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

by McNear, Mary

  “Wait, when do you start work at the Pine Cone Gallery?” Caroline called after her.

  “Monday,” Allie called back. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” Caroline murmured. But they were already gone, the bell jingling as the door swung shut behind them.

  “Is this a bad time?” Buster asked, not sitting down at the counter yet. “Because I can always come back. During regular business hours, I mean.” He smiled, a little sheepishly, and Caroline realized he’d hoped to find her alone again. Her stomach fluttered, and she found herself reaching for a dishcloth.

  “No, you can stay,” she said, with studied casualness, rinsing the dishcloth out at the sink and starting to wipe down the counter with it. “I don’t know what I can offer you to eat, though. We’ve had a really busy day. I feel like we ran out of everything at the same time.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve already had lunch,” he said. “I’d love something cold to drink, though. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. What about an iced tea? I’ve got a freshly brewed pitcher of it right here.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, sitting down on one of the stools.

  “And if I’m not mistaken,” she said, “there’s one more piece of apple pie left, too.”

  “I don’t see how I could say no to that,” he said, smiling.

  Caroline poured his iced tea and slid the last wedge of apple pie onto a plate. She set them both down in front of him on the counter, along with lemon wedges, sugar, a napkin, and a fork.

  “Now this was worth a trip into town,” Buster said, helping himself to a forkful of pie.

  Caroline smiled and poured herself another glass of iced tea. “So how are you settling in?” she asked.

  “Pretty well,” he said. “I’ve got everything unpacked now.”

  “Were you here the night of the storms?” she asked, concerned.

  He shook his head, finishing a bite of pie. “I’d gone back down to the Twin Cities to tie up some loose ends, but I’m back now. And I’m not just here, at this fine establishment, for a piece of pie. Although God knows the pie is a bonus.”

  Caroline raised her eyebrows. “What are you here for?”

  He put his fork down. “I’m here to ask you if you’d like to come up in my airplane with me. You said you’d never flown before. Well, here’s your chance.”

  For a moment, Caroline was too surprised to say anything. “Me?” she finally sputtered. “In an airplane?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, why would be a better question, wouldn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. Why, because you’ll be doing something you’ve never done before. And you’d be giving me the pleasure of your company. And I hope I’m not being conceited when I say that I’m not bad company myself, as a general rule.”

  Caroline hesitated. She was having trouble formulating a response.

  “Look,” he said, “my plane is at the Butternut Municipal Airport. It’s a five-minute drive from here. And we don’t have to stay up for long, if you don’t want to. Thirty minutes, tops.”

  When she finally spoke, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “But don’t those little planes sometimes crash?”

  “Well, nothing in life is entirely risk-free,” he admitted. “But I’m an excellent pilot, and I’ve never had any problems with this plane before.”

  Caroline wavered again. “Look, I don’t know what you charge for your charter business, but I probably can’t afford to pay it.”

  “This isn’t a sales call, Caroline,” he said, surprised. “I’m not expecting you to pay. I’m asking you to come as a friend.”

  “A friend?” she repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  Caroline hedged. “So this wouldn’t be a date?”

  “A date?” He looked mildly amused. “You know, I haven’t been on one of those in a long time, but I think they still call them that. So, yes. I guess this would be a date. Is there a problem with that?”

  “Not a problem, exactly,” Caroline said. “But we don’t know each other very well yet, do we?”

  He looked amused again. “That’s true. But isn’t that the whole point of a date? Two people getting to know each other a little better?”

  “I guess so,” she said, doubtfully.

  “Okay,” he said, considering something. “Maybe I shouldn’t take you up in my plane. Maybe that’s a little . . . adventurous for a first date. Why don’t we go out for a cup of coffee? That’s assuming, of course, that there’s somewhere else around here where we can get a decent cup of coffee.”

  “No, Buster. This is it,” she said, looking around.

  He sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mean to make it hard. I just don’t date, that’s all.”

  “Not ever?” he asked gently.

  “Not recently,” she said. Because of course she had dated in the years since her husband had left her. A shop teacher from the high school. A veterinarian who had a practice in town. And she had liked them both immensely. But not enough, it turned out, to invite them into the life she and Daisy had built together. And now that Daisy had left home? Might that change now? But no . . . She shook her head, a little sadly.

  “So, no to the date?” Buster asked, looking at her quizzically.

  “No to the date,” she repeated, a little uncertainly.

  “That’s fair,” he said. He took his wallet out and left a bill on the counter. “But if you change your mind, remember, it would just be a date, Caroline. Not a commitment ceremony.” His blue eyes twinkled unmistakably.

  “Thanks for the pie,” he said, and Caroline nodded and watched him leave.

  Then she picked up the bill he’d left on the counter—another twenty—cleared away his dishes and started wiping down the countertop again, with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. She was thinking about something she’d said to Allie, not fifteen minutes ago. About how sometimes, when it came to men, and relationships, things could be simple. Straightforward. And wasn’t that, really, what Buster Caine had just said to her, too?

  But the coffee shop’s phone rang, interrupting her brooding.

  “Hello?” she said, answering it.

  “Mom?” It was Daisy. And she sounded worried.

  “Hi, honey,” Caroline said, emotion welling up inside of her.

  “Mom, are you all right?”

  “Of course,” she lied. “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s been a couple days since we talked. When you weren’t at the apartment, I decided to try you downstairs.”

  “I know I haven’t called,” Caroline apologized. “But I don’t want you to feel like I’m smothering you, that’s all.”

  “Mom, I never feel that way. You know that. I want you to call. I miss you.”

  Caroline felt her eyes glaze over with tears. Don’t you dare cry, she told herself. Don’t you dare leave Daisy with that image of you, alone and sad.

  “But, Mom,” Daisy was saying, “isn’t it a little late for you to still be working?”

  “Not really,” Caroline said. “A friend of mine stopped by.”

  “A friend?” Daisy asked, interested.

  “A customer,” Caroline corrected herself. “He’s new up here. Retired military. He wanted to know, if you can believe it, if I’d like to go up in his airplane with him.”

  There was a pause, and then Daisy whistled softly. “I can see now, Mom,” she said, “that when I told you to join a book club, I was aiming way too low.”

  “Well, I didn’t say yes,” Caroline said, exasperated.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because he said it would be a date.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she said, suddenly irritable. “I just thought, at my age, it would be a little ridiculous.”

  “Oh, that’s right,�
�� Daisy said, pretending to remember something. “I forgot you were pushing forty. No, you’re right, Mom. You’re way too old to date. Unless . . .” Here she paused for dramatic effect. “Unless you think you could fit your walker in the trunk of his car when he comes to pick you up.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes on her end of the phone. “Look, it’s not just my age. It’s that I’ve . . . I’ve gotten out of the habit of . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Gotten out of the habit of being anything other than my mother?”

  “Something like that,” Caroline admitted. Then, “You must think I’m pathetic.”

  “Not even a little,” Daisy said. “You’ll figure it out. But I’ve got to go now.”

  “Okay, sweetie,” Caroline said. “I love you.”

  “Bye, Mom,” Daisy said, cheerfully. And then she was gone, too.

  Caroline sighed and leaned against the counter. For once, she didn’t feel the need to be busy. She’d gotten it all wrong, she decided, worrying about Daisy going to college. Daisy was fine. It was her she should be worried about. Because in all those years of being a mother and a businesswoman, of trying to do right by Daisy and the coffee shop, she’d forgotten how to do something else. She’d forgotten how to take a risk.

  She walked, slowly, over to the cash register. She opened it, lifted the bill drawer up, and took out Buster Caine’s business card. She stared at it for a long time, wondering if she had the courage to call him. Finally, she put it back, and slammed the cash register drawer shut.

  “You’re hopeless,” she said out loud, to the empty coffee shop. But it didn’t make her feel any better.

  CHAPTER 18

  Walker took hold of the edge of the dock with both hands and, in one fluid movement, pulled himself up out of the lake. He sat, for a moment, the lake water sluicing down his body, and then he tipped back and lay down on the dock, looking up at the night sky, his chest rising and falling rapidly from the exertion of a three-mile swim.

  It was a beautiful night, the sky so black, and the stars so brilliant against it, that it reminded him of the night sky at a planetarium his parents had taken him to once when he was a child. He sighed, remembering that day. Like so many other days in his childhood, it had ended badly. He’d loved the planetarium show, but afterward, as they were leaving, his parents had gotten into an argument about some trivial thing. The fight had escalated, and by the time they reached the natural history museum’s parking lot, they were screaming at each other. His father had driven home in stony silence, and his mother had sobbed miserably in the passenger seat beside him.

  And Walker? He’d sat hunched in the backseat, knowing he should comfort his mother but not knowing how to. So instead, he’d tried to remember everything he’d learned that day at the planetarium. If he reviewed the whole thing in his mind now, he’d decided, he would be able to reconstruct it for Reid later that night, at bedtime.

  Bedtime was the best part of his day during those years. He and Reid lay there, talking across the small space that separated their beds. Often, they had to talk loudly, to be heard over their parents’ fighting. Walker couldn’t remember now what they’d talked about. Little things, probably. Baseball, and BB guns, and scary movies.

  Reid had been a good older brother, he thought now, lying on the dock. Always helpful. Patient. Willing to listen. And if Walker had gotten on his nerves, he’d never let on. Walker made a mental note to remember that the next time Reid drove him crazy. Which was pretty much all the time lately.

  He sat up now and looked, reflexively, across the bay to Allie’s dock. The dock light had been turned off. So had the boathouse light. But the cabin’s lights were still on, each window a solid square of yellow. He glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock. Over the next couple of hours, the cabin’s lights would gradually go out. First in one window, then another, until finally there was only one left on. Then that last light would blink off, too, usually around eleven o’clock.

  He knew it wasn’t normal, spending so much time every night watching the lights in her cabin go out. But he told himself it wasn’t technically an invasion of her privacy, since he was too far away to actually see anything inside the cabin. He told himself, too, that there were worse ways to spend these long, empty nights, like rereading fishing magazines or answering Reid’s one-hundredth e-mail of the day.

  But still. He knew it was a little weird, a little . . . obsessive, even, to spend so much time staring across the bay at her cabin. And obsessive was not a word that Walker generally associated with himself. Not when it came to women, anyway. Maybe when it came to working or fishing, but never women. He smiled ruefully to himself. He’d always thought, somehow, he was above all that. The insecurity. The jealousy. The craziness. The general messiness of love that, until recently, he’d believed he was immune to.

  Not that his relationship with Caitlin hadn’t been messy. Because it had been. In the end, anyway. But what they’d had together hadn’t been love. It had been something else. What, he didn’t know. And, as if in answer to that question, the memory of a winter night came back to him. It was after Caitlin had come back from the hospital, after they’d settled back into their old pattern of politely and assiduously avoiding each other.

  Walker had had insomnia, something that had become increasingly common for him during his marriage to Caitlin, and he’d left her sleeping in their bed and gone downstairs to work in his study. But when he’d finally come back up, he’d been surprised to discover Caitlin was awake, too. All the lights in their room were on, and she’d emptied her clothes out of the closet and the dresser and she was throwing them into a collection of suitcases that were open on the bed. Watching her, Walker saw that her complexion, always pale, had a bright, crimson flush overlaying its paleness. It made her look almost feverish.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she said, trying to force a too-full suitcase closed.

  “Are you leaving?” Walker asked. He knew it was a ridiculous question, and so did she.

  “That’s right, Walker, I’m leaving,” she said, starting to stuff clothes into another suitcase. “Your powers of observation are truly astounding, by the way.”

  Walker flinched. Caitlin was rarely angry. Or sarcastic, for that matter. Of course, he later realized, he’d had no way of knowing how she’d felt during the time they’d lived together. She hadn’t told him, and he hadn’t asked her.

  “Caitlin,” he said, quietly, “I thought we were doing better. Since you . . .” He stumbled here. He couldn’t say the words.

  “Since I lost the baby?” she finished for him. “And if, by ‘doing better’ you mean being polite to each other on those rare occasions when we’re actually in the same room, then yes, I’d agree, Walker. I’d say we were doing fantastic.”

  “Look, can we talk about this in the morning?” Walker asked, coming over to her and putting one hand, tentatively, on her shoulder.

  But she immediately shook it off. “No, Walker, we can’t talk about it in the morning. Because I won’t be here in the morning. I’m leaving as soon as I’m packed.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Walker objected. “It’s snowing. They haven’t even had time to plow the roads yet.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” she said, closing another suitcase.

  “Caitlin, no. It’s not safe. If you want to leave in the morning, after the roads have been plowed, I won’t try to stop you.”

  “Walker, you can’t stop me now,” she said, angrily. “I won’t let you. And while it may not be safe for me on those roads, it’s much more dangerous for me in here.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Walker asked, shocked. He’d never even raised his voice at her, let alone raised a hand at her.

  “It means that I’m in danger here, Walker. In danger of dying from loneliness. Did you know that was possible? Because it is. And do you know how I know that? I know that because I researched it on the Internet. Just one
of the many things I do with all the hours in the day I have to fill.”

  “I have to work,” Walker said, defensively. “I have to earn a living. I can’t just entertain you all the time.”

  “Entertain me all the time?” she shot back at him, furiously. “How about taking me out for dinner? Not every night. Just occasionally. Just once. Or how about having dinner with me here? Instead of staying at the boatyard from dawn to dusk and then locking yourself in your study when you come home.”

  “That’s not fair,” Walker objected. “You knew my job was demanding when you married me. And by the way, I never stopped you from trying to have your own life here.”

  “Walker,” she burst out, her pale blue eyes brimming with tears, “that’s not fair. I tried to fit in here, but you didn’t help me. You didn’t introduce me to anyone. And whenever anyone invited us anywhere, you said no. So what was I supposed to do? Go by myself and explain to people that my husband doesn’t care enough about me—or about them, for that matter—to come with me?”

  “That’s not true,” Walker muttered. But he didn’t argue the point too strenuously. He knew he hadn’t helped her build a social life, and he knew how hard it could be to do that in a town where most of the residents had known one another all their lives.

  Caitlin finished closing the final suitcase and, dragging it off the bed, started to carry it downstairs.

  “This is crazy,” he said, trying to take it, gently, away from her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, so angry now that her whole body was shaking.

  He didn’t try to help her after that. And he didn’t try to stop her either. He just watched, dismayed, while she loaded the trunk of her car and slammed the hood shut.

  Then she turned to him. The sky was just starting to lighten, and a fine, wet snow was still falling.

  “One last thing, Walker,” she said, with a fury so quiet it scared him. “A little parting advice. Don’t ever get married again. And don’t ever consider being a father again either. Because you are way too selfish to do either of those things. I know when you proposed to me you thought you could have it all. The wife, the baby, the house. Just like that. But it’s not like that, Walker. It’s not like some pancake mix you just add water to. It’s complicated, Walker. And it’s hard. It takes commitment. And discipline. And perseverance. And outside of your professional life, Walker, you haven’t got any of those qualities. Not a single one.