Page 67 of Butterfly Sisters
“In the back of Nan’s cabinet!” Mama answered, smiling wider than she had in a long time.
Meredith squeezed her eyes shut with amusement, handing it to Leigh. Then she grabbed a beer and popped the top, thepssstof the can spouting between them. She poured it into Leigh’s pink glass as the fire crackled beside them.
“Hungry?” Mama asked, leaning down and cutting the pizza.
“Actually, yes.” Leigh took a seat in the Adirondack chair next to the tent, while Mama divvied out slices of pizza and Meredith got the other two beers.
As the three of them sat together around the fire, the heat danced into the cool air, the orange light casting shadows onto the patio beneath their feet.
“I’ve had that tent for five years,” Meredith said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder before cracking open a beer for herself. “This is the first time I’ve ever had anyone else stay in it.”
“It’s about time, then,” Mama teased.
“And would you have ever guessed that your first tentmates would be your mother and sister?”
Meredith laughed. “Not in a million years.”
Leigh held up her beer. “To family.”
“To family,” Mama repeated, the three of them clinking their beers together. Then, Mama’s smile dropped. “You know, I’ve been holding on to the guilt of how your dad and I parented you two. We did the best we could…”
Leigh reached over and grabbed Mama’s hand protectively, waiting for her to stand up and begin to tidy something, but she didn’t this time. “I know you did,” Leigh said.
“It’s all okay now,” Meredith said.
“But no matter what we did right or wrong,” Mama continued, “you ended up as two pretty amazing women. Your nan would be so happy if she could see this. She loved her family.”
Meredith looked behind her at the cabin. “Y’all might not think it hit me hard when we lost her, but it did. I didn’t show it, but I was devastated too.” She turned back around. “I miss her every day. But it doesn’t weigh me down because I think of the situation differently. She’s around us all the time. She’s here, sitting with us right now.”
“You think so?” Mama asked, tears beginning to glisten in her eyes.
“I feel her when I paint,” Meredith admitted.
“How do you feel her?” Leigh asked, this new information hitting her like a ton of bricks. She’d been wanting to feel Nan since the minute she’d come back.
“The happiness that washed over me when she used to laugh really hard—that same feeling surrounds me when my brush hits the canvas.”
Leigh tried to hone in on any of the feelings she’d had since arriving, wondering if she’d missed the signs. Her mind went back to the table and chairs in the kitchen, the letters hidden for them, and the feel of her bedspread under her fingers. “I guess her presence is in her things for me because I don’t have the connection to her through a paintbrush.Myconnection is in the memories.”
Meredith nodded and took a drink of her beer, a faraway, pensive look in her eyes.
“I would give anything to hear her laugh,” Mama said.
Meredith came to, distracted from the conversation, and pointed to another Luna moth that had settled on the arm of the empty chair. It flapped its massive wings as if on show for them. “Look. Is that a butterfly?”
Mama wiped a tear as it escaped down her cheek. “Now we’ve all seen them,” she said.
Meredith kept her eyes on the bright-green moth. “Seen what?”
“The butterflies. Maybe Nanishere after all.”
The moth flapped its lime-green wings one last time and lifted off into the air. In the glow of the firelight, Leigh sensed that the three of them were being transformed right there under the stars that had started to peek out in the sky. They were no longer like passing ships in the night. They were becoming a family.
“Anyone heard from Colton?” Meredith asked once Mama had been caught up to speed on the situation with his land, the three of them nestled inside the warm tent, the empty pizza platter now resting on the tray outside, next to the flickering embers in the fire pit.
“I’ve tried to get in touch with him a few times, but he wouldn’t take my call or return my texts.” Leigh lay back on the mattress, sinking down into it as if it were some sort of heavenly pillow. She pulled the blanket up over her, basking in the warmth of her little cocoon. “I wish he knew how sorry I was.”
“Maybe you could try to stop by,” Mama suggested.
