The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(87)

Inara wheezes in Sophia’s renewed embrace, but doesn’t ask her to let go.

“Are you all right?” asks Sophia.

“I will be,” Inara replies quietly, almost shyly. “My hands are the worst, but if I’m careful, they should heal.”

“That’s not all I’m asking, and I am asking. I have my own place now, I can break the apartment rules.”

Inara’s face lights up, all the uncertainty and shock vanishing. “You got your girls back!”

“I did, and they’ll be so glad to see you. They’ve missed you as much as the rest of us. They say no one reads to them as well as you do.”

Eddison doesn’t quite manage to turn his laugh into a cough.

Inara gives him a sour look.

For his part, Victor’s almost relieved to see her sidestep the more probing question. At least she does it with everyone. He clears his throat to get their attention. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to insist on an explanation.”

“He usually does,” Inara mutters.

Sophia just smiles. “It’s pretty much his job. But perhaps . . .” She glances over at the boy in the bed, Victor’s eyes following. Desmond hasn’t so much as twitched in all the noise. “Elsewhere?”

Victor nods and leads them out of the room. In the hallway, he can see Senator Kingsley standing alone in front of the door to the Butterflies’ room, taking deep breaths. She should look softer in just the blouse and skirt; instead, she just looks scared. Victor wonders if her suit is like Inara’s lip gloss, a way to armor up against the rest of the world.

“Do you think she’ll go in?” Inara asks.

“Eventually,” he answers. “Once she realizes this isn’t something she can be ready for.”

He takes them into a room in the buffer zone between the Butterflies and the MacIntosh family. It’s private, at any rate, and one of the guards shifts down to make sure they’re not disturbed. Inara and Sophia settle side by side on one of the stripped beds, facing the door and anyone who might try to enter. Victor sits on the opposite bed. He’s unsurprised that Eddison decides to pace, rather than sit.

“Ms. Madsen?” Victor prompts. “If you please?”

“You do like to get right down to it, don’t you?” Sophia shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but no, not yet. I’ve been waiting longer than you have.”

Victor blinks, but nods.

Taking Inara’s hand, Sophia wraps both of hers around it, holding tight. “We thought something from before had caught up with you,” she says. “We thought you ran.”

“It was a logical assumption,” Inara tells her gently.

“But all your clothes—”

“Are just clothes.”

Sophia shakes her head again. “If you were going to run, you would have taken your money. Whitney and I started an account for you, by the way. We didn’t feel comfortable with that much cash sitting around.”

“Sophia, if you’re trying to find a way this is somehow your fault, you’re not going to find it from me. We were all running from something. We all knew that. We all knew not to question it if someone disappeared.”

“We should have. And the timing . . .”

“There was no way to know.”

“The timing?” Victor asks.

“The event that the Gardener—Mister MacIntosh—”

Sophia gives a startled laugh. “He has a name. I mean, of course he does, but . . . how bizarre.”

“The event at the Evening Star,” Inara continues. “I didn’t say anything about Mister MacIntosh being creepy, just about the run-in with Avery. But then we came home with all those costume butterfly wings.”

“I drank myself damn near insensible,” Sophia says grimly. “It was like being back in hell.”

“I took her out to the fire escape to get some fresh air, and she ended up telling me all about the Garden.”

“I’d never really told anyone before.”

“Why not?” Victor asks. From the corner of his eye, he sees Eddison’s pacing stop.

“At first, there didn’t seem to be anything to say. I didn’t know his name, I’d been so panicked on leaving that I didn’t pay any attention to what was around me. I didn’t know where the estate was. All I had was a tattoo and a growing fetus and a crazy story. I thought if I went to the police, they’d be just like my parents: assume I was drunk or high or screwing around and lying to avoid consequences.”

“You went back to your parents?”

She makes a face. “They kicked me out. Said I was an embarrassment. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was nineteen and pregnant and didn’t have anyone to help me.”

Eddison perches on the very end of Victor’s bed. “So Jillie is the Gardener’s?”

“Jillie is mine,” she retorts, baring her teeth at him.

Eddison holds up both hands in a placating gesture. “But he is the father.”

Sophia deflates, and Inara leans against her for comfort. “That was the other reason not to say anything. If he’d found out about her, I could have lost her. No court in the world would have let her stay with a heroin-addicted hooker when she could live with a wealthy, well-respected family. At least when social services took my girls, I could work to get them back. If he’d taken Jillie, I would never have seen her again, and I don’t think Lotte would ever have gotten over it. They’re my girls. I had to protect them.”