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

by McNear, Mary

  CHAPTER 9

  Allie and Wyatt were already sitting on the front steps of the cabin when they heard the crunch of Jax’s tires coming up the gravel driveway.

  “Wyatt, there’s something you need to know before you go blueberry picking this morning,” Allie said, putting his Minnesota Twins baseball cap on him and adjusting the visor to a jaunty angle.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Eating blueberries from the pail is a time-honored tradition,” she said, playfully. “So is eating them directly off the blueberry bush. So don’t worry about filling up your pail. I don’t care how many blueberries you bring home. I just want you to have fun. Okay?” She waited for a response. There was none. “Okay?” she said again, lifting up his visor and looking into his chocolate brown eyes.

  Wyatt didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything. His trembling lower lip said it for him. He didn’t want to go blueberry picking without Allie. Oh God, please don’t cry, she thought desperately. Because if you cry, my resolve will crumble. And I’ll come with you. Or I’ll let you stay home. And you’re already with me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It can’t be healthy, and it can’t be fun, being with someone who’s always pretending that everything’s all right, when it’s so obviously not all right.

  But Allie didn’t know how to say any of this to him. So instead she handed him a slightly battered tin pail, and said, “You have to trust me on this one, okay? You’re going to have a good time blueberry picking with Jax and her daughters. And I’m going to get a lot of work done here by myself cleaning out this old cabin.”

  “Oh, look, here they are,” she added, brightly, as Jax’s pickup rolled into view. “Let’s go, buddy,” she added, standing up and brushing off the seat of her blue jean cutoffs. Wyatt sighed, and stood up, slowly. Wearily. Just like a little old man, Allie thought sadly.

  But in the next moment, Jax and her daughters came tumbling out of the truck, creating a welcome distraction. And Allie was amused to see that Jax’s three daughters were all scaled-down, but otherwise identical, versions of Jax. They each had jet black hair, vivid blue eyes, and creamy white complexions sprinkled liberally with freckles. Soon, the three of them had surrounded her and Wyatt and were all talking at the same time.

  When the introductions had been made, Jax said, cheerfully, “All right, everybody into the truck. Let’s pick blueberries before it gets too hot, and then we can have our picnic in the shade.”

  Allie watched as Jade, Jax’s youngest daughter, took Wyatt firmly by the hand and led him over to the truck. Wyatt looked surprised, but he didn’t object.

  Jax glanced over at them and then back at Allie. “Could this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?” she asked.

  “God, I hope so,” Allie said, visibly relieved. “I was afraid there’d be a scene,” she confessed. “You know, one that ended with you peeling a hysterical Wyatt away from me.”

  “He looks fine,” Jax said, glancing over at Wyatt and Jade. Jade was speaking animatedly to him, and Allie thought she heard her say something to him about a rock collection. Then, a moment later, she watched as Jade took a rock out of her pocket and handed it to Wyatt. He examined it politely.

  “I hope Wyatt likes rocks,” Jax said, wryly.

  Allie smiled and turned back to her. Then she really smiled. “Jax, I swear,” she said, studying her. “You look so adorable.” And it was true. Jax’s hair was braided in twin braids, and she was wearing a checked maternity blouse under a pair of faded denim overalls. A battered straw hat, strung on a ribbon, hung down her back.

  “I don’t feel adorable.” Jax sighed. “Just big.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Allie said, climbing back up the front porch steps and retrieving a Tupperware container she’d left there. “This is my contribution to the picnic.”

  “Chocolate chip cookies?” Jax asked, hopefully.

  Allie nodded.

  “The same recipe we used that summer?”

  “The very same.” Allie smiled.

  They started walking toward Jax’s truck and Jax asked, “How’s everything going? It’s been, what, two weeks now? Are you two settling in?”

  “More or less,” Allie said. “Sometimes more, sometimes less. But I wanted to thank you, Jax, for giving me Johnny Miller’s phone number. He’s been a lifesaver. He’s already replaced the rotted-out parts of the porch and the steps.” She gestured at the new pine planks that were now interspersed with the older, darker ones. “And now he’s moved onto the boathouse and the dock.”

  “I’m so glad it’s worked out,” Jax said. “I can’t say enough about his work.”

  They reached the truck, and Allie watched while Jax boosted Jade and Wyatt into the backseat and fastened their seat belts. She fidgeted, resisting the urge to give Wyatt another hug and kiss before Jax slammed the truck’s back door.

  Then she followed Jax around to the driver’s side and watched in astonishment as she lightly hoisted herself up behind the wheel. How anyone that small could drive a pickup truck that big was a mystery to her. She lingered for a moment, feeling the first stirrings of anxiety. Wyatt wasn’t the only one who was nervous about their separation today, she realized.

  “Are you sure this isn’t too much trouble?” she asked Jax.

  “No trouble at all. Trust me. Any day I spend away from the house and the hardware store is like a vacation for me. Besides, you must have a lot you need to get done around here.”

  Allie nodded and stepped back to let Jax close the truck’s door. Then she smiled and waved as they drove away. But she felt a little bereft as she went back into the cabin.

  She went to the kitchen, where she’d planned to spend the morning cleaning out the cupboards, but she didn’t start work right away. Instead, she walked over to the window and looked out at the lake. It was a breathtaking shade of deep blue today, and its smooth surface, sparkling in the morning sun, was only occasionally broken by the ripples of a soft breeze. One of those warm breezes stirred the kitchen curtains now, and it brought with it the dry, piney smell of the trees, and the clean, almost tangy smell of the lake. And then she remembered something she’d seen in the storage shed that morning when she’d been searching for a blueberry pail for Wyatt.

  That’s it, she thought. I’m not spending another second inside. The kitchen cupboards will have to wait. She left the cabin, walked around behind it to the storage shed, and, swinging the door open on its rusty hinges, maneuvered carefully around the junk inside until she came to a canoe in the corner. It dated from her grandparents’ time at the lake and was, she knew, at least fifty years old. She turned it over now, gingerly, and looked inside of it. It was lined with leaves, dirt, and spider webs, but she wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.

  So she took one end of it and dragged it out of the shed and over to the garden hose at the back of the cabin. She turned the hose on full throttle and rinsed the debris out. Then she had another look at it. It just might be lakeworthy, she decided. She could see that the wood was rotting, slightly, in the bottom of the canoe. But there were no actual holes in it. She went back to the shed for some other items she’d seen there: a canoe paddle, a battered life vest, and a sawed-off plastic milk jug used for bailing out boats. She hosed those off, too. Then she threw them all in the canoe and pulled it down to the lake.

  And as she did so, she felt her spirits lift. She needed to get away from this cabin, if only for an hour. Since she and Wyatt had gotten here they’d left it only a few times, to go to the grocery store, or the hardware store, or Pearl’s.

  She wouldn’t go far, she told herself, as she slid the canoe down the gently sloping lake bank. No more than a few hundred yards from the dock. And she’d stay close to shore, too, in no deeper than shoulder-deep water. If the canoe started to leak, she’d come straight back. And if it didn’t, well, then taking it out would be a nice diversion.

  When she reached the lake, she pushed the canoe, bow first, into the wate
r, and walking out on the dock, pulled the canoe out alongside her until it was in water deep enough to paddle. Then she sat down on the edge of the dock, climbed carefully into the canoe’s stern, and sat down on the seat. Using the paddle to push off the lake bottom, she maneuvered out away from the dock. Then she started paddling and, after a few clumsy strokes, settled into a comfortable rhythm. She was surprised at how natural it felt after all these years. How right.

  She’d gone about a hundred yards, parallel to the shore, when she realized she was heading in the direction of Walker Ford’s dock. Even from this distance, though, she could see that no one was on it. Good, she thought, since for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, their meeting at Pearl’s continued to rankle her. She made a conscious effort now not to think about him, and she kept paddling until she noticed that a few inches of water had accumulated in the bottom of the canoe. She stopped paddling, then, and drifted for a few minutes while she bailed the water out. She should probably turn back now, she thought. But if she did, it would be the end of her little adventure. And she wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

  So she kept going, staying close to the shoreline, in water only deep enough to paddle comfortably in. The canoe, she knew, wasn’t going to sink like a lead weight. Not if she kept bailing it out every few hundred yards. Which she did, alternately paddling and bailing, until she realized her arm was getting tired, and the back of her neck was getting sunburned. The weather, which had seemed so delightfully pleasant when she’d started out, now just seemed hot. Besides, she was almost at Walker Ford’s dock, and even if he wasn’t down there now, she didn’t want to take any chances by lingering too long. It was time to turn around. Or it would be, as soon as she could get some more water out of the canoe’s bottom.

  But as she stopped to bail again it occurred to her that the canoe might be taking on water a little faster. She bailed furiously for a few minutes before she realized with dismay that the water level in the canoe wasn’t falling anymore. It was rising. She bailed faster, but the water only rose faster. She stopped, exhausted, to catch her breath, and saw with alarm that lake water was rushing into the bottom now, covering first her feet, and then her ankles.

  She looked back at her own dock, shocked by how far away it suddenly seemed. There was no way she was getting back there now, not in this canoe. She looked around the bay. It was deserted. Even if she could have swallowed her pride long enough to ask for help, there was nobody there to help her. Walker Ford’s dock, on the other hand, was only about a hundred yards away.

  She sat in the canoe, watching it fill with water, knowing what she had to do, and not wanting to do it. But right before the water reached her knees, she made her escape. She dove out, taking the paddle, the life cushion, and the plastic milk jug with her. Then she stood up, in shoulder-deep water, and watched the canoe sink. It wasn’t very dramatic. When it had come to rest, forlornly, on the lake bottom, she swam awkwardly over to Walker’s dock, tossed everything she was holding on to it, and dragged herself up after them.

  Then she stood up and looked around, feeling utterly ridiculous. Lake water dripped off the hem of her cutoffs, trickled down her legs, and pooled in her sneakers. Thank God Walker Ford hadn’t chosen this moment to go for a swim, she thought. She glanced up at his cabin, perched on a bluff above the lake. There was no sign of him up there, either. Good. She was going to have to tell him about the sunken canoe eventually. But at least she could skulk back to her cabin now with her dignity intact. Well, partially intact.

  Still, there was the question of how to get back to her cabin. She looked back at her own dock again. Across the open lake, it was less than half a mile away. She was a good swimmer and could cover that distance easily. But as tempting as it was to do that, it would break one of her cardinal rules as Wyatt’s only surviving parent. Never take an unnecessary risk, no matter how small. Because the thought of leaving Wyatt without any parent at all, was, well . . . unthinkable.

  That meant her only option was walking back to her cabin on the main road. She groaned, inwardly. She’d have to skirt around Walker’s cabin to get to his driveway and to Butternut Lake Drive beyond it. If he was home, there was a chance he’d see her, and the ridiculous situation she was in. She briefly considered bypassing his cabin and bushwhacking through the woods to the road, but she dismissed the idea. Too many mosquitoes, too much poison ivy.

  So she started walking up the dock, towing her gear along with her. The lake water squelched in the bottom of her sneakers, as her fury at herself settled into a slow burn. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she said to herself, every time a sneaker slapped against the dock. What were you thinking?

  She reached the end of the dock and walked right past the boathouse, not bothering to look inside of it. She already knew it housed at least half a dozen boats. All of them, she imagined, in pristine condition. She felt a fresh wave of irritation at Walker Ford.

  And when she started climbing up the stone steps to his cabin, that irritation only intensified. Was it necessary to have so many steps, she thought, the backs of her calves aching, and her breath coming faster. But when she reached the top of the steps and turned around, breathing hard, even she had to admit that the view of the lake from there was spectacular. Then again, she thought, as she turned back around, the cabin wasn’t too shabby, either. It managed to be both contemporary and traditional at the same time, its simple A-frame shape enhanced by fieldstone trim and an entire wall of glass that opened onto the back deck. Whatever else you could say about the man, she admitted, grudgingly, he obviously had good taste. Better than good, really. Everything about this place—the dock, the deck, the cabin—was impeccably designed and beautifully built. It managed to be both luxurious and harmonious at the same time, blending in effortlessly with its natural setting.

  She glanced now at the stone path that skirted around to the right of the cabin. That was the way to the driveway and the road beyond. But she hesitated, her curiosity about this place getting the best of her. There was obviously no one around, she thought, and if she just took a quick peek through the glass wall, no one would ever be the wiser. She edged out onto the deck, and over to the glass wall, and, stopping at a sliding glass door, pressed her face against it. The inside of the cabin, she saw, was as spectacular as the outside. The room she was looking into—the living room, obviously—had a cathedral-style ceiling with exposed wooden beams and an enormous fieldstone fireplace embedded in one wall. Two vast, cognac leather couches faced each other on either side of that fireplace. And on one of them, she realized, with a little jolt of surprise, was Walker Ford. Though why she was surprised to see him inside his own cabin, she couldn’t exactly say.

  The good news though, if there was any good news, was that he was flipping through a magazine and, as far as she could tell, hadn’t seen her yet. She stood there, perfectly still, trying to formulate a plan of action, but her options were limited. If she moved now, she might attract his attention. And if she stood there long enough, he’d eventually look up from his magazine and see her standing there. Looking like an idiot. A total idiot. Which was exactly what she was, when you considered the long list of mistakes she’d already made today.

  And it was while she was considering this that Walker Ford looked up from his magazine and stared straight at her. Oddly enough, he didn’t look surprised. Not exactly. Disturbed was a better word. And who could blame him? She could only imagine what she looked like. The creature from the black lagoon, probably.

  As he set down his magazine, stood up, and walked toward the sliding glass door, Allie made a last-ditch effort to make herself look a little more presentable, peeling her sodden T-shirt away from her wet skin. She tried to ring some of the lake water out of it, too, but it still stuck to her like glue. She tugged, too, at the hem of her dripping cutoffs but couldn’t seem to make them any longer than they were, which right now seemed to be about two inches long. She sighed and gave up. She looked like a horror show. And a scantily clad
one at that.

  As Walker reached the glass door and slid it open, she wondered what else could possibly go wrong today. She had a feeling she was about to find out.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was the strangest thing. One minute, Walker was sitting on his couch, flipping through an issue of American Fisherman magazine, trying not to think about his new neighbor, and thinking about her anyway. And the next minute, he was looking up and seeing her, standing there on his deck, holding, of all things, a canoe paddle.

  That’s when it occurred to him that he might actually be losing his mind. That he might be hallucinating. But when he shut his eyes and opened them again, she was still standing there, still holding a canoe paddle.

  He stood up, crossed the room, and opened the sliding glass door. And that was when he realized that she was dripping wet. His first thought, obviously, should have been, What the hell was she doing here? And, more important, What the hell was she doing before she got here?

  But his first thought, instead, was that she looked amazing. Like some kind of freshwater mermaid who’d just washed up on his deck.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, a little sheepishly, “but my canoe sank and—”

  “Where’s your son?” Walker interrupted, his brain kick-starting itself.

  “Oh, no, he’s not with me,” she said quickly, reading the expression of alarm on his face. “He’s picking blueberries with Jax and her daughters—”

  “Wait,” he said, interrupting her again. “Did you say your canoe sank?” He looked out at the lake. The water was as smooth as glass.

  “Yes. I know, it sounds strange, but—”

  “Sank or capsized?” he clarified. An inexperienced canoer could capsize a canoe, but canoes did not, as a general rule, sink. Not on a day like today, under weather conditions like these. If he’d special ordered a summer day from a catalog, it could not have been more perfect than this one.