Butterfly Bayou (Butterfly Bayou 1)

She got the door open and stepped into the fifties. At least she was pretty sure that was when every piece of furniture had been bought. The newspapers, though, looked like they came from every week of the last fifty years.

“Sorry about the papers.” Lisa maneuvered her way around the first of what looked like fifty stacks. “Like I said, the place isn’t dirty, per se. Just cluttered. He liked newspapers and magazines. And books. Lots of books. There’s also a closet full of buttons. No idea why, but we were told not to open that one. I wasn’t talking about physical differences. I was talking about fitting in. I’m not sure if you know it, but sometimes you can be intimidating.”

Often in the ER a little intimidation went a long way. “I can’t help how other people react to me. I do my job and I do it well.”

“See, right there. Intimidating.”

She managed to make it to the living room. It was better in here, but the place was covered in tchotchkes. Every available space was littered with snow globes and stuffed animals with the names of various monuments stitched on them. There were commemorative plates and spoons and thimbles.

At least the sofa looked fairly comfy. “Again, I’m not seeing the problem.”

“People here aren’t used to that,” Lisa said, picking up a set of Disneyland salt and pepper shakers and moving them in an attempt to clear off the coffee table. “They’re used to a gentler approach. You have to think before you blurt out whatever goes through your head or you’ll lose them. The people here aren’t used to change. They kind of actively fear it.”

“You seem to be getting along well. And this is coming from the girl who got into a fight her first night here and ended up pulling out another chick’s weave. So I’m not seeing the Southern manners.” Her sister’s stories about the town and the people here had been one of the reasons she’d come.

It had seemed like a good place to hide.

Lisa grinned. “They do like drama. And she was coming after my man. They understand that, too. You’re amazing at your job. I just want it to be smooth sailing for you.”

“It will be.” At least her clinic probably wasn’t a museum for bad souvenirs. “Why on earth would he keep all these things? The poor man obviously had a mental illness.”

“Or he was lonely.” Lisa’s hands ran over the collection of brightly colored pens. There looked to be tubs of them. “These things probably reminded him of a time when life was good. When he and his family traveled. The only thing the kids asked me for were the pictures. I sent those back. There were lots of pictures of the five of them in a camper traveling across the country.”

The Daley family had never done that. Not once. The most they’d traveled as kids was to the prison on visiting days after Will had managed to get his license. They hadn’t taken trips, they’d just tried to survive.

Was she still trying to survive? Was she still clawing her way through a day without any understanding as to what it meant? Her family was safe. They were all happy and moving on. They had lives and she was . . . running and managing to stand still all at the same time.

The man who’d lived here, he’d had a life. Maybe it had been a messy one. Maybe he’d been lonely in the end, but he’d lived.

When she’d decided to leave Dallas, she’d packed up her car and had room to spare. She hadn’t taken a bunch of things that reminded her of good times.

Because she hadn’t really had good times.

Lisa held up a coffee mug. It was emblazoned with the hokiest picture of an elderly couple smiling from inside a big heart. World’s Greatest Husband was written across the other side of the mug. “I think some of these things were gifts from his wife. Isn’t that sweet?”

She’d been engaged at one point in time and she’d handed back the ring without a second thought. She hadn’t needed to have a bonfire to burn all her mementos because there hadn’t been any. All of his gifts to her had been practical. No flowers for Lila Daley. She needed a pair of gloves. No jewelry. She would rather have orthopedic shoes and new scrubs.

“I used to schedule gifts for myself,” she said quietly, studying the books on the shelf. It looked like the man had been heavily invested in old Westerns. Her eyes drifted down to the lower shelf and she found a whole row of what looked like romance novels. “When I was with Brock, I mean. I would schedule gifts because I thought I should. He bought me flowers once and I explained that I would prefer him to spend money on something that wouldn’t die on me in a week.”