The Burning of the Palace at Versailles (or, Butterfly) [REWRITING]

Chapter 1 - The Man on the Roof

And there was also the fact that Melody couldn't remember what she had been doing before the cops had shown up.

But no. She hadn't taken that baby. She was being framed, and they were eventually going to find that out, and she would be released from prison.

The lawyer had sighed. "It's not a bad sentencing."

"It's two years!" Melody's mother had shrieked. She pulled away from Melody. Her eyes were fiery with rage. "If you had just done your job, we wouldn't-"

"Mom, it's okay!" Melody said, and, much to her surprise, her mother stopped screaming at the woman. "The evidence is not on my side. I would have called myself guilty too. If I were writing a piece on this for work, I would write that I was guilty."

Her mother clenched the handkerchief in her fist again. Melody expected her to start yelling at her. But she didn't and instead hugged her daughter to her again. Melody closed her eyes, trying to picture her childhood home. She remembered the wide-open field, which was green in the spring and summer, golden in the fall, and white with snow in the winter. She pictured the tire swing her grandfather had put up for her when she was barely big enough to climb onto it. She tried to remember the flowers in the gardens. Her father had been a gardener. In Japan, he said, gardens were works of art that had to be built and maintained for decades. He had shown her pictures of gravel gardens and Buddist temples that were older than the country they lived in. But Melody had never cared much for the gardens made from gravel or stones. She preferred the flower gardens. She preferred the sun-yellow daffodils that bloomed in the spring. She also liked their other name: Narcissus. It was a beautiful word. She had always loved those gardens and had run to them on the days that her brain felt like it was exploding in her head. Even throughout college, on days when she really felt low, she would drive the hour to her family's home to spend time in the gardens. For the winters, her father would make tiny box gardens for her to take care of, and remind her of the plants even when it was freezing.

"You have to take care of my plants for me," she told her mother.

It probably wasn't the right thing to say at that exact time, as her mother burst into a fresh round of sobs. Those gardens were some of the few things the small family had left from her father. Melody's mother had lost her husband, and now she was losing her daughter for several years.

When some of the fresh waves of tears had subsided, the lawyer spoke again. "I assure you, it's a good sentencing. Versailles isn't really a prison. It's for criminals, yes, but every inmate is also treated as a patient. It's very limited, and everyone there has a history of nonviolence. There are strict rules. As long as you are able to be nonviolent, Versailles is the best possible sentencing you can get."

"So it's a psych ward for criminals?" Melody asked.

The lawyer nodded. "More or less. But as I said, attendance is extremely limited. It's not even a prison building, it's a repurposed mansion. You'll just spend your time there and come back out. It's a good deal."

Melody nodded. There wasn't much else she could do, after all.

She spent her final night before being sent to Versailles in a holding cell. Another woman was there, a quiet woman. Melody tried talking to her, but the woman just stared at the wall in front of her.

"I wouldn't try with that one," the night cop sitting at the desk said. "No one's ever been able to get a word out of her. She didn't even say anything at her trial."

"What did she do?" Melody asked.

The guard shrugged. "You ask me, she's got mafia hitman written all over her."