Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (The Butternut Lake Trilogy)

by McNear, Mary

  “Walker! You’re here, too,” he said, beaming at him and then back at Caroline, who’d come up beside him and taken his hand. He looked as if he could not believe his luck.

  “Hey, buddy,” Walker said, looking genuinely pleased to see Wyatt.

  But Allie shot him a warning look. If he was here to break things off with her—and she felt sure that he was—she didn’t want him making promises to Wyatt he couldn’t keep.

  “Do you want to catch tadpoles with us?” Wyatt asked. But Walker, taking his cue from Allie, seemed suddenly noncommittal. “Maybe some other time,” he said. “Today I’m here to talk to your mom, okay?”

  “Okay,” Wyatt said. “But my mom’s really tired,” he warned. “She helped Jax have a baby last night. Caroline said she’s supposed to take a nap.”

  “Hello, Walker,” Caroline said, now. And despite defending Walker only moments ago, there was a coolness to her tone that Allie had never heard before. Walker, she saw, noticed it, too.

  “Hi, Caroline,” he said, a little uneasily.

  And then to Wyatt he said, “Listen, you’d better catch those tadpoles. They won’t wait all day, you know. And don’t worry about your mom. I know she’s tired. I won’t keep her long.”

  Wyatt nodded happily and let Caroline lead him away.

  “Hi,” Walker said to Allie, his blue eyes serious. “Is it okay if we talk now? I tried to get ahold of you yesterday, but I couldn’t. Your line was busy. And your cell—”

  “I know,” Allie said, sighing inwardly. She’d forgotten to charge her cell phone. What a day for her to be out of reach, she thought. First Jax, and then Walker . . .

  “Anyway, judging from what I heard in town this morning,” he said, “you’ve had your hands full here. And if you’d rather I come back later, after you’ve had a chance to get some rest, that’s fine.”

  But Allie shook her head. “No, now is as good a time as any,” she said, walking back toward the cabin. And she meant it. Whatever Walker had come to say, she knew, wouldn’t be any easier to hear later.

  “Would you like an iced tea?” she asked, pushing the cabin’s screen door open.

  “Sure,” he said. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She poured their iced teas from the pitcher in the refrigerator and sat down across from him. It was hard not to think about another night in this kitchen. A night when he’d kissed her, passionately, just a few feet from where they were now sitting awkwardly.

  He put some sugar in his iced tea. She fiddled with a lemon wedge in hers. But he didn’t say anything.

  Finally, she got impatient. “Look, Walker, we both know why you’re here.”

  “We do?” he asked, surprised.

  “Yes, we do. And since you can’t seem to tell me, I’ll make it easy for you. You’re here because you don’t . . . you don’t want to see me anymore.” There, she’d said it, never mind how much hearing herself say it had hurt.

  “What? No,” Walker said, obviously blindsided. “Why would I not want to see you anymore?”

  “Because your ex-wife is back in your life.”

  He frowned. “You mean back in my life to stay?”

  She shrugged, a tiny shrug.

  “Allie,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong. That is not why I’m here. First of all, my ex-wife and I have been separated for over two years. And we’ve been divorced for over a year. We are not reconciling. That’s not why she’s here.” He shook his head, looking less surprised now than disappointed. “You know, Allie,” he added, “I wish, instead of listening to the Butternut rumor mill, you’d just picked up the phone and asked me why she was here.”

  Allie’s cheeks flushed with anger. “And I wish you’d told me she was coming. Instead of leaving me to rely on the Butternut rumor mill for my information.”

  “Okay, that’s fair,” Walker said, calmly. “And I would have told you she was coming, if I’d known ahead of time.”

  “You mean, she just dropped by?”

  “Yes, she did,” he said. “And believe me, I was as surprised as you are.” He added quickly, “She’s not staying with me, by the way. She’s staying at the White Pines resort. She drove over there last night after we had dinner.”

  After Jax saw her car in your driveway, Allie thought, tracing the pattern in the tablecloth with her fingertip.

  “Look,” he said, after a short silence. “My ex-wife—her name is Caitlin—isn’t here because we’re reconciling. She’s here because we have some loose ends we need to tie up.”

  “Loose ends?” she echoed.

  He sighed. “It’s complicated. It turns out we haven’t quite finished what we started.”

  “So you still care about her?” Allie asked, surprised by how hard the words were to say.

  “Yes, I do—though not in the way you mean. But I realized, Allie, that I can’t start things with you until I’ve ended things with her.”

  “I thought that was the point of getting a divorce, Walker. You ended things with someone.”

  “Well, divorce doesn’t always bring closure. Or it didn’t for us, anyway.”

  Allie felt impatient again. She needed him to get to the point. “Walker, why are you here, exactly?”

  “I’m here to ask for more time,” he said, quietly. “I’m here to ask if we can . . . put things on hold until I can figure this out. Not that long ago, Allie, you needed more time, too,” he added gently.

  Allie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had needed more time. But this was different, wasn’t it? And, suddenly, she knew what she needed to do. What she needed to say. “No,” she said, opening her eyes.

  “No what?”

  “No, Walker, I’m sorry. You can’t have more time. You can’t have more time because it’s over between us.”

  He looked stunned. “Allie, that’s not what I want,” he said.

  “Well, maybe it’s not about what you want, Walker,” she said, studying the tablecloth with renewed interest and trying to ignore the hot, prickly sensation of tears building up in her eyes. “Maybe it’s about what I want, too. And I want it to be over. Now. I knew, from the morning we met at Pearl’s, that it would be a mistake for us to get involved with each other. I should have listened to myself, Walker. I shouldn’t have gotten caught up in the moment. Because I was right. It was a mistake.”

  “I don’t believe that. And I don’t think you believe it either.”

  “You’re wrong,” Allie said, but her voice quavered slightly when she said it.

  “So that night we spent together, that was mistake? And that day on the boat? That was a mistake, too?” he asked, his blue eyes dark with anger.

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. “They may not have felt like mistakes at the time. But in retrospect, I think they were.”

  There was a burst of laughter from down at the lake, and Allie got up and walked over to the kitchen window. If she craned her neck, she could glimpse Caroline and Wyatt through the trees, splashing in the water at the lake’s edge.

  Walker got up and joined her at the window. He watched for a moment, too, then asked, quietly, “Allie, where is this coming from?”

  Allie looked at him, then back out the window. When she spoke again, her voice was mercifully calm, betraying none of the emotional turmoil she felt inside. “Walker, I don’t expect you to understand. You’re not a father. But that little boy down there? He’s my whole world. And I’m his whole world. Because except for a few other people—Caroline, Frankie, Jax’s daughter, Jade—I’m it for him here. He’s already had one parent taken away from him. So I’ve got to be here for him. Every day. All day long. It takes a lot of energy. Physical and emotional. But I have to have that energy. I have to be present in his life. Fully present. I can’t spend my time waiting for you and your ex-wife to find closure. Or hoping that you and I can have a relationship of our own one day. I can’t put my life on hold, Walker. Wyatt deserves better than that. And you know what? I deserv
e better than that, too. And now,” she said, turning to him, “I need you to go. I really do need to get some rest.”

  Walker stared at her, wordlessly, frustration and sadness mingling in his face. Then he shook his head and started to say something, but changed his mind. He left the kitchen, left the cabin, and drove away.

  Allie turned and watched out the other kitchen window as his truck disappeared down the driveway. Then she turned back to the window in front of her and found Wyatt’s red bathing suit through the trees. A single, hot tear slid down her cheek. But that was the only one she allowed herself. She’d cried enough for one day.

  Later that night, as she was putting calamine lotion on Wyatt’s many mosquito bites, she looked for a way to broach the subject of Walker Ford with him. Wyatt needed to know that their Sunday morning fishing trips had ended. But she wanted to break it to him gently, in language he could understand. That meant skipping the part about her relationship with Walker. Or rather, her former relationship with Walker.

  “You missed one,” Wyatt said, interrupting her thoughts. He pointed to a mosquito bite on his elbow and Allie patted it with a calamine-soaked cotton ball.

  Wyatt gave her a grateful smile. Allie thought he looked especially adorable. He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, clean and sweet smelling after his bath, and wearing his favorite pair of pajamas, sky blue with a pattern of puffy white clouds on them.

  “Is that all of them?” she asked, examining his arms.

  Wyatt nodded.

  “You know, Wyatt,” she said, screwing the lid back on the calamine lotion, “this is the same stuff my mother put on me and my mother’s mother put on her.”

  “Same bottle, too?” Wyatt asked, fascinated.

  She chuckled. “No, not the same bottle. But it still looks exactly the same. And it still works as well, too.”

  “But it’s pink,” he objected, examining the splotches of it on his arms and legs.

  Allie tried not to smile. “No, I wouldn’t say it was pink. I’d say it was more of a peachy color.” She tossed the cotton ball into the wastebasket and put the calamine lotion back into the medicine cabinet.

  “All right, big boy,” she said. “Time for bed.”

  “But I haven’t finished my train tracks yet,” Wyatt said, giving her a beseeching look.

  Allie sighed. “Five minutes,” she said sternly, following him into the living room, where he was adding a new spur to his railroad.

  She sat down on the couch, watching him as he worked. When it had been more than five minutes, she gently interrupted him.

  “Wyatt, honey?”

  “Yes,” he said, not looking up. He was lying on his stomach, level with the train track, frowning in concentration as he put a bridge together.

  “Wyatt, I spoke to Walker Ford today. He said he’s going to be really busy at the boatyard, and he’s not going to be able to take you fishing anymore on Sunday mornings.”

  Wyatt paused and looked up.

  “Not even sometimes?” he asked, his face still hopeful.

  “Not even sometimes,” Allie echoed, something catching in her throat. “But you know, Wyatt, we have our own boat now. I can take you fishing anytime. Or we could fish right off the end of our dock. I may not be as good at it as Walker is, but I know all the basics. We could still have fun together.”

  “Maybe,” Wyatt said, going back to working on his train tracks. There would be no tears, Allie realized with relief. Just lingering disappointment. Which, in its own way, was almost as bad as tears.

  The five minutes Allie had told Wyatt he could play for turned into ten. And then fifteen. She knew it was past his bedtime, but something was nagging at her. Something that had been at the edge of her consciousness all day.

  “Wyatt,” she said, tentatively, “do you still miss Eden Prairie?”

  He shrugged. He was running an exploratory train around his system of tracks now, and Allie could tell he wasn’t really listening to her.

  She tried again. “I mean, do you miss our old neighborhood? And our old friends? You know, like Teddy?”

  Wyatt gave a little sigh that was almost comical in its irritation. Like an old man who’d been interrupted while reading the newspaper.

  “Sometimes I miss them,” he said, glancing up from the train tracks.

  “Because I was thinking . . .” I was thinking that moving here may have been a mistake, after all. But that’s not what she said to Wyatt. What she said to Wyatt was, “I was thinking that we could move back to Eden Prairie. We couldn’t have our old house back, of course. We already sold that. But we could rent an apartment there. I could find a job. And you could start kindergarten.”

  Wyatt stopped pushing the train around the tracks and looked up. She had his full attention now.

  “We could still keep the cabin, you know,” she said quickly. “Maybe come up here for a couple of weeks in the summer and see our friends. We just wouldn’t live here all the time anymore.”

  “But I like living here all the time,” Walker said, a frown creasing his smooth little forehead.

  “Why?” Allie asked, knowing that if what he said had anything to do with Walker Ford, it would only strengthen her inclination to leave. Walker was not part of the picture anymore. For her or for Wyatt.

  At first, Wyatt didn’t say anything. He just looked around the living room. And Allie’s eyes followed his as he did. Trying to see what he saw. It looked very different than it had on their first night here, almost three months ago. Between her and Johnny Miller, their handyman, they’d cleaned, painted, buffed, and polished every single inch of the cabin, inside and out. It had been hard work. But it had paid off. This room, for instance, had a soft, warm glow to it, and it looked not only lived in but well cared for, too. Maybe even loved, she realized with surprise.

  “Wyatt,” she persisted, “why do you want to stay here?”

  He looked thoughtful. “Because it’s home,” he said finally. Decisively. And he went back to playing with his train set.

  CHAPTER 28

  So . . . you’re staying?” Jax repeated, not trusting herself to believe what Allie had just said.

  “We’re staying,” Allie agreed, with a rueful smile.

  “Allie, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” Jax said, almost light-headed with relief. It had only been three months since Allie and Wyatt had moved to Butternut, but already it was impossible to imagine life here without them.

  “I’d like to propose a toast, then,” Jax said, giddily, raising her can of Coke. “To Allie and Wyatt staying in Butternut.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Caroline said, and the three of them clinked their soda cans together.

  It was nighttime, and they were sitting at Jax’s kitchen table, eating the pizza that Allie and Caroline had brought over for dinner. Joy, Josie, Jade, and Wyatt had finished dinner already and were watching a movie in the living room. Jenna, now two weeks old, was sleeping in her crib upstairs, her baby monitor flickering on the table in front of Jax.

  “Jax,” Caroline said now, with mock disapproval, “you didn’t really think Allie was going to leave because of some man, did you? I mean, if a woman left Butternut every time a relationship didn’t work out, this town wouldn’t have any women in it.”

  “No, of course I didn’t think that,” Jax said quickly. “I was just worried that after spending the summer here, she might decide Butternut was too dull for her, that’s all.”

  “Dull?” Allie repeated, her eyes widening in disbelief. “Which part of it was dull, Jax? Wyatt and I fleeing our cabin during the tornado watch? Or your unplanned home birth, in my home?”

  Jax laughed. The girl had a point.

  “No, really,” Allie said, her hazel eyes suddenly serious. “When Wyatt said this was our home, I realized he was right. It is our home. We could live in a hundred places, and not find one that felt as much like home as Butternut does, or as that tumbledown old cabin does. What happened between
me and Walker isn’t going to make it feel any less like home, for me or for Wyatt. Besides, things are really getting interesting at work. Sara’s started taking me with her to some of the artists’ studios, and she’s going to let me start managing some of our relationships with them.”

  “Allie, that’s wonderful,” Caroline said, beaming at her.

  “But there is one glitch in this whole plan to stay,” Allie said, breaking off a piece of one of the chocolate chip cookies she’d baked for Jax. “I didn’t realize when I told Walker that I didn’t want to see him anymore that it would be impossible not to see him anymore in a town the size of Butternut.”

  “Do you see him often?” Caroline asked, popping open another can of soda.

  Allie sighed. “All the time. At the gas station, at the grocery store, at the bank.” She ticked the places off on her fingers. “The question is, where haven’t I seen him?”

  “That’s all right,” Caroline said. “You’ll get used to it.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

  “Maybe,” Allie conceded. “But in the meantime, it’s damned awkward. And the strange thing is, while I’m trying to ignore him, he’s just staring at me. Like he’s trying to get my attention. And then, at the grocery store the other day, he started to approach me. Of course, I just hightailed it out of there. But it was almost as if there was something he wanted to say to me.”

  “Maybe there was something he wanted to say to you,” Jax interjected.

  Allie shrugged. “I think he said it all, don’t you?”

  “What he said, Allie, was that he needed more time,” Caroline pointed out. “He never said he didn’t care about you.”

  Allie frowned, still picking at her cookie. “No, he never said he didn’t care about me. And I think he does care, in his way. But he’s not ready to have a serious relationship. And you know what?” she asked, looking at both of them in turn. “I’m not sure I’m ready to have one either.”

  “Is this about you feeling guilty?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes. Yes and no,” Allie said. “During that time we were together I was so caught up in the moment that I . . . I didn’t think about Gregg as much as I should have.”