Page 45 of Butterfly Sisters
Leigh reached over for her hand but her mother barely noticed. That was when Leigh knew that, just like her mother had for Nan and then again for their father, she needed to mourn the loss of the relationship she never had with her younger daughter.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Meredith said, coming down the steps toward them.
Leigh looked up at her sister.
“I heard you through the window.”
Mama tipped her head up to address Meredith as she maneuvered around their chairs and sat in a third, draping her paint-spotted hands on the arms, her eyes on Mama.
“I understood my whole life that you couldn’t see it.”
Mama bowed her head, defeated, more tears surfacing. “I shouldn’t have made you feel less than the gifted and brilliant person God created you to be,” she said. “I also keep thinking that your nan could see it all, yet she never told me to lighten up. Not once. I wonder why.”
“She was a big believer in letting us all do our thing,” Meredith said. “She was allowing you to be a mother, I think. Who was she to tell you differently?”
“But I got itwrong,” she said, distraught.
Meredith teared up, and for someone else—Leigh had never seen it happen before. As her sister looked at their mother, tears glistened in her eyes in front of the thoughts that swam across her face. It was clear that she felt for Mama.
“Maybe our paths weren’t meant to be straight,” she said. “Maybe life is supposed to be messy because it isn’t up to you to find me. It’s up to me to find myself.”
Meredith’s words seemed to lift a layer of heaviness from Mama’s brokenness, and she took in a deep breath, letting it out. “I could’ve made it a little easier, not subjecting you to all that school tutoring when you could’ve been painting,” she said.
“Well, I have to do payroll for two people, so the extra math was helpful.” She grinned at Mama.
Mama chuckled through her tears and Leigh was glad for Meredith’s compassion. Then their mother sobered. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I won’t ever let it happen again.”
Meredith wrapped her arms around their mother, their little family finally together, side by side and still, the cabin watching over them.
As the sun sank in the sky, Leigh sat on the dock with her bare feet hanging over it just like she had as a girl, the new perspective she had of her family swirling around in her mind. Growing up, she’d thought her mother had had all the answers. She’d listened to every single thing Mama had directed her to do. So today, after seeing her mom’s vulnerability, and realizing that she was only doing the best she could at raising them, Leigh questioned her own life.
Leigh had happened to be good at school, so she’d easily been able to fulfill her parents’ wishes, and she liked pleasing them. But now, she wasn’t so sure if she’d done the right thing. She’d put everything she had into her job—her whole life. Even now, she was clinging to what little success she found at Greystone Properties, literally scraping up work in an attempt to find her life’s fulfillment.
But what if she was looking for happiness in the wrong place?
Leigh dipped her toes in the cold water, the trees shushing her as if to settle her racing mind. The lake seemed vast today, like one of Meredith’s canvases, waiting for something from her. She suddenly felt the absence of little feet that could’ve pattered along the path behind her, the husband who might have wrapped his arms around her at the end of this dock—none of it a part of her reality. The truth was, she loved doing what she did, and she felt real joy in being a success in the office. But maybe her destiny was bigger than that.
“You’ve been awfully quiet, Nan,” she whispered under her breath. “Wanna help me out here? What are you doing all this for?”
The wind blew her hair behind her shoulders and she strained, just hoping to hear her grandmother. But, as always, there was only silence. Then she applied Meredith’s words to her situation: maybe life was supposed to be messy because it wasn’t up to anyone else to find us. It was up to us to find ourselves. She was looking to Nan to guide her because her whole life people had guided her. But perhaps, just like Meredith had, it was time for Leigh to find her own way.
SIXTEEN
The next morning, Leigh woke with a new perspective. She lifted the shades in her bedroom and opened the windows. The spring temperatures were glorious today, topping out at seventy-one degrees, with sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Once she was ready for the day, Leigh slipped on her sundress, layering a cardigan on top, and headed into the kitchen.
“Mornin’,” Mama said, while packing her lunch for work, filling in again for a colleague, working more hours than she usually did. She was in her bathrobe, her graying hair tucked behind her ears.
“Morning,” Leigh returned happily.
Mama slid two halves of a sandwich into a plastic bag and placed it in her lunchbox, then took a seat at the table to eat her breakfast. “You’re chipper today.”
Leigh pulled a mug down from the cabinet and filled it with coffee from the half-full carafe still warming on the burner, adding cream and sugar before bringing it to the table. She sat down across from Mama and a dish full of breakfast casserole, a spatula leaning against it. “I might go to the farmer’s market this morning.”
“Sounds nice.” Mama got up and grabbed a plate from the counter before handing it to Leigh and sliding the sausage and egg casserole toward her.
Leigh scooped a square of casserole, lumping it onto the plate. She sliced a bite of it with the side of her fork. “Do you know if they still sell those handmade soaps that I used to use when I was in high school? It would be nice to get some.”
“I think they do,” Mama replied.
