The Butterfly Garden (13 page)

She nodded and looked down between her feet at the ground that seemed so far away. “I don’t like it up here.”

“Do you want me to help you down?”

She nodded again.

I stood carefully on my branch and turned so I could start down my tree, only to hear Ravenna cry out behind me. “Evita, no! Wait for Maya!”

I looked back over my shoulder in time to see Evita windmilling wildly and teetering down the branch until it was too narrow to support her weight. The branch snapped and Evita shrieked as she dropped. Everyone rushed from their hiding places to try to help, but then her head struck a lower branch with a sickening crack and her screams abruptly stopped.

She fell into the pond with a great splash, and was still.

I shimmied down the tree as quickly as I could, scraping my legs and arms on the bark, but no one else moved, not even the Gardener. They all stared at the girl in the pond, at the blood floating away from her pale blonde hair. Wading into the stream, I grabbed her ankle and pulled her closer to me.

Finally the Gardener came running, and heedless of his fine clothing, he helped me get her out of the water onto dry land. Evita’s lovely blue eyes were frozen open, but there wasn’t any sense in trying to make her breathe.

Part of that crack had been her neck breaking.

Death was a strange thing in the Garden, an omnipresent threat but not something we actually
saw
. Girls were simply taken away and a pair of wings in a display case in the halls took their place. For most of the girls, this was their first time seeing death firsthand.

The Gardener’s hands shook as he smoothed Evita’s wet hair back from her face and cradled the wet mess on the back of her skull where she’d hit the branch. Then we were all staring at him rather than Evita because he was
weeping
. His entire body moved with the strength of his sobs, his eyes screwing shut against this unexpected pain, and he rocked back and forth with Evita’s body clasped to his chest, blood staining his sleeve and water soaking through his shirt and trousers.

It was like he’d taken even our tears from us, then. Alerted by the screams, the other girls had come running from their rooms or elsewhere in the Garden, and together all twenty-two of us stood in dry-eyed silence as our captor wept for the death of the one girl he
hadn’t
killed.

She takes the stack of hallway photos and flicks through them until she finds the one she wants. “He arranged her hair so the damage wouldn’t show,” she tells Victor, laying it out for him to see. “He spent the rest of that day and night doing something, off where we couldn’t see him, and the walls came down, and the next day she was up in the glass and he was asleep in front of her, his eyes red and swollen. He stayed there the rest of the day, right in front of her. Right up until a couple of days ago, he touched the glass every time he passed it, until he didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. Even when the glass was covered, he touched the wall.”

“She wasn’t the only accidental death though, was she?”

She shakes her head. “No, not by a long shot. But Evita was . . . well, she was sweet. Utterly innocent, incapable of comprehending the bad things. When they happened to her, they touched her lightly and then let her go. In a way, I think she was the happiest of us, purely because she didn’t know any other way to be.”

Eddison bursts in with a groan of cheap metal, dragging a cot behind him with the other arm full of blankets and thin pillows. He drops them in the far corner and, panting, turns to his partner. “Just got a call from Ramirez; the son is dead.”

“Which one?”

The words are said so softly, so full of air and some indefinable emotion, Victor isn’t entirely sure he even heard it. He looks at the girl, but her eyes are fixed on Eddison, one fingernail digging under the gauze until scarlet blooms along her finger.

Eddison is equally taken aback. He glances at Victor, who shrugs. “Avery,” Eddison answers, nonplussed.

She folds in on herself, hiding her face in her arms. Victor wonders if she’s crying, but when she lifts her head a minute or so later, she’s dry-eyed. Haunted, in some new and inexplicable way, but dry-eyed.

Eddison gives Victor a significant look, but Victor can’t begin to guess what’s running through this girl’s head. Shouldn’t she be happy her tormentor is dead? Or, at the least, relieved? And maybe that is there, buried in her complexity, but she seems more resigned than anything else.

“Inara?”

Her pale brown eyes flick over to the cot, her fingers digging under
the gauze on both hands now. “Does this mean I can sleep?” she asks dully.

Victor stands and motions for Eddison to give him the room. He does
so without comment, taking the pictures and evidence bags, and in less than a minute, Victor is alone with the broken child he may never understand. Without speaking, he unfolds the squeaking legs of the cot and stands it up in the farthest corner from the door, where the table can be between the girl and anyone entering, and wraps one of the blankets around it like a sheet. The other he drapes at the foot, with the pillows piled near the head.

When he’s done, he takes a knee next to her chair and gently lays a hand against her back. “Inara, I know you’re tired, so we’ll let you sleep now. We’ll be back in the morning with breakfast and more questions, and hopefully an update for you on the other girls. But. Before I go—”

“Does it have to be tonight?”

“Did the younger son already know about the Garden?”

She bites her lip until blood dribbles down her chin.

With a deep sigh, he hands her a tissue from his pocket and walks to the door.

“Des.”

He looks back at her, still with one hand on the door, but her eyes are closed and her face is written over with a pain he can’t begin to name. “I’m sorry?”

“His name is Des. Desmond. And yes, he knew about the Garden. About us.”

Her voice breaks and even though he knows a good agent should take advantage of this crack, this vulnerability, he sees his daughters sitting there with that pain and he just can’t do it. “There’ll be someone watching from the tech room,” he says softly. “If you need anything, they’ll help you. Sleep well.”

That fractured sound might be a laugh, but it’s not one he wants to hear again.

He pulls the door closed with a quiet click behind him.

II

The girl—strange to call her Inara, when he knows it isn’t her real name—is still asleep, her face buried in the collar of his jacket, when Victor arrives and checks in with the yawning night-shift tech analysts. One of the techs hands him a stack of messages: reports from the hospital throughout the night, from the agents out at the property, background on as many of the players as possible. He sorts through them as he drinks his cafeteria coffee—marginally better than the questionable swill left standing in the pot in the team kitchen—trying to match the pictures to the names in the girl’s stories.

It’s barely six o’clock when Yvonne enters, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep. “Good morning, Agent Hanoverian.”

“Your shift doesn’t start till eight; why aren’t you sleeping?”

The tech analyst just shakes her head. “Couldn’t sleep. I sat up all night in my daughter’s room, rocking in the chair and staring at her. If someone ever . . .” She shakes her head again, more sharply this time, as if sloughing off the bad thoughts. “I left as soon as my mother-in-law was awake enough to deal with the baby.”

He considers telling her to find an office and take a nap, but then, he doubts anyone on the team slept well last night. He certainly didn’t, plagued by the hallway photos and the distant memories of his daughters running around the yard wearing costume butterfly wings. It’s easier for the horrors to catch up once you have nothing to do.

Victor hefts the canvas bag at his feet. “I have a fresh-made cinnamon roll for you if you do me a favor,” he says, and watches her stand straight with sudden energy. “Holly gave me clothes for Inara; think you could walk her down to the lockers and let her shower?”

“Your daughter is an angel.” She glances through the glass at the sleeping girl. “I hate to wake her up, though.”

“Better you than Eddison.”

She walks out of the tech room without another word, and a moment later the door to the interview room opens with the slightest squeak.

It’s enough; the girl sits up in a tangle of hair and blanket, her back against the wall until she identifies Yvonne, standing in the doorway with her hands out and open. They stare at each other until Yvonne tries a small smile. “Good reflexes.”

“He used to stand in the doorways sometimes; he always seemed disappointed if you didn’t realize he was there.” She yawns and stretches, joints popping and cracking from the uncomfortable cot.

“We thought you might appreciate a shower,” says Yvonne, holding out the canvas bag. “We’ve got some clothing that should fit well enough, and some soaps.”

“I could kiss you if I were into that sort of thing.” On her way to the door, she taps against the glass. “Thank you, FBI Special Agent in Charge Victor Hanoverian.”

He laughs but doesn’t try to answer.

While she’s gone, he moves into the interview room to continue parsing through the new information. Another of the girls has died in the night, but the rest are expected to live. Counting Inara, that makes for a total of thirteen. Thirteen survivors. Perhaps fourteen, depending on what she can tell them of the boy. If he’s the Gardener’s son, is he part of what his father and brother did?

She’s still in the locker room when Eddison comes in, cleanly shaven and wearing a suit this time. He drops a box of Danishes on the table. “Where is she?”

“Yvonne has her down at the showers.”

“Think she’ll tell us anything today?”

“In her own way.”

A snort tells him what his partner thinks of that idea.

“Yes, well.” He hands him the stack of papers he’s already gone through, and for a time the only sounds are the shuffling of pages and the occasional slurp of coffee.

“Ramirez says Senator Kingsley has set up camp in the hospital lobby,” Eddison says a few minutes later.

“Saw that.”

“She says the daughter didn’t want to see the senator; claimed she wasn’t ready.”

“Saw that too.” Victor drops his papers to the table and rubs his eyes. “Can you blame her? She grew up on camera, with everything she did reflecting on her mother. She knows—probably better than any of the others—the media blitz waiting for them. Seeing her mother is the start of that.”

“Ever wonder if we’re really the good guys?”

“Don’t let her get to you.” He grins at his partner’s startled look. “Do we have a perfect job? No. Do we
do
a perfect job? No. It isn’t possible. But we do our job, and at the end of the day, we do a hell of a lot more good than harm. Inara’s good at deflecting; you can’t let her get under your skin.”

Eddison reads another report before saying anything. “Patrice Kingsley—Ravenna—told Ramirez she wants to talk to Maya before making a decision about her mother.”

“Wanting advice? Or someone to make the decision for her?”

“Didn’t say. Vic . . .”

Victor waits him out.

“How do we know she isn’t like Lorraine? She took care of these girls. How do we know it wasn’t to please the Gardener?”

“We don’t,” admits Vic. “Yet. One way or the other, we’ll find out.”

“Before we die of old age?”

The senior agent rolls his eyes and turns back to his papers.

It’s a different girl who finally reenters with Yvonne, her hair combed in a straight fall to her hips. The jeans don’t quite fit, tight across her hips with the buttons undone to give a little more space, but the layered edges of the tank tops mostly cover that, and the mossy green sweater hugs soft curves. Thin flip-flops slap quietly against the floor as she walks. The bandages are off and Victor winces at the purple-red burns that wrap around her hands, marked through with gashes from glass and debris from their escape.

She follows his gaze to her hands and holds them up for further inspection as she drops into her seat at the far side of the table. “They feel worse than they look, but the doctors said as long as I’m not stupid, I shouldn’t see any loss of function.”

“How is the rest of you?”

“There are some lovely bruises and the stitches are a little pink and tender around the edges, but not really swollen. A doctor should probably give them a look-see at some point. But, you know, I’m alive, which is more than I can say about a lot of people I know.”

She’s expecting him to start out with the boy. He can see it in her face, in the tension in her shoulders, in the way her fingertips press over the scabs on the opposite hand. She’s prepared for that. So instead, he pushes across the remaining cup—hot chocolate rather than coffee, given her distaste for it yesterday—and opens the tinfoil wrapping on the rolls. He hands one to Yvonne, who murmurs a thank-you and retreats to the observation room.

Inara’s brows pull together at the sight, her head tilting like a bird’s as
she studies the contents. “What kind of bakery wraps things in aluminum?”

“The bakery known as my mother.”

“Your
mother
made your breakfast?” Her mouth moves in something that might be a smile with less shock. “Did she make your lunch in a little brown sack, too?”

“Even wrote a note, telling me to make good choices today,” he lies with a straight face, and she rolls her lips in to stop the smile from growing. “But you never had that, did you?” he continues more softly.

“Once,” she corrects, and there’s no trace of the humor now. “The couple across the street took me to the bus station, right? She made me a lunch, and inside there was this note, saying how glad they were to know me, how much they’d miss me. Their phone number was there, and they asked me to call them when I got to Gran’s to let them know that I was safe. To call them whenever I wanted, just to talk. They’d signed it with hugs, both of them, and even the baby had a crayon scribble on the bottom.”

“You didn’t call, did you?”

“Once,” she says again, almost a whisper. Her fingertips trace the lines of each cut and gash. “When I got to the station near Gran’s, I called them to tell them I’d gotten there. They asked to speak to Gran, but I said she was arranging for the taxi. They told me to call back as often as I wanted. I stood at the curb of the station, waiting for a taxi, and kept staring at that silly piece of paper. Then I threw it away.”

“Why?”

“Because keeping it felt too much like hurting myself.” She sits up in the chair, crossing her legs at the knee, and leans her elbows against the table. “You seem to have this strange image of me as a lost child, like I’ve just been thrown on the side of the road like garbage, or roadkill, but kids like me? We’re not lost. We may be the only ones who never are. We always know exactly where we are and where we can go. And where we can’t.”

Victor shakes his head, unwilling to argue the point but equally incapable of agreeing with it. “Why didn’t the girls in New York report you missing?”

She rolls her eyes. “We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

“But you were friends.”

“Yes. Friends who were all running from other things. Before I moved in, the bed was vacant because the last girl suddenly picked up and left. Hard on her heels was a pissed-off uncle who wanted to know what she’d done with the baby he’d raped into her three years before. No matter how carefully you hide, there’s always
someone
who can find you.”

“Only if they’re looking.”

“Or if you’re really just that unlucky.”

“What do you mean?” asks Eddison.

“What, you think I wanted the Gardener to kidnap me? The whole city to disappear in, but he found me.”

“That doesn’t explain—”

“It does,” she says simply. “If you’re a certain kind of person.”

Victor sips his coffee, trying to decide if he should push the conversation in a necessary direction or let it go in what may or may not prove to be a useful one. “What kind of person, Inara?” he prompts eventually.

“If you expect to be overlooked or forgotten, you’re always at least a little surprised when someone remembers you. You’re always outside understanding those strange creatures who actually expect people to remember and come back.”

She takes her time then, eating her cinnamon roll, but Victor can tell she isn’t finished with the thought yet. Maybe it isn’t fully formed yet—his youngest daughter will do that sometimes, just trail off until she knows the rest of the words. He isn’t sure if that’s Inara’s reason, but it’s still a pattern he knows, so he kicks Eddison under the table to keep him silent when his partner’s mouth opens.

Eddison glares at him and scoots his chair several inches away, but says nothing.

“Sophia’s girls expect her to come back,” she continues softly. She licks the icing off her injured fingers and winces. “They’ve been with their foster family for . . . well, they’d been there nearly four years when I was taken. Anyone could have understood if they’d given up hope. They didn’t, though. No matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, they knew she was fighting for them. They know she will always,
always
come back for them. I don’t get it. I don’t think I ever will. But then, I never had a Sophia.”

“But you have Sophia.”

“Had,” she corrects. “And it’s not the same. I’m not her daughter.”

“Her family, though. Yes?”

“Friends. It’s not the same.”

He’s not sure he believes that. He’s not sure she does either. Maybe it’s easier for her to pretend she does.

“Your girls always believe you’ll come home, don’t they, Agent Hanoverian?” She smooths a hand along the soft sleeve of the sweater. “They’re afraid that one day you might die in the line of duty, but they don’t believe anything could keep you away if you were still alive.”

“Keep your mouth off his girls,” snaps Eddison, and she smirks.

“You can see his girls in his eyes every time he looks at me or one of those pictures. They’re why he does what he does.”

“Yes, they are,” Victor says, finishing his coffee. “And one of them sent along something else for you.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tube of deep berry lip gloss. “This is from my eldest, who also gave the clothing.”

It startles a smile from her, a real one that makes her whole face shine for a few seconds, her amber-flecked eyes crinkling at the corners. “Lip gloss.”

“She said it’s a girl thing.”

“I’d hope so; this would be a very unflattering shade on you.” Gingerly unscrewing the cap, she squeezes the tube until a bead of shimmering color oozes from the end. She rolls it along her lower lip, managing the upper with no mess or missed places despite her eyes never going to the one-way mirror. “We used to do our makeup on the train on the way to work. Most of us could put our whole face on without ever looking in a mirror.”

“I have to admit, it’s not something I’ve ever tried,” he says dryly.

Eddison straightens the stack of papers, lining their edges precisely with the edge of the table. Victor watches him, used to his partner’s com
pulsions but still amused by them. Eddison sees him watching and frowns.

“Inara,” Victor says finally, and she reluctantly opens her eyes. “We
need to start.”

“Des,” she sighs.

He nods. “Tell me about Desmond.”

I was the only one who liked to find the high places in the Garden, so I was the one to find the
other
garden. Up on the little cliff, there was this small stand of trees—and by stand, I mean five—that grew right up against the glass. At least a couple times a week, I climbed one of the trees, settled into the highest curve of branches that could support me, and pressed my cheek against the glass. Sometimes if I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was out on our fire escape, against our bank of windows, hearing Sophia talk about her girls, or listening to a boy in another building play violin, as Kathryn sat beside me. To my front and left, I could see almost the entire Garden, except for the hallways that wrapped around us and what was hidden by the edge of the cliff. In the afternoon, I could see the girls playing tag or hide-and-seek along the stream, one or two floating in the small pond, or sitting among the rocks or bushes, with books and crosswords and various things.