Butterfly Sunday by David Hill Page B

his arms, tucking his hands into the crooks of his elbows, and waited for her to continue speaking. When she didn’t, he dropped his hands into his pockets and walked around behind his desk and leaned against the back of his chair.

    “What can we do for you, sugar?”

    He said it loud enough for anyone in the surrounding offices to hear him, and he used a tone of voice that might expect her to say she wanted a car loan.

    “Sir, I’m here to make an honest appeal.”

    He flashed a broad, mechanical grimace and leapt around her to shut the door.

    “Have a seat, precious.”

    She sat down on a leather sofa. He leaned back, half sitting on the front edge of his desktop. It probably gave him some confidence because it positioned him above her.

    “All right, honey. Is this about Daddy’s time deposit account?”

    That disingenuous rhetoric delivered with a punch, he made several louder than necessary steps toward the door, which he opened a crack, and seeing that the corridor was empty, he closed it again.

    She was wrapped in a veil of unreality that protectedher from condemning her effort with an angry overreaction. How could any of this be real? She was eighteen years old. This time yesterday she had stifled terrible nausea, hiding it from the whole town, while she watched her mother’s casket descend into the ground. She wouldn’t disgrace herself or insult her mother’s memory by allowing the swirling inferno in her stomach to erupt. When she wept she didn’t know if she was mourning her mother or Ty or expressing the terror she felt at surviving as a woman alone with a fatherless child.

    And this son of a bitch knew it. This empty bastard was well aware that she was carrying his grandchild. Was this really about his position at the bank? Was Mr. Crockett devoid of all human decency? Would he deny his son’s child and tear him away from a girl he loved—all for some job? Then, in the name of the brass plaque on the door, would he further force that son to marry a woman he despised and accept another man’s child as his own?

    No. No one was that cold. Were they? Had she missed the point? Were people in general far more devious and dangerous than she was willing to see? No. She wouldn’t believe that. The strain of the last weeks was catching up with her. She had stood by her dying mother to the end. She had planned and overseen the arrangements. She had carried her terrifying sadness with determined grace, greeting the onslaught of people, behaving as if she had one and not two losses to bear, as if she had any idea what to do or expect.

    Meanwhile this contemptible jackass had manipulated Ty—of that she was certain—into a miserable marriage. “My father used to say that a man’s secrets are hisdoom,” she began. She had gotten the idea if she confronted him with some truths about the situation, she might win him over.

    “Ty and our darling Gloria have been inseparable for years.” He took a little step into it. “They had a silly lover’s spat last year, but they can’t argue with destiny. They need each other. They might as well be Pyramus and Thisbe.” Mr. Crockett thought he came across upper-class when he made obscure references. It just so happened that her mama had reared her on mythology. She knew all about Pyramus and Thisbe.

    “Pyramus and Thisbe were eaten by a lion,” she replied.

    He reddened at the affront.

    Leona knew the score. In the first place, everyone who went to high school with Ty and Gloria knew that they had bickered and argued for months before they broke up. Ty had told Leona that his and Gloria’s parents had exerted a lot of pressure on them to date each other, and talked as if they were engaged. Everyone in school knew Ty’s father was the reason he hadn’t already dumped Gloria. He’d made it clear to all his friends he planned to dump her when he got to college, where he wouldn’t have to listen to his parents’ badgering.

    For that, Gloria told