would gloat that he’d been right. My grandfather was a man of strong opinions, some that rankled but that, more often than not, turned out to be right. Long before these things came into existence, he predicted cell phones, laptops, climate change, and conservative Christian values’ decline—all of which he believed to be travesties looming on the horizon that would alter humanity for the worse.

My mother, a flower child who came of age in the sixties and marched for women and gay rights, was the first to cut ties. My uncles soon followed, and our idyllic family summers came to an end.

After that, the only contact I had with my grandfather was the cards I got on my birthday with generous checks inside. I regret now not having kept in touch. We had been close. “Duplicity personified,” he used to say. He’s the reason I went to Yale and the reason I studied economics. He’s the one who taught me to wolf whistle, tie a dozen different knots, properly shake a hand, and ride both a horse and a bike, and he’s the reason I never apologize unless I mean it.

Yes, we didn’t share all the same views, but I regret not seeing past it to the common ground, which far outweighed our differences. Perhaps, had I kept in touch, I might even have been able to persuade him to see things differently, the same way my kids often enlighten me to things more progressive than I’m used to.

“Should we carry the rest in or wait for Dad?” Hannah asks.

I turn to see her squinting against the light streaming in from the tall windows. Since Hannah got her period, a little over two years ago, she’s been afflicted with debilitating migraines, and brightness is a trigger.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and rest,” I say. “The boys can carry the rest in when they get here.” I roll my eyes. “Whenever that is.”

“Mom, stop. You know Dad loves his car.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s for the environment.”

“He needs to recharge every seventy miles!”

“Why do you care? You’re not the one who has to do it.”

“Because it’s ludicrous. We drove here and didn’t need to stop once.”

“Different strokes,” Hannah says with a shrug.

She’s an easygoing kid, water flowing downstream. So unlike me that if we didn’t share the same gold hair and blue eyes, I’d wonder if we took the wrong child home from the hospital.

“Yeah, well, hopefully they get here before summer ends,” I say, enjoying the banter that’s become so rare these days.

She almost smiles but cringes instead, which makes me feel terrible. It seems a basic tenet of parenthood that you should be able to take away your child’s pain. But no matter how many doctors I’ve taken her to, nothing has worked.

She shuffles up the stairs. I watch her go, then plop on the couch and stare out the window. I consider going to find Pen so we can explore. I could show her my favorite hiding spots, and we could pick berries or hunt for nests. We could walk to the river to see if the giant willow’s still there, then climb onto the branch over the water and carve her initials next to my sister’s and my own.

But I’m just so tired.

Leaning my head back, I close my eyes and breathe. In, out, in, out. One breath at a time. Each carrying me another inch forward until, hopefully, by the end of summer, we find ourselves somewhere new.

2

PENELOPE

The butterfly weaves in and out of the spindly white trunks as I jump from spot to spot of dancing light blinking through the leaves above.

I saw it before the car stopped, a flutter of blue beside the barn, and my heart leaped. When Mom said we were spending the summer in New Hampshire, I was worried Bee wouldn’t know where we’d gone. But there she was, waiting.

She lands on the stem of a bush with large pinkish-purple poofs, and I inch closer, hoping to see her wings. If they have black lines and orange spots, she is a red-spotted purple, but if they have a white stripe with dark spots, she’s a white admiral, something I’ve never seen.

I’m a yard away when she takes off again. I hurry after, wondering if the glimpse I caught was actually a white stripe or only my wish for it to be true. I’ve learned if you wish hard enough, sometimes your wishes turn real.