Up at Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  “Where’s your son?”

  “Over there,” Allie said, gesturing to Wyatt. He wobbled the flashlight beam in their direction.

  “Well, grab him and let’s go,” Walker said, opening the door again, and Allie saw then that he’d left his pickup truck’s engine running and its headlights turned on.

  “Go where?” she asked.

  “To my cabin,” he said, quietly but urgently, glancing over at Wyatt. “I don’t want to scare your son, but there’s a tornado watch in effect for this whole county until two A.M. tonight. At least three of them have already touched down in this area. And you two aren’t staying here.” He glanced around and added, “Because this pile of twigs looks like it would come down in a stiff breeze, never mind a tornado.”

  Allie stared back at him.

  “And don’t think, for one second,” he said, mistaking her hesitation for a refusal, “that this has anything to do with my asking you out when you were at the boatyard the other day. It doesn’t. Trust me. I don’t have to work this hard to get a date.”

  But that wasn’t what Allie was thinking. She was thinking, A tornado? Up here? Living in suburban Minneapolis they’d been a fact of life, but it hadn’t occurred to her to worry about them this far north. Tornados, as a general rule, liked wide-open spaces. They were less common in densely wooded places like northern Minnesota. But they weren’t unheard of. She remembered one summer, as a child, when her father had taken her to see a cabin on Butternut Lake that had been leveled by a tornado. Fortunately, nobody had been injured. The family who owned the cabin had been away at the time.

  “Let’s go,” she said, suddenly. She hurried over to Wyatt, her heart pounding. But she forced herself to speak calmly as she knelt down beside him.

  “Wyatt, Mr. Ford is going to take us back to his cabin with him.”

  “Why?” Wyatt asked, still holding the flashlight.

  “Because . . .” She hesitated, a hundred convenient lies coming to her mind. But she decided to stick with the truth. “Because this is a bad storm,” she said. “And Mr. Ford thinks we’ll be safer at his cabin.”

  Wyatt nodded, and she picked him up and carried him to the front door, where Walker was waiting impatiently. Her mind was racing. She was wearing what she’d planned to sleep in that night—a tank top and a pair of pajama bottoms—but there was no time to change now. So she stepped into a pair of flip-flops she’d left beside the door, grabbed the cabin’s key off a hook on the wall, and stuffed them into the pocket of her pajama bottoms.

  “Ready?” Walker asked. She nodded and followed him out the door, pulling it closed behind her. She was shocked at how dark it had gotten outside. The storm, she could see, was directly over them now, and the sky was as black as midnight, except when it was illuminated by frequent bursts of lightning.

  Walker opened the passenger-side door of his pickup for them, and she boosted Wyatt in. As she scrambled in behind him, she felt the first raindrops on her shoulders. Walker started to slam the truck’s door behind them, but the wind caught it and almost flung it back open. Walker shut it again, forcefully, then hurried around to the driver’s-side door.

  Allie fastened the seat belt clumsily around her and Wyatt, and Walker launched himself into the driver’s seat and yanked his door closed. He stepped on the gas and the truck lurched. He turned it around and drove, too fast, down the driveway.

  But by the time they reached the road, Allie was worried about more than the speed at which Walker was driving. The wind was blowing harder now, so hard, in fact, that it was littering branches and even small trees down on the road’s surface. Walker had to swerve around some of them, and Allie tried not to think about the possibility of a car coming from the opposite direction on this narrow road. Meanwhile, the rain, which had started as big drops splashing onto the truck’s windows, started coming down faster. Soon, it was sheeting over the front windshield, and the windshield wipers, going full speed, barely put a dent in its deluge.

  “Damn it,” she heard Walker say, under his breath. She didn’t ask him what was wrong. She already knew. Between the wind and the rain, the visibility on the road was practically nil. How Walker was even keeping his truck on it was a mystery to her.

  She turned to Wyatt. He was staring, stoically, ahead of him. She gave him a reassuring squeeze, just as Walker turned sharply into what she assumed was his driveway. As they started down it, there was a sharp, cracking sound as something landed on the roof of the truck. The sound came again, and then again, until it was so close together that it was nearly continuous, and so loud that Allie shielded Wyatt’s ears with her hands.

  “What is it, Mommy?” he asked, fearfully.

  “It’s hail,” she said, into one of his ears, “And it’ll be over soon.” They both watched as a flash of lightning illuminated the view through the front windshield, where golf-ball-sized hail was bouncing off the hood of the truck.

  Allie squinted ahead and saw, with surprise, the lighted windows of Walker’s cabin coming into view. “Didn’t you lose power, too?” she called.

  “I have a generator,” Walker said, pulling into the cabin’s carport.

  Of course you do, Allie thought. And you probably have a whole drawer full of flashlight batteries, too.

  “All right, let’s go,” Walker said, putting on the brakes and cutting the engine. Allie unfastened the seat belt and slid out of the truck, still holding Wyatt in her arms. She slammed the truck’s door and prepared to run the short distance between the carport and the cabin’s front door.

  “Ready?” Walker asked.

  “Ready,” she said.

  She followed him, running full out, the rain soaking her skin, the wind whipping her hair, and the last of the hailstones biting into her skin. Lightning flared overhead, and she heard an ear-splitting crash that even in her near panic she knew was the sound of lightning striking a tree. She held Wyatt tighter, and he buried his head deeper into her chest.

  Then Walker was opening the front door and pushing them both through it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, when he’d slammed it behind them and they were standing in the cabin’s vestibule.

  “I think so,” Allie said, breathing hard and shifting a sodden Wyatt from one hip to the other. “Where should we go?” she asked Walker, her adrenaline still spiking. “To your cellar?”

  He shook his head. “No, I think we’re okay here,” he said, leading them into the cabin’s living room. “I built this place to withstand winds of up to a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour.”

  “That’s . . . that’s very impressive,” Allie murmured, feeling some of the tension ebb out of Wyatt’s little body. And as her eyes followed his around the living room, she understood. It was ablaze with light, and from the thick wooden beams that crossed the high vaulted ceiling to the enormous fieldstone fireplace that took up most of one wall, it looked incredibly solid. It felt solid, too. Outside, the storm continued to rage, but inside, it seemed somehow far away. Insubstantial.

  “I’m going to get you two a couple of towels,” Walker said, and he disappeared.

  “Mommy, it’s so big,” Wyatt breathed, looking around.

  “It is big,” Allie agreed. It’s too big, she wanted to say. But she caught herself. Its bigness was the reason they were safe here. Their cabin might be smaller and cozier, but then again, their cabin might not actually be standing there anymore.

  Walker returned now, handing Allie a couple of towels. “I’m going to be in my study,” he said. “I’m tracking the storm on Doppler radar.”

  She frowned. “The thing that meteorologists use?”

  He nodded. “Fishermen use it, too. We sell it at the boatyard. Do you want me to show you how it works? You can see how powerful this storm is.”

  “No, thanks,” Allie said, a little weakly. “I think I already have a pretty good idea of how powerful it is.”

  “Right,” he said, with a quick smile. And then he was gone.

 
Allie finally put Wyatt down, then rubbed one of the towels over his damp curls. “That’s better,” she said, after a few minutes, and turned her attention to herself. There wasn’t much she could do, though. Her tank top clung to her damply, and her pajama bottoms were positively soggy. She sighed, patting herself ineffectually with the towel.

  Why is it that both times I’ve come here, she wondered, I’ve been barely dressed, and sopping wet? She felt a flicker of irritation at Walker Ford, which she knew was unfair. After all, it wasn’t his fault she kept getting into trouble, and he kept getting her out of it. Still, it was annoying. The man was so damned . . . capable. So prepared. He had Doppler radar, for God’s sake. And she had . . . well, not much, really. Other than Wyatt. And an obviously misplaced faith in her ability to care for their little family by herself.

  When she’d done her best to dry them both off, she led Wyatt over to one of Walker’s massive couches, and, careful to spread a sheepskin throw over the leather to protect it from their damp clothes, she sat down and settled Wyatt in beside her. Then she pulled another sheepskin throw over the two of them. Wyatt didn’t want to talk. She could tell that. He was still alert, and watchful. But gradually, he relaxed, and, as she stroked his forehead gently, he finally drifted off to sleep.

  After that, Allie tried to keep herself awake. But it was hard, especially once the storm outside started to subside. There was something soothing about the sounds of its receding fury, the distant thunder, the dying wind, the now only occasional creaking of the cabin’s rafters. Finally, she drifted off too, only to jerk awake when, sometime later, Walker touched her shoulder.

  “How are you two doing?” he asked.

  “We’re fine, thanks,” Allie said, straightening up and brushing her hair out of her face. She was embarrassed that he’d discovered her sleeping. It seemed like such an intimate thing to have someone see you doing.

  But Walker wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Wyatt, asleep in her lap, and, as he did so, she saw something soften in his face. “He’s a brave little guy,” he said, quietly.

  “He is brave,” Allie agreed. He’s had to be.

  “I thought you should know the tornado watch was lifted,” he said. “For now, anyway. But that storm is part of a whole system of storms that’s going to be moving across the region over the next several hours.”

  “There are more like that one?” she asked, appalled.

  Walker nodded. “In the meantime, you two will have to spend the night here. I’d take you home, but the roads aren’t drivable. I can take you back by boat by tomorrow, though, as soon as there’s a break in the weather.”

  “I think we’ll have imposed on you enough by then,” Allie said, apologetically.

  But he only shrugged. “Let me show you the guest room, okay?”

  Allie followed him, a sleeping Wyatt in her arms, to a downstairs bedroom with twin beds. Like the rest of the cabin, it was both impersonal and luxurious at the same time. Not unlike a resort, she decided. As opposed to, say, someone’s actual home.

  She put Wyatt down on one of the beds, and he barely stirred. She turned back to Walker, who was standing in the doorway.

  “Thanks,” she said, again. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

  But he waved her thanks away. “Do you need anything? A change of clothes?” His dark blue eyes took in her wrinkled tank top and pajama bottoms.

  She shook her head, and her face felt warm. But to cover her self-consciousness, she said, “My clothes are fine. They’re practically dry now. And, anyway, I’m too tired to care.”

  He nodded. “There’s a bathroom down the hall. And extra blankets in the closet. And, uh, let me know if you need anything else, all right?”

  “I will,” she lied.

  “Well, good night then,” he said, turning to go. But just as he was closing the door he paused. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “you should call Caroline in the morning. She was worried about you two tonight.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She called me on my cell phone. She said she’d tried to reach you at your cabin but your phone was out. She was afraid you didn’t know about the storm, and she was hoping I’d check on you two.”

  “Is that why you came over?”

  “No. Actually, when she called, I was already on my way out the door. I wasn’t going to let you ride out a storm like this alone,” he said, and he closed the door.

  Allie tucked Wyatt into bed and got into the other bed herself, turning the light off on the bedside table between them. Then she tried to sleep. She really did. But soon another storm rolled in, and then another one. Eventually, she lost track of them, and they all seemed to somehow run together. She dozed off, occasionally, for a few minutes at a time, flashing on images from the night: Walker’s hands on the steering wheel of his truck; Walker’s face when he looked at Wyatt asleep on the couch. But no sooner would she see these things than she’d jerk awake again, disoriented in the unfamiliar bed.

  She told herself it was the storms that were disturbing her, but she knew they weren’t the only thing making her restive. Something else was bothering her. Something right on the edge of her consciousness. Something she had to keep pushing away. Because while the storm had been scary, she had a feeling that this thing—this feeling—was a whole lot scarier.

  CHAPTER 16

  Walker was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the sun-drenched kitchen the next morning when he sensed, rather than saw, Allie standing behind him.

  “Good morning,” she said, lingering in the doorway.

  He turned around, and she waved, a halfhearted little wave. She was embarrassed, he realized, and he couldn’t really blame her. They didn’t know each other well enough to be doing the whole “morning after” thing. Not that anything had happened between them last night—anything intimate, at least—but it was still awkward. He felt it, too.

  “Good morning,” he said, pouring half-and-half into his coffee. “How’d you sleep last night?”

  “Not very well,” she admitted, folding her arms protectively across her chest. She was still wearing the clothes she’d been wearing when he’d picked her and Wyatt up at their cabin last night. A tank top, pajama bottoms, and flip-flops. He tried, but failed, not to stare at her almost-bare shoulders. Her arms tightened across her chest.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked, trying to fill the conversational void.

  She nodded. “I’d love one,” she said, coming tentatively into the kitchen. He poured her a cup.

  “Half-and-half?” he asked.

  “I’ll get it,” she said, standing next to him. He handed her the cup and she took it, then reached for the carton of half-and-half on the counter and sloshed some into the cup. He handed her a spoon, and she smiled appreciatively as she gave her coffee a quick stir.

  He drank his own coffee and watched her. Her honey-colored hair, normally trained into a neat ponytail, fell loose and tousled on her shoulders, and her hazel eyes, usually closer to brown, looked strikingly green in the light streaming in through the windows. But it was her mouth he found especially captivating this morning. It was the palest shade of pink, and it looked so soft right now, so vulnerable. He felt an unfamiliar tightness in his chest, a constriction in his breathing.

  “Is Wyatt still asleep?” he asked, trying to ignore the strange sensation.

  She nodded. “He slept straight through the night.”

  “That’s amazing,” Walker said. He hadn’t slept at all. But he didn’t know how much of that had had to do with the storm.

  “It is amazing,” she agreed, sipping her coffee. “When he was a baby, he used to sleep so soundly, for so long, that a couple of times I woke him up just to make sure he was all right. Then my neighbor, who’d raised four children of her own, told me you never wake up your second child.” She smiled, shaking her head at the memory. “I guess I’ll never know,” she added, more to herself than to him. And then she blushed
, hard, and looked away. She obviously felt like she’d said too much.

  But Walker was thoughtful. Did she really believe that? That she’d never have a second child? He thought it was probably too soon to know, especially given how young she was. But he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. Not by a long shot.

  “What about you?” she asked. “How’d you sleep?”

  “I didn’t sleep at all,” he confessed.

  “Not even a little?” she asked, surprised.

  He shook his head. “No. At some point, I guess, I just realized it wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Were you worried?” she asked, frowning slightly. “About the boatyard, I mean?”

  “Worried?” he repeated, dumbly. He was thinking about how pretty her mouth was. Even frowning.

  “No,” he said, finally understanding her question. “I wasn’t worried. I called Cliff, after you and Wyatt went to bed. He was there, and he gave me an update. There was very little damage, actually. We got most of the boats inside yesterday afternoon.”

  “So you knew about the storm?”

  “I thought everyone did,” he said. It wasn’t a judgment. Just a statement.

  She sighed. “I didn’t know about it,” she said, guiltily. “I was completely oblivious.” She added, with a little shudder, “If it hadn’t been for you, last night might have ended very differently.”

  He started to tell her something, but she put her empty coffee cup down on the counter with such force that it startled him.

  “I’m such an idiot,” she said, her jaw tightening. “Otherwise, I would have had a cell phone. Or a generator. Or—”

  “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said, interrupting her.

  “Why not?” she asked, her face flushing. “Why shouldn’t I be? I’m the one who had the brilliant idea of moving us up here. Of starting over again. Of having peace, and quiet, and solitude. None of which, by the way, Wyatt ever asked for. And I was so determined that we’d do everything on our own. So determined, and so completely unprepared. I mean, last night I realized I didn’t even have flashlight batteries, for God’s sake.