Page 36 of Butterfly Sisters
She nodded, the years away feeling like lost time. “I’d forgotten how great it was for a little while, and how comforting the cabin is for me, but I won’t do that again.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, stepping up next to her, the two of them side by side under the stars. “I hope you visit a lot.”
His admission filled her with joy. “Yes,” she said, unsure of how to do that once she was back in New York, under the pressure of a new job, but she was certain that she’d figure it out.
When Colton dropped Leigh home, the house was dark and all the bedroom doors were shut. After her night with Colton, Leigh was energized, and she felt slightly at peace, despite the lingering tension with her family. Whatever her mother had to tell her, she could get through it if she just channeled the peace of this place. While Nan wasn’t there physically, she was still all around, and Leigh could finally feel her.
Clicking on the lamp in the living room, she went to sit down on the old sofa and curl up under one of Nan’s quilts that always hung on the arm, but then she spied the old trunk where Meredith had kept her things. Had Nan left her sister a note too? The buzz of the wine gave her the courage to take a look for herself. With a glance at the shut doors down the hallway, she quietly paced over and unlatched the trunk, lifting the lid.
Inside were old canvases with a few of Meredith’s elementary paintings on them from when they were little girls. There were coloring books, a couple of the dolls she used to keep there to sleep with, and a pair of Meredith’s swimming goggles. But the thing right on the top was what made Leigh’s skin prickle. It was the leather butterfly book with an envelope paperclipped to the cover. And on the envelope was Meredith’s name in Nan’s writing.
Meredith probably hadn’t thought once about this book since she’d arrived, and yet Nan was giving it toher? Leigh had been the one with the interest in nature like Nan; Leigh had studied birds the way Nan had studied butterflies; Meredith hadn’t spent a single moment with Nan, talking about anything. Nan had left Leigh nothing but a note. So why in the world would her grandmother give that precious book to Leigh’s sister? She had to know why. Quietly, she slid the envelope from under the paperclip and slipped it into her pocket, closed the lid of the trunk, and took the note to her room.
With the door closed and locked, Leigh stared at her sister’s name on the envelope, wishing it had been her note that had been attached to the butterfly book. She pulled out the single sheet of paper, gasping when she saw how long the letter was, when hers had been short. Her curiosity piqued, she dove in and started reading.
Meredith, my sweet child,
You and I never spent more than a few minutes at a time together—you were always in motion, like your heart, following the moment’s desires. Even though I wasn’t by your side a lot of the time, I watched you come and go, knowing that the movement was essential to who you are. But I also understand that a restless soul doesn’t have it easy most of the time.
Once, on a tree down by the lake, I stopped in my tracks at the sight of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. I watched it struggle every single day for about a week and a half. It was working so hard and it seemed like no one was noticing its incredible struggle. I couldn’t bear it, so I grabbed my tweezers and started to help it get out. When I finally freed it, it fell to the ground and it never got back up. The next day, when I went to check on it, the butterfly had died. I was devastated.
Convinced I’d let it struggle too long, I started to research butterflies, jotting down my findings in this journal, feeling just terrible. But what I found surprised me even more. You see, by helping it out, I’d killed it. When leaving its cocoon, a butterfly needs the struggle to push the fluid from its body into its wings. So essentially, without the struggle, it never flies.
My hope for you is that, by the constant struggle within you and what you’ve had to endure, you’ve found your wings. And if I’m allowed from the big paradise upstairs, I’ll be watching you fly.
All my love,
Nan
Slowly, Leigh folded the letter and placed it back into the envelope, her mind whirring, tears filling her eyes. All this time, Leigh had thought that it had been she who’d worked the hardest, studying long hours and pushing herself to the limit to climb the corporate ladder; she’d thought it was she who’d struggled the most, leaving everything she knew behind and building a life in a brand-new place. But Nan had thought differently.
Nan’s wordsalways in motionandrestless soulfloated back into her mind. Her skin burned with the realization that the reason Meredith wasn’t close with her was because Leigh had never understood her sister. She’d seen her restlessness as avoidance and her laid-back attitude as laziness. Had she gotten it all wrong? Was Meredith really the stronger of the two of them? After all, it did seem that she’d found her wings, while Leigh was flapping around on the ground, trying to survive.
She slid the letter back into its envelope and took it back to the living room, where she returned it to the place where Nan had left it for Meredith. As she stood in the silence of the cabin, suddenly nothing about her life felt clear to her anymore.
TWELVE
Leigh tentatively sat next to Mama outside at the fire pit, watching the sun rise and trying to gauge her disposition this morning.
“Mornin’,” Mama said, tipping her head up to view a sparrow that flew overhead. “What are your plans today?” she asked.
“I’m going to start calling different companies to see if I can get a meeting with them for the Greystone property.” If she was ever going to feel better about herself, she needed to get a move on and figure out what to do with her life. “I want the emails in their inboxes Monday morning.”
Mama nodded, rearranging a log on the fire pit with the stoker. “Did Meredith come back last night?” She stabbed a log, the sweet charcoal scent of it reminding Leigh of summer.
“Yeah,” Meredith answered from the doorway of the porch, tucking a runaway strand of curls into the tangled, messy knot on top of her head. With a huff, she walked down and sat across from Leigh, pulling at her baggy jogging pants to keep them up.
“It’s chilly out here. Should we go inside?” Mama asked.
“Yes,” Meredith answered in almost a hiss of desperation.
Before last night, Leigh would’ve interpreted Meredith’s response as her not wanting to be there, but after reading Nan’s letter, she wondered if sitting outside with two people who totally didn’t get her was more difficult for her than she let on. Was that what Colton had understood about Meredith that Leigh had not?
Mama got up and went inside. Leigh and Meredith followed behind her. Without warning, their mother turned around and said, “I think it’s time I say what I’ve brought you two here to tell you. We’ll let the chips fall where they may…”
The three of them sat together at the kitchen table where they’d shared so many meals, where they’d laughed until they’d cried while Nan told them stories, where they’d made big breakfasts and covered the surface with flour to bake cookies, the place they had gathered—they were there, ready to hear whatever it was that Nan had to tell them from the grave.
“Your grandmother gave me a letter just before she died. It was addressed to me, and I didn’t have the strength to open it right then, so I tucked it away in the back of a drawer. It was all too much for so long… I couldn’t bear to read her words to me, knowing she was no longer there to say them. Then, years later, when I finally felt like I could read it without crumbling, I opened it.”
