The Butterfly’s Daughter Read Free Page A

one?” the persistent man asked as he approached again. “I dunno. Maybe you shouldn’t be looking at a manual transmission.”
    â€œNo,” she said, feeling as though fate had just smiled on her. “This is the one.”

    Luz Avila looked out the wall of grimy industrial windows at the foundry to see thick, gray clouds gathering in the sky. She reached up to tug at the elastic of her ponytail, then shook her head to free her long mane of black hair. Then, slipping into her brown corduroy jacket, she took her place in a long line of employees waiting with vacant stares to enter their numbers into the employee time clock. One by one they moved forward, but she felt they were all really just stuck in one place.
    â€œYou wanna go out tonight?” the young woman behind her asked. Dana was only a year older than Luz but already married and divorced. Her short, spiky hair was an unnatural shade of red and she liked to experiment with varying shades of green and blue eye shadow. “We thought we’d hook up at O’Malley’s.”
    Luz shook her head. Dana wouldn’t understand that she was saving every dollar she could to finish college. Or that her conservative Mexican grandmother didn’t approve of freewheeling single girls who went out to bars alone.
    â€œSully and I have plans. But thanks.”
    Dana shrugged. “See you at the grind tomorrow, then.”
    â€œYeah,” she replied dully. The foundry paid a good wage but Luz felt trapped inside its walls, unable to see a brighter future for herself. The best part of her day was clocking out.
    Luz stepped out into an October wind tinged with acrid industrial scents. She wrinkled her nose and walked quickly toward the parking lot, where she knew her boyfriend would be waiting for her.
    Sully’s face burst into a grin under his baseball cap when he spotted her. Sullivan Gibson was a traditional midwestern boy of German-Irish farming descent, evident in his six-foot-three-inch height, his broad shoulders, his penchant for basketball and beer,and his polite manners toward a lady. His long arm pushed the truck door open for her as she approached, and she climbed into the warm compartment just as an icy northern rain began.
    â€œGod, I hate this rain,” she said.
    â€œAt least it’s not snow.”
    The air in the truck was close and reeked of stale cigarette smoke—she couldn’t get Sully to break his habit. She leaned across the seat to meet his lips. Sully’s brooding blue eyes sparked to life when they kissed, like his truck when he fired the ignition.
    Beneath Sully’s rough exterior beat the steady, generous heart of a gentle man. He worked at an auto repair shop in Milwaukee. It was a small garage but it had a sterling reputation and a waiting list for appointments. Sully felt lucky to have been offered a job there, but Luz knew that his diligence, reliability, and honesty meant that the garage was the lucky one. Sully already had his own roster of clients. He made a good living with the promise of raises, promotions, and if his dreams were realized, his own shop someday. He was a man ready to settle down with a wife and raise a family. They’d been dating for three years and Sully was her rock. She felt safe when he slipped a possessive arm around her shoulders and drew her close as they pulled out from the parking lot.
    Every day after work Sully drove Luz to her home on Milwaukee’s south side. He pulled to a stop in front of her unassuming A-frame bungalow, one of many identical houses bordering the narrow street. It was a modest neighborhood, mostly Hispanic. A neighborhood where the residents couldn’t afford improvements to the houses and the city didn’t bother to improve the streets. But there were pots of brightly colored geraniums on front porches, well-tended shrubs, bicycles chained to a railing, and soccer balls lying in the yard. This was a close-knit