Moonlight on Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  “Reid,” Mila whispered. “I think he’s already here. Cutting the phone line . . . That’s him. He works construction. He knows how to do that kind of thing.

  Reid looked at his iPad. Walker’s e-mail was still open in front of him. He clicked on reply and started typing.

  She looked positively gray now. “Reid, where’s your cell phone?” she whispered.

  “I left it on the kitchen table this morning,” he said, and he finished typing and pressed send.

  “I’ll get it,” Mila said, turning to go. And before he could stop her she left the room, closing the door behind her.

  He checked his iPad again. No reply from Walker yet. Please let Walker still be at his desk and still be checking his e-mail.

  Breathe, Mila. Breathe, she told herself, and as she walked through the living room she drew in a ragged little breath. Now keep breathing, because you’ll be useless to Reid, and to yourself, if you faint again. When she walked into the kitchen, she saw Reid’s cell phone on the breakfast table, caught in an intricate pattern of sunlight and shadows. And something about the way the light danced along a jagged edge made her look at the windowpanes on the kitchen door. That’s when she saw that one of the panes had been broken, but before she could register what this meant, she was grabbed from behind.

  “Brandon,” she whispered through his hand, which was now clamped over her mouth.

  “That’s right, Mila.” His voice was a menacing whisper. “What did I tell you? I told you I’d never let you go. I meant it.” As he said this he turned her around and pushed her back up against the wall, and, pressing his forearm against her chest, he pinned her there. “Don’t even think about screaming,” he said.

  She tried to focus on him, tried to formulate a plan, but she couldn’t think clearly. He started ranting, telling her how she’d wrecked everything, ruined their life together. He had no job, no money, no nothing. Nothing but her, and she’d left him. She was coming back with him now, though, and she would have to fix things. Put them right. He said other things, too, things that were harder to follow. They were disjointed. Chaotic. And so, too, was his appearance. His hair was greasy, and his T-shirt stained, both of which were unlike him. He’d always taken care of the way he looked before.

  His tirade ended abruptly. “Who’s that man?” he asked, his eyes coming into focus.

  Mila felt a new stab of fear. “There’s no man,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Yes, there is. I saw a man in the other room. I saw him through the window.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her heart beating faster.

  “Yes, you do. He’s sitting at a desk. Who is he?” He moved his arm up, so that it was pressing against her neck. “Who is he, Mila?” he repeated, pressing harder. “Answer me.”

  “He’s a patient,” she rasped finally, her hands trying to push his arm away.

  “Hold still,” he said in her ear. “Or I’ll hurt you.” And then, “I don’t think he’s a patient. He looks all right to me.”

  She shook her head. She had to get Brandon to leave before Reid knew he was here. If Reid knew he was here, he would try to protect her, with potentially disastrous results. She would go with Brandon now, she decided, but she would only stay with him long enough to get him away from Reid.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered to him, still fighting for breath.

  But he shook his head. “Who is that man?” he asked her again. “Have you been living here with him?” More pressure on her neck.

  “Let go of her.” Reid, she thought, and her fear was mixed with relief. Brandon swung around, and she sucked in some welcome air. Reid was standing ten feet away, in the kitchen doorway. Brandon jerked her away from the wall, and holding her arms tightly behind her, he turned her so that she was between him and Reid.

  “Who the hell are you?” Brandon said.

  Reid ignored the question. “You need to leave.” His voice was calm, but his taut body looked poised to strike.

  Brandon yanked Mila closer to him. “We’re both leaving. I’ll be back for you later.”

  Mila felt a surge of panic, and she started to struggle against Brandon. But he only tightened his grip on her.

  “You’re not taking Mila. The police are on their way. And unless you want to spend the night in a jail cell . . .”

  “You’re lying,” Brandon taunted. “The police aren’t coming. I cut the phone and Internet lines, and your cell phone’s right there,” he said, his eyes darting to the kitchen table.

  “I didn’t need those. I used my iPad.”

  Mila felt Brandon tense. He tightened his arms around her. “We’re going together,” he said in her ear.

  “Did you hear that?” Reid said quietly. “That’s a police siren.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Brandon said, but he cast a nervous glance toward the door. In the next second, Mila heard it: the faint whine of a siren. She wondered if, in her desperation, she was imagining it. But then Brandon heard it, too. “Son of a bitch,” he said, under his breath and he scanned the room rapidly, his eyes stopping on the knife holder on the kitchen counter.

  “Brandon, go,” Mila said, trying to distract him. She knew that the longer he was there, the more likely things were to spin out of control. “This isn’t going to end the way you want it to,” she said. “It was never going to end the way you wanted it to. I’m not your wife anymore.”

  “You’ll always be my wife,” he said, but as he said it there was a hunted quality about him. He was afraid, Mila saw, with surprise.

  “If you don’t leave now, you’ll be arrested,” Reid said. “You won’t be with Mila. You’ll be sitting in a jail cell.”

  Brandon wavered, and in the silence that followed the sirens sounded again. They were getting closer. But Mila knew from experience how far sounds carried out here. The police might still be five miles away. Then again, Brandon didn’t know that.

  He turned her to him, and his grip on her arm tightened. “I found you once. I’ll find you again,” he said. And he shoved her, hard, against the wall, and then he was gone, the screen door banging shut behind him. Mila groped for a kitchen chair, but Reid was already beside her.

  Brandon took off through the woods to the place where he’d left his pickup parked on an old logging road a quarter of a mile from the cabin. By the time he reached it, he was scratched and bleeding and he had badly twisted one ankle, but the pain barely registered. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket, his breath coming fast, his whole body trembling with a mixture of anger and fear. With great effort he pulled open the door, climbed into the driver’s seat, and shoved the key into the ignition.

  Just then he heard the sound of sirens again and a surge of adrenaline shot through him. They’re not going to get me, he told himself as he slammed on the accelerator with such force that the pickup lurched up the logging road and shot onto the main road. They can’t get me. I’m not going back to jail. I’m not an animal. I won’t be locked up like one.

  He took a turn wide, not caring that he was taking up the whole road. He had no idea where he was going, only that he was heading away from the town. A truck passed him coming from the other direction and practically grazed his pickup. The driver honked and signaled something to him. He knew he needed to slow down. To make a plan. To figure out what he would do next. But he couldn’t fix on anything. His brain felt crowded. Muddled. He realized he didn’t even know what day it was. What time it was. He’d left that morning to bring Mila back, but nothing had gone according to plan. He’d thought she would leave with him. She was supposed to leave with him. She was meant to be with him. In the past, she’d always done what he’d told her to do. The last time she’d run away, he’d brought her back. She’d come willingly then, hadn’t she? But she seemed so different this time. He didn’t know this Mila. What had she meant, for instance, when she’d said things were not going to end the way he’d wanted them to? But they had to end the way he wanted
them to. There was no other future for him than a future where Mila was always there, always waiting for him.

  He took the next turn too fast and slid onto the shoulder before pulling back. Christ, this road was twisted. Why would Mila have come to this crazy place anyway when she could have been safe at home with him? Christ, it was practically the end of the world, he thought, as blinding green forest flashed by on either side of him.

  A wave of dizziness came over him then. He should have eaten something. He’d wanted to get here so badly, though, he hadn’t had time. And now . . . now he had to start over. Rest. Eat. Plan. And then go back for her. There was so much he had to do over. To do right. The dizziness got worse. He saw Mila at the cabin with that man. Saw her refusing to come with him. Saw her wrecking everything they’d had. “Why’d you do it?” he muttered, speeding up. His car veered, and instead of righting it, he stepped harder on the accelerator. The last thing he saw as his car went off the road was a blur of green branches and the dark, roughened bark of a tree trunk rising up to meet his windshield.

  CHAPTER 27

  Mila lay on her bed, facing the wall. She was willing herself not to think about what had already happened, or what might happen in the future. She had no idea, either, how long she’d been lying there for, but it must have been at least an hour, judging from the shifting light outside. It would be evening soon. She could hear Reid and Walker, still talking in the kitchen.

  After Brandon left, but before the police arrived, she’d had a few minutes to talk to Reid. She’d told him then how sorry she was, how she never should have put him in this kind of danger. But he’d stopped her from saying any more. It wasn’t about blame or guilt, he said. It wasn’t about him or her. They were in this together. And that was the way he wanted it to be.

  Then there was a flurry of activity. A police car pulled up outside, followed shortly by Walker’s pickup truck. She and Reid had spoken to the police. The police, who luckily had been in the area when they got the call from Walker, hadn’t passed any cars on their way to the cabin, so they knew that Brandon had left the driveway heading north on Butternut Lake Drive. They’d radioed another car to try to intercept him coming from the other direction. And Mila had worried, silently, about the possibility of Brandon taking one of the logging roads, and hiding out there until after dark, but she’d said nothing about this to the police.

  When the police left, she’d told Reid, who was obviously worried about her, that she wanted to lie down. She was exhausted, but more than that, she knew the brothers needed time to talk. Walker was visibly upset, and who could blame him? She could hear them now, and she concentrated on Reid’s voice. Something about it made her feel safe. Reassured.

  Finally, though, she heard a car drive up. She got up from the bed and walked over to the window. It was a police car, and for one wild moment she wondered if Brandon had been arrested and was sitting in the backseat. But no, there was no one in the backseat. She watched as two officers got out, and then she went and sat back down on the edge of the bed. He got away, she thought wearily.

  She sat there as the minutes ticked by. Reid and Walker’s voices were joined by the policemen’s voices, and then, finally, there was the sound of everyone leaving. Reid must be alone, she thought, and she went to the kitchen to find him. She saw him before he saw her. He was standing at the kitchen table; a bottle of whiskey and two small glasses, one of which was empty, were on the table.

  “Mila,” he said, when he saw her in the doorway. His expression, which had been one of preoccupation, instantly softened.

  “Come sit down with me,” he said. “I was about to finish my drink. My brother had the idea of finally opening that bottle of whiskey I gave him. Do you want a glass too?”

  She shrugged a tiny shrug, but he took this for a yes and went to get a third glass, then poured a little whiskey in it. She was surprised by his casualness, though it was tempered by concern for her. Still, under the circumstances, he seemed almost too calm.

  She looked at him quizzically as she sat down at the table. “What did the police say?”

  He sat down with her and pulled his glass over to him but didn’t take a sip. Instead he reached for her hand. “He’s gone, Mila.”

  “He got away?” Mila asked.

  “No,” he said, his hand tightening on hers. “He’s dead.”

  She shook her head, not understanding.

  “He hit a tree a couple of miles from the driveway. The police passed the crash site after they left here the first time. Judging from the impact, it looks like he was going way too fast for these roads. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, either. They think he broke his neck. In which case, he died instantly.”

  She stared at Reid, her mind a perfect blank. But it must have been functioning on some level, because she picked up the glass of whiskey. She took a sip, and swallowed, then felt it burn, first as it went down her throat and then as it landed in her stomach. She put the glass down.

  “Why don’t you try drinking the whole thing at once,” Reid suggested.

  So she did. She gulped the rest down, and this time the burning sensation made her eyes water, and the taste, so foreign to her, made her whole body shudder.

  Reid then drank what was left in his own glass. Unlike Mila, though, he didn’t wince when he drank it. She wished that the whiskey brought some relief. But it didn’t. Her head felt a little cloudy, her stomach a little warm, but, mostly, she felt the same. She felt numb. Completely numb, and it scared her.

  “Reid . . . I don’t feel anything,” she confessed.

  “Anything from the whiskey?”

  “Anything at all.”

  “I think you’re in shock, Mila.”

  “I think . . . I think you’re right,” she said softly. “But it feels wrong, somehow. He’s gone and I feel . . . I feel nothing. Nothing at all.” Not even relief, she almost said, but didn’t.

  “I think the feelings will come later,” Reid said.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think they’ll come a little bit at a time, or all at once?”

  “I don’t know that, either. But I know they’ll come, eventually.”

  “I . . . think I’ll lie down,” she said suddenly, knowing even as she said it that sleep was out of the question.

  “That’s a good idea,” Reid said encouragingly. “You must be exhausted.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll be in my room, if you need me,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, standing up.

  She got ready for bed, changing mechanically into her nightgown. She didn’t expect to sleep, but she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, she was sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding, her breath coming fast.

  “He’s gone,” she said, out loud, in the dark room, and, for the first time, the words resonated with her. For the first time, she understood them. And then the feelings came, as Reid had said they would. And they came all at once, one on top of the other, so that she didn’t have even a moment between them to label them, examine them, or understand them. And they were all there: relief, anger, horror, sadness and regret, and even a little guilt. And she knew now she wanted to be with Reid. She went to his room and opened the door. He was still awake.

  “Mila,” he said, sliding over in his bed and reaching for her at the same time. And Mila came into the room, and let him take her into his bed, and his arms, in one fluid motion, and hold her tightly to him. And, Mila, wordlessly, held him back, held him as if her life depended on it, which in a way it did.

  She nestled against him, her face buried in his chest. And then the tears came. Just a few, at first, rolling hotly down her cheeks. She sniffled and blinked them away. But they wouldn’t be stopped. There was more then, a great flood of them.

  And Reid held her and let her cry. And Mila was so grateful to him. He never once suggested she stop. He never made a show of bringing her tissues, or a glass of wa
ter, or a cup of tea or anything like that. And he never said anything, either. Any of the meaningless things people say at a time like this. He never said that everything would be all right. That things would get better. That it was a blessing, really, that it had all happened the way it had.

  He just held her, on and on and on, as her tears soaked through his undershirt. And as the night sky lightened in the east, and then slowly pinkened, and as the sun rose, burning the morning mist off the lake and leaving the grass shimmering with dew, Mila cried. She cried for herself, for the years she’d lost living with Brandon, and for the bruises that had faded from her body but would never fade from her memory. And she cried for Reid, who’d never asked for any of this but had become a part of it anyway, and for Ms. Thompson, who was in the intensive care unit, and for Heather, whom she missed terribly.

  Mila cried for all these things and more. And at some point, and against all odds, she fell asleep in Reid’s arms. He had held her, without words, or judgment, for hours. And only later did Mila realize that she had done what he’d wanted her to do the evening he’d first seen her swim. She had let him love her.

  CHAPTER 28

  Well, I’ll be damned,” Reid said, squinting at the far shore of the lake. He was leaning on his crutches at the living room window, watching a sunset that even by Butternut Lake standards was spectacular. But it wasn’t the sun, an enormous orange globe hovering above the horizon, or the sky, awash in pinks and golds and reds, that had caught Reid’s attention. It was a birch tree across the lake whose upper leaves were already splashed with gold. There was always one tree like this. One tree that began to turn before all the others. It was almost as if it had been put there, Reid thought, to remind the residents of the lake how truly short, and truly ephemeral, the rest of summer would be.

  “Reid, if it’s all right with you, I’ll be leaving now,” Lonnie said, from the doorway to the living room.

  “Oh, of course,” Reid said, turning to her.