The Butterfly Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death, death by suicide, sexual violence and harassment, rape, and suicidal ideation.

By the next morning, another of the girls has died in the hospital, but the rest—13, in all—are expected to live. Senator Kingsley’s daughter has refused, for now, to see her mother, insisting on seeing Inara first. The agents continue their questioning of Inara, who says she’s not surprised that her housemates in New York never reported her missing to the police. She says that children of neglect, like herself, get used to never being thought of or remembered. She cites Sophia as an example of a devoted mother; though her two children are often in the care of the state, they know that their mother will always fight to get them back.

Inara describes the first time she saw Desmond, the Gardener’s younger son. Fighting boredom in the long, seasonless months of her captivity, she often scales the cliff to explore the Garden’s high places, particularly a clump of trees where she can peer through the glass wall into the outer garden without being seen. Sometimes she can see, far below, the Gardener’s family strolling through the greenhouse: the Gardener, his sickly-looking wife, his murderous son

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