Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight

Author:Deidre Knight [Knight, Deidre]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-60504-134-6
Published: 2009-04-20T23:00:00+00:00

***

Stepping into the kitchen, the house feels cool and quiet compared to the choking L.A. traffic we just fought our way through out on the freeways. Late afternoon heat rolled like a mirage off the asphalt, and it seemed like we’d never get here, like I’d never survive all the polite chitchat volleying between us. The 405 was log-jammed with cars because of an overturned truck, and edging past that accident only made me more cranky and irritable about this whole damn visit.

Laurel shakes out her hair, dropping her shopping bag to the floor along with her funky, beaded purse. Andie slips past me, scampering to her bedroom ahead of her aunt while I lug Laurel’s expensive suitcase back to the guest room. She follows me, wordless, as she sees her brother’s house again for the first time since his death. Her movements are pensive as she steps through the living room toward the back hallway. I know she’s wondering where all her damned paintings went, but that would require a trip to the attic for me to show her all the loving care I used in warehousing them all. Just ’cause she hurt me doesn’t mean I wouldn’t protect such a material reminder of my years with Allie.

Andrea and I’ve spent the past year steadily erasing Alex’s fingerprint from this place. Bedroom shoes, eyeglasses, razor, toothbrush, these are the things that mark a home as belonging to someone distinct, and so long as that person is alive, you take every balled-up athletic sock, every discarded tissue and half-finished Coke for granted. It’s only afterward, when you wander through each room, that you’re spooked by the illusion that your lover might simply waltz through the ether into your bedroom, slip on those eyeglasses, and finish the novel he left cocked open bedside.

Of course Laurel doesn’t understand that as she wanders through each room, admiring what I’ve done with the place since Allie’s death—which is exactly nothing. But it’s been a few years since she’s visited; the last time was when Andrea was about five. So the leather sofa we bought a couple of years ago, and the thick hand-woven rug, and the mission-style entertainment center—those are all new to her. She drops to the floor, admiring the rug. “This is great,” she says, tracing her fingers over the pattern.

“Al bought it up around Monterey.” Shoving my hands deep into my jean pockets, I rock back on my heels. For some reason it hurts, talking about that trip we made together, like it was only yesterday.

“I never knew he liked this kind of thing.”

“Sure he did.”

“I guess I always thought he was a little more…” She pauses, fingering the fibers and texture. “I don’t know. Classic.”

“Guess it’d be hard to say, sitting two states away.”

A whole damn lot she didn’t know about her brother, no matter how well she thought she understood him. Especially not in death, when it came to what he would’ve wanted from her with his family. I

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