Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (The Butternut Lake Trilogy)

by McNear, Mary

  Then she smiled, remembering something. “You know, Wyatt, your dad did much more mischievous things than that when he was a little boy. I’ll tell you about them sometime, okay?”

  He nodded, obviously relieved.

  “And Wyatt? From now on, why don’t we say that your dad is only looking down on you when you need him to, all right? I mean, he’ll always be there for you. But he doesn’t have to watch you every minute of every day. He knows you’re a big boy now. He knows that most of the time you can take care of yourself.”

  Wyatt nodded again, this time sleepily. And Allie made a mental note to be more careful of how she phrased things in the future, given how literal Wyatt’s thinking still was.

  Now, he snuggled deeper under the covers and Allie looked out the window. She found the break in the trees that denoted the lake. It was too dark to see the water, but her eyes followed what she knew to be the shoreline. About half a mile away, across the bay, she saw a lighted dock. She frowned. A dock meant a house, and a house meant a neighbor. There hadn’t been any neighbors the last time she was here. Her family’s cabin had had the whole bay to itself.

  She sighed. She should have known there would be changes here, too. Even in Butternut, Minnesota, time didn’t stand still. But a neighbor? That hadn’t been part of her plan. Her plan had been to come to a place where there were no neighbors. At least not any close by.

  She thought of their neighbors back home in Eden Prairie. They’d tried to be helpful. They’d brought her and Wyatt an endless procession of casseroles. They’d raked their leaves, shoveled snow out of their driveway, and mowed their lawn. All without asking.

  She knew she should have been grateful. And she was, to a point. But she couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been easier to grieve privately. Without feeling that you’d somehow become a curiosity. Someone to stare at, surreptitiously, at the grocery store, or speak to, a little self-consciously, at the playground.

  Of course, the novelty of her widowhood had eventually worn off, but what had replaced it was worse. Because what came next were the suggestions, sometimes from family and friends, sometimes from only casual acquaintances, that it might be time to move on, to pick up the pieces. She was still young, they’d pointed out. There was no reason to think there wouldn’t be another husband someday. Maybe even another child.

  These conversations, it turned out, and not the pitying glances, had been Allie’s breaking point. When they’d started, she’d known it was time to leave.

  Now, sitting on the edge of Wyatt’s bed, she gave herself a little shake, trying to throw off some of the exhaustion that had settled over her. She listened, for a moment, to Wyatt’s breathing. It had settled into the regular rhythm of sleep. He was down for the count, she knew. He rarely woke up after he’d fallen asleep for the night. She turned off the lights and left the room, careful to leave the door open. She would be able to hear him, from her bedroom across the hall, if he needed her for any reason.

  Then she made up the bed in her room, changed into a tank top and pajama bottoms, and brushed her teeth. It wasn’t until she’d gotten into bed and turned off the bedside table lamp that she let herself contemplate the enormity of what she’d done. She’d sold their house, the only home Wyatt had ever known. She’d put most of their belongings in storage. And she’d bought out her brother’s share of the lakeside cabin they’d been given by their parents, who now lived full-time in a retirement community in South Florida.

  And now she’d returned to a place she hadn’t been in years. A place she hadn’t even spent a whole summer in since childhood. She had no relatives here. And no friends to speak of. The few friends she’d once had here had probably long since moved away. There was nothing here for her now, she knew. Nothing for either of them. Which begged the question of why, exactly, she’d decided to come back.

  She heard a faraway sound, haunting but familiar. It had been a long time since she’d heard it, but if you heard it even once, you never forgot it again. It was the sound of coyotes howling. Not an uncommon sound in the woods of northern Minnesota, but not exactly comforting, either. She felt a tremor of fear. Even knowing they were safe inside the cabin it was unnerving. Tiredness, however, quickly overcame her, even if it didn’t completely obliterate her anxiety. I must be crazy, she thought as she fell into a troubled sleep. Why else would I have thought moving here was a good idea?

  CHAPTER 2

  By eleven o’clock that night, when Walker’s cell phone rang, his mood had gone from bad to worse. He glanced at the caller ID. It was his brother, Reid, the last person he wanted to talk to right now. But in addition to being his brother, Reid was also his business partner. And a demanding one at that. Walker ignored phone calls from him at his own peril.

  He picked up his cell phone and hit the talk button. “What is it?” he growled, by way of a greeting.

  “Jeez, Walk, is that the way you answer your phone now?” Reid asked mildly.

  “It’s eleven o’clock at night,” Walker pointed out, leaning back in his leather desk chair. “We’ve been through this before, Reid,” he said, massaging his temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. “Remember? You may work twenty-four hours a day, but I’m more of an eight-to-eight man myself.”

  “Well, that may be,” Reid said, sounding faintly disapproving. And despite his bad mood, Walker felt a corner of his mouth lift in amusement. Only a workaholic like Reid would find evidence of laziness in a twelve-hour workday. “But your character defects aside,” Reid continued, “I finished running the numbers on the Butternut Boatyard tonight.” He paused for effect.

  “And?” Walker asked, wishing Reid would hurry up. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about business right now.

  “And you did it,” Reid said simply. “You said you needed five years to turn the boatyard around. You did it in three. Congratulations.”

  There was a long pause while he waited for Walker to answer. Walker didn’t answer.

  “Hey, Walk, I thought this was good news.”

  “It is,” Walker said finally. “Of course it is. I’m just in a lousy mood.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out all by myself,” Reid said. “And you know what? I don’t blame you. If I lived in Butternut, Minnesota, population twelve hundred, I’d be in a bad mood, too. Seriously, Walk, what do you do with your free time up there?”

  “What free time?” Walker asked, only half jokingly.

  “Walk, even I have a little free time,” Reid pointed out. And we both know how you spend it, Walker thought. Chasing women. And, more often than not, catching them.

  “If you must know, Reid, I fish,” Walker said. “It’s very therapeutic. You should try it sometime. God knows you could use a little therapy.”

  Reid chose to ignore that remark. “Listen, Walk, I didn’t just call to congratulate you on the boatyard. I wanted to discuss something else with you, too.”

  Walker tensed. They both knew what that something else was.

  “I think you should move back to Minneapolis,” Reid said, without waiting for Walker to give him an opening. “I need you back here at headquarters. We agreed you’d live in Butternut for as long as it took you to turn the boatyard around. Well, you’ve done that. You’ve done that and more. That boatyard’s gone from being a cash drain to being one of the most profitable we own. Now I need you to do that again with another boatyard. And another. Because nobody’s better at day-to-day operations than you, Walk. Not even me.”

  That was high praise, indeed. And they both knew it. But still, Walker didn’t answer.

  Reid tried a different tack. “Seriously, Walk, I don’t know how you live up there year-round. I mean, it’s beautiful, I’ll grant you that. And you have every right to be proud of the cabin you’ve built. But you’re single. You’re in the prime of your life. And you’ve chosen to live in a place where the hottest game in town is Friday night bingo at the American Legion. Besides, you’ve told me yourself how competent your g
eneral manager is. So put him in charge and move back to the Twin Cities. You can still go up to Butternut on weekends. And fish to your heart’s content. Maybe even play a game of bingo or two.”

  Walker sighed. The promise of a headache had materialized, throbbing steadily at his temples. “Reid, can we talk about this later?”

  “No, we can’t. We can’t because I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a long time. I’ve tried to be supportive, Walk, even during your little . . . domestic experiment—”

  Walker interrupted him. “Is that how we’re referring to my marriage now? As a domestic experiment?”

  “Look, call it what you want,” Reid said. “It didn’t work out. And it’s not surprising, really, when you consider that our first exposure to the concept of marriage was our parents’ marriage.”

  Walker winced. That was true enough. Their parents’ marriage had been a train wreck, and witnessing it had been more than enough to instill a lifelong fear of the institution of marriage in both of them. It was, they knew, something to be avoided at all costs. Walker’s brief, and unsuccessful, stab at it had done nothing to convince them otherwise.

  “Listen, Reid, I’ll call you in the morning,” Walker said.

  “Walk, I need an answer from you.”

  “Later.”

  “Now,” Reid insisted.

  “I think you’re breaking up,” Walker lied. “There’s a storm moving in.”

  “I’m not breaking up—” Reid started to argue.

  But it was too late. Walker pressed end on his cell phone and flipped it shut, dropping it on the desk. Reid would be annoyed, but he’d get over it. It wasn’t the first time Walker had hung up on him. And it most likely wouldn’t be the last time either.

  He left his study and went to the kitchen, grabbing a cold beer from the refrigerator. Then he cut through the living room and pushed open the sliding glass door that led onto the deck. It was pitch-dark outside. He glanced up at the sky. What moon there was was covered by a gauzy layer of clouds. He reached back inside the cabin and flipped on the outdoor lights. Then he walked out to the edge of the deck, found the black sheet of lake below, and twisted off his beer top. He sat down on an Adirondack chair and drank his beer slowly, setting the empty bottle down on the deck when he was done. He thought about getting another one, but stopped himself. No point in drowning his aggravations in beer. Especially when it wasn’t even Reid who’d aggravated him. In fact, he felt a little guilty now for hanging up on him.

  No, even before Reid’s phone call, he’d been in a bad mood. And all because of an otherwise innocuous little shred of fabric he’d found that afternoon.

  He’d been taking down a fishing tackle box from the top shelf of the hall closet when he’d felt something else up there, too. Something improbably silky and soft. He couldn’t see what it was until he’d yanked it down, and by then it was too late. He’d stared at the object in his hands, simultaneously fascinated and repelled by it. It was a lacy little nightgown. His ex-wife Caitlin’s lacy little nightgown, to be exact.

  Once he’d realized what it was, he’d tried to hold it with only his fingertips. As if it would burn him if he touched any more of the fabric than was absolutely necessary. Which was ridiculous, he knew. It was a piece of material, not some talisman with supernatural powers. But still, it was all he could do to force himself to hold it up, gingerly, for inspection.

  He hadn’t remembered this particular piece of lingerie. But then again, Caitlin had owned so many of these frothy little concoctions. Never mind how impractical it was to wear them during northern Minnesota’s long winters. She would have done better to invest in a high-necked, long-sleeved flannel nightgown. But no. Practicality had never been her strong suit. Still, how this one—a white slip of a nightgown, with a lacy trim at the neckline and hem—had gotten left behind, he had no idea.

  And it had occurred to him, for a second, that she might have left it there on purpose. In a place where he’d least expect to find it. But he decided that hadn’t been the case. Caitlin was many things, but she wasn’t devious. Or malicious. Besides, by the time she’d left, she’d been so furious at him the last thing she would have wanted to do was leave anything behind.

  No, he decided. Maggie, the woman who came out from town to clean once a week, had probably found it after Caitlin had left. Tactful as ever, she’d put it somewhere where she thought he wouldn’t find it. At least not for a while.

  But now that he had found it, he had no idea what to do with it. He thought about throwing it away, but that seemed somehow disrespectful to Caitlin. Even if things had ended badly between them, he didn’t bear her any ill will. He thought about sending it to her, but he quickly dismissed that idea, too. He didn’t have her address. And even if he did, how exactly did someone mail his ex-wife her nightgown? In an otherwise empty envelope, with no return address on it? Or wrapped in tissue paper, with a friendly note? Something like, I guess you forgot to pack this when you were screaming hysterically at me and throwing all your clothes into suitcases in the middle of the night?

  In the end, he’d put the nightgown back where he’d found it, on the top shelf of the hall closet. When he had enough clothes to donate to a local charity, he reasoned, he’d bundle the nightgown in with them. But for now, there was nothing else to be done. The nightgown would be out of sight, but not out of mind.

  A breeze blew off the lake now, stirring the branches of the great northern pines that towered above his deck, and Walker exhaled slowly. He felt his headache ease a little. He knew Reid didn’t understand why he lived here. Not full-time, anyway. And Reid was right. It wasn’t entirely necessary for him to do so. He could easily split his time between Butternut and Minneapolis. He also hadn’t needed to build a cabin here. He could have lived in the apartment above the boatyard office. It would have been as comfortable, and maybe even more comfortable, than many of the places he’d lived in over the last several years.

  But what Reid didn’t understand was that where Reid found escape in casual hookups and one-night stands, Walker found escape here. In this town, this lake, and this cabin.

  The town was gossipy, it was true. Most small towns were. Even without trying, Walker already knew more about its residents than he wanted to know. But he had been careful, after his wife left, not to get personally involved with any of them.

  And when he wasn’t working at the boatyard, he was here, in a cabin he’d designed and built himself on one of northern Minnesota’s most pristine lakes. Living out here, he’d been able to avoid any more complications in his life. Because here was untrammeled wilderness, and wildlife galore. There were miles of trails to hike around the lake; and on the lake, which was over twelve miles long and one hundred and twenty feet deep, there were dozens of pine-crested islands to explore. But in all this natural beauty, there were no messy entanglements, no senseless misunderstandings, no heated arguments. In short, there were no relationships, and that suited him just fine.

  Not that he was a monk. He wasn’t. He kept an apartment in Minneapolis, and when he was there on business, he’d get together with a woman he’d known since college. Like him, she put her job first. And also like him, she was uninterested in a long-term relationship. The time they spent together was brief, fun, and uncomplicated. In short, it was just about perfect.

  As he reached down to pick up his empty beer bottle, his eyes scanned the opposite shore of the lake. They stopped on an unfamiliar light, faint but still visible, through the trees. He tried, from memory, to picture what was there. He knew this bay now like he knew the back of his hand.

  But there was nothing there. Not really. Just a derelict old cabin he’d assumed was abandoned. That and a falling-down dock and boathouse. Certainly he’d never known anyone to actually stay on that property. Not since he’d built his own cabin. Maybe, he thought, the place had been discovered by local teenagers, looking for somewhere to drink beer and make out out of sight of watchful parents. That’s probabl
y it, he thought, heading back inside the cabin. No one would be crazy enough, or brave enough, to actually live there.

  CHAPTER 3

  Wyatt, look, it’s still here,” Allie said excitedly, tugging on her son’s hand as they crossed Butternut’s Main Street the next morning. For the first time since they’d arrived at the cabin, she felt a small surge of optimism. This was a good sign, she decided. Pearl’s was still here. Still open for business. And, as far as she could tell, still exactly the same as it had been when she was a child. The same red-and-white-striped awning, she noted with satisfaction. The same hand-lettered sign, advertising THE BEST PIE IN TOWN. And, she saw through the windows, the same Formica-topped counter and red swivel stools.

  But when they reached the sidewalk outside of Pearl’s, Wyatt hesitated. Allie squeezed his hand encouragingly.

  “Hungry?” she asked, smiling down at him. He nodded. “Good. Because I’m starving. And it’s either Pearl’s, or that can of baked beans I found in the back of the kitchen cupboard this morning.” She waited for a response. He glanced anxiously through the glass door. This was new, she realized, with a little jolt of anxiety. This reluctance to go into unfamiliar places.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” she prompted, letting go of his hand long enough to tousle his hair.

  “This place,” he said, resignedly. Too resignedly for a five-year-old, Allie thought.

  But she pushed open the swinging glass door and gently pulled Wyatt in behind her.

  Once inside, though, Allie felt an unexpected shyness herself. She nodded politely to the customers who looked up from their conversations or their newspapers, but her cheeks burned. It had been a long time since she’d been a stranger anywhere.

  She led Wyatt over to the counter and boosted him up onto one of the empty stools. Behind the counter, a pretty, blue-eyed, strawberry blond woman of about forty was shoveling coffee grounds into an industrial-sized coffeemaker.