The Glass Butterfly by Louise Marley Page A

with fresh eyes at her fair hair, her clear, smooth skin, the faint lines around her eyes, the deeper ones around her mouth. He couldn’t remember ever looking at her as a person. As a woman.
    But maybe young men didn’t do that. Maybe if he sat down with a therapist—like Tory—that’s what he would hear, that young men were that way, that their mothers weren’t women, they were . . . mothers.
    His had done the best she could. He wished he could tell her he understood that.
    He put the photo back on its shelf behind the cookbooks. No, it wasn’t wishful thinking. She wasn’t gone. He could—he could feel her. Wills, police, the wrecked car, the lawyer—none of it changed anything. Jack wandered into the living room and gazed out at the mountains of the park, their wooded peaks going blue with early dusk. He listened to the swell and crash of the Mahler symphony, and wondered what he should do.
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    By the time full darkness settled over the house, Jack began to wish he had accepted Kate’s invitation after all. He didn’t want company, exactly, but the house seemed to echo with emptiness. Tory disliked drapes that might block her view of the woods, so the big picture window in the living room and the sliding glass door to her office were uncurtained. With the lights on, the glass was black and reflective. He saw his every movement, his mussed-up hair, his ragged Red Sox sweatshirt. He felt exposed to the night.
    He went around the house, checking that the front and back doors and the office entrance were locked. He peeked in the utility room, where the washer and dryer were now clean and empty. There had been a few things in the washer, a pair of jeans, sneakers, a shirt. He had dried them and put them away. The ironing board—as always—was folded up into its frame. He had never seen it out, and he didn’t know why they even had one. If there was an iron in the house, he didn’t know where. Tory had a thing about ironing.
    He turned out the lights in the living room and in her office, and confined himself to the kitchen, where he could draw the curtains over the sink and close out the darkness. He could watch the small television Tory kept under the cabinet while he made himself dinner.
    At first he had avoided the TV. The news endlessly replayed the photos of the Escalade at the bottom of the ravine, its doors open like empty arms that had dropped their burden. But now, it seemed, with nothing new to report, everyone had lost interest. There had been blood on the upholstery of the car, but it had been Tory’s, and there hadn’t been much of it. The Escalade appeared to have some damage to its rear bumper, but no one knew how long that might have been there. There was no explanation for why Tory might have driven into the woods instead of down her driveway, but the police seemed to think that wasn’t particularly suspicious.
    Father Wilburton had explained all of this to Jack in a gingerly fashion, as if the twenty-year-old young man in front of him might break down or fly into hysterics. Jack listened, his head down, his teeth clenched. There had been so little blood, the priest said. Not enough to prove that—
    Jack had thrown up his hand, made him stop talking about blood.
    Misunderstanding, Father Wilburton had changed the subject. He went on to speak gently about sorrow, support groups, the comforts of faith. Jack had listened to his little homily in polite silence.
    Jack switched on the television, but he kept the volume low, letting the news drone softly while he pulled one of Kate’s casseroles out of the fridge. She had taped instructions to the lid. He pulled those off, set the oven temperature, and slid the dish onto the top rack. While the oven ticked, warming, he looked through the kitchen cupboards for things he should give away or throw out before he went back to school. He found the knife block in a lower cupboard, and gazed