Page 2 of Butterfly Sisters
“You sure you wanna go all the way to Chicago?” he asked, continuing the conversation anyway.
“Yes,” she said, completely confident that Northwestern was the best option for her. Until just now, with him right there in front of her. “What do you want to do, Colton?”
“I wanna fish off the side of my boat and watch football out on my porch in the evenings. I wanna go into town and know everybody there.”
The idea seemed as comforting to Leigh as a warm hug, but she couldn’t let her feelings for Colton hold her back. To break the tension, she splashed him. Getting her back, he stood up and threw himself off the dock in a cannonball, causing a spray that fanned across the wood of the dock. She squealed, pushing away from him, relieved slightly by the lighter moment.
“Y’all are crazy,” Meredith said, continuing down the dock on her way somewhere. Meredith never stayed around very long. She’d rather be anywhere but the cabin.
“And what are you going to do for money?” Leigh asked Colton, treading water as she darted out of his range.
“I’ll find somethin’,” he replied. “Work’s just work. Life is what happens after work.”
“Not if you do something you enjoy,” she countered.
He reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her in. “I enjoy this. I’m gonna miss you.” That day, he leaned in and kissed her, crossing the line, and she knew right then that he understood it was the end for them. She could still feel the soft wetness of his lips, how they fit perfectly on hers, and the ache in her chest that it caused when she thought about leaving him.
He pulled back and looked at her, one hand on the dock, the other around her to keep them steady. “You love hanging out with your nan and living here. Why don’t you not worry about all that college stuff and stay here with me?” He swallowed her with his pleading gaze, beads of water on his jaw.
The sting on his face when she’d laughed was burned into her memory. She hadn’t meant it to be a jab at him—it had been a nervous reaction, because she couldn’t fathom that she’d fit into that kind of life; she hadn’t planned for it. And at her age, she didn’t even know if she wanted it. Everything she’d done until now was to prepare for the moment when she’d get into a major university and begin building her career in public relations. There was no way she could give up school and move to the lake at the young age of eighteen to fish and watch sports. But Colton definitely wasn’t laughing. He let her go and swam away.
“We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us,” she called out to him, trying to backtrack and explain, but he’d already lifted himself out of the water further down the dock. “I have a plan for what I want in life,” she continued, sticking to her guns and not letting his gorgeous face sway her.
Those brown eyes bored into hers from the other end of the dock. “So do I,” he said, but then his shoulders fell in surrender. “I don’t want to argue.” He reached down and picked up her towel, peering down at it, his thumb gently rubbing the soft terrycloth, the situation clearly getting the better of him. But he was the best at keeping his composure. He walked the towel over to her. “Let’s get you packed.”
Academics were what Leigh was built to do. She didn’t know how to do anything else.
Until she came to her grandmother’s cabin. For those few months every summer and on school holidays like that one, she let her hair down, packed all her favorite novels, and spent time with her family and Colton. That was the only part of her life that he’d seen.
Leigh and Colton had always had an easy chemistry, falling right back into step whenever she’d visit. Every now and again, she’d make the hour drive from her house in Spring Hill on a weekend, and they’d hang out together, but it was when she stayed at Nan’s that their little romance would kick into gear. They’d never acted on it, apart from flirtatious moments when one of them would pull away just as the seriousness of their feelings settled between them, which sent an electric pulse through her body whenever it had happened. Leigh wondered if they were both scared that moving past that level would break the spell, and they both loved each other too much to do that. Her mind went back to that day she’d left, pulling up the rest of the memory as clear as the summer water on the lake.
Once she’d gotten to Chicago, she’d tried to call him a few times, but he hadn’t picked up. And Nan passed a few months after she’d left, that same year, which had changed everything. Before she knew it, her life had swept her so far away from that moment that she’d stopped calling. But every now and again, she sometimes wondered about Colton. While she piled her brain with the rules of calculus and countless facts about modern Western civilization, and later after she graduated, trying to build a career for herself, moving to New York, she wondered if Colton was back at the lake, rocking on the waves in his boat, hat turned backward, fishing with his buddies just like he’d wanted.
And she wondered if he could’ve made her happy.
ONE
Her phone pressed to her ear, Leigh strained to hear through the buzz of morning commuters who bustled into New York City’s Financial District every weekday and gathered at the café on the corner of Wall Street and Pearl, while they waited impatiently for their morning coffee. Her younger sister’s voice came through the end of her phone—happy, bouncy. “It’s Meredith! You’ve reached my voicemail, so I’m obviously off doing something incredible. Leave a message.”
She wedged the phone against her shoulder while she paid the cashier for her double-shot caramel latte on her way to work. Leigh had resorted to calling after both she and her mother had tried to text Meredith several times with no response, and apparently that wasn’t working either.
“Mom wants us to go to the lake house,” she said after the beep, feeling strangled when she uttered the words, knowing the resentful look that would show in her sister’s eyes when she heard the message. Meredith hadn’t given the family or the cabin any thought since she’d left home, something Leigh had never understood. “It’s… important. Text me or call me back.” She ended the call, guessing she’d have to leave a few messages with something more dramatic for Meredith to actually respond.
Her family had never been that close group of four who went to the movies together or laughed with each other over games of charades or family dinners. It was something Leigh had always longed for, but never seemed to be able to catch hold of.
Her sister hadn’t been home for any length of time in the last eight years, other than their father’s funeral, which had happened three years after Nan died, when she’d actually stayed a night, before claiming she needed to go. The last time Leigh and Meredith had been in the same place for more than twenty-four hours had been in high school, for Leigh’s graduation. When, a few weeks later, everyone had gathered in the driveway to see her off to college, Meredith hadn’t appeared with their mother, father, Nan, and their neighbors to wave and cheer as Leigh left home for four years at Northwestern University, her old Ford Escort filled to the brim with all her belongings. Leigh had seethed over it for the first hour of the trip, wondering what she’d ever done to make her sister hate her so much.
Leigh had always been frustrated with Meredith; her behavior put a strain on them. It had seemed as if Meredith would do anything to set herself apart from everyone in their family. And while her sister had appeared as though she’d had no direction her whole life, she had a kind of contempt for them all, as if they were criminals for having their lives together. All her sister had to do was apply herself, but she never did. She took odd jobs and lazily gathered the bare minimum to live on, spending nights on her friends’ sofas and living out of her car at times.
But even though her sister was a disaster, Leigh was always a little envious at the way she never had to stay in one place or have anything special to be happy—she’d gotten that from Nan. Meredith could pack a tent and a loaf of bread and leave for a week, coming back looking vibrant and rested. Leigh wished she could have just a little of her free spirit.
Meredith was an artist like Nan, but that and her lack of interest in possessions were about all her sister and their grandmother shared. It had been Leigh who’d spent every free minute with Nan, who’d talked for hours and listened to all her grandmother’s stories about traveling across the world, or her latest ideas for a pottery line she wanted to try to make. It had been Leigh who’d stayed at Old Hickory Lake with Nan until her final days, only a few weeks before heading to Northwestern. Leigh hadn’t been back to the cabin since Nan had passed away nearly eight years ago—thoughthadbeen too much to bear. She’d pushed the heartache down as far as she could, burying it so she could focus on her work, unable to take the time to mourn. She knew that if shehadtaken that time, the grief might have broken her completely.
When her coffee was ready, Leigh weaved through the throngs of people, took her cup from the counter, and headed out into the New York sunshine. Under a bright-blue sky, the winter chill easing slowly as spring took over, Leigh dodged a group of people holding lemonade they’d gotten at the street cart beside them. She paced down the sidewalk downing her latte, her shoulder bag tightly held against the designer suit she’d bought for this morning’s meeting with McGregor Consulting’s largest potential client.
As a commercial property management consultant, an off-shoot from her years in corporate PR, Leigh was the best. And when one of the partners, Phillip Russo, had given her this account because he’d had too many projects on his plate, he’d told her that there was no one else he’d trust with it. She was “capable,” he’d said. Phillip Russo was thin on praise, to say the least, so a term like “capable” spoke volumes.
Leigh firmly believed that he’d trusted her with this because she provided nothing less than excellence. Her work ethic was incredible, and she knew it. It had been that way her whole life. Growing up, while her sister had struggled, spending countless hours with tutors—their parents’ attempt to keep her “on track”—Leigh had been a straight-A student. Leigh had spent her Friday nights studying, while Meredith would sneak out after curfew, doing who knows what with her band of rebels. Leigh had been the rule-follower, and it had paid off.
