You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it.
But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder.

~ANONYMOUS~

The first butterfly comes the day after the funeral.

I’m lying on the floor with my fingers in my ears — and I’m a girl who never sticks her fingers in her ears — when a pair of purple wings flutters across my bedroom window.

Jerking upright, I pull out my fingers to stare at the empty window glass. The butterfly, if there was one, isn’t there any longer. I must be seeing things.

Disappointment settles in my chest as my sister’s favorite band, Kittie, keeps on shrieking through the walls. I swear the screaming — I mean singing — is gonna blister the faded wallpaper right off its glue.

“I’ll hack Riley’s speakers into a million pieces,” I mutter, yanking the new dress I’d bought for the funeral down over my knees. It’s yellow, because that’s Grammy Claire’s favorite color. Lying on the floor while wearing a dress is another one of those things I never do — unless I’m straightening rug fringe in the downstairs foyer.

But I can’t hardly care about Riley or rug fringe. Not after staring at the closed lid of Grammy Claire’s coffin for two hours. I can still smell the scent of mortuary formaldehyde inside my nose.

The sun shifts through the window, jabbing me right in the eyeball. The world ought to be dark and sinister and cranky. The sky should be gushing tears, drowning the streets, uprooting trees, and spitting at anybody who dares to be happy.

Grammy Claire is dead. The person I love more than anyone else in the whole world.

Fighting the burning in my eyes, I start counting dust particles as they float through the air like angel glitter. When I reach Dust Particle Number Forty-Three, all of a sudden the earth stops.

The dust floaties freeze.

Riley’s insane rock music halts and the whole world goes silent. And very, very still. Even my stomach stops growling, although I can’t remember the last time I ate. Maybe the funeral potatoes, clumped and cold.

Because, suddenly, through the open window, the butterfly returns. Deep purple wings swish the air, outlined in lemon yellow, reminding me of Grammy Claire’s melt-in-your-mouth pound cake. The butterfly dips and swirls, and my eyes go crazy trying to follow its path.

First, it inspects my dresser and the spines of the books in my bookcase. Then it flies up to dance around the four posters of my bed and the drapes that hang in perfect folds along the floor. I’d fixed them myself just that morning.

Finally, the butterfly hovers right over my face, staring straight into my swollen, itchy eyes. The wings fold up tight, and then open again — so slow, it’s like watching hundred-year-old molasses ooze out of a bottle. Never seen a butterfly move so deliberate, like it’s thinking about its actions instead of trying to escape back out the window. Like that butterfly knows I’m watching it. The wings look soft as velvet and I want to touch it so bad, but I’m afraid of scaring it off.

The butterfly floats across my nose, moving its wings like the bayou on a sluggish, blistering hot day. Shades of purple and yellow, deep and brilliant and dazzling.

I lift my hand and stick out my finger. Three heartbeats later, the butterfly alights, its spindly feet touching the tip of my finger like an invisible breath of air.

I swear its wings are velvet. Softer than anything I’ve ever felt before. Softer than silk or marshmallows or bubble gum when it’s brand-new.

The butterfly’s tiny black eyes fix on mine. We stare at each other, and it’s almost as if that butterfly is looking at me and knows who I am. Like it’s got a brain and is thinking.

That’s when I hear music again. Not Riley’s rock music rattling my brain, making me want to crunch my teeth. This is angel music, delicate, unearthly, filling me up until my heart feels like it’s gonna burst.

This butterfly ain’t no regular butterfly.

“Are you magic?” I say real quiet, because I don’t want it to fly away and disappear. “I wish Mamma could see this.” Problem is, I don’t even know where Mamma is because she actually did run off and disappear after the funeral was over.

A hole is shredding up my heart, and I can’t believe I’m never gonna see my Grammy Claire again. I’d been counting down the days until she arrived. Now I wish she’d never gotten on that airplane. But for just a few minutes, the hurt in my heart begins to vanish.

All because a butterfly flew in the window and perched on my finger.

We’re like a statue, me and that purple butterfly. If we were suddenly transported to a museum filled with halls of sculptures, we’d be called Girl with a Butterfly.

I glance at my dresser where the beveled glass figurine Grammy Claire gave me for my last birthday sits. It arrived wrapped up in tape and newspaper and postmarked from Guam. The crystal piece has a delicate butterfly inside sitting on a patch of flowers — and a girl stands next to it wearing butterfly wings, like she’s a fairy.

Trying not to jiggle the butterfly tickling my finger, I fumble for the crystal with my other hand, but two seconds later, Riley starts hollering like the world is coming to an end. ’Course, with Grammy Claire gone, the world has come to an end.

And that’s when the purple butterfly gently kisses the embroidery on my sundress, like it’s kissing my heart, and flutters out the window.