Butterfly Tattoo Read Online Free Page A

but it’s not the usual deep shame that such comments elicit. Maybe that’s why I brush back my hair so she can really see the marks along my face and jaw line. She responds to the invitation, peering upward for a closer look, then asks in a small voice, “Do they still hurt?”
    “Sometimes. Especially the ones you can’t see.”
    Her clear blue eyes widen in surprise. “How many do you have?”
    “A few.” I leave out the brutal details about my chest and abdomen because she doesn’t need the violent truth about my past. “You?”
    “Only one. On my leg.” I know she must be burning with as many questions as I am. Dozens instantly speed through my head—like why there’s such a sorrowful expression in her eyes. Or what happened to her that left this hidden scar.
    We fall silent then, the revelations apparently finished for the moment. I spread cream cheese on my bagel; she gives me a tentative grin and says, “So you are eating, huh?”
    “Yeah, think I am.” Gesturing with my knife I ask, “What about you?”
    She reaches for her doughnut and licks some of the warmed chocolate off the top. “Yeah, me, too.”
    Subtext, I think with a smile. That’s what my little red-haired friend and I are speaking. Volumes upon volumes of it, without any need for translation at all.
    If only grownups felt so safe—and so easy to understand.

Chapter Two: Michael
    “So did you have fun on the lot today?” I try to sound bright, but Andrea just stares out the passenger window of our truck, remote as always. “Well, did you?” My voice tightens over the words despite my best intentions.
    “You were supposed to call Ms. Inez to watch me today. You knew it was a teacher work day.” The disdain in her voice is palpable, thick as the smog hanging over our city like a threat. Even if I didn’t know that summer’s almost here, I’d see it in the hazy evening sky tonight. It’s turned all purplish blue, like a bruise.
    “I forgot, sweetheart. You know that.”
    She heaves a weary sigh. “You always forget,” she says. “But Daddy wouldn’t. He would’ve remembered.”
    “You’re right. He would have.” She turns to me, her ocean-blue eyes widening in shock at my new strategy. But why not admit the truth? I have no illusions. Her daddy would have done a better job at this single parenting drill than I’ll ever manage on my own. No wonder Andrea’s so bitter. She landed second unit with me, not first, and I’ll never be able to close that gap.
    “You didn’t get me on the Evermore set, like you said.”
    “I said I’d try .”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “It was a closed set!” I cry, blowing my cool, and a thin smile of satisfaction forms on her lips. It’s like she lives for this now, to see me lose control. It’s what she’s always after. Maybe because she needs some kind of reaction from me, anything other than this numbness that has such a stranglehold around my heart.
    She says nothing else, just stares out the window of the truck again, outlining an invisible pattern on the dusty pane with her fingertip, something that only she can see. I clutch the steering wheel tensely, the familiar silence smothering us as we edge along the 101 toward home. Long damn way there, too, at least in this kind of traffic. Really need to sell the house and move somewhere closer to the studio, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Can’t bring myself to let go of Alex that way, not when all of our memories are tied up in that place. Well, maybe not all of them, but certainly most of the significant ones.
    Just the thought of leaving our old bungalow on Mariposa Way makes my throat clench painfully. Nothing feels more like home than those eucalyptus trees that shade our tiled rooftop, or the thick jasmine vines knotted around our front steps. I can picture Andrea like it’s yesterday, maybe four or five years old, collecting handfuls of those white flowers as a gift for me. Here, Daddy! I picked them ’cause