Indeed, it was exotic. Butterflies of all colors and sizes zigged and zagged, dove and landed wherever they pleased. On trees, indoor benches, fences, flowers, and people. A vibrant yellow and blue one landed on Dakota’s head. Eric lifted his phone to take a picture. Dakota had no idea. “Dakota, look at me,” he said.

“What?” Dakota said as Eric snapped the picture.

“You’ll see,” Eric said.

“Look at that one,” Caz pointed. Dakota and Eric walked to the fence bordering the walkway and peered into the trees. They spied a small butterfly with transparent wings sitting on top of a stone statue of a small child. Each wing was delicately displayed, each looking like a thin piece of glass.

Eric and Dakota remained at the fence, searching through the trees for more unique varieties. Neither had noticed Caz slip away until Eric finally turned his attention back to the path. They continued stealthily along. “Where did your brother take off to?” Eric asked as they approached a fork in the path.

“I don’t know,” Dakota shrugged. “Well, maybe he went to catch up with Mom and Sam.” Eric regarded both right and left directions. “Which way should we go, Dee?”

“Um…this way.” His little arm stretched out to the left. A large butterfly with muted blue and yellow colors landed on him. Dakota kept his arm outstretched long enough for Eric to take a picture. Click. Click.

The two proceeded to their left, watching some butterflies sipping nectar from a feeder in the shape of a flower sprouting from the ground. Eric was impressed. He had not envisioned the visit to be as interesting as it was shaping up to be. He tried to imagine seeing it all through a child’s eyes. As a child, he had never gone to a butterfly sanctuary. He had been to plenty of zoos, but there was something different about this experience. He tried to put his finger on what that was and resolved that it was seeing so many little living things all in one place—the stars of the show.

The purpose of the sanctuary wasn’t about displaying lions, hippos, giraffe, and bears, but showing a world that one might overlook, which was much smaller than the world that more often demanded attention.

Dakota jumped up on the bottom rung of the fence in front of them as Eric caught site of Caz sitting on a bench in front of them.

“There you are,” Eric called. “I was about to call out the National Guard. Did you see your mother and Sam?”

Caz offered no response. As Eric approached, he noticed Caz’s eyes were closed and his body still. Was he asleep? He had only gone off ten minutes before, and taking a nap on a bench in the middle of a butterfly sanctuary hardly seemed like a Caz thing to do. Or an any person thing to do.

“Caz?” Eric said in a casual but curious way.

Caz’s legs were sprawled out in front of him and his arms limp at either side of his body. His head was pivoted in the sky. Eric gently kicked one of his feet with one of his own feet. “Get up, Caz.”

Caz did not move. Eric couldn’t tell if he was only playing or if Caz was truly asleep or worse. Eric wasn’t one to panic, but his heart did skip a beat. It wouldn’t be the first time his oldest child played a prank of this sort. Eric remembered when Caz was Sam’s age he would love to pretend to be asleep. Sarah would call him time and again. “Oh, Caaaaz,” she would say. When she arrived at his limp body on the couch, floor, or bed she would tickle him, and he would laugh so hard. The game was a staple of his pre-tween years. This was different. He was too old for games like that, and they were in public, not in the comfort of their home.

“Caz!” Eric said with a little more gusto. Still nothing. “Caz, stop fooling around.”

Just as Eric was about to go into a full-blown panic Dakota, in true Dakota fashion, ran over and jumped onto Caz’s lap. Caz’s eyes bulged and he let out a yelp. “Ow!”

As Caz snapped to, Eric peripherally observed a Monarch butterfly take flight from his shoulders. Caz tracked it and smiled. “Ohhhh,” Caz said. “There it is.”

“Oh, what?” Eric asked, annoyed. “What the hell were you doing?”

Caz turned away from the butterfly and back to his father. “Flying,” he said.