The Butterfly Garden (The Collector, #1)

by Dot Hutchison

Eddison lurches to the very edge of his seat. “You’re comparing the FBI to Hitler?” “No, I’m engaging in a discussion about perspective and moral relativity.”

So not only was I self-sufficient, I came to have a pretty low opinion of most people’s intelligence.

He made sure of that, and then he strove to give his Butterflies a strange breed of immortality.

I wanted so badly to cry. I’d seen most of the other girls do it time and again, and some of them always seemed to feel better afterward.

“Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”

Body language was one of the things that told me my next-door neighbor was a pedophile long before the first time he exposed himself, long before the first time he touched me or asked me to touch him. It was in the way he watched me and the other kids in the neighborhood, in the bruised looks of the foster kids who lived with him. I was prepared for his advances because I knew they’d be coming. Body language warned me about Gran’s lawn guy, about the kids in school who would try to beat you up just because they could. Body language was better than a flashing light for warnings.

“Does ‘justice’ change any of what he did? Any of what we went through? Does it bring the girls in glass back to life?” “Well, no, but it keeps him from doing it again.” “So would his death, and without the sensationalism and tax money.”

“Then he’s a tool.” Sometimes it was hard to argue with Bliss’s logic, such as it was. But sometimes, tools could be used.

“Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”

I could have killed him then and there, but what stopped me was the thought that Avery would inherit the Garden.

But my wings couldn’t move and I couldn’t fly, and I couldn’t even cry.