Butterflies are always following me, everywhere I go.

~MARIAH CAREY~

Riley’s shrieking startles me so bad the glass butterfly tumbles off the dresser and lands on my big toe, smashing the glittery nail polish stars Mamma painted a week ago. Ouch!

Hopping on one foot, I race to the window. My heart lurches. There’s no sign of the purple butterfly! Over there! Is that a bit of purple floating along the ribbon of green lawn?

I lean out farther and the purple disappears in a gust of invisible wind. My feet come off the floor and the edge of the windowsill digs into my stomach. The shingles of the first-story roof loom dangerously close. I flip back in and land on my backside. More pain shoots down my legs.

Walking on the opposite side of my injured big toe, I march to the door and throw it open.

Riley throws her bedroom door open, too, and we stand face-to-face, nose to nose.

My sister’s blue hair sticks straight up, brittle and spiky with too much hair glue. She’s wearing the same pair of ripped jeans she’s had on for the last three days. I wonder how often she does her laundry. I have to wash my sheets every day. And iron them.

“What are you screaming about?” I screech at her.

“As if you care what I’m screaming about,” Riley says in her lazy voice.

“What did I ever do to you?” My voice cracks.

“What did you ever do to me?” Riley repeats. “Try — everything!”

I hold myself still, like I do at school when someone’s in my space or has messed with my desk. “So you’re screaming just because … of nothing?”

Riley rolls her eyes. “I always have a reason. A moth tried to attack me.”

“A moth tried to attack you?”

Riley throws her arm out dramatically. “It’s over there.”

My stomach quivers. Two minutes ago I had a butterfly sitting on my finger and now there’s an attack moth in Riley’s room.

“Do I have permission to enter Your Highness’s abode?”

Riley can’t bring herself to actually say yes. Finally, “I suppose” oozes out of her mouth. Crossing the threshold is always a huge deal. “Go ahead,” she snaps.

I take three small steps and glance around. Her room is a wreck. Clothes are all over the place. A half-filled suitcase sits on the floor. Assorted mountains of makeup and hair junk are scattered across the bedspread. Heavy metal shatters the air. “Could you turn it down?” I yell.

“What?” she says, although it looks like she just mouths the word since I can’t actually hear her.

“The music!”

She rolls her eyes and pushes the volume button on the remote control. The sudden silence makes my ears ring.

“Hey, what’re you doing with a suitcase?”

“There!” Riley spits out, pointing to her dresser and ignoring my question. There’s so much clutter, jewelry, papers, notes, photos, pencils, and school paraphernalia I can’t tell what she’s referring to.

“What?”

“The moth! What do you think I’m talking about?”

“I don’t see any moth.”

“You are so blind, Tara.” She pushes me forward.

On the edge of the dresser lies a pair of soft wings, a black body, and spindly legs. I almost choke. “You smashed it! You killed it.”

My legs feel wobbly as I stare at the broken pieces of what used to be a living creature.

“It’s a moth. An ugly insect. They try to make you go crazy by flapping their wings in your eyes or trying to nest in your hair.”

I want to strangle my stupid, self-centered sister. “It’s not a moth. It’s a butterfly! Can’t you see the colors?” My eyes zero in on the deep blue smeared across the polished oak. There are faint tinges of a bright orange hue, too. “They’re like — like — flying flowers or something. Would you crush a flower, a perfect rose? Or stuff Mamma’s spring tulips in the garbage can?”

“Don’t get so dramatic.” Riley riffles through the closet, pulling clothes off hangers. “Butterflies have a short life span, don’t they? Like a single day or something? And there’s millions of them. One dead butterfly won’t make a bit of difference in the ecosystem.”

One dead.

The words sound so ominous. Like a bad omen. Boding evil.

I reach out and touch one of the broken wings, so small, so perfect, it feels like touching a breath of air. “But this butterfly was different. What did it do to you? Where did it come from?”

“Came flapping through my window, then tried to attack me.”

“Butterflies don’t attack! What did it actually do?”

“I was just sitting on my bed —”

Surreptitiously, I glance over and see paper, a letter, scrawled with male handwriting. You can always tell when it’s a boy’s handwriting. It’s messier, jagged, and sloppy.

“— when that moth — butterfly — insect thing — tried to land on my eyelashes.”

“You mean your head?”

“No, it came straight at my eyes! Like it was attacking me!”

“You never thought it might be a friendly butterfly? A butterfly trying to figure out who you were? To make sure it had the right address or the right person?”

Riley stares at me. “I think Grammy Claire’s death has made you go crazy, little sister. Butterflies are bugs. They cannot read street addresses.”

“Maybe it was trying to give you a message. An important message.”

“Maybe I need to call Mrs. Begnaud to come stay with you.”

“I’m not sick!” I stop, feeling dizzy, like I’ve been turned inside out.

“Maybe you’re sick in the head. Ever think about that? Maybe you need someone to examine your crazy mind.” She slams the closet door and walks to the window, staring into the hot, steamy afternoon. The fan overhead turns lazily, stirring the air. “Some days I think my whole family needs a psychiatrist.”

“Are you planning on leaving?” My stomach starts to hurt again.

“Did the suitcase give it away?” Riley is pure sarcasm, but her voice softens just a little bit.

“You were going to leave me here all by myself?” I choke back a sob, holding it inside my chest, which really hurts. Me, Tara Doucet, Pantene Princess, crying? I never cry. Not in public. Not if I can help it. Mamma taught me to act cool and calm no matter what happens.

I whisper the words I’ve heard my mamma say a thousand times ever since my daddy left when I was six. Mamma didn’t want nobody in Bayou Bridge talking behind her back. Reciting your pedigreed genealogy helps a girl not to lose her temper. “I’m Tara Doucet, daughter of one of the oldest families in New Iberia Parish, descendant of the original Paris Doucet family.”

“What are you doing?” Riley lifts her eyebrows so high they disappear into her blue bangs. My sister was eleven when Daddy left, and it occurs to me that she’s been angry ever since.

“You don’t care about me or our family reputation or anybody but yourself.”

“Just now you were talking to yourself.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. Did Mamma tell you all that stuff?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I scramble to my feet, keeping my long hair in front of my face because I don’t want to look at her. Picking up the pieces of broken butterfly, I hold them gently in my palms. Over my shoulder, I hiss at my sister, “Murderer!” and run back to my own room.

“Oh, please! Tara, come back here! I gotta talk to you!”

“No!” I scream, placing the torn pieces of blue-and-orange butterfly on my bureau. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to it, and my heart turns over painfully.

Sweeping my eyes around the bedroom, a wiggly shiver runs up my spine. At exactly the same moment the purple butterfly came, this blue-and-orange one had flown into Riley’s bedroom. I just knew that butterfly wasn’t a normal butterfly!

“Grammy Claire,” I whisper, breathing on the dead butterfly as if I could put its wings and body back together and wake it up again. “Grammy Claire, I need you. You were supposed to live until you were a hundred years old. You always said so!”

I begin counting dust motes again so I won’t start crying. Riley’s music cranks up, and a second later something slams against the wall. Probably the stiletto heels she wore for Prom three weeks ago.

Then I realize it’s my bedroom door banging against the wall.

“Tara,” Riley says behind me. When I whirl around, she holds out a piece of paper. “I came to show you this. A note I found.”

“From Mamma?” We’d gotten home from Alucet Mortuary yesterday and disappeared into our own rooms, and I hadn’t seen her since.

“Read it.”

I don’t want to, but finally I pluck the pink notepaper from Riley’s fingers.

Tara, I’m not dead like Grammy Claire. I’m perfectly, miserably fine. But don’t come looking, Riley. Don’t worry; it’s always darkest before the dawn. At least I keep telling myself that … but don’t listen to me, girls. You’ll know what to do.

With love from your mamma,
Becca Doucet

At first I can’t believe the note is really from her, but Mamma always signs her full name. A funny little quirk she has. Plus I recognize her handwriting.

“What’s she talking about, dark before the dawn? It’s a blistering ninety degrees and the middle of the day.” I love that word, blistering. Describes so many things. Weather. Moods. Or Riley most of the time.

“It’s just an expression,” Riley says, sounding weary. “Means when things look really horrible and sucky, just wait because eventually it’ll get better. Like nightmares when they disappear with the alarm clock and five minutes later you forget why you were ever scared.”

Mamma just … disappeared. With only a cryptic note left behind. She has a habit of disappearing once in a while, but she always comes back. At least eventually. I always worry that this is the time she’ll leave forever and I’ll never see her again. But to disappear on the day after Grammy Claire’s funeral … I know she’s been crying buckets. But what about me?

Mamma should be here. Daddy should live here, not in stupid California, and he should take me to dinner. Alyson should call me. Closing my eyes, I wish really hard that Alyson’s mamma will show up with her gumbo and hug me real tight. Because something really strange is going on.

First, Grammy Claire dies coming home from the airport in New Orleans — after her fifth year living on that island. She was gonna take me and Riley and Mamma back to the South Pacific for the rest of the summer. She said there was something important she needed to show us. Or tell us. We were finally going to go snorkeling, and swim with sea turtles, and I’d planned on spotting a mermaid from my own private beach.

The funeral was closed casket. I didn’t even get to see her one last time. The undertaker man said, “The accident, ah, left things, ah, less than, ah, pleasant,” when I asked him why.

Mamma pinched my arm. She hissed at me that seeing a dead body was something properly bred ladies don’t think about, let alone ask about.

I stare at the window, wishing the butterfly would come back. What if a cat claws it out of the air? Or it gets smooshed by a car or drowned in the bayou? The thought makes me sick and I can feel myself shaking.

Then I realize that someone is pounding on the front door.

“Turn off your music!” I yell to Riley, taking the stairs two at a time.

The music lowers exactly one notch. Downstairs is silent as a tomb. Empty as a cavern. Friendless as enemy territory. The wallpaper is dingy and fading, the parquet flooring old as the hills. The shine Miz Landry put on it for Grammy Claire’s visit is long gone, too.

I hear the buzz of a lawn mower through the open windows, and secretly hate how our old plantation house looks. Mamma always makes sure the lawns and gardens are pristine. Decorated in sparkly white lights for the December holidays. But the citizens of Bayou Bridge are not allowed to know that the interior of the main house is crumbling into shambles.

Mamma never lets anybody inside anymore. Teas and book clubs and garden parties are a thing of the past.

The doorbell rings again, twice real fast.

“Okay, okay,” I mutter. When I jerk the door open, there’s a short, skinny man with a cap on his head, ears sticking out, and wearing a starched uniform.

“Special delivery, miss,” he says, touching the brim of his hat and thrusting a brown envelope at me.

I blink. “Who’s it for?”

Without glancing at the address, he says, “Miss Tara Doucet. You’re her, right?”

“You mean Becca Doucet?”

“Nope.”

“Riley Doucet?”

He shakes his head.

I look at him sideways. “Grammy — I mean — Grammy Claire — well, guess her last name isn’t really Doucet …”

“If you’re Tara Doucet, then this letter is definitely for you.” He smiles, and I can’t help smiling back. First time I’ve smiled in days. The skin around my mouth feels weird and tight. “Sign right here, miss,” he adds, handing over a clipboard.

I take the attached pen, and write Tara Doucet on the line marked with an X.

He tips his ball cap again. “Have a nice day.”

I watch him jog down the brick walkway and jump into his truck. Just a regular old post-office truck.

I shut the door, staring hard at the envelope, my ears buzzing like crazy.

Then I rip it open.