Chasing The Butterflies (The Glendale #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Emma

You can be anyone you want to be when you start a new job.

It’s a fresh start or, for some, a redo.

Your coworkers have no idea how neurotic you are or that you secretly color-code everything.

They don’t know you’re the reason Secret Santa has a price limit or that every break room snack has to go through an approval process.

They just know you from the fancy memo sent out from management.

The same could be said after having a baby.

That baby has no clue that you’re just flying by the seat of your pants.

They’re blissfully unaware that you left the house with the oven on yesterday or that you kept them in their pajamas all day.

They’re just eating, sleeping, vibing—while you’re peeing once a day and surviving on yesterday’s cold coffee.

Like coworkers, they’re trusting you are who you say you are and nothing else.

Except for some, they have siblings.

And a chatty aunt who spills your deepest, darkest secrets.

And your “new job” is actually your old job with the same coworkers—one of them being your sister.

Postpartum is a wild thing. Brushing my hair feels like a fragile dance between maintenance and utter denial.

I shouldn’t be doing it while driving. I shouldn’t be thinking about postpartum hair loss as I pull into the Glendale High parking lot.

I shouldn’t be remembering, in vivid detail, how I took a pair of scissors to my hair last night and hacked it into an angled bob.

I should be focused on my new job, my new responsibilities.

Principal of Glendale High School.

I step out of the car onto the black asphalt that hugs the building.

Frigid January air slices at my ears as I fumble with the zipper on my coat.

My heels click loudly against the pavement as I rush to the door, but before I can open it, my phone buzzes in my hand with an incoming call.

My fingers are icy stiff as I silence it.

Then another buzz.

The text from my husband flashes like a warning across my screen.

Steven: Session is at 4 tomorrow?

I grit my teeth, deciding against the “same as every week” I want to justifiably shout through my phone. Instead, I type:

Yes, 4pm. Ellie will pick up the boys.

Steven: Have a good day. Love you.

Me: Love you too.

I rub at the ache blooming beneath my sternum.

Our texts lately, really our conversations altogether, have been polite at best. Stripped of anything warm, playful, or marriage-esque.

He should know it’s my first day at the new job.

It’s plastered in big bold letters on our fridge.

So the absence of a “good luck” or “you’re going to crush it” punches a small, hollow space in my chest.

I shove the feeling aside, chalk it up to Steven’s busy schedule saving lives, and barrel through the front double doors.

It doesn’t announce my arrival like I imagine. No gust of wind or dramatic swoosh. No stunned silence for the new leader’s arrival. Just the creak of old door bolts.

Which makes sense. It’s barely seven a.m. The only other soul here is Bill, the janitor.

“Mornin’, boss lady,” Bill says, wheeling out his cleaning cart. He won’t touch a mop or broom until later, but when it comes to inventory, he’s relentless, counting rolls of paper towels like it’s his solitary mission on this planet.

“Good morning, Bill. How are you this morning?” Did I really say morning twice? I clear my throat and ignore his lingering eyes—eyes that can see right through me.

Honestly, everyone can probably see right through me. I am in over my head taking on this new job, and it’s only my first day. I know this will be a disaster, and then I will have to quit, and then I will show my children what a quitter looks like before they even learn how to spell inadequate.

“Just fine,” he says. “My knee’s feeling strong today. I have therapy again tomorrow, but I might skip it. I don’t think I need it.”

“You need therapy, Bill.” I sigh then mumble under my breath, “We all do, apparently.” We have this conversation every Monday.

At first, I thought it was just our pattern.

We bicker back and forth, me telling him he needs physical therapy, him insisting I’m wrong, while deep down he enjoys the pestering.

It’s clear he doesn’t want to go. Apparently, he runs this same conversation with five other people before his girlfriend, Margaret, finally drags him there. Every Tuesday at 9 a.m. Like clockwork.

Bill waves me off as I shuffle down the hallway to my office.

The principal’s office.

I have no idea when I’ll actually get used to it.

The door is locked, and my hands are full—coffee cup, book bag, three binders, and a cotton-ball good-luck dragon the boys made me.

Its head has fallen off, and the fire it was “breathing” has bled through the first page of binder two, leaving a splotchy trail of canary yellow and burnt orange as evidence.

Once inside, I pull back the curtains of my not-so-discreet-parking-lot-spying window, and the morning sun floods the space. Boxes and books are scattered everywhere, my new office chair is still in its box, and my breast pump supplies have taken over my desk. But somehow, it’s cozy. And it’s mine.

A knock on the door comes as I pull the chair and its plastic wrapping out of its box.

“You’re early,” I say.

“I’m early because you’re early,” Ellie, my sister, says as she bumps the door open with her hip. “You know it’s 7 a.m., right?”

“I needed to be on time,” I say as I contort myself up and over the pieces of the chair and begin assembling.

“How was drop-off?” she asks, setting a cup of tea on my desk, completely missing the guilt-ridden flurry of emotions moving across my face at her question.

“It was fine,” I murmur, screwing a bolt into a leg.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Miss Psychologist.”

“Mrs.,” she corrects.

“You know, for someone who was left at the altar before, you’re real confident about this one.” Another bolt attached.

“Seeing as we are past the altar now, she should be.” Benny, the reason for my sister’s newfound confidence, says as he strolls in wearing his bright blue Glendale polo and an even brighter smile.

He reaches for my chair, likely to help assemble, but I swat him away.

“Good morning, Principal Jones. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” I don’t look up, keeping my focus on a wheel that refuses to turn, though I can feel their eyes on me. I grunt and groan, fighting it as if sheer will could make it budge.

Benny, my new brother-in-law, and Glendale’s vice principal, gently pries the chair from my hands and guides me to the couch. Out of habit, probably because he was my boss last year, I do as he says.

“Why are we in a mood?” Ellie whispers, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear and rubbing my shoulder. “I thought today was supposed to be a happy day.”

It is, but the day has barely started. Who knows what could happen in a few hours.

Or the next fifteen minutes. Nothing is guaranteed.

I just know that when I left my baby with the nanny this morning, no one could have convinced me that today would be good, that being here, away from her, would be a good idea.

But then I walked into the school, into my office, and a small part of me flickered to life. A good day is possible.

“Are you overthinking?” Ellie asks.

“No. I’m not.” Nothing about my demeanor supports this statement.

“What are you thinking, then?”

I don’t respond. My shoulders suddenly weigh a thousand pounds, my mouth pulls downward, and my eyes sting with the threat of tears. A mix of emotions zaps through me, roiling my gut, simmering under my skin. Anger—irrational and uncalled for—is the strongest of the bunch.

Why do I have to get sad so easily? Why do I have to get angry?

Why does the thought of leaving my baby to go to work fill me with such guilt I would burn the world down to get to her? And why does my brain instantly feel better as soon as I have a quiet moment to myself? And why is thinking all these things giving me hot flashes?

“That is a clear sign of Emma Jones overthinking.” Ellie points at the hand I’m using to fan myself.

Sweat pools in places it shouldn’t, and I try to discreetly wipe it away with the underside of my shirt. The heat rises to my cheeks, and Ellie starts fanning me with binder one.

“I’m fine, really.” I shake my hands and any feelings of un-fineness off. “I’ve done this before.”

“Em, you didn’t leave the twins until they were nine months old. It’s okay, and kind of expected, to be wary of leaving a four-month-old.”

The hot flash quickly engulfs me from head to toe. Blazing red hot against my skin and scorching any sense of calm in the process. Desperation is suddenly all I feel as a quivering sob spews out of me.

“What if something happens to her?” I whimper pathetically. My pin-stripe button-up is practically drenched now. “What if I can’t get to her? What if Steven can’t get to her? What if I’m so worried about her I forget the twins?”

“You won’t forget the twins. Nothing will happen to her,” Ellie says, pulling me and my sweaty skin into the crook of her arm.

“How can you be so sure?” My chest tightens, and my mind whirls around the panic button nestled neatly in the center of my brain. It’s right there, ready to be pushed. “What if I’ve made a mistake?” I mutter.

“You won’t know until you actually do something that can be considered a mistake.

” Ellie rubs my arm and squeezes me tighter.

“It’s going to be an adjustment. Anything after having a baby is.

And your worsened anxiety is a result of that too.

Your hormones are trying to figure out who they are again, and you’re at their mercy. ”

“Yay me.”

“It’s totally normal,” Benny says, like he’s suddenly an expert on motherhood and postpartum. “And you have us and Steven to help you.”

“Yeah, sure.” I wave him off, ignoring the hollow dip in my stomach at the sound of my husband’s name. I stand and turn to the boxes that need unpacking before the school bell rings.

Silence stretches between us. Instead of filling it, I grab another box. And then another. The air feels thick—crowded somehow, like it’s paying too much attention to me. Ellie and Benny drift back into their newlywed chatter.

My phone buzzes.

I don’t check it. I don’t have to. I know it’s Steven again.

I keep moving—sifting through folders, stacking files, moving the dragon. My body slips into autopilot, chasing order like if everything around me is neat enough, I might be too.

Another buzz and suddenly my emotions scrape sharp against my skin, like they’re becoming too much. My breathing feels tricky, but I manage, trying to focus on the good things like Ellie mentioned. The true things. But it’s not enough.

My hands tremble against the cardboard. A thousand scenarios crowd my mind at once. It’s an adjustment.

“You’re going to be okay.” Ellie gives me a smile as they leave the office.

She means well. Benny too. Steven probably does too, with all the texts. But even the well-meant things have started to feel like a lot. Stacking on top of the hormones and responsibilities. Expectations I won’t ever meet. Like this unspoken pressure to be strong, steady, to be okay.

Everyone is trying so hard to make this good for me. They’re always trying. And maybe it will be a good thing. Eventually.

But right now, it’s terrifying. It adds to the other thing. The quiet, twisting unease that creeps in every time I think of my husband. The way my stomach knots without permission. I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it.

Still, I shake it off.

That’s what I do. It’s what I have to do.

But standing here, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and Steven’s easy smile frozen in a frame on my desk, a quiet, unwelcome thought slips in.

What if it’s not going to be okay?