Free The Butterfly Sister by Amy Gail Hansen Page A

explained. “I wanted to experience a real ‘White Christmas.’ But more than that, I think I was testing my autonomy. Maybe I wouldn’t move back home after graduation; maybe I would stay in the Midwest. And I needed to prove to myself that I could do it, that I could cut that tie—to New Orleans, to my family, to my father. Of course, I had no idea what would happen. He would still be here if I hadn’t been so selfish.”
    â€œIf you had been here, you would have been hit too,” Mark rationalized.
    â€œNo, because the timing would have been off. Dad and I always went out for cheeseburgers and fries first. It was our little indulgence, our little secret. We’d load up on fat and carbs and then walk the food off in the park, walk the stench of it off our clothes, so Mom wouldn’t smell it on us when she got home. But I didn’t come home for holiday break, and my father went alone. Not for the cheeseburgers, just the light show. And so if I had been here, we would have been crossing the street at least an hour later. It wouldn’t have happened.”
    â€œYou can’t blame yourself, Ruby. You can’t play the ‘what if’ game.”
    â€œBut I play it all the time, ever since it happened. Even in my sleep. Right after, I started having these recurring nightmares, where my father is walking alone in the park, and people—moms with snot-nosed kids wearing reindeer antler headbands—are glaring at him as he passes because, what forty-five-year-old man goes all by himself to a holiday light show? A pedophile?”
    â€œYou’re being too hard on yourself,” he said.
    â€œDo you know it snowed here last year?” I went on. “The first time in a very long time. It snowed that night, just a few inches, but people here don’t know how to drive in snow, not like people up north. They close school here for a dusting of snow. They close roads. And that night, it snowed. And whoever was driving the car that hit him—the police never caught the person—probably didn’t know how to handle driving in that kind of weather.”
    â€œThis is an awful amount of guilt for you to bear, Ruby.” Mark sighed. “Have you seen someone?”
    â€œWhen it first happened, yes, especially when the nightmares kept me up all night. I was an insomniac. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed sleeping pills. But I’ve been fine lately. I’ve been sleeping well. I haven’t been feeling guilty. Until now and . . .”
    â€œâ€”Come here,” Mark said, wrapping his arms around me so tightly, his hands clasped at the small of my back. We sat like that—my face buried in his chest, my tears dotting our laps below us—until I gained control of my breathing.
    It was then, after we pulled back from the embrace, that I noticed the woman with the notebook—the one who’d looked like she had nowhere to go and nothing to do—watching us. She stared at me as if she knew me, as if trying to place me in her memory, and my mind raced through faces: women my mother used to work with at the hospital, the mothers of my grammar school friends, our old neighbors. Do I know her? I wondered. Does she know me? Had she known my mother and saw a resemblance? No, her expression did not suggest recognition but rather disgust. It seemed she’d seen our exchange. Or had she overheard our conversation? Either way, it was clear she didn’t approve.
    The waiter provided me a respite from her damnation when he appeared with two mugs filled with a liquid the color of a good summer tan, and a small plate of fried dough coated in powdered sugar. Mark paid while I gave the woman one more glance, and sighed relief when I saw her reabsorbed in her notebook. Maybe she hadn’t been looking at me after all, but someone or something past me. I turned to look behind me but saw only an empty