Page 73 of Butterfly Sisters
Leigh thought about Nan, about the butterflies she used to sketch, and about how much had changed here at the cabin in the last couple weeks. “I think I’d like to call it Instar Commercial Management.” She opened Nan’s journal and tapped her grandmother’s writing. “Nan says here that the stages of growth that a caterpillar takes before it goes into its cocoon are called ‘instars.’”
Mama offered a content smile. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “I still can’t believe that you’re actually doing this. Where are you going to live?”
Leigh looked back at the computer. “If I get the lot behind Colton’s, I’m going to renovate the bungalow so that it has a small apartment at one end that can be converted completely into office space later, if I need it.”
“I love that idea,” Mama said.
Just then, Leigh’s phone went off. She scooped it up and put it to her ear. “Hello?” Her heart thumping, she mouthed to her mother and sister, “The agent.” Then she turned her focus back to the phone.
“The seller wants to counter,” the agent told her. He gave her the price. While it was higher than she’d wanted to pay, given the fact that she still needed a budget for renovations, she could do it—not forever, but at least until she got on her feet and started bringing in revenue.
Pausing for a second, it really hit her that she was literally putting everything on the line for this. It was the craziest thing she’d ever done, but despite what Phillip had said that day, she knew by her success at Greystone that she had the talent, and as she looked at her sister and her mother, she also knew that she’d have the support she needed to make it happen. “I’ll accept,” she said.
Mama and Meredith cheered with giddy excitement, while she waved them quiet to finish the call, unable to control her absolute elation.
When she hung up, she turned to her family, wide-eyed. “I just bought a piece of property!”
Meredith squealed, throwing her arms around her sister; Mama wrapped them both up in a hug, the three of them bouncing up and down.
Once the finality of her decision had settled upon her, Leigh looked at them both. “I’m going to need your help with ideas for how to make the repairs to the house,” she said to them, the weight of what she’d just agreed to becoming very clear. “I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m sure the home inspector will find more.”
“I can stay a few more days,” Meredith said, although Leigh knew that her sister needed to get back.
The gesture warmed her to the core, and she gave Meredith another big squeeze.
“I can stay on and help too,” Mama said. “I can keep driving in to work. It’s totally doable.”
Excitement tickled every nerve in Leigh’s body. “I need to call Colton,” she said, wanting to share this with him. She dialed his number right then and there, her gaze bouncing between her mother and sister as it rang. But after more than a few pulses, her hopes dropped when she got his voicemail again. She left another message.
“Colton, it’s Leigh. I need to tell you something, but most of all, I can’t handle not talking to you or seeing you. Please let me speak to you. Nothing else is as important to me as making this right for you.” She hung up the phone, Mama and Meredith both smiling at her.
“I always knew there was something special with you and that boy,” Mama said.
There, in the kitchen of Nan’s cabin, Leigh knew her mother was right. Her life felt full, and she could feel herself standing at the precipice of change, becoming something different, something greater than she was.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Knock, knock,” Meredith said in Leigh’s doorway, holding Nan’s butterfly book.
Leigh took one last look in the mirror before facing Meredith, her sister immediately noticing something on Leigh’s face.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked, looking her up and down.
“I’m in my element, that’s all,” Leigh replied, running her hand down her best trouser suit, before taking a seat on the edge of her bed to hear whatever it was that Meredith had come in to tell her. “I’m meeting with the retailers this morning, and I have a good feeling about it. It’s make-or-break time.”
Meredith walked into the room, sitting down beside her on the bed. “Well, you might feel even better when you hear what I have to say. I want to show you something.”
Leigh swiveled her legs to the side of the bed to face Meredith as her sister held the book in her lap.
“A lot has changed since I got here,” Meredith said, her tone more serious than Leigh had heard it before. “I expected to come in, hear whatever it was that Mama had to say, and then get out of town as quickly as possible. But here I am, eleven days later.”
Leigh noticed a kind of tranquility in her sister’s eyes that she hadn’t seen before.
“I didn’t say anything, but while you were on a call with that woman for a job, I saw another butterfly.” She looked at Leigh as if they now held some sort of hidden secret.
“You did?”
Meredith nodded. “I’d taken one of Nan’s easels out front and I was by myself, painting. It flew over and landed right on my wrist. So, I went in and got Nan’s book.” She held up the journal and then opened it, pointing to where Nan had jotted down a few lines. “She says here that butterflies only live about a month, so they remind us that we should be in the present rather than the future.”
