The Butterfly Garden Read online

  The Butterfly Garden

  Mary Campisi

  Mary Campisi Books, LLC

  Contents

  Introduction

  Title Page

  The Story Behind the Story

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Outtakes

  Intro to Excerpt

  Prologue

  25. Chapter 1

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mary Campisi

  Introduction

  It’s all about that second chance…

  * * *

  The Butterfly Garden is Book Six of That Second Chance Series. (These are stand-alone stories tied together by a common theme— belief in the beauty of that second chance.)

  Sometimes love happens when you least expect it…

  Jenny Romano has never been a white-picket-fence, happily-ever-after girl. Despite a mother who rejected her free-spirited, unique ways as irresponsible and just plain wrong, Jenny has found happiness as a photographer, flitting around the country and snapping photos of other people’s lives. Her older sister, Grace, has a husband, children, and a carpool schedule. She’s the one their mother calls “perfect.”

  But when tragedy strikes her sister’s carefully constructed life, Jenny must step in and offer support. Soon, she finds herself in the sort of small-town suburban life she swore to avoid…

  Psychologist Elliot Drake spends so much time healing other people’s pain and witnessing the backlash of caring too deeply that he prefers to keep his own relationships short and bittersweet. He’s loved and lost once and with a young daughter to raise, he’s not willing to risk his heart again. But he’s never met anyone quite like Jenny. Outrageous and unpredictable, she’s a force of nature—not at all like her well-controlled older sister. Suddenly, Elliot isn’t so sure that short-term is what he wants…

  Taken by surprise and unsure of the next step, Elliot and Jenny are about to discover that real life happens whether you want it to or not. Will they let real love happen, too?

  * * *

  That Second Chance Series:

  Book One: Pulling Home – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: The Promise)

  Book Two: The Way They Were – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: The Secret)

  Book Three: Simple Riches – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: Winter)

  Book Four: Paradise Found – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: The Wish)

  Book Five: Not Your Everyday Housewife – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: The Gift)

  Book Six: The Butterfly Garden – (Also prequel to A Family Affair: The Return)

  * * *

  BONUS MATERIAL: Included with this ebook is the first chapter of Pieces of You, The Betrayed Trilogy, Book One. Sometimes hiding in the shadows is the only way to protect your heart.

  Title Page

  The Butterfly Garden

  * * *

  That Second Chance Series

  Book Six

  * * *

  by

  Mary Campisi

  To siblings, pecking orders, and parents

  The Story Behind the Story

  The Butterfly Garden

  I am the third child in a family of four—two older brothers and a younger sister, all born in less than six years. Our family wasn’t wealthy, as a matter of fact, we were much less than wealthy, though we never knew it. We thought sharing a bed was normal, and a bathroom, and a closet, and clothes…as for entertainment, well, there was only one mother in the neighborhood who had a car and it wasn’t for carting kids around to play dates.

  We spent our early childhood playing and working together, and of course, as siblings do, complained the oldest got favored and the youngest got spoiled, and the two of us in the middle got all the work. Even today, we think there’s a grain of truth in that, though our mother insists we were all treated the same. Any middle child will tell you that is doubtful!

  And so, The Butterfly Garden is especially important to me because it delves into sibling relationships and family hierarchy as children and as adults. It also deals with metamorphosis on various levels and an eventual letting go…of old beliefs, habits, rituals. Just as the butterfly sheds its cocoon to emerge in dazzling splendor, so too, if given proper nurturing and guidance, do we.

  I am so very grateful for my brothers and sister. Through the years we have leaned on one another, never more than a phone call away, listened with great empathy, advised with caution, accepted our differences, and above all, loved one another. That is indeed a cherished gift.

  I hope you enjoy Jenny and Grace’s journey as they discover each other and themselves and learn that love often arrives at unexpected times and in unexpected packages.

  1

  Jenny Romano, Queen of Calm. She could get her heart rate to settle into an orderly thump with a few deep breaths and a dab or two of—

  Who was she kidding? There was nothing calm or orderly about her, but that didn’t mean she was ready to give up on breathing her way to tranquility. She yanked open the middle drawer of her desk and rummaged past candy bars, packets of sugar, chopsticks, and a tube of toothpaste. Where was the stuff? Stefan promised it would work, said he’d gotten it from a reliable source. Just a sniff and it’ll make every bone in your body loose, your mind relaxed, he’d said. Well, she needed to feel loose now, needed mellow. She scooped up a handful of the drawer’s contents and tossed them onto her desk. If she were neater, she might not have to resort to panic searches when she misplaced important things. She scanned the almost-empty drawer and spotted the dark brown bottle.

  Just a sniff, girl, and it’ll take you away. Stefan’s words floated in her head as she snatched the bottle and unscrewed the stopper. Inhale…hold. Ahhhhh.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jenny swung around and stared at the lanky figure in the doorway. “Didn’t you ever hear of knocking?”

  Gino Strandelli ignored her question, took three long strides, and folded himself into a leather side chair. He wore his usual prep-grunge attire: wrinkled khaki’s, button-down cotton shirt, and scuffed, brown loafers, no socks. “Is that another one of your concoctions? You get that from Fredo on the corner?”

  “Stefan gave it to me. It’s aromatherapy—lavender and chamomile.”

  “Ah, aromatherapy. So what did your neighbor tell you this…aromatherapy…would do?” He rubbed his stubbled jaw and continued. “Win you a shoot for the cover of Time?”

  Jenny closed the bottle, set it aside. “Everything isn’t about getting that damn cover shot.”

  “It’s not?” Gino crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. “And here I thought we were in for a little friendly competition.”

  The man was a damn good photographer and he knew it. When a person looked at a Gino Strandelli photograph, he wasn’t just looking at a random shot of a face with a famous name attached; he was inside the person’s head, peering into his thoughts, touching his soul, all with the help of a camera lens.

  “So, if you’re not trying to work some potion to score big with Time, what were you doing with that stuff in the bottle?
”

  Jenny straightened a stack of papers on her desk, avoiding his gaze. “Relaxing.”

  “What did you say?”

  Jenny cleared her throat. “Relaxing,” she repeated, a decibel higher.

  “Relaxing.” He said the word as though it had a foreign element to it. “You? Jenny Romano?”

  She cracked her knuckles and frowned. “I was trying not to think about the Italy assignment. It’s so big, the pope and all those cardinals, and the Vatican. And Rome. God, that would be so incredible.” She rubbed her neck, tried to massage the knot on the right side. “Joe’s supposed to decide who’s doing the shoot later today, and since you’ll be in Greece, I figure I’ve got a good chance of landing it.”

  “You’ll get it,” Gino said. “Relax.”

  “I was trying to relax when you barged in on me.”

  “I think I liked it better when you smoked.”

  “Me, too. Don’t let anybody tell you that once you’re over the hump, you forget about it. That’s not true. Five months and I’m still leaning next to people in the elevator, trying to catch a whiff of cigarette smell on their clothes.”

  Gino grinned and shook his head. “Just think how many alveoli you’re expanding in your lungs and how much healthier you are.”

  “That’s not why I haven’t picked it back up,” she said, thinking of the two packs in the glove compartment of her car. “It’s because of Stefan and Gerald. They bought me a stack of ‘kick the habit’ audiotapes, fixed me up with a bunch of herbal remedies, home-grown concoctions that Gerald created and swears by, and then, if that wasn’t enough,” she opened her top drawer, pulled out two eight-packs of bubble gum. “They bought me two cases of this stuff. Strawberry and berry punch. How can I start smoking again? They’d be crushed.”

  Gino shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Do you realize,” Jenny went on, thinking about the brown bottle of lavender and chamomile beside her on the desk, “that everything we do revolves around our breathing?”

  “Now there’s a revelation. Everything we do revolves around breathing. Tell me the truth, what’s really in that bottle?”

  “I told you. Lavender and chamomile.”

  “Then either it’s relaxed your brain as well as your nerves, or you need a vacation, bad.”

  “I’m fine. And my brain’s fine, too. I just…I just needed a few minutes to… quiet myself.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re taking that yoga class again.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m taking tai chi.”

  “Can’t you just sit still on your own? You know, close your eyes and drift, no smells, no instructions, no props…just you?”

  The sad truth spilled out. “I don’t think so.”

  He considered this a moment. “Please tell me there isn’t another one of you out there somewhere, because I’m not sure the universe could take it.”

  “I’m it. My parents stopped after me.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” he said, but there was a smile on his face.

  “Of course, I do have an older sister. Grace. You’d like her, she’s nothing like me.”

  “Ah, she’s normal.”

  “Yeah, she’s normal: husband, kids, minivan.”

  “Stifling.”

  “She doesn’t seem to mind. Grace is used to taking care of everybody, me included.” Jenny shrugged, poured a handful of M&M’s in her hand, and popped them in her mouth. “It’s just what she does,” she said, chewing. “It’s just Grace.”

  * * *

  Grace folded another pair of her daughter’s underwear and glanced out the kitchen window. Spring in Ohio was usually soggy and gray mixed with brown sludge, but today the sun burst across a robin’s-egg sky, coaxing new sprouts from beneath layers of dark soil. A patch of crocuses by the swing set provided a backdrop of purple, yellow, and white.

  This time of year reminded Grace of birth, newness, and starting over. Her chest tightened and she grabbed another pair of Natalie’s underwear: Cinderella in a ball gown. Why did parents let their girls believe in princes and “happily ever after”? Happily ever after what? There was no such thing. Grace had known that for a while now. Most of the time, lives were just made up of the “after” part; after the pain, after the nothingness, after the heartache—a heartache she’d buried so deep no one would ever know.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  When the phone rang, Grace considered not answering it until her sister’s number popped up on the Caller ID. She snatched the phone and said, “Jenny. Hi.”

  “Hey, Gracie. What do you know about lavender and chamomile?” Before Grace could answer, Jenny went right into, “Do you think they really make you relax or is that other stuff, patchouli, better?”

  “Please tell me you’re not taking those herbal supplements again.”

  “Of course not. This is just something Stefan gave me, said it would put me in a ‘mellow’ mood.”

  “He gave you the herbal supplements, too.”

  “Those were to quit smoking, remember? This is different.”

  “If you want to mellow out, stop drinking five cups of coffee a day, and cut out the chocolate.”

  Silence.

  “And the two packets of sugar in everything you drink. And—”

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture.”

  “You still planning to come for Natalie’s birthday?”

  “Uh…sure, sure I am.”

  “You forgot, didn’t you?” Of course, she forgot. Grace knew her sister well enough to pick up the half-second hesitation in her voice, the awkward sway of vowels as she tried to force them together into words that sounded natural, confident…like the truth. It didn’t matter that Jenny was only three years younger than Grace; their lives were worlds apart, their responsibilities to themselves and others wider than the twenty-four hundred miles that separated them. It had always been that way, even in elementary school; Grace sitting at the kitchen table, practicing her alphabet in cursive, writing each vowel with such care, such precision. Dog, cat, run, stop, making a round motion with her hand, circle, circle, until the sharp tip of the #2 pencil formed the word. And then, Jenny, three years later, pulling out a torn piece of paper and a few stubby pencils, the eraser tips worn, scribbling the letters with speed and deliberateness. They were the same words—dog, cat, run, stop—but their formation was cramped, smudged with attempted eraser marks, a rip where she’d pressed too hard.

  That was Jenny, moving through life fast, faster yet, trying to get to one place, then the next, not always a goal, just an experience, making an occasional correction, but always moving. Grace was a planner. She plotted, thought about it, took polls, adjusted her opinion, thought about it again…and yet again. When she finally moved off her mark, the goal had become indistinct, less intense…often, it had become someone else’s goal.

  “Okay, so, I have it marked down here…the thirty-first of July, right?”

  Grace sighed. “The thirtieth is Natalie’s birthday.”

  “Oh, right…what I mean is, the thirty-first is the day the girls and I will have our own party so you and Grant can do something together.”

  “What day is your flight coming in?”

  “Well…I haven’t booked it yet. I’ve been…preoccupied lately, waiting to see if I get this really huge assignment in Italy. That’s why I was using the lavender and chamomile, to make me relax, so I won’t think about it. Joe’s making his choice later today, and I really want it.”

  “Good. Great.” Jenny wouldn’t make it for Natalie’s birthday. Oh, she’d mean well, even promise the girls they’d do fun things, but in the end, she’d call, last minute, say the plane was delayed, the assignment got extended, the taxi driver drove around in circles for an hour jacking up the meter and she missed her flight. “I see.” And she did. Grace loved her sister but she also knew her, knew she couldn’t depend on her.

  “I’ll be there. Hey, come on, Grace. Ha
ve a little faith, okay? Just as soon as I find out about this assignment, I’ll book the flight. Trust me. I’ll be there.”

  2

  Grace adjusted her skirt one last time, undid the second button on her shirt. Too low? Not low enough? She undid another button, moved slowly from side to side, studying herself in the mirror, actually, studying the area of exposed flesh peeking out of the yellow cotton. Too low. She fastened the button, grabbed the overnight bag from the bed, and hurried out of the room.

  Could she really go through with this? A surprise anniversary present that included lunch at Victor’s and dessert at the fancy new hotel near her husband’s office… she being the dessert? Laura had made it sound so romantic, so captivating, so easy…

  “I’m your friend,” she’d said. “Would I steer you wrong? Guys love this sort of thing, trust me. When I did this for Hank last year, he made coffee for me every morning for a month. Of course, he doesn’t do it anymore, but, well, nothing lasts forever, does it? So, do it, Grace. It’s your anniversary. After twelve years together, you need a little pick-me-up every once in a while. Have the lunch, get the room, I’ll take the kids…and don’t forget to stop by Natasha’s Nighties.”