The Butterfly Box

Prologue

Prologue

November 2013: Seymour, Oregon 

Disclaimer: I believe in miracles.

Not too long ago, someone asked me whether I thought the term "miracle" was loosely used. Beautiful though they are, people seem to toss the word around with everyday kitchen talk, labeling everything from Macy's Clearances to cancer-free patients in the same category. A broken heart healed after years of suppression, an abused boy learning to open up, the bond between a father and child restored--none of these are miracles without the presence of an unbreakable faith. For the word "miracle" is inscribed the moment a divinely omniscient God cares to intercede in the lives of ordinary people, answering the prayers they often neglect to speak.

I wouldn't call my story a miracle. A testimony, a lament, a eulogy--maybe someday I'd even come to call it a love story too.

But I didn't always believe in miracles. My world was bound by the tragic norm, the idea that anything that got caught inside would suffocate the once fragile hope that barely remained within me. Then a little more than a year ago someone got in, and my view of a deist clockmaker aloof from a broken world came to a close.

November 1999: Seymour, Oregon

               Her name was Bella.

            She had named her after the strawberry blond in her Barbie collection for Bella’s sheer pink complexion.

            “Be careful, Vi,” Beth whispered, handing the small box to Violet gingerly, as if any abrupt motion would disturb the delicate creature. “She’s very fragile.”

            As Violet balanced the little wooden box in her lap and carefully creaked open the tiny flap, a barely audible gasp escaped her mouth. Beth’s tired eyes crinkled in a soft smile as she watched the little girl cradle the box, and she saw her own world eclipsed in her young daughter. But whatever world her young daughter would fill, Beth never had the chance to see.

            Violet was four years old when her Preschool teacher received the call. She was playing dress-up in the corner and had just slipped on the strawberry-pink dress when the Principal arrived at Room 340, and how nice Violet looked and wouldn’t she like to step out in the hallway and take a stroll with Mrs. McDuffy to discuss some news? Violet was still wearing the strawberry dress when her grandmother arrived an hour later to whisk her away, only the dress was muddy and torn after Violet had run away and hid in the playground bushes.

            The butterfly box was the last gift Beth had given her daughter before she died. It was the last memory, the last cherished treasure, that would forever link Violet back to her mother, and it was the last reminder that a little girl needed to know things would never be the same.

            Violet held onto that box with all her might as she drove to the Fairmore Cemetery that November. And it was a promise she made to herself—her mother and her world—that she would never let go.