Up at Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  “I’ll be right with you,” she said, glancing up with a smile.

  “No hurry,” Allie said, picking up a menu. She offered to read it to Wyatt, but he had discovered that the top of his stool rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, and with a rare glimmer of excitement in his eyes, he was using both hands to push off the countertop and spin himself around.

  Allie smiled nervously at the woman behind the counter. “He was cooped up in a car for the better part of the day yesterday,” she explained. But the woman, looking over at Wyatt, only smiled.

  “Three generations of children have spun on those stools,” she commented, flipping a switch on the coffeemaker. “And with any luck, three more generations will spin on those stools, too.”

  Allie started to say something, then stopped. The woman was frowning at her in concentration. “Don’t tell me,” she muttered. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue . . . Allie Cooper,” she announced, finally. Triumphantly. “Your family has a cabin on Butternut Lake.”

  “That’s right,” Allie said, flushing with surprise. “How did you know?”

  “I never forget a face,” the woman said, taking out a pencil and a check pad. “Although truthfully, sometimes, I wish I could. My ex-husband’s, for instance. Now there’s a face worth forgetting.” She didn’t sound bitter, though. Just matter-of-fact.

  “I do forget faces,” Allie confessed. “And names, too.”

  “Well, I don’t expect you to remember me,” the woman said with a shrug. “You were just a little girl when your father used to bring you in here for breakfast. I was a teenager. And this was the last place I wanted to be on a summer day. Busing tables when my friends were all out at the lake.”

  Of course, Allie thought, with an internal sigh of relief. She did remember her. Caroline, she thought her name was. Her grandmother Pearl had worked the register. Her mother, Alice, had taken orders, and her father, Ralph, had worked the grill. Allie had to subtract the years from her face, and replace her middle-aged warmth with adolescent sulkiness, but she could see her now as she had been then. Busing tables with a bored, slightly exasperated expression on her face.

  “You’re Caroline. Caroline Bell,” Allie said.

  “I was. I’m Caroline Keegan now. I didn’t keep my husband,” she said, with a smile. “But I did keep his last name.”

  “Well, I’m not Allie Cooper anymore, either,” Allie explained. “My last name now is Beckett. And this is Wyatt,” she added, gesturing to Wyatt, who continued to spin furiously.

  “That’s right,” Caroline said. “I heard you’d gotten married. Your brother was up here fishing with friends some years ago, and he brought me up to date on all your lives.”

  “I did get married,” Allie said, quickly, checking to see that Wyatt was still absorbed in spinning on his stool. “But . . .” She paused. This was the hardest part, telling people who didn’t already know. Oh, who was she kidding? All of it was the hardest part.

  “But my husband was in the Minnesota National Guard,” she said, finally. “He was sent to Afghanistan with them two years ago this summer and . . .” She stopped again. She couldn’t go on.

  “And he didn’t come back,” Caroline finished for her, speaking softly. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Allie shook her head, fighting back the tears.

  Wordlessly, Caroline flipped over the empty coffee cup on the counter in front of Allie and filled it up from a steaming pot of coffee. Then she pushed it, along with cream and sugar, over to her.

  “Now, I’ll take your orders,” Caroline said, companionably. “But I can’t get them started right away. The grill’s on hold while Frankie, my fry cook, tinkers with the air-conditioning. It’s on the blink right now. And I don’t need to tell you how bad the timing is, what with the weather reports calling for a heat wave.”

  Allie nodded, sipping her coffee. She was grateful to Caroline for changing the subject. It was an art form, she’d decided, that few people had mastered.

  “Oh, here’s Frankie now,” Caroline said, as a massive man maneuvered his way behind the counter. Wyatt caught a glimpse of him and abruptly stopped spinning. Then he stared, wide-eyed, as Frankie scrubbed his hands at a deep sink, dried them off, and took an enormous apron down from a hook on the wall and tied it around his huge waist.

  “Frankie, the griddle cakes are up for table three, and table seven needs the breakfast special, sunny-side up,” Caroline said, cheerfully.

  Frankie nodded and turned to face the grill, but Wyatt continued to stare at his back. Caroline noticed him staring and smiled. She leaned on the counter and said, quietly, to Allie and Wyatt, “Frankie is six feet six inches tall and three hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. But he is the gentlest man I’ve ever known.” She added, “I have never, ever, seen him lose his temper. He doesn’t need to. One look from him and an unwanted customer clears right out of here.”

  I’ll bet they do, Allie thought with amusement. Coming up against him would be like colliding with a solid wall of rock.

  “Now, for those orders,” Caroline said.

  “Wyatt and I will both have the blueberry pancakes,” Allie answered.

  “And I’ll have a chocolate milk shake,” Wyatt chimed in.

  “Not for breakfast,” Allie corrected him.

  “But you said I could have one yesterday,” Wyatt said, determinedly.

  “I did?”

  He nodded. “When we were driving in the car yesterday, you told me about Pearl’s. And I said, ‘Do they have chocolate milk shakes?’ And you said, ‘Yes, they do.’ And I said, ‘Could I have one when we go there?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’ ”

  “Oh,” Allie said, momentarily at a loss for words.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Caroline said. “How about if I bring you an extrasmall milk shake as a compromise? After all, it is breakfast time. And a growing boy like you needs food that’ll stick to his ribs.”

  Wyatt thought about it. “Okay,” he said finally. “But not too small.”

  Caroline winked at Allie, scribbled their orders down, and ripped the sheet off the check pad. She stuck it to a clip above the grill, at eye level with Frankie. A customer came up to the counter to pay then, and she moved down to the cash register.

  “Your cabin is on Otter Bay, isn’t it?” she called down to Allie.

  Allie nodded in surprise. As far she knew, Caroline had never been to her family’s cabin. But she’d forgotten how much people in a small town knew about each other’s lives. Even, it turned out, the location of an otherwise remote little cabin.

  “You have a new neighbor out that way,” Caroline said, handing her customer his change.

  “I know,” Allie said, a frown playing around her lips.

  She’d taken Wyatt down to the dock first thing that morning, and they’d seen the cabin across the bay. It was built on a bluff, perched over the lake, and it had been designed in such a way as to make it look as if it were hovering there, over the water. It was sleek and contemporary, all clean lines, pale wood, and glass.

  Below the cabin, on the lakefront, was an enormous boathouse, with at least half a dozen slips in it, and a seemingly endless dock, jutting far out into the water.

  Allie’s ramshackle boathouse and dock, on the other hand, presented an almost comical contrast to their luxurious counterparts across the bay. The boathouse roof had partially fallen in, and so many birds were nesting in its exposed rafters that it looked like a rookery. The dock, unfortunately, hadn’t fared much better. It was in the process of collapsing into the lake, with only part of it visible above the waterline.

  “Your neighbor’s name is Walker Ford,” Caroline said, coming back down the counter to stand in front of them. “He bought the local boatyard a few years back.”

  “Really?” Allie asked, with more politeness than enthusiasm. She wasn’t thrilled about having a neighbor, especially one as seemingly ostentatious as this man. His owning the boatyard, though, did explain why he had s
o many boats.

  Caroline put place settings, pats of butter, and pitchers of syrup in front of them. “It’ll be nice to have a neighbor all the way out there,” she said. “And I think you have at least one old friend from town who’s still around.”

  “Really?” Allie asked, puzzled.

  “That’s right,” Caroline said. “You remember Jax Lindsey, don’t you? You two used to be inseparable, didn’t you?”

  Of course Allie remembered Jax. The two of them had met the summer they were sixteen. They’d bonded over the makeup counter at the local drugstore. But it had never occurred to her that Jax, of all people, would still be living here. Her family life had been troubled, to say the least, and Allie had always assumed that when Jax left home, she’d put as much distance between herself and her parents as possible.

  “I can’t believe she’s still here,” Allie murmured.

  “Well, she is,” Caroline said. “She stayed in Butternut. Although, honestly, if she hadn’t met a nice local boy—Jeremy Johnson—she might have moved on. Anyway, they got married, took over the local hardware store from Jeremy’s parents, and had three daughters. With a fourth on the way.”

  “Four children?” Allie breathed. She’d often felt she was barely holding her own with one.

  “That’s right,” Caroline said. “And she makes it look easy, too.” She sighed and shook her head. “I have one daughter. Daisy. But four? I’m frankly in awe of Jax.”

  “How old is Daisy?” Allie asked.

  “Eighteen,” Caroline said. “She’s starting college in September. She has a full scholarship to the University of Minnesota. But she moved down to Minneapolis after school ended a few weeks ago. She wants to work and save money before school starts.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Allie said.

  “It is a good idea,” Caroline agreed. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss her,” she said, a little wistfully, reaching behind her, to the counter beside the grill, and sliding two plates of blueberry pancakes in front of them. Then she presented Wyatt with his chocolate milk shake. It was in a small juice glass, but it had a hefty dollop of whipped cream on it, with chocolate syrup drizzled over it. Needless to say, Wyatt didn’t complain. He picked it up immediately and took several large gulps. When he set the cup back down, empty, he had a little glob of whipped cream on his nose. Allie laughed and wiped it off with a napkin.

  “Not bad, huh?” Caroline asked, smiling. “I’ve got to take a few orders,” she said, coming out from behind the counter. “You two enjoy your breakfasts.”

  “Thank you,” Allie answered. She reached for Wyatt’s plate of blueberry pancakes and started to cut them for him. Otherwise, she was afraid he’d swallow them whole. Her own stomach was rumbling hungrily. Often, over the last two years, she’d had to force herself to eat. This morning, though, that wouldn’t be necessary. Perfect blueberry pancakes might not be able to solve the world’s problems. They might not be able to solve her problems, either. But right now, it was almost possible to believe that they could.

  CHAPTER 4

  Walker was still in a bad mood the next morning as he slid onto a stool at Pearl’s and signaled Caroline for a cup of coffee. She was taking an order at one of the tables, but she looked up long enough to give Walker a quick nod that said she, and a fresh pot of coffee, would be right with him. He glanced at his watch. He was late for a meeting with one of the boatyard’s biggest suppliers, and last night’s headache, despite the aspirin he’d swallowed before leaving the cabin, continued to throb dully at his temples.

  At least he’d managed to get to the counter without being drawn into a conversation with any of the regulars, he thought. Because this morning, he had neither the energy nor the patience for Butternut’s particular brand of folksiness. Instead, as he waited for his coffee, he watched Frankie, the gargantuan fry cook, crack several eggs in rapid succession onto the sizzling grill. It never ceased to amaze him how a man that large managed to maneuver so gracefully in a space that small. But Walker had never seen him make a single false move. It was rumored, he knew, that Frankie had done time. Hard time. Which might explain why he obviously felt so at home in such close quarters.

  But as much as Walker was enjoying watching Frankie, something to the right of him caught his eye. Three stools away, a woman was sitting with a little boy. A mother and a son, obviously. Walker knew immediately they weren’t from Butternut. He would have recognized them if they were. He sighed. Was it possible that he knew, at least by sight, every single one of Butternut’s twelve hundred residents? Maybe Reid was right. Maybe it was time to move on.

  He tried, out of politeness, to look away from his counter mates. But he couldn’t. Probably because, even in profile, he could see how pretty the woman was. She must have sensed his eyes on her, too, because she turned and met his gaze, head-on.

  He hadn’t been wrong about her, he saw. She was pretty. Exceptionally pretty. But in a totally unselfconscious way. As if she didn’t know that she was pretty. Or didn’t care. Though neither scenario, Walker thought, seemed likely. In his experience, women both knew about, and cared about, their relative attractiveness.

  This woman had long, honey-colored brown hair that fell in a straight curtain down to her shoulders, and hazel eyes that were striking against a golden complexion. She smiled at Walker, now, a polite but disinterested smile. Walker recognized that smile. It was the smile he smiled when he didn’t want to appear unfriendly but didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation either. After the smile, she turned back to cutting her son’s pancakes.

  Walker felt a little jolt of surprise. That was unusual. Not that mothers of young children were in the habit of throwing themselves at him. They weren’t. Not usually, anyway. But they also weren’t completely immune to him either. His eyes skated, almost unconsciously, to her ring finger. There was a thin gold band on it. No surprise there. Young, single women were in short supply this far north. Not much excitement up here. Unless, of course, you were an avid fisherman.

  He watched, as discreetly as possible, while she finished cutting her son’s pancakes and slid the plate back in front of him. He was a cute little boy, Walker thought. He wasn’t good at guessing ages, but he thought this kid looked like he was somewhere between four and six years old. He had a mop of curly brown hair, and a sweet but serious expression on his face.

  Now, he wolfed down his pancakes hungrily, ignoring his mother’s mild protestations. Walker suppressed a smile. He couldn’t blame the kid. He’d had the blueberry pancakes before. They were beyond good.

  “You look like you could use an extrastrong cup of coffee,” Caroline said, materializing in front of him with the coffeepot.

  “That sounds good,” he said, tearing his eyes off the woman and her son.

  “For here or to go?”

  “To go,” Walker said, glancing down at his watch again.

  “No breakfast?” Caroline asked, reaching for one of the paper cups stacked behind the counter, filling it up to the rim, and snapping a plastic lid on it.

  “No breakfast,” Walker confirmed.

  Caroline frowned a disapproving frown, but otherwise said nothing. In her own, no-nonsense way, Walker thought, she was as maternal with her customers as the woman down the counter from him was with her son. Caroline didn’t like it when one of her regulars left without a hearty breakfast under his or her belt. But after almost three years, she knew Walker well enough to know he couldn’t be browbeaten into ordering food he wasn’t in the mood to eat.

  Walker laid a five-dollar bill on the counter and stood up to go.

  “Not so fast,” Caroline said, sliding the cup over to him. “I want you to meet your new neighbors. It just so happens that they’re here this morning, too.”

  “My new neighbors?” Walker repeated, blankly. “I don’t have any neighbors.”

  “You do now,” Caroline said. She gestured to the mother and son sitting a few seats away from him.

  “Allie,
Wyatt,” she said, loudly enough to get their attention. “This is Walker Ford. Your closest neighbor. Unless, of course, you count the black bears. And I’m not counting them,” she added, winking at Wyatt.

  Walker’s counter mate turned to look at him again. She didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked distinctly unhappy. Which was strange, Walker thought. He hadn’t given her a reason to dislike him yet, had he? He frowned. He wasn’t used to people, especially women, finding him uninteresting or unlikable.

  But her good manners obviously won out. She slid off her stool and, gently pulling her son after her, came over to shake Walker’s hand. Her hand felt soft and smooth in his own work-roughened hand, and for a second, he felt at a loss for words. It didn’t help that she was standing so close to him, either, though it was no closer than was absolutely necessary to shake his hand. She made her son shake his hand, too.

  “I’m Allie Beckett,” she said, smiling that noncommittal smile again. “And this is Wyatt. We just moved in last night, actually.”

  “I saw the light on in your cabin,” Walker said, mesmerized by her hazel eyes. He saw, up close, that they were actually light brown with darker flecks of green in them.

  “You must have been surprised,” Allie said. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s been there.”

  “I was surprised,” Walker confessed. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know that cabin was actually habitable.”

  Allie frowned, and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Pink color rushed onto the gold of her cheeks, although whether from anger or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell. And he didn’t really care, either. Because the change in coloring only made her look more ridiculously pretty than she already looked.

  “Well, it is habitable,” she said. “But it does need some work,” she agreed. “Which is where Wyatt and I come in. Right, kiddo?” she said, pulling the boy closer. He nodded solemnly. “Fortunately, we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty,” she added.