The Butterfly Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse, physical abuse, death, sexual violence and harassment, and kidnapping.

Victor interrupts Inara’s story, proposing a trip to the hospital. Puzzled and reluctant, Eddison accompanies them; as they approach the building, the two agents advise Inara on how to ignore the mobs of aggressive reporters who will accost her with prying questions. Inside, a third FBI agent named Ramirez introduces her to Keely’s parents. Keely, who is still alive, has been moved to a private room. Keely’s parents tell Inara that their daughter asked for her, and then for Bliss and Danelle. Inara tries to reassure them, saying that it’s natural, even healthy, that she wants to be with girls who suffered in the same way she did. 

Meanwhile, Senator Kingsley pushes her way through the crowded hallway to Inara, and “stridently” accuses the agents of “hiding” her. Inara boldly stands up to her, advising her to keep her entourage and others away from her daughter Patrice (or “Ravenna”), to give her time and space to recuperate, suggesting that Patrice’s sudden return to the “real” world could be more traumatic for her than the senator realizes. Both she and Victor prevail upon her to let the FBI do their job without her high-powered interference. 

The agents let Inara into a large, well-guarded room where Bliss, Keely, Danelle, and all of the other surviving Butterflies are gathered, in various stages of recuperation, along with some of their parents. All of them are glad to see Inara, and the parents eagerly share stories of their long searches for their daughters and their heartbreaking relief at their return. Then the agents lead Inara to another heavily guarded room, where the Gardener lies in critical but stable condition, hooked up to a large array of machines. His real name, they tell her, is Geoffrey MacIntosh. They emphasize to her that he will soon be tried for what he did, and that he cannot hurt her anymore. His wife is in an adjoining room, being monitored for a mental health crisis; she seems not to have had any knowledge of his crimes. 

Inara wants to ask about Desmond; instead, she continues her story of what happened that last day in the Garden: After the walls go up and the Butterflies leave their rooms, Inara sees the Gardener and his two sons at the far end of the Garden. She also sees signs (boot prints, a gum wrapper) that others, probably police, have been searching the Garden. The Gardener is screaming at Desmond for calling the police, asserting that, “This is my home, and my garden. Here, I am the law, and you went against that” (256). With assistance from the jubilant Avery, the Gardener whips Desmond with a bamboo cane. When he stops at 20 blows, Avery explodes in rage, protesting that he himself got that many just for branding Inara. Drawing a gun, Avery denounces his father for always favoring Desmond above himself, the “firstborn,” who has never been allowed to do what he wants. As the girls look on in horror, Avery shoots Desmond and then his father. When Inara runs to help Desmond, Avery pistol-whips her, then prepares to rape her, dropping his gun. A sound of distant sirens distracts him, and he runs up the cliff path to look outside.

Victor tells Inara that, after the police searched the Garden and found nothing, they ran a search on some of the other names (besides Keely’s) that Desmond gave them, such as Lyonette’s real name, and find a trove of information. The fact that Desmond knew about these years-old disappearances convinced the police and FBI to return in force.

As the girls apply pressure to Desmond’s and the Gardener’s bullet wounds, the Gardener asks Sirvat to fetch first-aid supplies from his laboratory, unlocking it with a remote control device. With a strange laugh, she runs to obey. Soon after, noticing a strong smell of formaldehyde, Inara shouts for everyone to take cover. Frantically, the Butterflies drag the two wounded men into the little cave behind the waterfall, just before a huge explosion rips through the Garden. Fire, smoke, and torrents of broken glass engulf the atrium, and Inara and the other girls search desperately for a way out before the whole place burns down. Inara proposes breaking through the glass near the top of the cliff, then using the roof of the halls as a bridge to safety; but at that moment, Avery, covered with cuts and burns, seizes Pia from behind, snapping her neck. Bliss shoots and kills Avery with his own gun, which she has picked up.

A large tree, in flames, crashes through the greenhouse wall, and Inara and the others try to clear a path around it, cutting and burning their hands on the broken glass and burning wood. As they forge their way through, single-file, pulling along Desmond and the Gardener, the latter does his part to urge some of the more frightened girls to follow. Suddenly, a big pane of glass near them shatters, revealing firemen with axes on the other side. As Inara is dragged to safety, she sees Isra being engulfed in flames, along with three other girls.

Having finished her story, Inara follows Victor to the hospital room of Desmond, who is still very weak but is expected to recover. He gasps out an apology to her for not going to the police six months sooner than he did. Victor tells her that he’ll likely be tried for complicity, and that Inara might have to testify against him. She expresses pity for him, saying that it might have been better for him if he’d died in the fire: “Maybe he could have died brave, but he’ll live a coward” (265). Victor infers, from this, that “it” (their love) never “became real.” Inara asks how it could ever have been otherwise, given their situation.

In the hallway, Sophia recognizes her, and the two of them embrace. Coincidentally, Eddison has just arrived carrying the newly discovered photo album of all the Gardener’s teenage captives, and Sophia is among them. Sophia, now 30, is the (fabled) Butterfly who managed to escape the Garden over a decade before. A faded wingtip of her tattoo shows through the neck of her shirt. She tells Inara that she has her own apartment now and has regained custody of her two daughters, who miss Inara. She tells the agents that on the night of the Gardener’s butterfly-themed party at the Evening Star restaurant, the girls’ costumes brought back such traumatic memories of her captivity in the Garden years before that she told Inara all about it. She’d escaped from the Garden at age 19 by spying on Avery as he punched his code to open the door. Once out, she didn’t go to the police because, with her history of substance abuse, she doubted they’d believe her; she also lost track of where the Garden was located. 

In addition, she was pregnant with the Gardener’s daughter, and as time went by, she was afraid of losing her. Other girls were too “scared” to try to escape, she says, because an earlier girl who attempted it was killed and put behind glass. Sophia knew she had to risk it because her pregnancy would soon be detected, which would mean instant death for her. Inara now confesses to the agents that she told her story in a roundabout way as a deliberate ploy to stall them, so she could try to spare Sophia the public scandal of being connected to the case.

Suspiciously, Eddison asks Inara if she somehow engineered her own kidnapping after hearing Sophia’s story, to gain access to the Garden. If true, Victor realizes, she could face serious legal complications. Inara insists that it was all a coincidence—that she wasn’t aware, at the time, of any connection between the Gardener and the host of the Madame Butterfly party. However, her prior knowledge of the Garden, and especially that Sophia managed to escape, did give her an edge, helping her to keep her sanity over her two-year imprisonment. She tried to use her charms on Desmond to get him to do the right thing, but failed: It was the rivalry between the two brothers for their father’s love—answering one extreme action with another—that finally led Desmond to call the police. This, she adds, led to the deaths of 10 girls in the explosion and fire, and the survivors will never be free of the trauma of their captivity. There are no “winners,” she says. 

However, Sophia tells her that she saved Inara’s clothes and other possessions for her, and put her money in a savings account for when she returned. “You’re one of my girls too” (274), she says, amazing Inara and bringing tears to her eyes—her first tears since being abandoned by her parents on the carousel at age six. Embracing Sophia, she heaves with sobs.

Inara tells Victor the name on her birth certificate—Samira Grantaire—so he can help her change it legally to Inara Morrissey, her “real” self. Knowing that many painful difficulties still lie ahead for Inara and the other survivors, Victor thanks her for being “incredibly brave” and for protecting the other girls.