Free Butterfly Garden by Annette Blair

really seen or heard him shout at his children. The worse she had seen was him pretending they didn’t exist, like he was doing now.
    As they drove toward a fate neither of them dared voice, Sara felt compelled to break a silence, heavier than their problems. Since worry was not a topic to uplift them, she chose foolishness, instead. “Lizzie says you call your horses Titania and Tawny. I never heard such names.”
    Lizzie smiled. “Silly, Sara. Those are butterfly names.”
    Sara questioned Adam with a raised brow, and he grimaced. “For the Tawny Crescentspot,” he said on a sigh, as if he had no choice but to answer, “which is attracted to Asters. And Titania’s Fritillary which favors Azaleas. Butterflies. Like my smart Lizzie said.”
    Lizzie perked up at his words and regarded her father with awe, and Sara wondered if he realized he’d both claimed and complimented her in one rare statement. That, and his knowledge of the delicate, colorful, almost frothy creatures, caught Sara’s imagination. “There’s more to you, Adam Zuckerman, than anyone knows,” she said.
    Silence became foremost after that, except for the beat of Sara’s heart, which she was certain everyone must hear.
    After a time, Adam cleared his throat. “Sara,” he practically whispered, which got her attention better than a shout might have done. “You must take them and leave ... or else.”
    Or else she could stay with him ... against the Elder’s wishes?  Is that what he was suggesting?  It was the first thing that came to her mind. And impossible.
    Yet the facts of her life kept intruding. No man for her. Not for Spinster Sara. No children. Too bossy to bed.
    If she left Adam, she could have the children, yes, but they did not belong to her, not really. No matter what Adam said, they were his. Only one thing could make them hers — marriage ... to him.
    The disturbing thought straightened Sara in her seat. Impossible.
    Marriage. A forever bond, dissolvable only by death. Could she bear to allow death to break her again?  She mocked herself with a silent laugh. If she married, at least she would know she had lived.
    Oh she’d come alive with learning to midwife, and even more so with taking the girls. But when she’d come home with them, to a clumsy, ornery giant who fought and growled at every turn, the sun had all but taken residence in her heart.
    She felt complete.
    Silly Sara, as Lizzie would say. As if Adam’s home was hers, anyway. But that was how she felt. Only because he was a challenge, she thought. She’d always warmed to a challenge.
    Still, could she now shut the door on the sun and accept a winter heart once more?  Oh life would never be bleak with the girls, except that Adam would always have the right to take them back, and the threat of it would hang above her like a cloud dimming the sun.
    Besides, she’d promised Ab, as they lowered her coffin into the ground, to do her best by the girls. So, wouldn’t raising them with their father be the best?  He wasn’t having anything to do with raising them alone, now, was he?
    Sara thought about that a long time and about how Adam seemed to be suffering somewhere deep inside himself. Almost as if ... he wanted to lay himself in a wooden box and close the cover. Hadn’t he tried with the drink?
    Sara’s composure cracked then, and she forced herself not to reach for his hand. “I know,” she said, “that there seems to be no choice. But I believe you and the children need—”
    “I know you believe it. But Abby could not. You cannot either. It is best for them.”  He nodded at his children.
    Sara understood that Adam believed it was best his children be separated from him, but…. “I do not believe that. Tell me why.”
    “Better you do not know.”
    Jealousy surged inside Sara and she was ashamed. Jealous of a dead woman whose children enriched her life; this was wrong, and yet she could not seem to stop herself. “Did Abby know?”
    It was clear