Butterfly Tattoo Read Online Free Page B

they’re beautiful, just like you!
    We have family history that practically hums all around that house. It’s in the crevices of the wooden floorboards, on the craggy paths that lead up the canyon hillside away from the garden, and in the sun-drenched windows of the morning room. Every direction I turn, our life resonates there, and maybe that’s because memories have a spiritual life all their own. Where there’s been suffering, the dark atmosphere hangs over a place forever, becomes a kind of energy that’s imprinted in the air. Like at Auschwitz or Gettysburg, or even Fredericksburg, where I grew up, where the bodies of men once fell by the moment. Ghosts before their bodies had even hit the ground.
    But when something’s been perfect and beautiful, as our family once was then the emotions linger like the perfume of angels. No wonder all my memories of that house are touched by sweet-scented jasmine.
     
    We moved to Studio City because Alex practiced pediatric oncology at UCLA, so it made sense to live in that neighborhood, an affordable family one closer to the hospital. That was more important than buying a house near the studio, like West Hollywood where I wanted to be. Allie hated my insane hours on the set, wanted me home more, so we fought over that decision. In fact, I remember mouthing off that some of us weren’t doctors pulling down a couple hundred grand a year, that some of us really worked for a living.
    God, the scorching, blue-eyed look I earned for that one. Alex was one of the warmest people I’ve ever known, but he could pack a feisty temper on occasion. The old stereotypes about redheads were true, I guess, because that day I got a pretty pointed lecture on the rewards of higher education versus those of pissing off my father by joining the army at age eighteen. That was okay, ’cause I also got a damned passionate kiss at the end. Making up was always the sweetest part of Allie’s firestorms.
    I swear those arguments over buying our first home together were some of the worst we everhad. Looking back, it’s easy to see that there were other tensions at play, deeper stresses about commitment and starting a family. About even being a couple in the first place. My fears over that issue alonewere threatening to separate us like the San Andreas Fault. Besides, having kids and settling down is already pretty big stuff when you’re only in your twenties, even if you’re a traditional couple.
    Being with Allie scared the crap out of me, all right, because I’d never gone that way before. I’d always been straight as an arrow before him. But I realized even then that love doesn’t bother with those kinds of distinctions. It just falls over you like a mystery, and once it does, you’re gone for life.
    By then I understood, too, that I was with Alex Richardson because I couldn’t be anywhere else.
    “You missed the exit.”
    “What?” I blink, staring ahead of me at the car-clogged freeway in disbelief.
    “That was our exit back there.” Our daughter explains the facts to me with the patient condescension of an eight-year-old.
    “Damn.”
    “Daddy didn’t like you cussing in front of me.”
    “No, you’re right, sweetie. He didn’t.”
    Your daddy didn’t like a whole lot of my wicked ways , I think, maneuvering into another lane of traffic. Now, thanks to my error, it will be another thirty minutes before we make it home.
    Yeah, Memory Lane can be a painful detour, all right. Can take you places you really don’t want to go, and then send you scrambling for hours to recover.
    Sometimes you never do.
     
    When someone dies, you’re left with mountains of memories. At first, you rush headlong at all of them, fists opening greedily, desperate to hold onto your loved one, no matter the cost, but over time, particular snapshots come into focus. They’re the ones that surface continually in your dreams and mental drifting, popping up on radar when you least expect them.
    For me, I’m