by Mary McNear
DEDICATION
To Harry and Rose, my bright, shining stars
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Excerpt from Moonlight on Butternut Lake
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Excerpt from Butternut Summer
Chapter 1
Excerpt from The Space Between Sisters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
P.S.
About the author
About the book
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
Okay, sleepyhead, time to wake up,” Allie said, reaching into the backseat of the car and giving her five-year-old son, Wyatt, a gentle prod. “We’re here. We’re at the cabin.” Wyatt stirred but didn’t wake up. She didn’t blame him. It had been a long day. Make that a long week, she corrected herself. And, if she were really counting, it had been a long two years. But she tried, whenever possible, not to count. It didn’t make the time go any faster, or the loss any easier to bear.
She exhaled slowly and resisted the urge to put her head down on the steering wheel. She was exhausted—beyond exhausted, really—and it occurred to her, in that instant, that they could just sleep in the car that night. God knows, they were tired enough.
But no sooner had she considered the idea than she rejected it. This was supposed to be a fresh start. A new beginning. For both of them. It wouldn’t do to wake up in the car tomorrow morning, wearing wrinkled clothes and stretching stiff limbs. They would spend the night in the cabin. The cabin that would hereafter be known as their home.
The only problem with that, she thought, studying the cabin by the light of the car’s headlights, was that it didn’t look very homelike. And that was putting it mildly. Several shingles had fallen off the roof. Knee-high grass was growing right up to the front porch. And the porch itself was listing dangerously to one side.
But it was still standing, she told herself. And that was something, wasn’t it?
It had been over ten years since she’d last seen it. Part of her had thought it might have vanished altogether, swallowed up by the forest around it. But of course that hadn’t happened. This wasn’t a fairy tale. This was real life. She, of all people, knew that. She’d learned it the hard way.
She turned off the car’s headlights, and the cabin all but disappeared into the darkness. She shivered unconsciously. Living on a suburban cul-de-sac these last several years, she’d forgotten how dark the darkness could be.
Maybe she should just keep driving. If memory served her correctly, there was a motel on Highway 169. They could be there in fifteen minutes. But then what? They’d still have to come back here in the morning. And the cabin wouldn’t look any better by daylight. It might, in fact, look worse.
“Mommy?” Wyatt’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Are we there?”
“Yes, we’re here,” she said, in her best imitation of cheerfulness. She turned to smile at him. “We’re at the cabin.”
“The cabin?” Wyatt asked, struggling to get out of his car seat.
“That’s right,” Allie said. “I’ll show you.” She reached for the flashlight in the glove compartment and turned it on. But as soon as she got out of the car, she could see the flashlight was no match for the night’s darkness. Its weak beam barely cut through the blackness. She glanced up at the sky. No moon that she could see, no stars, either.
She shivered again and tried to ignore the sensation that the darkness itself was somehow palpable, like a weight pressing down on her. Even the air, she realized, seemed to have a cottony thickness to it.
She opened the car’s back door, unfastened Wyatt’s seat belt, and lifted him out of his car seat. She settled him on her hip and shone the flashlight in the direction of the cabin.
“There it is,” she said. She hoped her voice sounded reassuring. Especially since she was feeling in need of some reassurance herself. Wyatt frowned in the direction of the cabin.
“I can’t really see it,” he whispered. “It’s so dark.”
“It is dark,” Allie agreed, and her heart sank a little more. But she caught herself. Stop it. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Peace. Quiet. Solitude. And now you’re unnerved by a little darkness?
She reached for the canvas tote bag she’d placed on the backseat beside Wyatt. She’d filled it with everything they might need their first night here. She’d unload their other belongings in the morning. Right now, the important thing was to get Wyatt inside and into bed.
Poor kid, she thought, slamming the car door and walking up the cracked, overgrown flagstone path to the front porch. She’d woken him up at dawn that morning, when the movers had come to put the contents of their house into storage, and, except for a few well-timed rest stops, he’d spent the whole afternoon and evening in the car. But he hadn’t complained. He almost never did that anymore. And it worried Allie. Complaining, after all, was one of childhood’s God-given rights.
She stepped gingerly onto the cabin’s front steps, testing them for stability. They held. So, too, did the warped and slanting front porch. She fished the front door key out of her tote bag and opened the rusted lock. And as she pushed the door open, she said a silent prayer. Something like, Please don’t let there be three generations of raccoons living here now. But when she turned on the lights, the cabin looked exactly as it had the last time she’d seen it. Relief flooded through her.
Wyatt, though, didn’t like what he saw. After a quick look around, he buried his face in the nape of her neck.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Allie asked, lugging him and the tote bag inside and locking the door behind them.
But Wyatt refused to lift his head. He just burrowed it deeper into her neck.
She frowned, looking around the cabin’s living room. It looked fine to her. Homey, even. She could see there was a layer of dust on the furniture, and a few spider webs in the corners of the room. And it was stuffy, after being shut up for so long. But for the most part, it had stood the test of time remarkably well. There was nothing wrong with it that a little elbow grease wouldn’t set right.
Still, she tried to see it from Wyatt’s perspective. After all, he’d lived his whole life in a three-bedroom ranch house replete with all of life’s modern conveniences. By his standards, this cabin wouldn’t just look rustic. It would look downright primitive. But scary? She didn’t think so.
“Wyatt,” she said softly. “What’s wrong, honey? I know it’s not like our old house. But it’s fine, really. It’s just a little dusty, that’s all. And the furniture is a little old. But it’s nothing you and I can’t fix up together.”
But he shook his head violently and whispered something she couldn’t understand.
“What did you say?” she asked, positioning her right ear against his mouth.
“I said ‘he’s looking at us,’ ” he whispered
back.
Allie felt her body stiffen involuntarily. “Who’s looking at us?” she asked, feeling a little unnerved. Okay, a lot unnerved. The movie about the boy who could see dead people came to mind, but Wyatt had never exhibited any such gift. At least, not to her knowledge. She fought down a little shiver of dread.
“Wyatt, who’s looking at us?” she asked again. But he only shook his head and wrapped his arms more tightly around her.
She willed herself to be calm. Nobody is looking at us, she told herself. We’re all alone here. In more ways than one.
So she forced herself to look at the cabin’s living room again. Really look at it. And this time her eyes came to rest, almost immediately, on the antlered buck’s head hanging above the fireplace. Of course, she thought, with a shaky exhale. Wyatt had never seen anything like that before. It would be frightening to him.
“Wyatt,” she asked softly. “Are you afraid of the buck’s head over the fireplace?” He nodded his head emphatically but still didn’t look up.
“Oh, honey, don’t be afraid,” Allie said, snuggling him closer. “It’s not real. I mean, it was real. But it’s not alive anymore. My grandfather, your great-grandfather, brought it back from a hunting trip,” she explained. “It’s been hanging there since before you were born. Since before I was born.” She admitted, “I didn’t really notice it when I was a child. I guess because I was used to it. But I can see why it might be a little frightening to you.”
Unlike her, of course, Wyatt hadn’t been raised in a family of hunters and fishermen. His exposure to wildlife, in fact, had been limited to the fireflies and frogs he’d caught in their backyard in suburban Minneapolis.
With some effort, Wyatt lifted his head up. He shot the buck’s head a quick look. But once again he squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in her neck.
She tried a different tack. “Wyatt, it’s like a stuffed animal,” she explained. “Only bigger. But it’s nothing to be afraid of. I promise you. It can’t hurt you.”
Wyatt cupped his hands around her right ear and whispered directly into it. “But he’s staring at us.”
Allie glanced at the buck’s head again. Maybe it was the angle she was looking at it from. Or a trick of the light. But it did, in fact, appear to be staring at them. She sighed inwardly. This was one difficulty she hadn’t anticipated.
She felt a flash of annoyance. Not at Wyatt. At the taxidermist responsible for the buck’s head. Did he have to make the buck look so realistic? And so . . . so fierce? That buck did not look at all pleased to be hanging up there. In fact, he looked downright angry. No question about it, she thought. He will have to go.
“Wyatt, I’ll take him down tomorrow,” Allie announced decisively. “But until then, can you just not look at him?”
Wyatt lifted his head again and looked at her doubtfully. “I’ll try,” he said. “But, Mom,” he whispered, stealing a sideways glance at him, “where’s the rest of him? That’s just his head.”
All at once, Allie felt exhausted. “The rest of his body . . . isn’t here,” she said finally, opting to skip the gory details. “And after tomorrow, his head won’t be here either, okay?”
Wyatt nodded, apparently satisfied. At least for the time being. As he snuggled back down into her arms again, Allie felt a surge of sympathy for him. She’d taken him away from everything that was familiar to him: his home, his extended family, his friends. And all she had to offer him in exchange was this creaky old cabin. Make that this creepy old cabin, she corrected herself, taking another look at the buck’s head.
She tried to push any negative thoughts out of her mind. Maybe she had made a mistake bringing them here. But that didn’t change the fact that she needed to get Wyatt to bed. And the sooner the better.
But first she looked around for something, anything, that would reassure him. Something that would help him understand, even a little, what it was about this place she had loved as a child.
She settled on the leather couch in the living room. It was old and worn with age. But she knew from experience that it felt deliciously buttery and smooth to the touch. She walked over to it, lowered Wyatt onto it and sat down beside him.
“This couch was my favorite place to read when I was a child,” she said, patting one of its arms. “Especially on rainy days.”
Wyatt frowned, a tiny line creasing his adorable brow. “I don’t know how to read,” he reminded Allie.
“I know that,” she said, tousling his hair. “But you’ll learn how to read. You’ll start kindergarten here this fall.”
But Wyatt shook his head. “There are no kindergartens here,” he said, sadly.
“Of course there are,” Allie said, smiling. “There are kindergartens everywhere.”
Wyatt gave her a pitying look, almost as if he thought she’d lost her mind. “There’s nothing here but trees,” he said, twisting his little body around and looking out one of the cabin’s many windows.
Allie resisted the urge to smile. “It’s true. There are a lot of trees here. And you’re right that there aren’t any kindergartens in these woods. But,” she said, pulling him into her arms and kissing the top of his head, “there is a kindergarten in Butternut. I’ve already told you all about Butternut, the town this lake is named after. It’s only fifteen minutes away from here by car. We’ll drive there tomorrow morning, and I’ll take you to Pearl’s, the little coffee shop there. And if it’s still open—and I hope it is—I’ll order you the best blueberry pancakes this side of the Mississippi. What do you say?”
Wyatt didn’t say anything. He just sighed wearily.
“Time for bed,” Allie said brightly. Maybe a little too brightly. She was fighting that by now familiar sense of guilt. The feeling that she’d failed Wyatt, that she’d somehow been less than the mother he needed her to be. But what was done was done, she reminded herself. They were here now and she needed to make the best of it.
So she helped him change into his pajamas. And she watched while he brushed his teeth. She had another tense moment when she turned on the faucet in the bathroom. There was an alarming gurgling sound before dirty brown water came sputtering out. But after a few seconds, the water ran clear. And Wyatt, fortunately, was too tired to have noticed anything amiss.
Of course, she was working hard to distract him. She kept up a steady, one-sided conversation about all the things they’d do that summer: fish off the pier, swim in the lake, and paddle around in the canoe.
By the time she delivered Wyatt to his bedroom, he seemed reasonably content. The room had been Allie’s room, too, during her childhood summers at the lake. And she was pleased to see that, like the rest of the cabin’s interior, it seemed remarkably well preserved. It was a tiny room, with a steeply sloped ceiling, and knotty pine furniture. There was a colorful braided rag rug on the floor, cheerful red-and-white-checked bedspreads with matching curtains, and an oilskin-shaded lamp that threw a soft glow over everything its light touched.
Being in this room again, Allie felt a wave of nostalgia. But none of this meant anything to Wyatt, she reminded herself. As far as he was concerned, they might as well be spending the night in a motel room. So now he watched, with solemn detachment, while she opened the windows, made up the bed with fresh sheets, and plugged in the night-light she’d remembered to pack in the tote bag.
As she tucked him in, she tried to reassure him. Tried to make an unfamiliar place seem more familiar. “Wyatt, did you know this is the same room I stayed in as a child?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
He shook his head.
“Well, it is. And do you know what the best part of staying in this room is?”
Again he shook his head.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s that when you wake up in the morning, you can see the lake from your window. You can’t see it now because there’s no moonlight tonight. But tomorrow morning, when you look out your window, the lake will feel close enough to touch. And, if it’s a n
ice day, the water will be the bluest blue you’ve ever seen.”
He stared skeptically at the black square of window above his bed.
“It’s there,” Allie reassured him. “And you’re going to love it.”
She reached over now and tried to smooth his hopelessly tangled brown curls, but she quickly gave up. It was impossible. The gesture, though, seemed to soothe him. He sighed and his eyes blinked closed. She waited as he hovered on the edge of sleep.
A moment later, though, he opened his eyes. He seemed suddenly wide-awake again. “Mom?” he asked, a worried expression on his face.
“Yes,” she said, reaching out to stroke his hair again.
“What if Dad can’t see me here?” he asked softly. So softly that Allie had to lean closer to hear him.
At the word Dad she felt the familiar tightening in her chest. But she forced herself to look directly at him. “What do you mean by ‘see you here’?” she asked.
He squirmed a little under the covers. “Well, you said he would always be watching over me. Only now we’re not at home anymore. We’re here instead. So how will he know where to look for me?”
Allie felt her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them back. She was determined not to cry. Not in front of Wyatt, anyway. There’d be plenty of time for that later, after he’d fallen asleep.
“Wyatt, he’ll always know where you are, wherever you go,” Allie explained. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“And he’ll always be watching over me?” Wyatt prompted.
“Always,” Allie said with a smile.
He squirmed again. “Even if I’m getting into trouble?” he asked.
Now it was Allie’s turn to frown. “What do you mean by ‘trouble’?”
“Well, remember when Teddy came over, and we caught that frog?” he asked, suddenly animated. “And we put him in the sink in the laundry room? To live there. Only I didn’t tell you about it. Because I didn’t think you’d let me keep him there. And then you found him anyway. And you got mad. Was he watching me then? Because if he was, he might have been mad at me, too.” He collapsed back on his pillow, slightly out of breath.
Allie shook her head vehemently, still fighting back the tears. “No, Wyatt. He wasn’t mad at you. Not at all. And neither was I. Not really. I was just a little . . . surprised when I found the frog, that’s all.”