The Glass Butterfly (22 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: The Glass Butterfly
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The CD stopped after the first act of the opera. In the silence, Tory closed her eyes, one hand on her own notes, the other pressed to her heart. Ellice had trapped her, cornered her with the deft cruelty, the merciless determination of a sociopath. She should have known, should have seen. Should have reported her before she could act on her fantasy. Before she killed a man who was, as far as she knew, innocent of any wrongdoing. Before she could threaten Jack.
Jack. Oh, God.
Tory's eyes flew open, and she leaped up to dash across the living room to the kitchen. Johnson leaped up, too, sensing some sort of crisis. Tory groped through her bag for her cell phone. She held it in her hand, staring at it, and then she dialed.
She didn't stop to think about what time it was in the east. She didn't even know what time it was here, in her lonely cottage on the Oregon coast. She only knew that she had to hear his voice. She couldn't bear not knowing. She couldn't bear it for another moment.
 
Jack jumped when he heard his phone ring. He couldn't think where he was, why he was asleep sitting up instead of in his bed—and then he remembered. The house was cold and dark around him, and when he pushed the afghan off his legs, the hatchet slid off the couch and clattered on the floor.
Jack, half asleep, staggered toward the kitchen, where he had left his cell phone in the tray where they always kept keys and pencils and pens, the flotsam of daily life. Beneath his sneakers, the sound of broken glass and the sharp fragments of shattered china brought him fully awake.
The phone had rung four times already. On the fifth it would go to voice mail. It wouldn't matter, really, except . . . something made him hurry, made him lunge across the darkened kitchen to seize it and push the button. He was still leaning across the granite counter, his belly pressing against its sharp edge.
“Hello?”
The hiss of an open line greeted him.
He said again, his voice scratchy with sleep, “Hello? Who's there?” There was no answer except a gentle click, the sound of the connection being broken.
He tried again just the same. “Hello?” And then, softly, hopefully, “Mom?” But the line was dead.
He crunched across the floor to turn on the light. He had to squint against the sudden glare as he looked at the phone for the number that had called him. 503. Where was that prefix? He didn't think he'd ever seen it before.
He could just redial, but that didn't seem like a good idea. It could be whoever had trashed the house. Or it could just be a wrong number, the simplest explanation. Everyone got wrong numbers from time to time. It was rude for the person—especially at one in the morning—not to apologize, but if the caller was embarrassed at the mistake, or just thoughtless, it could be—
Jack dropped the phone into his pocket and hurried upstairs to his computer, turning on every light along the way. He did a reverse phone search: 503 was in Oregon. The number, though, wouldn't come up, and an advisory at the bottom of the page told him it was probably a prepaid cell phone. For a fee, he could find out where it had been sold. It would be a start.
He pulled the phone out and looked again, then wrote the number down on a sticky note. He pressed the note onto the edge of the computer keyboard, then got up, slowly, to make his way back downstairs.
It was one-thirty. He couldn't call the Binghams before seven at the earliest, or maybe eight. He was wide-awake now. In fact, he felt jittery and dry-mouthed, as if he'd just drunk a double espresso. The pizza he'd eaten churned in his stomach. He went out to the garage refrigerator for a soda, and on the way back he picked up the push broom and dustpan. Might as well get to work on the mess. There would be no more sleep tonight.
 
Tory held the phone in her trembling hand after hanging up on her son. He had sounded sleepy. With a stab of compunction, she saw that it was after ten, meaning it was after one at home. Was he home? Was he at school? She had no way of knowing.
But he was okay. He had answered his phone, and he was okay. She dropped to her knees, buried her face in Johnson's soft fur, and wept. She sobbed aloud, with all the drama of a diva's theatrical weeping. She cried for a long time, and Johnson lay still, supporting her, waiting for her. When at last she stopped, the dog lifted his head to lick at her tears.
19
Sì, tutto in un istante io vedo il fallo mio. . . .
 
Yes, all in one moment I see my wrongdoing....
 
—Pinkerton,
Madama Butterfly,
Act Three
T
ory opened her eyes, not sure for a moment where she was.
She was shivering with cold, the chill of midnight, with the wintry ocean air seeping through the shutters and glass of the picture window. She had fallen asleep on the little sofa, and when she sat up, pain shot through her neck and shoulders, forcing her to full wakefulness.
Johnson lay at her feet. He lifted his head and regarded her solemnly, his eyes shining faintly in the darkness. Tory remembered crying herself to sleep against his silky fur, then, for some reason, curling up on the sofa. The file still lay on the coffee table, and the paperweight rested precariously at the edge. The gold butterfly was invisible in the darkness.
Tory knew she should go to bed. She had promised to be at the flower shop in the morning. Perversely, she wanted to stay where she was, thinking of hearing Jack's voice, contemplating the almost-destruction of Ellice's file. She padded into the bedroom and got the zippered sweatshirt and the extra blanket from the foot of her bed. She put a fresh log on the fire, and stirred the embers until it began to burn. She opened the shutters, despite the cold, so she could see the dark ocean beyond the window, and then she went back to the sofa. She collected the pages of the file and slid them back inside. She tucked the blanket around her feet, and curled up on the sofa again. Johnson sighed, and put his head on his paws. Tory gazed at the water for several moments before she felt a weight against her thighs.
She looked down. She had, evidently, taken the paperweight into her lap, and was cradling it between her hands. It seemed to vibrate against her skin, to echo with memories. It was easy, in the middle of the night, in the darkness and silence, to explore them.
Her fingers caressed the cool glass, and in her mind she saw the things of the past—an ocean voyage, a wedding in a tiny church, a village with dirt lanes and donkey carts.
Tory wondered if Nonna Angela had felt these things, and if that was why she kept the paperweight with its gold butterfly out of her granddaughter's reach. She wished she could ask her now.
Tory let her head fall back against the top of the sofa, and closed her eyes. She pictured Nonna Angela's wrinkled face, her bright black eyes, her aureole of gray hair. She remembered the softness of her veined hands, and faintly—because it had been such a long time—the welcoming cushion of her lap as she rocked little Tory and told her stories of a village by a lake.
Tory's mother had resented her Italian mother-in-law, complained of her ignorance and her “Catholic superstitions,” as she called them. She had bitterly opposed Nonna Angela coming to live with them, but at least in this one thing, Tory's father had put his foot down. Tory couldn't remember the words now, because she had been little more than a toddler, but she knew there had been a harsh argument, her father losing his temper, her mother eventually withdrawing to her bedroom for hours, or it could have been days. Tory couldn't be sure, but it seemed, to her child's perception, that Nonna Angela came and her mother disappeared, all at the same time. Nonna Angela moved in, bringing her cracked cardboard valise full of surprises to delight a child. For the all-too-brief years that followed, Nonna Angela was Tory's one constant parent, her defense, her solace, and her confidante.
Except for the paperweight, Nonna Angela allowed Tory to explore anything she possessed. A sweater, already old when Nonna Angela was a girl, became a cloak for a captured princess. A funny long skirt and a faded black hat turned Tory into a witch for Halloween. There were bits of cheap jewelry, a dried-up nosegay of white flowers pressed flat between the pages of an Italian Bible, and there was a wooden St. Francis, the paint worn from its brown robe, which Nonna Angela said Tory's father played with as a boy.
There was a photograph in a wooden frame, showing a bright-eyed young woman standing next to a tall, fair-haired young man in uniform. Behind them was a stone church, and in the distance, glistening with sunlight, a broad lake edged with reedy marshes. Tory had to practice saying the name of the lake, but she did it again and again until Nonna Angela said she had it right. Massaciuccoli. Nonna Angela had learned to swim in Lake Massaciuccoli, and her family fished there before the war.
Nonna Angela didn't tell Tory about the war. Tory dreamed of it. She was five, and had been sleeping in her grandmother's room one stormy night. She woke up screaming from a dream of bombs and fierce men with guns. Tory knew nothing of such things, but her Nonna Angela did. She knew them all too well. She remembered every detail as if it had happened the day before instead of forty years ago, and thunderstorms always brought it back to her.
Nonna Angela comforted the little girl, soothed her weeping, held her close until she calmed. She murmured endearments, but she didn't try to tell her granddaughter that her dream was just a nightmare. She couldn't say there were no monsters, tall cruel creatures with fierce eyes who invaded people's homes and brought terror and destruction with them. When Tory wept that she had seen people burning, Nonna Angela could only hug her, and murmur into her tumbled hair,
“Lo so, bimba, lo so.”
I know, little one, I know. I remember.
The little girl had dreamed her grandmother's dream, plucked it all out of her mind as neatly as if she had seen it herself. It was the first sign of Tory's fey.
20
So ben: le angoscie tue non le vuoi dir;
so ben, ma ti senti morir!
 
I know well: you don't want to speak of your sufferings;
I know well, but you feel like you're dying!
 
—Musetta,
La Bohème,
Act Two
I
n two days, Zoe and Tory established a routine at the flower shop. Zoe, upon learning that Tory was an early riser, clapped her hands. “Fantastic!” she exclaimed. “You can open up then, and I can stay in bed until I feel human!”
“Well—sure,” Tory said hesitantly. “If you'll just tell me what I need to do.”
“Easy squeezy,” Zoe said. “I'll give you the keys, you open the door, smile at the other crazy people who like to get up early, and take as much of their money as you can get.” She gave her scarlet grin, and Tory couldn't help but smile in return.
“Mom's stuck in Portland till next week,” Zoe explained. “But I told her we had the situation under control.”
“She doesn't even know me,” Tory said.
Zoe shrugged, and reached for a box of dry-cut flowers. “Your cred is good, thanks to Iris,” she said. “And hey—what's that in your yellow bug out there?”
Tory followed her gaze. She had parked the Beetle on the street, just in front of the shop. Johnson sat in his favored place, the front passenger seat, his long nose stuck out the window, his wide black nostrils quivering. “Oh,” Tory said. “That's the—I mean, that's my dog. Johnson.”
“Johnson?” Zoe said. “Cool! Does he like people?”
“He seems to. I haven't had him very long. I didn't feel right leaving him home all day.”
“Why don't you bring him in?”
“Well, I—I thought, a place of business . . .”
“Nah! Cannon Beach is a dog town,” Zoe said. “Mom has a papillon that goes everywhere with her. I'd have a dog myself if it weren't for going off to U of O soon.”
And so, with startling ease, the pattern was set. Tory came in early, opening the shop in the near-darkness of a coastal winter morning, Johnson panting at her heels. She swept up the litter of leaves and stems and bits of ribbon Zoe had created the evening before, and she opened the register and turned on the fairy lights adorning the window and the holiday displays. She dusted shelves and restocked supplies. Just before ten she took the dog for a walk on the side streets of the town. At ten she turned the door sign from “Closed” to “Open,” and a trickle of customers began to come in after having breakfast at one of the downtown cafés.
For two days, Tory kept her cell phone in her pocket, close at hand. She both hoped and feared Jack would try calling the number back, and when he didn't, she was disappointed and relieved in equal measure. She had put the file away again in its bottom drawer, but looking at it had reminded her of Ellice's reptilian gaze, and of her chilling lack of affect as she recited everything she knew about Jack.
When the shop was still quiet, as she busied herself readying things for the shoppers who would come, Tory admitted to herself she was relieved when her phone died, her prepaid minutes gone. Ellice was a police officer. She had access to all sorts of information Tory couldn't imagine, and it was possible, Tory thought, that she could monitor Jack's calls. Did you need a warrant for that? Was a disappearance enough cause? She didn't know. When she thought of the chance she had taken in calling, her stomach quivered with uneasiness. She had been reminded, looking through the file, of how intelligent Ellice was. So often the case with the sociopathic personality—but of course, in her naïveté, she hadn't believed her client was a sociopath. She had convinced herself she was just a woman with a difficult life whose response to its challenges was anger.
Anger. Ellice was like the big, dark woman in her dream, the embodiment of pure, untrammeled fury. Neither of them seemed to need a reason. They only needed an outlet.
Now, on her fourth day as an employee, Tory settled Johnson on a rug behind the counter and began tidying the gift wrap and ribbon racks. There was a steady stream of cars rolling up and down the main street of the town now, as Christmas approached. People strolled to and fro in the cold sunshine, reading the posters for the theater across the street, buying coffee and pastries, stopping to point at things in shop windows. They wore mufflers and knit caps and thick jackets. Tory found, to her surprise, that she looked forward to ten o'clock, when she had to unlock the door and open the shop, when people would come in and she would have to smile at them, offer assistance, wrap their purchases, make small talk. This thought made her pause with a roll of embossed red foil in her hand.
Where had Ice Woman gone?
Even as she thought that, the old feeling of premonition pierced her, the dull, sudden pain running from her breastbone to her spine. Johnson, as if he felt her unease, rose to his feet, and came around the desk to stand beside her. Tory put the roll of foil in its place, and turned slowly toward the door to see what was coming.
The chilly December sun glinted on his silver hair, and he had to bend a little to see her beneath the holly wreath decorating the glass door. He waved, a little awkwardly. She waved back, and hurried to unlock the door for him. “Hank,” she said. “Good morning.”
He grinned at her. “Good morning. How's our patient?” Johnson, tail waving a welcome, padded forward to nose at Hank's hand.
“He's fine, I think,” Tory said.
“And you?”
“I'm—I'm fine, thanks.” She felt awkward herself, like an adolescent not sure of how to behave. It happened sometimes—not often—that her premonitions were not so much warnings as acknowledgments, an occasional recognition of something important about to happen. She stood back for this tall, nice man to come into the shop, and she wondered when she would know why her fey vibrated so in her chest.
As she locked the door again, Hank stood looking around the colorful shop. Like everyone else, he wore a heavy coat. Its thickness made his legs look even longer and leaner than before. “I tried to call you, but I got a message saying the number isn't working anymore.”
“Oh, I guess—yes, it died. It was just one of those prepaid things. I'm going to have to get a new phone.”
“Well, be sure and let me know the number when you do.” Hank pulled a small, expensive-looking camera from his pocket and held it up. “Shirley's doing a calendar,” he said. “Photos of our patients, you know—one of those promotional things. It'll be on the Web site, too.”
“Oh.” Johnson sat down in front of Hank, as if he thoroughly approved of the idea.
Hank patted his head. “I thought it would be best if I came,” he said. “You and Shirley didn't seem to be quite—” He shrugged, and chuckled.
“She doesn't approve of me,” Tory said. “Maybe it's the red hair?”
“She wants me to be organized, and she thinks people should have to make appointments in advance,” Hank said. “She doesn't seem to understand that we need to be grateful for every bit of business we have.”
Johnson panted and smiled, and Tory said, “Looks like Johnson is happy to have his picture taken.”
“Why don't I take a picture of the two of you together?”
Tory stiffened. This was it, then. This was the warning her fey was trying to give her. She took a shallow breath, expecting the sensation in her chest to subside. It didn't.
“Hank,” she began, then stopped. She looked away from him, around at the red and green and silver decorations, the fairy lights twinkling in swags of greenery and miniature Christmas trees. It all seemed to have gone cold, somehow. It mocked her. How could she have thought, even for a moment, that she could forget it all? That she could make friends with people, live normally? She felt his gaze on her, questioning, possibly offended. But she couldn't look into his face. There was an edge in her voice when she spoke again. “Okay if you just take the dog's picture?”
There was a frozen pause. Tory, to cover her embarrassment and anxiety, bent to smooth Johnson's hair and adjust his collar. Hank hadn't said anything, and when she finally summoned the courage to look up into his face, his dark eyes told her nothing. He said, with that gentleness that was so striking in a big man, “Right. Just the dog.”
Tory straightened, and as Hank took the camera from its case and adjusted the lens, she took several steps back, well away from Johnson. The flicker of Hank's eyes told her he saw this, and a corner of his mouth twitched, but she couldn't tell if it was from amusement or, more likely, irritation.
Johnson sat patiently, the perfect model, smiling up at the camera while Hank snapped four or five pictures. When he was done, he put the camera back into its case with deliberate, precise movements. Johnson, evidently sensing that his job was done, padded back to his blanket behind the counter and lay down with a gusty sigh.
Hank dropped the camera back into his pocket. He nodded to Tory. “Thanks,” he said. “We appreciate it. We don't have all that many patients yet.”
He turned toward the door, and Tory hurried to unlock it for him. She glanced at the clock behind the counter, and saw that she would need to open the shop in five minutes in any case. She pulled the door open, and Hank started through it.
The sensation in Tory's breastbone intensified. She said, impulsively, “Hank. Wait.”
He stopped in the doorway, one hand on the doorjamb, the other in his pocket. He looked remote now, his face composed, his eyes gleaming slightly with the sunlight splashing through the door. “Yes?”
Tory felt as if she couldn't breathe past the pressure in her chest. “We don't really know each other,” she said. “But you've been more than nice to me—and I haven't behaved very well.”
Hank's eyelids dropped a bit, as if in acknowledgment, and the set of his mouth softened. “You don't have to explain anything to me, Paulette,” he said.
“I do.” Tory folded her arms, pressing them close to her ribs, and tried to take a deeper breath. “I have to at least say that—that it has nothing to do with you.”
That quirk at the corner of his mouth showed again, just briefly. “I'm pretty sure,” he said calmly, “that I'm the only one here.”
Tory sighed, releasing her arms, turning her face up, closing her eyes against the glare of the cold sunlight. “I have baggage you wouldn't believe,” she said. The pressure in her chest released so suddenly she almost gasped. She couldn't think what else she had meant to say.
When he didn't answer, she turned her head away from the light and opened her eyes. He was watching her with a steady dark gaze. “I have a little baggage of my own,” he said. “Don't you wonder why a guy my age is just starting out as a vet?”
“I—I didn't really know you were just starting out,” she said. From behind the counter she heard Johnson sigh and roll onto his side. She was distinctly aware of being close to Hank, close enough to catch the scent of the soap he used, and the faintest tinge of something medicinal. His coat had fallen open. Beneath it he wore a blue denim shirt and a tie printed with dogs of a dozen breeds. It was crooked, and she had to put her hand behind her back to stop herself from straightening it.
“I'd bet,” he said, turning his head now to look out into the street, “that every person who makes it past adolescence has a story of some kind. I do. Evidently you do.”
It was the sort of thing Tory the therapist might have said. She stepped back a little, away from the beguiling male scent of him. “I just didn't want you to think I was—that I'm just—” She clicked her tongue. “Rude,” she finished, in exasperation. “Even though I've been rude to you at least twice now.”
He smiled at her. “Okay, then,” he said. “I have to get to the office now, Paulette. I do have some actual appointments this morning.”
“That's good.”
“It's great, actually.”
A trio of women, laughing, adorned with Christmas pins and earrings, walked up to the door of the shop. “Are you open?” one of them asked.
“Oh, yes.” Tory stepped aside, out of the doorway. “Please come in.”
When they had trooped past Hank, he said, “Hey, Johnson, thanks for the picture.” The dog's tail sounded a farewell, beating against the floor. “That's a really nice dog,” Hank said. “I'm glad you two found each other.”
A moment later he was gone, long legs striding up the sidewalk. “Hey,” Zoe said from behind Tory. She had just come in from the back of the shop, and was unbuttoning a vintage plaid wool coat. Her red lipstick clashed violently with the orange pattern of the fabric, and she had stuck a red-and-white candy cane into her hair. “Who's the heartbreaker?”
Tory glanced after Hank, but he had already disappeared around the corner. Zoe elbowed her. “Hey, Paulette?”

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