Story for the Week
If you’ve never heard of the butterfly effect, it’s the idea that small movements or changes can have significant impact. It is believed that the philosophy derives from the work of mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz, who suggested that the disturbance caused by a butterfly flapping its wings could influence the path of a tornado weeks later.
Possible? It’s a theory.
Shortly after I graduated college, I went to an audiologist. As long as I can remember, I have had tinnitus, a constant ringing in my right ear. In middle school, I failed a hearing test they used to give and had to retake it. In college, when I had my own dorm room, I always slept with the radio on. If it was a little too loud, I didn’t have to get up to turn it down. I just turned to lie on my left side because it was quieter. Before I had a family and shared my car regularly with others, I set the balance on my speakers to be louder on the right. To me it sounded even. And when I’m talking with someone, I make sure they are on my left side or I miss words.
Once I was working and had health insurance, I decided to see a specialist. His first question was if I had a ringing in my ear. Then he used a tuning fork to perform the Weber test, putting the base of the tuning fork up to the middle of my forehead and asking me to tell him when the sound was the same volume in both ears. It was probably a 45-degree angle to the right.
His final test consisted of putting me in a soundproof booth and having me repeat words that he spoke through headphones, sometimes with noise in one ear, sometimes with noise in both. His diagnosis was sensorineural hearing loss, indicating that I seemed to be missing the upper and lower ranges of sounds. He didn’t note any damage to my ear and suspected that I was born with the defect, but the hearing on my left was excellent, so it never really made a huge difference. I had learned to adjust.
I tell you this story specifically to talk about the soundproof booth. 😜
I have never been claustrophobic, but that booth probably brought me the closest to understanding what it might feel like. The booth was literally big enough to house the chair the patient sat in with a little bit of legroom. The door was probably two feet in front of my face, and there was about a foot on either side of me. I heard nothing that was happening outside the booth, and the air inside was completely still. It occurred to me that the world without sound waves felt very different, and I realized how much sound waves make a difference in how the air around you feels.
So when people talk about a butterfly impacting the path of a tornado? It feels like a possibility to me. There are an infinite number of things that move the air around us.
And that leads to the question of the thousands of small decisions we make every single day that might have a big impact over time. If I hadn’t gone to the college I went to and participated in campus ministry, I never would have met my best friend Stephanie. I randomly decided to go into an AT&T chat room and eventually met my husband Dennis, who lived in New York at the time.
I have some amazing friends because of where we bought our home. We weren’t actively looking. Dennis just happened to drive by on his way to the gym one day while the owners were weeding the front lawn. We had literally just renewed a lease two months prior, but because they were outside, he noticed the landscaping and the for sale sign, and he stopped. He never did get to the gym that day, and we were signing the mortgage documents less than a month later.
And I think almost everyone who lived through 9/11 has heard a story about someone who was supposed to be inside one of the buildings or on one of the planes. One of the people I worked with then had a friend who worked in one of the buildings, and she decided to get off the subway a few stops early to walk because it was such a nice day. Seth MacFarlane has famously mentioned that he missed American Airlines Flight 11 that morning, and Mark Wahlberg cancelled his ticket on the same flight the day before.
Darius Rucker released a song called “This” a while back that touched on the seemingly random events in our lives that get us to where we are.
For every stoplight I didn’t make
Every chance I did or I didn’t take
All the nights I went too far
All the girls that broke my heart
All the doors that I had to close
All the things I knew but I didn’t know
Thank God for all I missed
’Cause it led me here to this
Like the girl that I loved in high school
Who said she could do better
Or the college I wanted to go to
Till I got that letter
All the fights and the tears and the heartache
I thought I’d never get through
And the moment I almost gave up
All led me here to you
I didn’t understand it way back when
But sittin’ here right now
It all makes perfect sense
Small moments, little things, like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings….
I was reminded of this idea by the book reviewed below when the main character talks about her mother and father: “…there was the choice she made to walk into a certain corner deli at the exact same moment as my father, and to start talking to him as they waited for their sandwiches. My parents’ collision course was set by as many variables as there are points of light in the sky.”
The butterfly effect. 😊🥰
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
4.5 Stars for House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen
344 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.
Publisher’s Description
On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.
A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?
Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny—in the midst of her parents’ bitter divorce—and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella’s mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.
From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there’s something eerie about the house itself: It’s a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.
As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny’s murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella’s supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?
************
Main Characters:
- Stella Hudson – 38-year-old attorney who lost both of her parents at a young age, her father died swerving to miss a deer in the road, her mother died of a drug overdose, works as a best interest attorney assigned as counsel for teenage children in custody cases
- Charles Huxley – a judge and the closest thing Stella has to a father, he gave her a job after high school and has been her support system through her adult life, he asks her to take on the case for 9-year-old Rose Barclay because of her own traumatic history
- Rose Barclay – 9 years old, presumably saw her nanny fall to her death through a window, hasn’t spoken since, diagnosed with traumatic mutism
- Beth Barclay – Rose’s mother, comes from an extremely wealthy family and filed for divorce when she discovered her husband was having an affair with Rose’s nanny
- Ian Barclay – Rose’s father, a landscaper, came into his marriage to Beth with very little wealth
- Harriet Barclay – Ian’s mother, moved in with Beth and Ian after knee surgery and stayed permanently because she has not recovered full mobility and still walks with a cane, started home schooling Rose after the nanny’s death
I will always seek out Sarah Pekkanen’s new releases. Always. I discovered Pekkanen when I received a physical ARC as a Goodreads giveaway of The Wife Between Us, co-authored with Greer Hendricks. With Hendricks or as a solo author, Pekkanen is a powerhouse.
Told from the first person perspective of Stella Hudson, the story begins with Stella deciding whether to take on Rose’s case in the midst of finalizing her divorce. She considers the case mostly as a favor to Charles, who has been a father figure to her. She feels pulled to the case because of Rose’s traumatic mutism, similar to what Stella experienced as a child when her mother died of a drug overdose.
Stella’s task? She has to submit a recommendation about custody when Beth and Ian’s divorce becomes final. While she spends her time talking with Rose’s family members, she also talks with Rose’s former school teachers, a language teacher, a piano teacher, even the detective investigating the death of Rose’s nanny. Her job is made more difficult by the fact that Rose can’t (or won’t) speak and clearly doesn’t want Stella around.
In the midst of her investigation into the Barclays, Stella relives her own experience with mutism and starts thinking about her own mother’s death. She wants to know what happened, and delving into both Rose’s situation and her own starts to really mess with her emotions.
That’s all I’m going to give you in terms of the story. Pekkanen’s pacing here is perfect. She provides nuggets of information that make you want to keep reading. You will question the characters but not necessarily know why. They just feel off a little bit, which is clearly intentional. You will be suspicious, and when the reveals come, and they do come, you will think to yourself, “I knew there was something, but I was not expecting that!”
This is a great read. You will not regret picking this one up.
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