Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  “Did you get a chance to go over those?” she asked, nodding at the folder.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. That’s the reason I’m here.”

  She stopped wiping. “So you agree with me that it’s hopeless?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t. In fact, I want to set up a time for us to discuss it,” he said, tapping on the file.

  “What about right now?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not at Pearl’s.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, there’s no privacy here,” he said, and, as if to underscore his point, Frankie chose that moment to come through the back door with a bucket and a mop. He nodded at Jack and Caroline, came around from behind the counter, and started stacking the chairs on the tabletops.

  “And, for another thing,” Jack continued, “I’d like us to discuss it over dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Dinner,” he confirmed. “The meal that comes after lunch.”

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  “Good. Because I’d like you to come for dinner at the cabin.”

  She frowned and started wiping the counter again. She didn’t know if that was a good idea.

  “Oh, come on Caroline,” he chided her gently. “Aren’t you just a little curious to see what I’ve done with the place?”

  She sighed. He had her there. Daisy had given her occasional reports on it, but she was dying to see it for herself. But still, she and Jack alone together?

  “This would be business, Caroline. Not pleasure,” he said, reading her mind, and Caroline concentrated on wiping the counter again. Because she was still having trouble reconciling the old Jack with the new Jack. The old Jack, for instance, had had very little interest in business. Pleasure, of course, had been a different matter.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, finally, more to herself than to him.

  “Caroline, I promise, I’ll be on my best behavior. This won’t be a replay of the last time we had dinner together.” Caroline felt her face grow warm at the memory. “So, don’t say no on that account. Unless . . .” He trailed off, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you don’t trust yourself to be alone with me,” he said, dropping his voice so Frankie, who was mopping nearby, wouldn’t hear him.

  “Oh, I think I can handle myself, Jack,” she said coolly, nonetheless remembering another night when he’d taken her home from the Corner Bar and she’d practically pinned him up against the wall at Pearl’s. “But I don’t know how I feel about leaving Daisy alone yet,” she added. “She says she’s fine, but—”

  But Jack shook his head. “Sorry, Caroline. You’re going to have to find another excuse. Daisy told me she’s spending the night at Jessica’s house tonight. She says if she doesn’t get out of that apartment, at least for a night, she’s going to go stir-crazy.”

  “Oh,” Caroline said. She was running out of excuses.

  “Look, what’s the worst that can happen?” Jack pressed. “At the very least, you’ll get a free dinner out of this.”

  “A free grilled cheese sandwich?” Caroline ventured.

  “No, I have something a little more complicated in mind,” he said. And Caroline didn’t answer, because that was exactly what she was afraid of.

  “All right,” Jack said. “Forget dinner at the cabin then. How about a drink there instead?”

  “A drink?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “A sparkling water,” he clarified.

  She hesitated again, but Jack took her hesitation for acquiescence. “Good,” he said, smiling. “I’ll see you tonight. Why don’t we say six o’clock. Oh, and you can have this back.” He pushed the folder across the counter to her. “I don’t need it anymore.”

  She nodded, a little distractedly, already having misgivings about their plans.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” Jack said, and they said their good-byes. Even after he left, though, Caroline kept standing there, dish cloth still in hand but not otherwise moving.

  “Everything okay?” Frankie asked, startling her out of her reverie. He’d finished his work and was toting the mop and bucket into the back room.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, giving the counter a few more halfhearted swipes with the dish cloth. But what she was thinking was, Did I really just agree to go to Jack’s cabin for a drink? She had to admit, with a grudging admiration for her ex-husband, that she had definitely not seen that coming.

  There,” Jessica said proudly, as she examined her handiwork that evening. She and Daisy were sitting on the couch in Jessica’s living room, and Jessica had just finished giving Daisy a manicure.

  “What do you think?” she asked Daisy, blowing on her still-wet nails. Daisy’s hands were resting on a pillow, which Jessica had covered with a dish towel and placed between them on the couch.

  “I think . . . I think they look great,” Daisy said, knowing, even with her limited experience with manicures, that this was not a good one. She had some insight now into why Jessica might have flunked out of cosmetology school before coming to work at Pearl’s. But she smiled at Jessica and said loyally, “It’s very professional. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jessica beamed. “It’s the least I can do for my best friend, who happens to be recovering from an appendectomy. And do you want to see what else we’re doing tonight?”

  “Okay.” Daisy smiled.

  Jessica left the room and hurried back with her arms full. “Well, first of all, I bought all the trashiest magazines,” she said, depositing a stack of glossy magazines onto the coffee table in front of Daisy. “I also rented all our favorite movies,” she continued, putting a half-dozen DVDs, all romantic comedies that she and Daisy had already seen at least ten times, beside the pile of magazines. “And, last but not least, I bought Double Stuff Oreos.” She produced a bag of them with a flourish. “Remember how mad your mom used to get, Daisy, when we used to buy these at the grocery store?” Jessica settled onto the couch beside Daisy. “There was Pearl’s, right downstairs, with all those homemade cookies, and we wanted these instead.” She laughed then, tore into the bag of Oreos, and gave one to Daisy. And Daisy smiled and ate it, dutifully, being careful not to touch it with her fingernails.

  She listened then, or tried to listen anyway, as Jessica reminisced about their growing up together. But as had so often happened that summer, Daisy was having difficulty paying attention. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with Jessica; it was just that if she could have chosen someone to spend the night alone with right now, it wouldn’t have been her . . .

  Daisy had been with Will a couple of hours earlier. Since she’d gotten home from the hospital, he’d gotten into the habit of driving over to see her in the late afternoons, after Pearl’s had closed for the day and her mom and Frankie had left. They were able to find a little privacy then, sitting in one of the back booths, where they talked and kissed, but mainly kissed. It felt wonderfully illicit in its way. But it felt a little torturous, too, to go from spending a whole blissful night alone together to stealing a few hours of kisses in a place where they knew they might be interrupted at any moment.

  But it wasn’t just the lack of privacy that Daisy was struggling with. It was Will, too. He was still sweet, of course, still incredibly solicitous of her. But he was something else, too. Quieter, maybe, or more intense. He seemed burdened by something. It was hard for her to put her finger on it. But she felt it, just the same. Once, he’d told her he wanted to talk to her about something, but no sooner had he brought it up than he dropped it. And when she’d pressed him about it later, he’d changed the subject. It worried her a lot, almost more than she was willing to admit to herself.

  “Daisy, you’re not listening to a word I’m saying,” Jessica observed ruefully, bringing her back to the conversation.

  “You’re right,” Daisy admitted. “I’m sorry.” S
he felt a rush of guilt then, because she knew she hadn’t been a very good friend to Jessica this summer. In fact, she’d barely spoken to her recently, except when she’d asked her to cover for her when she’d gone to Mr. Phipps’s cabin with Will.

  Jessica didn’t seem angry though. “You don’t need to apologize,” she said, fishing in the bag for another Oreo. “It’s not your fault you can’t pay attention. You’re in love. And you only get to fall in love for the first time once,” she added, with a smile, biting into her cookie.

  “That’s true,” Daisy said, feeling a wave of gratitude for her friend. Jessica might never make a good waitress, she thought—she might never even make a decent waitress—but she had the sweetest disposition of anyone Daisy had ever known.

  “Thank you for being so understanding, Jessica,” she said, leaning over and giving her a hug.

  “Oh, it’s easy for me to be understanding about this,” Jessica said, hugging Daisy back. “Because it just so happens that I’m in love right now too.”

  “You are?” Daisy asked, settling back into her spot on the couch and examining her friend. “When did this happen?”

  “It’s been happening all summer. I just didn’t realize it until recently. For the first time, Daisy, I didn’t fall in love fast. I fell in love slow, a little bit at a time, and then, suddenly, all at once,” she added, flushing.

  “That’s wonderful,” Daisy said, beaming at her. “But who is he?”

  “Guess,” Jessica said, her big brown eyes dancing with excitement.

  “Um, okay. Is it someone who comes into Pearl’s?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Is it . . . Oh, I know. Is it that new guy who works at the hardware store? The one who likes his eggs practically raw?”

  “Nope. Try again.”

  Daisy tried again, but it didn’t take her long to exhaust the possibilities. There just weren’t that many young, single men who came into the coffee shop.

  “It’s not one of your ex-boyfriends, is it, Jessica?” she asked, at last. “Because as far as I’m concerned, none of them ever treated you the way you deserve to be treated.”

  “No, it’s not an ex-boyfriend,” Jessica said. “And I agree, Daisy. They were all losers. Keep guessing.”

  But Daisy held her hands up in surrender. “I give up. Tell me.”

  “No, this game is too much fun,” Jessica said with childish pleasure. “But I’ll give you a hint. You know him. Very well. You see him every day.”

  Daisy frowned. “I see him at Pearl’s?”

  Now Jessica was practically squirming with excitement. “Yep.”

  Daisy shook her head slowly.

  “And you said he makes the best hash browns on the whole planet.”

  Daisy looked at Jessica in astonishment. “Frankie?”

  Jessica nodded excitedly. “It’s Frankie. We’re in love, Daisy.”

  Daisy struggled to wrap her brain around this concept. “But Jessica,” she said finally, and not unkindly, “he’s so much older than you.”

  Jessica looked hurt. “He is not. I’m twenty-one. He’s thirty-six. That’s only fifteen years. Lots of people who fall in love have a bigger age difference between them.”

  Daisy nodded. That was true. But did Jessica know everything about Frankie? And if she didn’t, was it Daisy’s place to tell her?

  She deliberated, briefly, then asked, “Jessica, what has Frankie told you about his past?”

  “Everything,” Jessica said promptly. “He told me he killed a man, in self-defense, and that he went to prison. He told me everything; he said he doesn’t want there to be any secrets between us.”

  Daisy was relieved. She wasn’t worried about Frankie’s propensity for violence. Because while she didn’t know all the details of the incident that had ended in Frankie being convicted of voluntary manslaughter, she believed, privately, that he must not have had any choice in the matter. Besides, he’d paid his debt to society, and he’d been a loyal and trusted friend and employee to her mother, though her mother, she knew, had always worried that Frankie was lonely. Well, not anymore, Daisy thought with a smile. Not if he cared as much about Jessica as she cared about him.

  “Does . . . does he love you too, Jessica?” she asked her friend gently.

  Jessica nodded, flushing again. “He calls me his little doll,” she said shyly. “You know, because he’s so much bigger than me. And because he can pick me right up, just like a little—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Daisy said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “That nickname requires no explanation. But you know what does? The fact that I’ve been so oblivious this summer. I mean, not even noticing the two of you falling in love with each other, right in front of me?” And it wasn’t just Jessica and Frankie falling in love either. Something was happening between her parents, too. She was sure of it. Even now, they were having a drink at her dad’s cabin. Her mother had insisted that they were meeting there to discuss business, but Daisy had her doubts.

  Now she shook her head in bemusement. So . . . Will and her, Jessica and Frankie, and now, maybe, her mom and dad. “Jessica,” she said suddenly, “is everybody around here falling in love this summer? I mean, do you think there’s something in the water at Pearl’s?”

  “I don’t know,” Jessica said, considering this. And then her eyes widened with solemn wonder. “But you know, Daisy,” she whispered. “Frankie and I did both drink the water there.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The first thing Caroline saw when she turned into Jack’s driveway that evening was a bright red mailbox with “J. Keegan” stenciled neatly on its side. So Jack really is planning on staying here, she thought, putting down roots and mailboxes at the same time. She remembered now what she’d said to him at the beginning of the summer about his living in Butternut. I’ll give you two weeks, Jack. A month, tops. Well, she’d been wrong about that. What else, she wondered, had she been wrong about?

  But she didn’t have much time to consider this question as she drove down the gravel driveway, because the next thing she knew she was pulling up in front of the cabin, and Jack was coming out of it to meet her.

  “Hey,” he said, as she got out of her pickup. “You’re right on time.”

  “Am I?” she murmured, staring at the cabin, and seeing it, but, at the same time, not really seeing it, because being here was giving her the strangest feeling, a feeling that was the opposite of déjà vu. She’d been here many times before, most recently a few years ago when she’d brought an ailing Wayland a casserole, but right here, right now, she felt as if she’d never been here before. It was totally different, and totally unfamiliar.

  “Jack . . . what did you do to this place?”

  “What didn’t I do to this place?” Jack said, pleased by her reaction. “But come on inside. I’ll show you around.”

  “All right,” she said, following him up the cabin’s front steps. There hadn’t been any front steps the last time she’d been here; there hadn’t been any front porch, either. But now there were steps and a porch, straight and smooth, and built out of a clean, pale yellow pine that hadn’t had time to mellow and darken with age.

  Jack opened the front door, but she paused for a moment on the porch to admire the window boxes, which were painted the same dark green as the trim on the cabin’s windows, but which did not yet have any flowers in them.

  “I built those last week,” Jack said. “I had some extra wood, and some extra paint, but the flowers . . .” He shrugged. “I’m not much of a gardener.”

  “They’re nice,” she said, thinking that they would look even nicer with some impatiens in them.

  “Are you coming?” Jack asked quizzically, standing in the doorway, and she nodded and walked past him into the cabin’s living room, where she stopped and looked around, momentarily speechless.

  “What do you think?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, he led her through the rooms, explaining as he went all
the work he’d done. And Caroline tried to pay attention to what he was telling her, but it wasn’t easy. Her eyes didn’t know where to rest. There was so much to see, so much to absorb: wide-planked pine floors, sparkling new windowpanes, freshly painted walls, a pretty tiled floor in the bathroom, and shiny new appliances in the kitchen. The rooms were still sparsely furnished, but they were so well lit, so comfortable, and so inviting that it was all Caroline could do not to curl up on the buttery leather couch in front of the living room fireplace and demand that Jack give her a book to read right then and there.

  But Jack had other plans.

  “I want to show you the back deck,” he said.

  “Jack, I can’t believe what you’ve done with the place,” she said, as he led her out through a sliding glass door. “I mean, I knew you were working on it, but it’s, it’s . . .” She stopped when she saw that a string of tiny white lights had been strung through the arbor above the deck. They were glowing softly in the evening light. She turned to him in surprise, and he shrugged. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I found a box of lights in the attic. So either Wayland decorated his Christmas tree with them, or he was a secret romantic.”

  Caroline laughed. “The first one, I think,” she said, wandering over to the deck’s railing and admiring the view of the sun setting over the lake in a swirl of pinks and golds and reds.

  “Well, either way it seemed like a shame to let those lights go to waste,” Jack said, coming up beside her. “And I thought they might be nice to look at while we had a drink out here.” He gestured to a little iron table, with two iron chairs. On the table was a bottle of sparkling water, two glasses filled with crushed ice and lemon twists, and a plate with red grapes, cheese, and thinly sliced French bread on it.

  “Jack, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” Caroline protested.

  “It wasn’t any trouble.” He pulled out one of the table’s chairs for her.