Up at Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  No, not hell, he decided. She wouldn’t say hell; she wasn’t a big one for swearing. She’d say something like hell, something that let him know, in no uncertain terms, that his being here was not a good thing and that she wanted him to leave. The sooner the better. He felt a trickle of perspiration start to work its way down from his temple to his jaw. Just thinking about seeing her was making him, quite literally, sweat.

  He reached over now and turned the air-conditioning up and pulled the visor down against the noonday sun. But it didn’t help. He glanced at his watch again. Daisy was now ten minutes late.

  He swallowed, hard. His throat was parched, his mouth as dry as sandpaper. He reached for the water bottle in the drink holder and saw that it was empty. Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t water he wanted, anyway. He wanted a drink, a real drink, a neat tumbler of single-malt whiskey. It swirled around the glass in his mind’s eye, its amber color the loveliest thing he had ever seen. No, not the loveliest, he corrected himself. Because the loveliest thing he’d ever seen was in Pearl’s, right now. She was the reason he was here, sweating in the arctic chill of his air-conditioned truck. He’d give Daisy five more minutes, he decided. Then, with or without her, he was going in.

  At the exact moment Jack Keegan made that resolution, Caroline Keegan was sitting in her cramped office behind the coffee shop, staring at a monthly bank statement on the desk in front of her. She’d already reviewed it carefully, committed it to memory even. But she kept staring at it, hoping the numbers would somehow magically rearrange themselves. They didn’t. She sighed, stretched, and bent to examine it again. Nope. Still the same. She’d have to make that appointment, after all. The one with the bank, the one she’d been absolutely dreading having to make.

  But before she could do that, her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the display. It was Buster, her boyfriend of three years. She hesitated, then let the call go to voice mail, then felt guilty about letting it go to voice mail. Of course, Buster never minded when she didn’t take his calls, though sometimes, honestly, she wished he did mind. Just a little. But that wasn’t fair, she told herself. He didn’t mind because he knew she’d call him back when she found the time. And she would. It was just that, lately, it seemed to be getting harder for her to find the time. Well, she’d think about that later, she decided, scrolling through her cell-phone’s contacts for the bank’s number. But she was interrupted again, this time by a light tap on the door.

  “Do you have a minute?” Frankie, who was the cook at Pearl’s, asked as he opened the door just wide enough to poke his head in.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, though she suppressed a little flicker of irritation as she said it. She wasn’t irritated at Frankie—the man was a saint—but at the constant interruptions that every workday brought with it. Normally, she didn’t mind those interruptions; she even welcomed them. They were what kept her from getting bored. Not today, though. Today she needed to do something about the problem staring up at her from her desktop.

  Still, she smiled at Frankie as she simultaneously motioned him into the office and locked the bank statement back in her top desk drawer.

  “What can I do for you, Frankie?” she asked, as he lumbered in, immediately filling the entire space with his massive bulk.

  “Um, well, it’s not for me. It’s for the customers. They’re complaining—whining, really—that it’s too hot in Pearl’s,” he said, in a tone that suggested they were being unreasonable. Frankie was so loyal to Caroline, and to Pearl’s, that he took even the most minor customer complaint personally. “I don’t think it’s that bad, though,” he added. “I mean, we’re having a heat wave; what do they expect?”

  “They expect to eat their breakfasts in an air-conditioned coffee shop,” Caroline said, automatically.

  “It is air-conditioned,” Frankie objected. “The system’s just a little old.”

  “Frankie, that system is more than just a little old. It’s ancient. It needs to be replaced. You and I both know that. Now our customers know it, too.”

  Frankie sighed, an enormous sigh, and shoved his gigantic hands into his apron pockets. “Well, what do you want me to tell them?”

  “Who’s complaining?” she asked.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester, and Cliff Donahue.”

  She frowned. They were all good customers. “Just . . . just comp their lunches and turn up the fans,” she said. “And ask Jessica to put extra ice in all the water glasses.”

  He nodded and turned to leave.

  “And Frankie? I’ll ask Bill Schelinger to take another look at the air-conditioning. Maybe there’s something he can do with it, at least until I can . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had no idea if, or when, she’d be able to afford a new system, not when Bill Schelinger had already told her it would cost over ten thousand dollars.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it.” Frankie said, flashing her one of his rare smiles. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

  “Thanks, Frankie,” she said, gratefully. And then, with a little frown, “Is Daisy back yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, she’s late then,” she said, her eyes traveling to the clock on her desk. “Which is strange, because believe it or not, she wants me to have lunch with her here today. A sit-down lunch. She made me put it in my date book and everything.”

  “That’s nice,” Frankie said. And it was nice, Caroline thought, but it was also a little odd. Of course, she and Daisy had lunch at Pearl’s every day in the summertime, but they usually just grabbed it whenever they could. They rarely had either the free time, or the free table, to have it together. Maybe, Caroline thought now, Daisy was trying to make some time for them together in an otherwise hectic summer. And she couldn’t argue with that, could she? Since Daisy had started college, their time together had felt all too brief to Caroline.

  “Well, I’ll be getting back to work,” Frankie said, and then he was gone. And Caroline was left to chew distractedly on her lower lip and add the faulty air-conditioning to her list of worries. But she was interrupted again, almost immediately, by another knock on the door.

  “Come in,” she called out, her impatience flaring at this latest interruption.

  The door opened, tentatively, and Jessica, her waitress, leaned in.

  “Caroline?”

  “Yes, Jessica?” Caroline said, stealing herself for this exchange. Jessica was Daisy’s best friend, and although the friendship between the two of them had long been a mystery to Caroline—Daisy, the perennial honor student, on the one hand, and Jessica, the hopeless scatterbrain on the other—she tried to be respectful of it. She’d hired Jessica six weeks ago, after she’d failed out of cosmetology school, as a favor to Daisy. But Caroline had regretted it ever since. Of course everyone had a learning curve when they started waitressing. But Jessica’s was all curve and no learning.

  “Um, there’s a problem with a customer,” Jessica said hesitantly, her brown eyes wide in her heart-shaped face.

  “Yes?” Caroline said, impatiently. Every minute Jessica spent standing here was a minute she wasn’t waiting on tables.

  “Well, it’s kind of awkward, but . . .” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly and fidgeted with her apron strings.

  “Jessica,” Caroline said, closing her eyes and willing herself not to lose her temper, “please tell me this isn’t about one of your ex-boyfriends eating here again. Because I’ve told you before you’re going to have to wait on them the same way you’d wait on any other customer.” And she sighed wearily, because the way Jessica waited on any other customer was with a fairly consistent level of incompetence.

  “Oh no, it’s not one of my exes,” Jessica said now, tucking one of her unruly brown curls behind an ear. “It’s . . . it’s actually one of your exes. I mean, not one of them,” she qualified, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other. “Just your ex. Your ex-husband, I mean. He’s sitting at one of the tables. And he says he wants to see yo
u.”

  “My ex-husband? Here?” Caroline said, her mind a perfect blank.

  Jessica nodded emphatically. “Uh-huh.” But Caroline only stared at her, and Jessica, feeling some explanation was in order, went on. “See, what happened was, I went to take this customer’s order. And I said the patty melt was on special, and he said ‘no, thank you,’ he didn’t want the patty melt, he wanted to see you. And I said you were in your office, and I wasn’t supposed to disturb you there unless it was absolutely necessary. And I said it had already been absolutely necessary three times this morning, and I was hoping it wouldn’t be again, because the last time I interrupted you, you seemed a little irritated. So I told him if I bothered you again, I might get fired, and I really need this job. And he said—”

  “Jessica, stop,” Caroline said. Her brain was finally starting to work again. And her brain told her that Jack Keegan could not be here. “Just back up, honey. Where, in all of this, did this man say he was my ex-husband?”

  “I was getting to that.”

  “Well, get to it faster.”

  “He said he didn’t want to get me in trouble, but I’d still need to tell you that Jack Keegan, your ex-husband and Daisy’s father, was here. And that he wanted to see you.”

  Jack? Here? After all this time? It took a lot to shock Caroline. But this did it. This completely, and totally, shocked her.

  “What do you want me to tell him?” Jessica asked now. “Because I’ll tell him anything you want me to, Caroline. Even if it’s not true. I mean, I try not to tell lies, I really do. Especially big lies. But small lies are different; sometimes you can’t help telling them. Well, you can help telling them but—”

  “Jessica, please. Just . . . just stop talking. Just for a minute,” Caroline said, needing it to be quiet in the office. Needing to think—and think quickly.

  “No,” she said, after a moment of silence.

  “No, what?”

  “No, I won’t see him, Jessica,” she said, knowing that it was the only possible answer to his request to see her. “Tell Jack—Mr. Keegan—that he has no business turning up here, without warning, in the middle of the workday. And, furthermore, that I can’t imagine why he’s here, or what he could possibly want.”

  “I, I don’t know if I can remember all that,” Jessica said worriedly. “I mean, not exactly the way you said it. Should I write it down?”

  “No,” Caroline snapped. “Just tell him I can’t, I won’t, see him.”

  “Okay,” Jessica said, scurrying out of the office and closing the door behind her.

  But it seemed to Caroline that not sixty seconds later she was back, knocking on the door again.

  “Yes, Jessica?”

  Jessica opened the door, slightly breathless. “Caroline, I told him what you said, and he said to tell you he’s not leaving until after you see him. He said he’ll sit at that table all afternoon if necessary.”

  “He actually said that?” Caroline asked, her face flushing with anger.

  Jessica nodded anxiously. “Do you want me to have Frankie ask him to leave?” This was generally how they dealt with the rare unwanted customer at Pearl’s. Frankie asked them to leave. He never had to do more than ask them either. Having people listen to you was one of the perks of being six feet six inches tall and weighing three hundred pounds.

  “No, don’t tell Frankie,” Caroline said. “It’s tempting. But Jack is just brave enough—or stupid enough, I should say—to take Frankie on. And I don’t want there to be a scene. I’ll ask him to leave myself.”

  So she was going to see him again, she thought, after eighteen years. And then something occurred to her, something that made the corners of her mouth twitch up in a smile. She’d often wondered, since he’d left, if the passage of time would be kind to Jack’s looks, and she’d decided that it probably wouldn’t be. After all, all those years of hard living would take their toll on anyone, even someone as good-looking as Jack. She pictured him now with a receding hairline, a spreading waistline, and a jowly neck.

  “How does he look?” she asked Jessica suddenly. “Does he, you know, look bad?”

  “Bad how?” Jessica frowned.

  “Bad like . . . well, like old and kind of broken down. You know, bloated. Puffy. The way a man looks when a lifetime of bad habits finally catches up with him.”

  Jessica looked perplexed for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I don’t know what he looked like before. But he looks good now. I mean, really good. When I first walked over to his table—before I knew he was Daisy’s father, because now, of course, it feels a little strange to think this—but when I first walked over there, I thought, ‘This guy’s not from around here. If he were, I’d remember him.’ We don’t have that many—”

  “Okay, that’s enough, Jessica,” Caroline said with a flash of annoyance. “You can get back to work now. I’ll handle Mr. Keegan.”

  Jessica nodded and started to leave, but Caroline called her back. “Where’s he sitting, hon?”

  Jessica considered. “At table five, I think. Or maybe it’s table seven. I get them mixed up. It’s the one—”

  “Never mind,” Caroline said distractedly. “I’ll find him.” Jessica nodded and closed the door behind her. And Caroline stood up from her chair and then immediately sat back down again. She wasn’t just angry, she realized; she was nervous, too. Which was ridiculous, really. She had nothing to be nervous about. He was the one who should be nervous. He was the interloper here, not her. And not Daisy. Daisy! In all the tumult following Jessica’s news, she’d completely forgotten about Daisy.

  Thank God she was late, she thought, glancing at her watch. Thank God she hadn’t seen her father. Hadn’t seen her father yet, she corrected herself. And just like that, her nervousness was gone, replaced by a pure, blind fury. She practically catapulted herself out of her chair, flinging the office door open and running down the narrow hallway to the coffee shop’s back door. It was one thing for Jack to spring himself on her, she thought, her mind racing as fast as her body; it was another thing for him to spring himself on their daughter. After all, Daisy had long since accepted the fact that her father was a father in name only. The last thing she needed now was for him to reappear, opening up old wounds and bringing back old memories.

  Caroline opened the back door to Pearl’s and came out from behind the counter, her eyes scanning the room. There he was, at table five. Table five, Jessica, she thought, gritting her teeth and heading straight for him. He didn’t look up. Instead, he leaned back comfortably in his chair, glancing casually at the menu, acting as if his being here were the most natural thing in the world, as if the only thing on his mind was whether to order the BLT or the turkey club.

  When Caroline reached him, she stopped abruptly, and, resting her hands on the tabletop, she leaned across it toward him.

  “Jack,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He looked surprised, shocked even, but only for a second. After that, he recovered his equilibrium, his infuriating equilibrium. “Caroline,” he said, putting down his menu, “I don’t remember you ever swearing before.”

  “Well, I don’t remember ever having as good a reason to swear before, Jack,” she said, leaning a fraction of an inch closer to him. “But we don’t have time to discuss that now. You need to leave before Daisy gets back. And I mean it,” she added. “She’s not going to see you here today. Today or any day. Is that clear?”

  “Caroline, calm down,” he said. But she saw a worried expression flit briefly over his face.

  “I will not calm down,” she said, bringing her fist down on the table hard enough to make the ice jump in Jack’s glass of water, hard enough to make the customers at the table next to theirs stop their forks in midair and turn to stare. But Caroline, usually the consummate professional, didn’t care if she was making a scene.

  “Caroline, it’s all right,” Jack said, his tone placating. “I’ve alread
y seen Daisy. Not today. But recently. And she knows I’m here now. She’s supposed to be here now, too.”

  “What?” was all Caroline could say.

  “Look,” he said, almost gently. “Sit down, okay? Just for a minute. And I’ll explain it all to you. Or I’ll try to, anyway.”

  Caroline, moving mechanically, pulled out the chair across from him and sat down on it. Not because she thought sitting down at the same table with him was a good idea. She didn’t. But because she couldn’t think of anything else to do right at this moment. She was, quite simply, in shock.

  “Miss, excuse me,” she heard Jack say, at the periphery of her consciousness. “Can you bring Ms. Keegan a glass of ice water?” A moment later, Jessica was back with the water and, looming up behind her, was Frankie.

  “Is there a problem here?” Frankie asked, towering over their table. Caroline took a sip of the water and watched while Frankie gave Jack the once-over. She’d seen Frankie do this to men before, with predictable results. But Jack, she saw, more than held his own, returning Frankie’s stare with a cool, levelheaded one of his own. Jack, she knew, was an excellent poker player. Whatever else you could say about the man, he knew how to bluff.

  “There’s no problem,” Jack said. “I’m just meeting my ex-wife for lunch.”

  Frankie’s face registered surprise, something it rarely did. “Is he . . . is he who he says he is?” he asked, looking at Caroline.

  She nodded dumbly.

  “Do you, uh, do you want him to stay?” Frankie asked.

  She hesitated, then nodded again.

  “Well, okay,” Frankie said uncertainly. “But let me know if you change your mind,” he added. He glowered at Jack again and left the table. Caroline, meanwhile, sipped her water and felt her shock beginning to recede. That was when she looked over at Jack and saw him—really saw him—for the first time that day.