Excerpt of The Butterfly House by Marcia Preston

CHAPTER 1

From the window of my husband's house, I see the stranger stop beside our gate at the bottom of the snow-covered hill. He steps from his black Chevy Blazer, leaving the door open, and peers at the name on our mailbox. His down jacket hangs unzipped despite the cold over- cast of the morning, and he's wearing cowboy boots. Even from this distance I am struck by the contrast of his black hair against the snow.

I switch off the single lamp on the sunporch and lay aside the pillowtop I'm embroidering, a gift for someone I love. This one is a yellow-and-black anise swallowtail, scientifically correct. A dozen other pairs of silent wings lie stacked on a closet shelf—my butterfly collection, David calls it. Each time he says the words I feel the wings inside my chest. He has no idea.

Go away. It’s the wrong house.

The bell chimes again, and I jump when the doorjamb rattles under his knock.

And then the stranger calls my name.

“Roberta Lee? Bobbie?”

My heart pounds. I don’t know this man; how does he know me? David is at work—I don’t know what to do.

My breath sucks in. I hurry to the door and jerk it open, sending small tufts of snow onto the hallway floor. No one ever uses this door.

I haven’t spoken aloud all morning and my voice sounds hoarse. “Is something wrong with Lenora?”

I grip the edge of the door with both hands. “Who are you?”

The name echoes in my head, bounces through the empty rooms. Harley Jaines Harley Jaines Harley Jaines…

“Sorry to contradict you, but I’m not.” A muscle in his jaw twitches.

And now he stands at my door.

I turn without answering and weave my way back to the sunporch, my hands touching each chair back and door frame as if I’m walking on a moving train. I hear the door close behind me and his quiet footsteps as he follows.

His voice is so low-pitched it’s hard to distinguish the words above the buzzing in my ears. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this. I need to talk to you about Lenora.”

He nods. “Regularly, for several months. Ever since I found out where she was.”

“She says she’s all right, but she isn’t. I can see it in her eyes.”

His eyes look away. “It’s a long story.”

He looks at me as if waiting for a reaction. But my mind has flown a dozen years away from here, to a house called Rockhaven that overlooks the Columbia River. I’m seeing Lenora the way she was then.

The wings rise to the back of my mouth. I wonder if he can see them beating behind my eyes as I regard him blankly. “And what does Lenora say?”

He waits. A patient man. But my heart is like the permafrost beneath the northern Canadian soil. Resistant, enduring. I face him with silence.

My mouth twists. “Which hospital? Which time?” But I know exactly what he means.

Harley Jaines watches my face. “She shouldn’t have gone to prison,” he says. “You know that, and I know it. I believe you have the power to set her free, if you come to the hearing and tell the truth.”

Outside, it has begun to snow again. I watch the air thicken. From the windows of our sunporch the world is a Christmas card, the pines stacked deep with snow. Despite the warmth of the house, I feel winter in my limbs.

Wrong again. I’m living proof. How can he be so naive? He’s twice my age, a war veteran, a Cherokee, as I remember. But I don’t bother to contradict him.

The question catches me unprepared. I stammer. “I hear from her now and then.”

My eyes cloud and I tighten my mouth to keep my face blank. “You’d have to ask her that.”

Cynthia Jaines’s husky, anguished voice on the phone six months ago echoes in my head. I picture the thin ghost who came to see me at Green Gables—a euphemism for the mental health facility where I lived for five years before I married David. Would seeing Harley Jaines save Cynthia, or push her, too, over the edge?

He nods, his face impassive. I can’t tell if he believes me. Where were you all those years, I wonder. Why did you let Lenora think you were dead?

My mind flutters to the appointment I’ve made at the women’s clinic tomorrow morning and my stomach contracts. Will I be able to drive myself home afterward? What if I’m ill, or bleeding? What can I tell David that he will believe?

“I’ll let you know when the hearing is scheduled,” he says. “May I have your phone number?”

He accepts it with cigar-shaped fingers that bear no rings. “Lenora doesn’t know I’m here,” he says, and pauses. “You tried to tell the truth once, but no one would listen. I’m asking you to try again.”

This time his dark eyes register some emotion, and I see them take note of the scars that snake down my jawline and flood my throat. He has no right to come here and ask me to rake those scars raw again.

But no. That decision is merciful. I’m sane enough, at least, to know that. If I never know another thing for certain, I know I have neither the right nor the skills to mother a child.

This isn’t fair.

Outside, the black Blazer’s engine bursts into life. I lean against the door until I hear the SUV drive away, then make my way back to the sunporch. Without turning on the lamp, I stand at the window and watch the snow.

No one knows the truth about Lenora and Cynthia Jaines, Ruth and Bobbie Lee. Least of all me.