Bonus Epilogue
*If you wanted to know what Percy said to Arya when he came back to Mariposa—here it is!
Arya
The first time I saw the Ascia Monuste—the Great Southern White Butterfly —I was four and my dad told me if I made a wish on Butterfly Day it would always come true.
Twenty-five years later, I know he was humoring me.
I’d wanted a strawberry ice cream cone from the shop and he’d made sure that wish came true.
What my dad hadn’t counted on when he was appeasing his four-year-old daughter with a cute story, was that she was a budding scientist and she tested theories and hypotheses. If then this. This then that. Collect the data and we’ll see.
For the next ten years I made a wish every Butterfly Day and wrote it down in my observations notebook. There was a column for the wish. A column for the date of the wish. A column for whether or not the wish came true. A column for the date it came true (if it did).
At fourteen years old, my dad’s hypothesis was proven wrong. Over ten years, only two of my wishes came true – the strawberry ice cream and being selected for the Mariposa Parrot Preserve summer volunteer program when I was twelve.
The others—my grandpa living until Christmas (age six), adopting a cat named Gilbert from the animal shelter (age eight), my grandma deciding not to move back to Jaipur after I told her how I wanted her to stay on Mariposa (age nine), being popular (age thirteen), getting kissed by my crush, Anthony (age fourteen)—none of those wishes came true.
Not a one. Not ever.
So even though I wanted to believe in the wish magic of Butterfly Day, logic and reason wouldn’t allow it. The hypothesis was proven false. Science won out. Wishes and magic lost.
At fourteen, ten years in to the experiment, I stopped making wishes and stood firmly on the side of data and science.
Until this year.
Because when I see the butterflies shooting past my office window I have the overwhelming, illogical urge to make a wish. There are hundreds of them. The green of the garden outside is painted white, the fluttering wings and the spinning dance fill me with an unexpected, buoyant hope. It’s as if I’m flying with them.
When the Ascia fly, even in huge groups, they always pair off. Two of them stay close, twirling around each other, dancing in the sky.
Seeing those pairs, I close off the logical side of my brain and I make a wish.
“I wish that Percy were here,” I whisper, and because I value being specific, “and that he’s sorry and still loves me and wants me as much as I want him.”
I don’t expect my wish to come true.
But I feel better having made it.
I smile and then shove my desk chair back and stand. Outside the butterflies are still flitting past – hundreds of them. The parrots shriek as they hop around the garden. And the afternoon scent of dew, palm, and ripe lemon drifts through my open window.
It’s a perfect day.
I’m ready to find my friends and go see the butterflies.
I set Percy aside as a wish that will never come true.
***
I race over the bumpy road to the preserve. My boss said he saw thousands of butterflies there. That is where we need to be.
Renee and Isla are here, just as excited as me.
Renee is her usual unflappable self, but I have to admit, Isla looks like she didn’t sleep much last night.
My heart thumps in time to the bouncing of the car. Expectation fills me. It’s just like Christmas. I love the butterflies. And the fact that they’re at the preserve! Boobies and butterflies? That’s almost too much of a good thing.
The air conditioning is set to arctic blast. My car was parked in the sun, and the inside is oppressively hot. But thanks to the cold air, each drop of sweat that drips down my chest turns cold as an icicle.
“I’m so glad you didn’t run off with Percy,” Renee says dryly. “Then it would’ve been just me and Isla with the butterflies.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel, and my stomach flutters, but I manage to give a casual smile.
“I wouldn’t have. I’m over Percy. Completely, totally, one hundred percent over…Percy?”
It’s him.
He’s here.
My wish…came true?
That’s not possible. Butterfly wishes don’t come true.
But the evidence stands in front of me.
Percy’s here. He’s rumpled and slightly sunburned. His blond hair blows in the wind and the white butterflies dance around him. When he sees me pull into the nature preserve car park, his eyes latch onto me.
I see it all in a second.
He takes a small step forward, hope and desperation in the lines on his forehead. Then he stops, a longing, worried look making him pause.
He’s watching me like he wants to run to me, hold me, but he’s scared that I won’t let him. There’s conflicted yearning in his expression.
A wishful sort of look.
Maybe he made a wish today too?
My hands shake on the wheel, and I pull to a stop. My heart joins my stomach in the crazed fluttering.
“Darn,” Renee says, stunned. “He actually came back.”
I don’t know what to do.
This was my wish wasn’t it?
But…
I glance at Isla, who always knows what to do, and give her a helpless look.
“You’re not over him,” she says.
“Not even a little,” I whisper.
All the boyfriends I’ve had in the past, I got over in days, a few weeks at most. I knew Percy was the kind of man it would take years – a lifetime – to get over. If I ever did.
I turn back to him, the air conditioning fluttering my hair. The scent of the preserve, heavy brush, mangrove, and the brackish tang of the inland salt pond fills the car.
Percy still watches me and I can tell by his face he’s castigating himself right now. I imagine, he’s been torturing himself with the what if’s and the whys. By the hollows under his cheekbones, the blue smudges under his eyes, and the bent of his shoulders, I don’t think he fared any better than I did these past weeks.
He hesitantly lifts his hand, a small, hopeful wave.
Will you?
Won’t you?
My chest is tight and my heart beats it’s wings, wanting to fly to him.
But…
“What if he leaves again?”
Renee scoffs and nudges my arm. “Arya. Boobies mate for life.”
A tiny fluttering hope rises in me, and then grows, ready to fly.
She’s right.
Renee, who has made fun of my boobies for years is finally, finally right. She really has been paying attention.
I stifle a laugh.
Then I give my friends a smile. A smile that shows them exactly how I feel.
He’s here.
He’s here for me.
“Go on then,” Isla says.
I nod and then I race out of the car, my feet flying over the sand and stone.
Percy’s face lights up, his eyes drink me in.
I want to fling myself into his arms. I want to hug him. Kiss him.
But I can’t.
There’s something that has to be said first.
I stop a few feet away from him.
“Arya,” Percy says. His voice is filled with love and painful longing.
“Percy.”
He holds up his hand again, like he wants to touch me and make sure I’m real.
“I just came back from England. I saw your home,” I say, watching the shadows and sun play on his pink cheeks. “I went to see the puffins. You were right. They made me want to find my mate for life. Just like them.”
His face falls, and I think he’s about to drop to his knees and beg me to forgive him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Declan told me you were there. If I’d known…”
“Yes?” I clench my hands into fists and dig my nails into my palm, otherwise I’d reach out and hug him.
“If I’d known, I’d would’ve come. Declan told me you and your friends schemed to ‘land the white whale and his friend’ and so I left, but Arya, I don’t care, I didn’t care then, and I left, but I don’t care now, and I’m not leaving anymore. I don’t believe that you care about those things. I don’t believe any of that matters to you. But even if it does, I’m going to stay. If you want a pile in the country, if you want a title, if you want the coronet, I can give all that to you, I’ll give you anything you want, if you’ll give me the chance to be with you. To hear you laugh, or talk with you about the migration patterns of the red footed boobies, or hold your hand while we walk along the shore, and maybe…Arya, I look into my future, and if you’re not there, it looks as bleak as a rocky barren coast. Empty. I need you. I should never have left you. If you could give me a chance. If you could maybe…just maybe let me make it up to you? I love you and I can’t…Arya? Please. I want to marry you. I want to spend the next seventy years making a life with you. Can you ever forgive me?”
I bite my lip, fight the urge to run to him, hug him, kiss him. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “What you did really hurt. I don’t know if I can…”
“You can’t?” he whispers.
His shoulders fall and it’s almost as if whatever hope was holding him upright leaves him.
I step forward. “Percy?”
“Yes?”
“I might be persuaded if you give me one thing. But it’s a big ask.”
He lifts his chin, a hopeful light in his eyes. “Name it. Anything. A flat in London. A pied-à-terre in Paris. The family diamonds. Anything. It’s yours.”
I stifle a smile. “I want you to promise me…”
“Yes?”
“That every weekend you’ll go birdwatching with me. And you’ll carry the bottles of water, and the binoculars, and extra sunscreen, because you burn really easily—”
He doesn’t let me finish. He rushes forward, picks me up off the ground and spins me around.
“You mean it,” he says. “You love me? You love me.”
I laugh as he holds me, and spins me, just like the butterflies flying above us. “Of course I mean it. I love you. You’re mine. I’m yours.”
He sets me down, not to let me go, but to kiss me.
His mouth brushes over mine, and if I’d expected butterfly soft, I would’ve been wrong. I open to him and he captures me. Holds me.
“I wished for this,” he breathes against my mouth.
I smile as he runs his mouth over mine, in the best promise I’ve ever been giving, a promise of kisses for years to come.
“Me too. I wished for this too.”
Then Percy is pulling away. He drops to his knees and takes a box from his pocket. And in the box is a ring. The diamond is huge. It looks like a bird’s egg, glittering and shining in the sun.
“Marry me. For life Arya, for the rest of our lives.”
How could I say no to that?
“Yes. Yes. Yes a million times.”
Then we’re kissing. And I’m floating. Flying.
And as Percy holds me close I decide that I was wrong, it seems, that wishes made on Butterfly Day do come true after all.
###
*If you were wondering whether Isla ever thanked Declan for the glass sea turtle—yes, she does!
Isla
I rest in Declan’s arms under the crimson red blooms of the flame tree.
The grass scratches my bare skin and a bee buzzes among the flowers. The breeze drifts overhead, rinsing us with sea salt air and loamy whispering pine tree smells.
Declan asked to see my “ordinary garden” and I obliged. I think he really likes it.
I smile into his chest and breath in his fresh soap scent.
His fingers stroke the back of my neck, circling gently over me, his touch featherlight. He’s staring up at the shifting red of the tree above us and the butterflies flying past. They’ll be here for another few days and then they’ll disappear until next year.
Here, then gone.
Almost like Declan.
I nearly lost him, and unlike the butterflies, he wouldn’t have come back.
The butterflies come back.
Sea turtles come back. They circumnavigate the globe, swimming all the oceans, but they always come back to Mariposa to lay their eggs.
Speaking of…
I press into Declan’s chest and peer down at him.
He has a sleepy contented look on his face. His eyes are lush tropical green, mirroring the garden, and very, very happy.
His lips curl into a smile. “Hullo.”
I grin at him. What a thing to say after making love in the garden.
“I just remembered.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“You gave me the glass sea turtle.” It almost comes out as an accusation.
His eyes crinkle and his hands roam down my back. Little sparks dance over my skin.
“Figured that out, did you?”
“You could have signed the note.”
He looks like he’s laughing at me. “But then you wouldn’t have put it on your bookcase, in the prized position.”
“I would have!”
He’s not buying it.
“Fine. I wouldn’t have.”
He gives me a satisfied look, so I say, “But I would have if you’d let me get to know you right away.”
“Ah. I see. Next time, I’ll endeavor to do better.”
I smile at him. “I still can’t believe it was you. Or that I didn’t realize it was you.”
“Of course it was me.” He tugs me closer. “Who else would know that you’re crazy about sea turtles?”
I bite my lip. “Ummm. Everyone?”
He grins and flips me over. The grass tickles my backside, but he cages me beneath him and smiles down at me.
I reach up and run my hand down the stubble of his jaw. One of the best things about Mariposa? It’s warm year round, so making love in the garden can happen any month of the year.
“Well, it’s a little late, but thank you. Thank you for the turtle.”
He turns his head and kisses my hand. His lips are warm against my skin.
“You’re welcome.”
A warm happiness settles deep inside me. I pull him down on top of me, “Would you like to go for a swim?”
We could go to the sea grass beach and watch the turtles swimming beneath us.
“Will there be a picnic lunch? With your cassava cake?” he asks, a hungry look in his eyes.
I knew I never should’ve fed him.
For the rest of our lives he’ll be begging for banana fritters, cassava cake, and mango salad.
I grin at him.
“Did you fall in love with me after you tried my cake?”
His eyes light up. “No. I knew I loved you at first sight.”
I smile at him. Good answer.
Then he says, a teasing smile on his face, “I knew I wanted to marry you after I tried your cake.”
I laugh and then push at his chest. “Come on. Let’s go for a swim.”
He pulls me up, grasps my hand, and then before I can let go, he tugs me in for another kiss.
“I love you,” I tell him, the sounds of the island whirring around us, the bright colors matching the lightness in my heart.
“You’re everything I never let myself dream of,” he says, his mouth next to mine.
“I think, on Mariposa, dreams get to come true.”
“I think you’re right,” he says.
And then we walk down the sandy trail to the beach, to swim in the turquoise sea, sea turtles beneath us, butterflies above, and all the love we could ever want, right here, between us.
***
