A Yellow Scarf

Casey was six years old when her father gave her the yellow scarf with the pink and blue butterfly embroidered at the top corner. 

She didn't understand until years later what that scarf had to do with the events that followed.  She remembered being home, sitting on the beige carpet with her grey blanket wrapped around her shoulders and watching TV with her mom.  She thought maybe it was The Night Rider, but that didn't matter.  The second she heard the back door open and the heavy clomp of his boots on the back porch, she leapt up, discarding the blanket on the floor, and ran to the back door. 

There was a ritual to this.  She stood in the kitchen, looking across at him where he stood three steps down at the back door.  She smiled at him, and he winked.  And she jumped.  This was the moment she loved the most.  She leaped off the step and into his waiting arms where he caught her and gave her a great big hug and she buried her face in his shoulder and smelled the familiar scent of cigarettes and cologne. 

He gave her the present later when they were back to sitting around the TV.  He pulled a light yellow scarf out of his pocket and passed it to her.  There was a little pink and blue butterfly embroidered in the corner. 

"Where did that come from?"  Her mom asked. 

He just shrugged and smiled.  "Found it in a truck stop."   

"Someone lost it?"

"Something like that."  he answered. 

And that was the beginning of the end of everything. 

Casey loved that scarf.  She loved it because her father gave it to her and she loved her father.  She loved it because she lived the feeling of the soft silky fabric as she ran her fingertips over it.  She loved it for the butterfly someone had lovingly hand sewed in the corner in blue and pink threat.  She loved it because she could wrap it around her neck and pretend to be a grown up woman like the ones she saw on TV and her art teacher who was never without a scarf around her neck. 

She wore it to school every day.  She showed it off proudly to everyone who would pay attention.  She named the butterfly in the corner daisy. 

When the detective came to school and they called her to the office, that was the first thing he asked to see. 

She showed it to him as proudly as she showed everyone else.  She never wondered why he would be asking. 

"That's a pretty scarf Casey.  Where did you get it from?" 

"My daddy gave it to me." 

"Where did your daddy get it from?"

"He said he found it."  She answered.  And she cried when the detective took it away from her and she was told to return to class without it. 

When she came home from school that evening her mother was crying and her father was gone.  He never came back home. 

For a long time Casey blamed herself, even though she wasn't really sure what it was she'd done.  How It had something to do with the scarf, that was obvious, and seeing as it was her scarf, it had to have been her fault, right? 

The next time she saw the scarf was on the evening news, only the scarf was being worn by a pretty girl with long blond hair.  The news man said they had a suspect in custody.  They showed a picture of her father. 

Months later she repeated the same thing she'd said to the detective at school in a courtroom filled with people.  She smiled and waved at her father sitting at a table at the front of the room.  He smiled back at her.  They wouldn't let her go sit with him.  They wouldn't even let her go hug him.  It made her cry that he was so close, but she still couldn't be with him.  At that time she still didn't understand why everyone cared so much about a scarf.