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

by McNear, Mary

  “Well, even if you have nothing to say for yourself,” she said, not bothering to keep the irritation out of her voice, “I assume you’d like to know how your wife and daughter are doing.”

  “I don’t need to ask. I know they’re being well taken care of by you.”

  Yes, but you should be the one taking care of them, she almost said. But she caught herself.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I am doing my best to make them comfortable. But there are certain things I can’t do. I can’t, for instance, persuade Jax to stop crying. All she does, Jeremy, all day long, is cry and nurse that baby. At the very least, I’d say, she’s in serious danger of dehydration.”

  She smiled, trying to inject a little humor into the conversation, but Jeremy only said, wearily, “Get to the point, Caroline.”

  “The point,” she said, “is that I want you to ask Jax to come home. Where she belongs. Because you and I both know that no matter how angry or how hurt you are, it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Caroline, I told you. I’m not having this conversation,” Jeremy said, starting to stand up.

  “Well, at least have the decency to hear me out then,” she said, sharply.

  He sighed and sat back down.

  “Jeremy, how much do you know about Jax’s childhood?” she asked, changing tack.

  He shrugged. “Jax doesn’t like to talk about it. But I assume it wasn’t exactly the whole white picket fence thing.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Caroline said. “But I’m going to tell you a little more about it.”

  “Don’t bother, Caroline. Because if you think the fact that her parents were both drunks excuses what she did, I disagree.”

  “It doesn’t excuse it,” Caroline said, carefully. “But it might explain it. Do you know, for instance, that when Jax’s parents got drunk, they used to fight with each other. I mean really fight. Physical stuff? And that when they fought, she would hide in a closet. She was generally safe in there. The only problem was, as she got older, the fighting got worse. That was when she started walking over to Pearl’s. Which, I should point out, was a three-mile walk for her. She did it at all hours of the day and night, too. During the day, my parents would give her breakfast or lunch. And they’d give her something to do around the place and pay her a little money for doing it. They liked her, of course. You couldn’t not like Jax. But mainly, I think, they felt sorry for her.”

  Jeremy still sat stony faced, not looking at her. But Caroline kept talking. “When Jax would come at night, my dad would let her sleep in the storage room. He’d bring down a blanket and pillow for her, and she’d sleep right on top of those enormous bags of flour he kept stacked in there. Then he’d wake her up early, when he came down to start the coffee, so she had enough time to walk home and get changed for school.

  “One night, I remember so clearly. It was in the dead of winter. It must have been twenty degrees below zero. And Jax showed up at around two o’clock in the morning. She was freezing. She’d walked the whole way there through the snow. My mother brought her right up to the apartment and put her to bed. She must have put five blankets on top of her. But it was almost morning before she got her to stop shivering.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Jeremy snapped, finally shaken out of his torpor. “She had a lousy childhood. But, Caroline, it still doesn’t explain why she did what she did. She lied to me. Every day of our marriage. And I let her lie, it’s true. But I never expected this to happen. She took our money—money that we worked so hard to save—and gave it away. Threw it away, really. And she didn’t tell me. She played me for the fool I was, I guess. But I’m not going to be that fool anymore.”

  Caroline shook her head, thinking, desperately, he’s got this all wrong. But she knew there must be some way to get through to him.

  “Jeremy,” she said suddenly. “Did Jax ever tell you why she didn’t want a dishwasher?”

  He looked at her and frowned. “Caroline, I really don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  But she persisted. “Did Jax ever tell you why she didn’t want a dishwasher?”

  He shook his head, impatiently. “I don’t know. She said she liked doing dishes.”

  “Nobody likes doing dishes,” Caroline said. “Jax did them for a special reason. She told me about it once. She didn’t tell you, probably, because she didn’t want to burden you with how unhappy her childhood was. But I was here one day, after you two had gotten married and moved into this house. And I was sitting in your kitchen, watching Jax hand wash the breakfast dishes. I wanted to help her. But she wouldn’t let me. And I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have a dishwasher put in, aren’t you?’ And she said no. And she told me that when she was a child, her family didn’t have any dishes. None at all. It wasn’t because they were poor, though money was scarce, of course. They didn’t have any dishes because her parents would always break them when they fought with each other. So eventually, I guess, someone had the brilliant idea of just not replacing them anymore. So they ate off paper plates, or napkins, or nothing at all, I guess.

  “And she told me that morning, in your kitchen, that every time she washed a dish, she was going to think about how lucky she was to have them. And how lucky she was to have you, too—”

  “Stop it,” Jeremy beseeched, holding his hands up in surrender. “I can’t take it anymore, Caroline. You think I don’t still love her? You think it doesn’t hurt me to hear this? But it doesn’t undo what she already did.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “Nothing can do that. But, Jeremy, don’t you see why Jax gave Bobby that ten thousand dollars? Don’t you see what she was trying to protect? She was trying to protect all the things she thought about every time she washed the dishes. Was it right for her to give him that money? Probably not. Should she have told you about it? Probably. But Jeremy, in Jax’s mind, she didn’t have a choice. She thought if she gave him the money, he would leave you all alone, and you could get back to being what you are. A family who loves each other.

  “I know ten thousand dollars is a lot of money,” she continued, a little breathlessly. “And I know she knows that, too. But I don’t think she put a price on what you had together, Jeremy. To her, I think, what you had was priceless. She gave Bobby Lewis ten thousand dollars. But Jeremy, honestly, I think she would have given him ten million dollars if she’d had it.”

  She stopped, her heart pounding, and waited. There was nothing more she could say. She knew that. The rest was up to Jeremy.

  For a long time, he sat there, motionless, in the armchair. And then he leaned over, his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. Caroline thought he was going to cry. But he didn’t. Although when he spoke again, he sounded so miserable that he might as well have been crying.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Now?” Caroline repeated, her mind racing. “You’re supposed to come with me,” she said, decisively. “Ask Joy to watch the younger girls. Come back with me. And bring your wife and daughter home, where they belong.” She held her breath. But she exhaled when she saw him nod.

  “I’ll talk to Joy,” he said. Then he pushed himself out of the armchair and headed up the stairs.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Caroline unlocked the front door to her apartment. Jax, she saw, was sitting on the couch in the living room, nursing the baby. She looked up when Caroline came in and tried to smile. Then she saw Jeremy behind Caroline.

  “Jeremy?” she said softly, questioningly.

  He nodded and, hesitantly, sat down next to her on the couch.

  He reached out then and stroked Jenna’s fuzzy head, barely visible above the top of her baby blanket.

  “What are you doing here?” Jax asked. She looked both hopeful and afraid at the same time.

  “I came to bring you two home,” Jeremy said, his voice catching, as he gathered them both up in his arms.

  “I need to do some things downstairs,” Caroline s
aid quickly, but neither of them paid any attention to her. Jax started sobbing, uncontrollably, this time with happiness. And by the time she closed the apartment door behind her, Caroline thought Jeremy might be crying a few tears of his own.

  Don’t you start crying, too, she told herself as she went downstairs. But she could already feel her tear glands going into overdrive. Maybe it was okay to have a good cry, she thought, letting herself into the coffee shop, if it was about someone else’s life. And it wasn’t a sad cry, but a happy cry. She started to walk over to the coffee machines behind the counter, but she stopped, midstride, when she passed the cash register. Then she hesitated and, opening it, lifted out the bill drawer and took out Buster Caine’s business card. She studied it for a moment, but only a moment. Time was of the essence here. Too much time and she’d lose her nerve.

  She walked over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed. He answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Buster? Hi. It’s Caroline. Caroline from the coffee shop?”

  There was a pause. Then he said, amused, “I remember you, Caroline.”

  “Is it too late for me to call?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m still awake. What can I do for you?”

  “You can take me up in your plane,” she answered, immediately.

  There was another pause.

  “I mean, if the offer still holds,” she said, quickly.

  “It still holds.”

  “Oh, okay. So what’s a good time for you?”

  “Well, that depends. What time do you close tomorrow?”

  “Three thirty.”

  “Should I come by then?”

  “Yes. And Buster?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really looking forward to this.”

  “Well, then, that makes two of us, Caroline.”

  CHAPTER 31

  On a cool night in September, Allie sat on her front porch steps and tried to stop her knees from shaking. They were doing that thing again, the thing they’d done the day of her and Walker’s picnic. She watched them now, trembling violently, resisting any effort on her part to still them. She wrapped her arms around them and pulled them up to her chest, resting her chin on them. They kept shaking. It was as if they had a mind of their own. As if they knew something she didn’t.

  Which was ridiculous, really. Because all she was doing here tonight was waiting for Walker to come over for an after-dinner cup of coffee. There was something she needed to discuss with him, obviously. Something important. But they were both grown-ups. Both rational people. And this evening would reflect that. There was no reason for her knees to be shaking uncontrollably.

  She glanced at her watch. Eight fifty-five. If he was on time—and she had a feeling he would be—he’d be there in five minutes. But at that exact moment she heard his pickup rumbling up the driveway, heard the spit of gravel flying out from beneath the tires. The truck’s headlights swung into view, briefly illuminating her as they traveled across the porch, then settling on a stand of birch trees that fringed the lake’s shore. Walker cut the engine, and the birch trees jumped back into darkness. He got out of the truck and came around to the porch side of it.

  “Stop it,” Allie whispered, to her still-shaking knees.

  “Hey,” Walker said, raising a hand in greeting as he came up the steps.

  “Hi,” Allie said, standing up, and praying that her wobbly knees wouldn’t buckle under her.

  “Is Wyatt around?”

  “Asleep,” Allie said. “But he put up a good fight before he agreed to go to bed.”

  Walker smiled. “I would expect no less of him.”

  “I thought we’d have coffee out here,” she said, gesturing to the porch. “But it’s a little chilly with the wind off the lake. So maybe we should have it in the living room, instead.” She’d forgotten how early fall came this far north. Already, she could feel the days getting shorter. Shorter and colder. This morning, in fact, when she’d left to drive Wyatt to school, they’d been able to see their breath in the air.

  “It’s a little chilly,” Walker agreed, following her into the cabin. “But then again, today’s September twentieth. The last day of summer. So maybe it’s fitting that it should feel a little bit like winter.”

  The last day of summer, Allie thought, going into the kitchen to turn on the coffeepot. She’d forgotten all about that. Was it possible that she and Wyatt had only lived here for one summer? She remembered back to their first night. The cabin had been a wreck, with its listing front porch and the sputtering brown water that had come out of the faucets.

  But, in truth, she and Wyatt hadn’t been doing much better than the cabin. Outwardly, of course, they’d looked all right. But inside, they’d both been hurting. Badly.

  She came into the living room now and perched, nervously, on the edge of the couch. Walker, who’d been standing around, unsure of what to do, sat down next to her, careful to keep a respectful distance between them.

  She hesitated, trying to find the words to say what she wanted to say, but it was Walker who spoke first.

  “I heard you and Wyatt were away.”

  “We were. For a long weekend.” A long weekend in the truest sense of the word. They’d gone back to Eden Prairie and stayed with friends. She’d cleared out their storage area and given away most of Gregg’s things. A few, she’d saved for Wyatt. A battered hockey stick Gregg had cherished. A guitar he’d played in a garage band in high school. A faded University of Minnesota sweatshirt. These things might not mean anything to Wyatt yet, but someday, she hoped, they would.

  They’d also done something else while they were back in the Twin Cities’ area. They’d visited Gregg’s gravesite and left a picture there that Wyatt had drawn for him. It was a bright crayon drawing of Allie and Wyatt, standing in front of the cabin. Above them was a blue sky, with puffy white clouds and a smiling yellow sun in it. Wyatt had said he hoped Gregg would like it, and Allie had said that she knew he would.

  But she didn’t tell any of this to Walker. Not yet, anyway. There was something else she needed to say first. But it was harder than she’d known it would be. So instead, she stalled. “Do you want some coffee?” she asked, glancing away. “It’s ready.”

  He nodded, distractedly, as if he hadn’t really heard her.

  She got up and went to the kitchen, filled two cups with coffee, and stirred half-and-half into both. When she came back to the living room, though, Walker wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. He was standing in front of the fireplace, staring at the new painting hanging above it.

  “Is that . . . ?” he asked, mystified, pointing to the painting.

  “It is,” she said, handing him his cup of coffee. “It’s the view of your dock, from my dock. Do you like it?”

  He looked at her, uncomprehendingly, and looked back at the painting.

  “Remember the painting you bought for that woman at the Pine Cone Gallery?” Allie said. “It’s by the same artist. I really like his work, and I knew he’s set a lot of his paintings here, on Butternut Lake. So I commissioned it from him. It’s big, so it took him a few days of working on it, painting nonstop. He drove over here and worked on it while Wyatt and I were back in Eden Prairie. It was waiting for us when we came back.”

  “Why that view?” Walker asked.

  “I don’t know.” Allie shrugged. “Maybe because I spent half of my waking hours staring at it this summer. But you know, Walker,” she said, smiling, “if things don’t work out between us this time, I’m going to be stuck with an awfully big reminder of you.”

  “So . . .” He stared at her, waiting for some additional explanation.

  “So . . . I thought about what you said at Pearl’s that day and I decided I want to take that leap of faith. With you, Walker. With us, I mean. I want to try again.”

  “Try again as in ‘you and me’?”

  She nodded. “If that’s what you still want, too,” she said.

  “If
that’s what I still want?” he repeated, disbelievingly. “Allie, are you kidding? I’ve never wanted anything more. But I didn’t think you wanted it. At least not anymore. So I was trying to prepare myself for the worst. Before I came here tonight, I felt like I was on my way to face a firing squad.”

  She laughed. Come to think of it, he had seemed uncharacteristically tense tonight. “So, we’re going to do this? Try this, I mean?” she asked him.

  “We’d be crazy not to,” he said, smiling at her. And that smile practically made her swoon. He reached for her coffee cup then and put it down on the mantelpiece with his. And then he pulled her into his arms, and his lips found hers. “We need to celebrate,” he said, between kisses. “Forget the coffee. Do you have any champagne?”

  “Champagne, no,” Allie said. “Apple juice, maybe.”

  “Apple juice isn’t going to do it,” he said, kissing her neck in that way she loved. “But there are other ways we could celebrate.”

  Allie’s knees wobbled warningly, but there was something she wanted to say to Walker before it was too late.

  “We’ll celebrate,” she said, shivering with desire. “I promise. But there are a few ground rules I want to establish, first.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now,” she said. After all, if the past was any guide, her self-control with Walker wouldn’t last much longer.

  He stopped kissing her neck, but he left his arms around her. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Let’s sit down,” she suggested, gently disentangling herself from him. He followed her to the couch and they sat facing each other.

  “Walker, Gregg was a good husband,” she said, without any preamble.

  “I know that,” Walker said, automatically. If he was surprised at her choice of subjects, he didn’t show it.

  “And a good father,” she added.

  “I know that, too.”

  “I’m not going to forget about him, Walker. And, if I have my way, Wyatt’s not going to forget about him, either.”

  “I don’t want either of you to forget about him,” Walker said, simply.