by Mary McNear
But he stopped when Mila stood up from the table so suddenly that she knocked over her iced tea, and then he watched, silently, as she rushed out of the coffee shop, bumping into a few more tables and chairs on her way out.
“Uh, Caroline,” Reid called out to the coffee shop’s owner, who was still hovering nearby, holding the baby. “I think we’re going to need your help over here again.”
He glanced over at his brother and sister-in-law, who both looked appalled.
“What?” he said, with mock innocence. “I thought that went very well.”
Mila was standing down the block from the coffee shop, under the dripping awning of the hardware store, when Allie caught up to her. She’d brought her baby with her— a girl, judging from the pale yellow sweater she was wearing— and the baby, as if sensing somehow how miserable Mila was, smiled at her.
And Mila, trying not to cry, smiled back at her. Even in her present misery, it was impossible not to. Most babies were cute, she supposed, but this one seemed especially so, with her downy brown hair and wide blue eyes.
“She likes you,” Allie said encouragingly.
“She’s adorable,” Mila said, watching as the baby now sucked contentedly on her chubby little hand.
“She missed her nap today, in all the excitement,” Allie said, resettling the baby on her hip. “So far, so good, though. But I’m . . . I’m sorry about that.” She gestured in the direction of the coffee shop. “I’m not going to ask you to excuse Reid’s behavior, since, obviously, there is no excuse for it.”
Mila shrugged, but she didn’t say anything. She was afraid if she did, the tears would start. She could feel them gathering behind her eyes and burning in her throat. They were tears of anger, and humiliation.
“Look,” Allie said now. “He’s not like that all the time. Most of the time, yes. But sometimes, every once in a great while, he can be almost pleasant to be around.” She smiled at Mila, and Mila saw that she was joking. A little. Mila tried to smile back. She didn’t blame Allie for her brother-in-law’s behavior. She and her husband both seemed like nice people. A little overwhelmed, maybe. But nice.
“No, seriously,” Allie said. “He was different before the accident. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Even then, he didn’t expend a lot of energy on, um . . . personal relationships. But that was mainly because he was a complete workaholic. It was all about the business with him.”
“The business?”
“He and my husband own a couple of dozen boatyards, all over the Midwest,” Allie explained. “Walker did some of the work, of course, building their company. But Reid was the driving force behind it. He worked all the time. We’re talking sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. And he’d be on the road two hundred and fifty days a year. It was crazy.” She shook her head. “Walker and I visited him once at his apartment in Minneapolis, and I swear, he had nothing in the refrigerator. Nothing. Not even, like, a jar of mustard or something. The only sign that someone even lived in that apartment, as I recall, was some dry cleaning hanging in the hall closet.” She shuddered at the memory.
“Anyway,” she continued, “that was the way he lived then. If he had any friends who weren’t his brother and I, or his business associates, I wasn’t aware of them. There were some women, of course. Quite a few of them, actually. But I never met any of them. I don’t think he was interested in a real relationship. I think he was the kind of guy who didn’t like to stick around in the morning, if you know what I mean.”
Mila knew what she meant, but she was having trouble believing it. Reid, the man in the wheelchair, didn’t look like he could have been a womanizer for the simple reason that no woman in her right mind would have been interested in him. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He wasn’t. Even his long hair— long enough to be falling in his eyes— and his scruffy beard couldn’t hide the fact that he was a good-looking man. But his personality was so unattractive. Yuck, she thought. Who would have wanted to spend time with someone as boorish and as rude as he was?
But Allie, seeing the skepticism on Mila’s face, only laughed. “No, it’s true,” she said. “Woman liked him. He was good-looking. He still is good-looking, somewhere under all that facial hair. And as for the rest of him, well, he could be very charming when he wanted to be.”
Mila considered this. It seemed unlikely. In fact, the man in the coffee shop was so uncharming that she was having difficulty imagining how she was going to spend the next three months with him. And Allie, watching her, sighed and shifted the baby to her other hip.
“Mila, I understand how you must be feeling about Reid right now. I really do. But you have to trust me when I say that there’s a nice guy in there somewhere. In fact, I’ll tell you something about Reid that’ll prove it to you.”
Mila raised her eyebrows, curious in spite of herself.
“When my husband was growing up, Reid was the closest thing to a parent— a good parent— that he had. His actual parents had a terrible marriage— you know, one of those relationships that makes kids feel like they were living in a war zone— and then, when they finally got divorced, things got worse. They still fought all the time, only now they used the kids as weapons against each other. Finally, though, their dad just kind of washed his hands of all three of them, and their mom just kind of checked out. I mean, she was there, but she wasn’t really there.”
Mila nodded. Her own mother had belonged to the same school of parenting, the there-but-not-there school. Except, of course, that in her case she really hadn’t been there a lot of the time. When she had been there, though, it hadn’t been much different.
“Anyway,” Allie continued, “that left Reid to be both parents to Walker, even though he was only a few years older than him. And you know what? He did it. He really did. He went to all his Little League games, and he helped him with his homework, and once, when Walker was having trouble with a class, he even went to a parent-teacher conference for him. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for Reid, I don’t know where Walker would have been. On his own, I guess.”
Mila knew something about that, too.
“So there you have it,” Allie said, shifting the baby back to the other hip. “That’s how I know Reid can be a good guy. When he chooses to be one, of course. Which, admittedly, doesn’t happen very often anymore. But, Mila?”
“Yes,” Mila said, relieved that the urge to cry had finally passed.
“Walker and I really need this to work out,” Allie said. “And I’m guessing you need it to work out, too.”
Mila looked at her sharply, wondering what Allie knew about her. But then she realized that Allie knew only what the agency had told her about her, which wasn’t much. Only her professional qualifications. What she’d meant, probably, was that if Mila had had any other offers, she probably would have taken one closer to home.
Mila studied Allie then and decided that she liked her. She was pretty, with long, shiny, golden brown hair and bright hazel eyes. But more than that, she seemed nice. Genuine, open, and warm. Mila couldn’t let her guard down around her, of course. She couldn’t let her guard down around anyone. But when it came to working with Reid, she figured she could use an ally, and the sooner, the better.
“So what do you think?” Allie asked hopefully. “Are you willing to give it a try? Walker and I are only three miles and one phone call away. And I promise, both of us stop by at least once a day. Sometimes more. And anytime you need us to be there, we can be. Even if it’s on short notice. I’ll make sure Walker gives you both of our cell-phone numbers, okay?”
“Okay,” Mila said, trying, and failing, to smile. The thought of going home with Reid now, and of being left alone with him eventually, was filling her with an almost palpable dread. Still, it could be worse. It could be a lot worse. And, as she remembered how much worse it could be, her eyes traveled up and down the length of Butternut’s Main Street, checking to see if she’d been followed. But . . . no. It was quiet. Just a rainy June afternoon in a small to
wn. A very pretty small town, she thought. And it was true. Even on a gray day like today, Butternut’s prettiness shone through. All the businesses on Main Street, for instance, had cheerful striped awnings, flower boxes, and brightly painted wooden benches for people to sit on. Taking this all in, Mila was reminded of the illustrations of small towns in children’s books she used to stare at longingly as a child. She’d lived in a the city then, of course, but not the nice part of the city. She’d lived in a drab, hardscrabble part of it, where no one thought to plant flower boxes or worried that tired people might not have a bench to sit on.
Mila turned her eyes back to Allie and Brooke just in time to see Brooke yawn a miniature yawn and bury her face against Allie’s shoulder.
“Listen, I need to get going,” Allie said apologetically. “I’ve got to pick up my son, Wyatt, at day camp, and I’m hoping it’s not too late for Brooke to take a nap in her car seat. But Walker and I are going to switch cars, and he’s going to drive you and Reid out to the cabin in the wheelchair-accessible van, all right? And, Mila?” she added, with a gentle smile. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. And thank you for staying.”
“You’re welcome,” Mila said, with her best imitation of a smile, but standing there, under the dripping canopy, and feeling as gray as the rain itself, she thought, Lucky for you I have nowhere else to go.
Click here to buy Moonlight on Butternut Lake.
Excerpt from Butternut Summer
CHAPTER 1
When Daisy Keegan heard the high-pitched squealing sound coming from the engine of her mother’s pickup truck that morning, she did what her mother had taught her to do in situations like this: she turned up the radio. There. Problem solved. If she couldn’t hear the noise, the engine wasn’t making it. It was that simple.
Except that it wasn’t. Because damned if the noise didn’t get louder. She turned the radio up all the way, but she could still hear it. “This is not happening,” Daisy muttered. Not today. She glanced at the dashboard clock. She had exactly thirty minutes to get home, unload the truck (it was full of the restaurant supplies she’d bought that morning at the wholesale warehouse in Ely), and change into something halfway presentable to wear to lunch with her parents.
Lunch with her parents, she thought, working hard to ignore the engine noise that was getting harder to ignore. What a strange concept; not for everyone, of course, but for her anyway. The fact was, to the best of Daisy’s knowledge, she’d never once, in her twenty-one years of life, had lunch with both her parents at the same time. And maybe, her subconscious told her now, there was a perfectly good reason for that.
But an alarming new development interrupted her thoughts. The truck was losing power. Fast. She pumped the accelerator, but nothing happened. She checked the rearview mirror. It was blessedly empty. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the county road she’d taken as a shortcut back from Ely. Still, she couldn’t stay on it—not if the truck was about to stall out.
Think, Daisy. Think. There was a ser vice station about a mile from here, right outside the town of Winton. With a little luck—and God knows she deserved a little luck—she could coax the truck all the way there. Then, maybe, with a little more luck, she could persuade someone to repair the engine while she waited, or, if there wasn’t time to repair it, rig something up that would last long enough to get her home. She probably wouldn’t have enough time then to unload the truck, or change her clothes, but she might have enough time to pull into a parking space on Main Street, dash into Pearl’s café, slide into a seat at the lunch table with her parents, smile sweetly, and say something like, “You know, we really should do this more often.”
No, she wouldn’t say that, she decided, turning off the county road onto a local street and passing a winton, unincorporated sign. Sarcasm wasn’t her style. Instead, she’d say something like, “We should have done this sooner.” Or “I know we’ve never done this before, but maybe now we can do it more often. Start a new tradition . . .”
Daisy was still rehearsing possible conversational openings when she pulled into the ser vice station. The truck was practically crawling by now, and the engine’s squeal was so loud that a guy came out of the office to investigate. Daisy turned down the radio and rolled down the window, wincing at the blast of hot air that immediately overtook the truck’s admittedly feeble air-conditioning system.
“That doesn’t sound good,” he said with a friendly smile, coming over to the driver’s-side window. He was young and blond, and he was wearing a baseball cap.
“It’s not good,” Daisy agreed. “I’m losing power, too. Do you think you could take a look at it?” Please, please say yes.
“No,” he said. “I’m not a mechanic.” Then he added, “But Will is,” pointing with his chin in the direction of the ser vice bay. “Are you in a hurry?”
Daisy nodded her head emphatically. “A huge hurry.”
“Well, let’s go then,” he said with another smile, motioning her out of the truck. “Leave it running. I’ll take it from here. You can wait in the office, if you want. Out of the heat.”
“Thanks,” Daisy said gratefully, opening the door and sliding out.
“Daisy, right?” he asked, taking her place in the truck.
“Right,” Daisy said, realizing that he looked vaguely familiar, but unsure of why. “High school,” he said, answering her un-asked question as he pulled the door closed behind him. “I was a couple of years ahead of you.”
“Oh, right,” Daisy said, placing him now, but still mentally searching for his name.
“Jason,” he said, “Jason Weber.” He smiled again, then drove the truck, which was still squealing, into the ser vice bay.
Jason, she thought, walking across a pavement so blisteringly hot she could feel it through the soles of her rubber sneakers. That’s right; she did remember him. Daisy’s hometown of Butternut, Minnesota, five miles from here, was too small to have a high school of its own, so instead it merged with four other towns in the area, Winton being one of them. She tried to picture what Jason had been like in high school, but she could only conjure up the faintest image of him. Their social lives hadn’t overlapped. Then again, between maintaining a perfect grade point average and playing varsity volleyball, Daisy hadn’t had much of a social life anyway.
She tugged now at the glass door to the office and entered its air-conditioned coolness. Then she sat down on a metal folding chair, crossed her legs, and tried to simulate calmness. She quickly gave up, though, and started pacing up and down the small room instead, stopping only when a calendar hanging on the wall caught her attention. It was a calendar for an engine parts company, but the blond, bikini-clad model on display for the month of June didn’t look like someone who knew the difference between an alternator and a carburetor. Daisy leaned closer, frowning at the photograph, and wondering if the model’s glistening body owed its bronze color to a spray tan or to a good, old-fashioned, carcinogenic suntan. The former, she decided, thinking of her own almost preternaturally pale skin. It wasn’t humanly possible to get that tan naturally. And, judging from the photo, her tan wasn’t the only thing that model hadn’t come by naturally. Honestly, Daisy thought, leaning closer, this calendar would be more appropriate hanging in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room than in a ser vice station office. But her disapproval was mixed with curiosity, and she was flipping the calendar to July when Jason came back into the office.
“Oh, hi,” she said, dropping the page on the calendar and taking a little jump back. Jason, though, didn’t seem to notice what she’d been doing.
“Jeez, do you think it could get any hotter?” he asked, yanking the door closed behind him. “And it’s only the beginning of June.”
“It’s hot all right,” Daisy agreed.
“So Will’s looking at your engine,” Jason said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of a gunmetal gray desk piled high with papers.
“Did he say how long it would take to fix it?”
He shook his head. “No. But he’ll know as soon as he figures out what’s wrong with it.”
“But it could be really quick, right?” she asked, glancing at her watch and fighting down a new wave of panic. She had fifteen minutes to get to her lunch.
“Could be quick,” Jason said. “It depends on what the problem is. And whether it needs a new part, and whether or not we have the part in stock.”
“Could I . . . could I go see for myself?” “Sure,” he said, shrugging. “Will won’t mind. Do you remember Will Hughes? He went to high school with us.”
She thought for a moment. “Not really,” she said. “But his name sounds familiar.” She was leaving the office when Jason asked, “Hey, your mom owns that coffee shop in Butternut, doesn’t she? Pearl’s?”
Daisy turned back and nodded, her politeness overriding her impatience. “That’s right.”
“Best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had,” Jason said, a little wistfully.
“I know. It’s famous for them,” Daisy said. And it’s where I should be right now, staking out a table in the middle of the lunch rush.
She gave Jason a quick smile and walked out of the office and into the blinding sunlight. Then she skirted around the station to the ser vice bay and ducked inside, blinking as her eyes adjusted to its relative dimness. It was surprisingly cool in there, and it smelled pleasantly of motor oil and rubber and damp concrete.
When her eyes had had a moment to adjust, she saw a young man—Will, presumably—standing in front of her truck. He had the hood up and was poking around in the engine with some kind of wrench.
“Will?” she said, coming closer.
He glanced up and nodded, and Daisy felt a little jolt of recognition. As it turned out, she did remember Will. Almost better than she liked to admit. In high school, he’d been what Daisy and her friends had thought of as a bad boy. (Not that a boy had had to be very bad to get that designation from them. From their perspective on the student council, anyone who cut the occasional class or got the occasional detention qualified as bad.) Still, in her innocence, Daisy had found Will just different enough, just dangerous enough, to be appealing—from a safe distance, anyway. And, looking at him now, she saw an image of him as he’d been then, sitting in the bleachers at the athletic field with his friends, smoking cigarettes.