Up at Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  “What is it?” Jax asked, her body tensing involuntarily.

  “It’s Joy,” he said, drawing her closer and saying the words into the hollow of her neck. “She’s reading under her covers with a flashlight again. And I’m wondering how I’m going to have my way with my very beautiful, very sexy wife, if our daughter won’t go to sleep when she’s supposed to.”

  Jax relaxed. “Honestly, Jeremy, do you ever think about anything else?” she said.

  “Not if I can possibly help it,” he answered her, pulling her closer. “It doesn’t help, of course, that you look so goddamned beautiful when you’re pregnant.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jeremy, I look like the side of a barn. And I’m barely into my third trimester.”

  “More time for me to appreciate you this way, then,” he said, his eyes lingering with appreciation on the new fullness of her breasts. He cupped one of them now, and Jax felt the warmth of his fingers through the thin cotton fabric of her maternity blouse and shivered with anticipation. But there was something she needed to do now. And she needed to do it alone.

  “Jeremy,” she said, “if you don’t let me finish cleaning up down here, we’re going to end up having sex on the kitchen floor.”

  “And that would be a bad thing?” Jeremy asked, kissing her again.

  “Yes,” Jax said. But she couldn’t quite hide her smile. “Now go upstairs and tell Joy to stop reading under the covers and go to sleep. I’ll be up as soon as I’ve wiped down the counters.”

  “Okay, but hurry,” Jeremy pleaded, giving her one final kiss before he headed up the stairs.

  Jax waited a minute, then opened one of the kitchen cupboards and reached into the back of it. She took out a recipe box and set it on the counter. Then she flipped the box open and removed an envelope from the back of it.

  The envelope had already been opened. She slid the letter out and unfolded it carefully, squinting at the nearly illegible handwriting. Penmanship had never been Bobby’s strong suit, and a stint in state prison, apparently, had done nothing to improve it. She was still able to read it, though. She’d already read it, in fact, a dozen times. And it always made her feel exactly the same way. Sick to her stomach, with a racing heartbeat, and sweaty palms. Tonight, unfortunately, was no exception.

  After studying it for a few minutes, she refolded it, put it back into the envelope, and tucked it back into the recipe box—the one place where she knew Jeremy would never look. Then she put the box back into the cupboard. It looked perfectly innocent there, but the letter inside of it, she knew, was a time bomb. And it was ticking so loudly she could hear it in every room of the house.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hey, Walker, are you still here?” Cliff Donahue, the boatyard’s general manager asked, poking his head into the break room on his way out of work on Friday evening.

  “I’m still here,” Walker said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a decrepit coffeepot.

  “I thought you were going to Minneapolis this weekend.”

  “I was,” Walker said. “But I changed my mind.”

  Cliff raised his eyebrows. “Any problems here I need to know about?”

  “Not a one,” Walker said, taking a sip of coffee. He winced. It had the taste, and texture, of sludge.

  “Actually, there is one problem,” he amended. “This coffeepot. Seriously, how long’s it been here? Since the Great Depression?

  “Maybe.” Cliff shrugged. “The old-timers don’t seem to mind it. Of course, unlike you, they might not have been spoiled by Caroline’s coffee.”

  “That’s true,” Walker conceded. Caroline brewed the best cup of coffee he’d ever tasted. And that included some very high-priced cups at some very upscale coffeehouses in Minneapolis.

  “Well, I’ll be heading out then. You can reach me on my cell, though, if you need me for any reason.”

  “Thanks,” Walker said, and he went back to his office. But he didn’t go back to work right away. Instead, he sat back in his desk chair, put his feet up on his desk, and sipped his lousy coffee. He was thinking that not only were there no problems at the boatyard, but Cliff was doing such a good job as GM that Walker might not be able to justify his presence here much longer. And then he frowned, remembering something. Because the day he’d interviewed Cliff for the general manager’s job, three years ago, was also the day Caitlin had come to the boatyard to see him.

  His interview with Cliff was winding down when there’d been a light rap on his closed office door.

  “Who is it?” Walker called out, with barely concealed annoyance. The few employees who worked at the boatyard then knew better than to disturb him when his office door was closed.

  “It’s Caitlin,” a voice answered. Caitlin? he thought. Here?

  “Come in,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. But his mind was racing. Caitlin was the woman he was dating on his weekend trips to Minneapolis, but she’d never been to Butternut before. She’d never been there for the simple reason that he’d never invited her. They weren’t at that point in their relationship yet. And it wasn’t clear to him that they ever would be. The more time they spent together, in fact, the less they appeared to have in common. Recently, it had occurred to him that the initial physical attraction they’d felt for each other might not be strong enough to sustain their relationship much longer.

  Which was probably why she was here, he realized, with relief, as she hesitantly opened the door to the office. She was here to break up with him. Though why she thought it was necessary to drive all the way up here on a weekday to do it was beyond him. She could have done it, much more conveniently, over the phone. Most people, he knew, would have considered that rude, but he wasn’t one of them. It would have spared them both the awkwardness of her doing it in person.

  He stood up then and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He started to introduce her to Cliff but saw that Cliff was in no condition for introductions. He was staring, dumbstruck, at Caitlin. And Walker couldn’t blame him. Not entirely. Because the first time he’d met Caitlin, at a bar in Minneapolis, he’d had a similar response.

  She had long blond hair, wide cornflower blue eyes, and skin so pale it was almost translucent. She was a beautiful girl. There was no question about it. But like a lot of beautiful people, Walker had come to suspect that she’d never been called upon to develop the rest of herself. Because either she didn’t have a personality, or she hid it behind her quietness. Still waters might run deep, or, in her case, he thought, they might just run still.

  “Cliff,” Walker said, turning to his interviewee, who had partially recovered himself, “I’m going to have to cut this short. But I’ll be getting back to you soon.”

  They shook hands and Cliff left. Walker gestured for Caitlin to sit down on the chair Cliff had just vacated. She sat down, uneasily, and Walker sat down, too.

  “Would you like a cup of really terrible coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  He smiled at her, and said, casually, “I think I know what brings you up here.”

  She looked surprised. “You do?”

  He nodded. He tried to choose his words carefully. “Our relationship has hit some kind of a wall. It’s not your fault, and I hope it’s not mine. But it doesn’t seem to have any real momentum left . . .” His voice trailed off uneasily. Something about the way she was looking at him made him stop.

  “What are you saying, Walker?” she asked.

  “I’m saying what I thought you came up here to say.”

  “Which is . . .” she prompted him.

  “Which is that you want to break things off with me.” There, he thought. He’d said it. Now that it was out in the open, they could get this over with.

  “You think I came up here to break up with you?” she asked, incredulously. And a bright red spot suddenly appeared on each of her pale cheeks.

  “Didn’t you?” he asked. So much for this not being awkward.

  She shook her he
ad. “Not even close, Walker.”

  He frowned. What was not even close to breaking up? But she didn’t give him time to contemplate that question.

  “I came to tell you that I’m pregnant,” she said bluntly.

  He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. He was too shocked to put a whole sentence together. And when he finally did, he didn’t choose his words carefully. He said the first thing that came into his mind.

  “How did this happen?” he asked.

  Whatever Caitlin had hoped to hear from him, this wasn’t it. She rolled her eyes. “How do you think it happened, Walker? You took sex education in high school, didn’t you? Or were you absent the day they covered the part about the sperm fertilizing the egg?”

  Sarcasm, Walker thought. He’d never known Caitlin to be sarcastic before. But who was he kidding? He’d never really known her at all before. He knew enough about her now, though, to know she was annoyed by his apparent stupidity. So he rephrased the question.

  “I know how it happened. What I meant was, you told me you were using birth control, so I assumed it couldn’t happen.”

  “I was using birth control,” she said, defensively. “But even the most effective birth control isn’t one hundred percent effective.”

  He nodded, dumbly. They’d covered that in sex education, too. Then a thought occurred to him. Actually, it was more of a hope. A tiny hope. Like reaching for a life vest right before you’re engulfed in a tidal wave.

  “Are you sure it’s . . .” He stopped. He knew he was crossing a minefield here. But there was really no tactful way to phrase this question. “Are you sure it’s mine? Could it be somebody else’s?” He braced himself for her response.

  But when she answered him, it was with more hurt than anger. “Of course not,” she said. And then, “How many people do you think I’m having intimate relationships with right now, Walker?”

  “I, I don’t know . . .” he said, honestly. It was the wrong thing to say.

  “Walker, for God’s sake,” she snapped. “I hope you know me well enough to know that you’re the only one.”

  Walker didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His brain was going into shut-down mode again. So they lapsed into another silence. An intensely uncomfortable silence.

  “Look,” she said finally, her tone softening. “I’m as surprised as you are. I almost fainted when I saw the results of the pregnancy test. But I’m not here to discuss how it happened. I’m here to discuss something else. I’m here to discuss what we’re going to do about it.”

  “Okay,” Walker said. His brain still wasn’t working very well. But it was working well enough to realize that Caitlin had just said more at one time than he’d ever heard her say before. “Go on, Caitlin.”

  She took a deep breath, and Walker had the feeling that she’d rehearsed whatever she was going to say next. “I’m going to have the baby, Walker. And I’m going to raise it—I mean him, or her—by myself. But I’m going to need your help. Financially, I mean. As you know, right now I’m a receptionist. I can’t do this by myself. Not on my salary. If anything changes for me, well, then, obviously, whatever financial arrangement we make would change, too. I mean, I don’t want to be a receptionist forever. And I still want to get married some day, even though this”—here she gestured at her still perfectly flat stomach—“might make it more difficult. And Walker?” she continued. “I know I was irritated when you asked if it was yours. But I agree that we should have a paternity test done when the baby’s born. If only for your peace of mind.”

  Peace of mind, Walker thought. It already sounded like a foreign concept to him. He didn’t think he would ever have peace of mind again.

  Caitlin stood up. She’d obviously accepted the fact that he was either unable, or unwilling, to say anything more.

  “My lawyer will be in touch with you,” she said, starting to leave. Walker almost let her. But something occurred to him.

  “Caitlin,” he said. His brain was working again.

  She turned back from the door.

  “Where do I fit in all this, other than helping you financially? Which I’ll do, obviously. But what would my relationship with our child be?”

  She hesitated. “I guess that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On you,” she said. “On what kind of relationship you want to have with our child. You don’t have to have any relationship with him or her if you don’t want to. I’m not going to force you to be someone you’re not.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  She sighed, a little sadly, he thought, and sat back down on the chair. “It means I don’t exactly think you’re father material, Walker. At least not yet.”

  He thought about it. “No, you’re right,” he admitted. My life is pretty . . . commitment adverse, I guess you’d say. I haven’t given any real thought to marriage before. Or fatherhood, for that matter.” Liar, he told himself. You’ve given plenty of thought to both of them. And you’ve decided you didn’t want any part of either one of them.

  “And that’s fine,” Caitlin said. “I’m not asking you to change overnight. Or change at all. You don’t have to be a part of this. Not if you don’t want to be. I mean, beyond providing financial support, that is.”

  Walker didn’t say anything. He was thinking about his own childhood. And about his own relationship with his father.

  His parents had gotten divorced when he was seven. For a while, his father had seen Walker and his older brother, Reid, every weekend. Then, gradually, the visits had tapered off. It hadn’t helped that his parents fought as much when they were divorced as they had when they were married. It also hadn’t helped that Walker’s father got remarried to a woman who resented the time he spent with his sons. When she and Walker’s father had a daughter of their own, she resented it even more.

  By the time Walker entered adolescence, his father had more or less dropped out of his life. He sent the occasional birthday card or Christmas present. He sent alimony and child support payments, too, but eventually those became less frequent as well. When Walker’s mother took him to court to enforce those payments, the deal was pretty well sealed. Their father started sending the checks again, but he didn’t send anything else.

  Walker had seen him one more time, though. It was at a Minnesota Twins baseball game several years ago. Walker had recognized him, and when he’d approached him, his father had been friendly enough. They’d had a brief, awkward conversation, but they’d had almost nothing to say to each other.

  “No,” Walker said, suddenly. His voice sounded loud in the quiet room.

  “No, what?” Caitlin asked, surprised.

  “No, I don’t want to be that kind of father.”

  “What kind of father?” She frowned.

  “I don’t want to be a stranger to my own child. To our own child,” he corrected himself. “That’s the kind of dad my dad was. I was the kid on the Little League team checking the bleachers every sixty seconds to see if he was there yet.” He paused. “He was never there yet. He was never there at all. If I’m going to do this, I want to be there, Caitlin. I want to be in the bleachers for that Little League game.”

  “It might be a girl, you know,” Caitlin said. “In which case, it might not be a Little League game. It might be a soccer game, or a volleyball game.” But the hint of a smile played around her lips.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Walker said. “I want to be there.”

  “You can be there,” Caitlin assured him. “We don’t have to work out all the details today, but if you want visitation rights, you can have them.”

  “Visitation rights?” Walker repeated. The phrase left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Caitlin shrugged. “I think that’s the correct legal term.”

  “Well, that’s not what I want.”

  She sighed and he noticed, for the first time, how tired she looked. “Well, what do you want?” she asked, with a trace of exasperation.

 
What he said next couldn’t have shocked Caitlin as much as it shocked him.

  “I want us to be a real family.”

  “A real family?” she echoed, skeptically.

  “Yes,” he said, with conviction. “A real family. Marriage, a house, a baby. Everything.”

  Now it was Caitlin’s turn to be speechless. “Walker, are you proposing to me?” she asked, finally, after a long silence.

  “I guess I am,” he said.

  She shook her head in wonderment. “Where is this coming from? We’ve never discussed marriage before.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time we did.”

  “I, I don’t know what to say,” Caitlin admitted. “Of all the outcomes I considered for today, this wasn’t one of them.”

  “I’m a little surprised myself,” Walker said. And then, because he felt something more was called for, he said, “Come here.”

  She stood up and came over to him. He took her hand and pulled her, a little awkwardly, onto his lap.

  “I’m sorry that wasn’t a very romantic proposal,” he said, putting his arms around her waist.

  “That’s okay,” she said, almost shyly.

  “So are you going to accept it?” he asked.

  She smiled, a little shakily. “Why not?” she said.

  “Exactly,” Walker said. “I mean, how difficult can this whole marriage thing be?”

  Plenty difficult, it turned out. But they hadn’t known that then. They hadn’t known anything then, as far as Walker could tell. Now, three years later, sitting in his office at the boatyard, he could only feel regret. Regret and guilt.

  But something else tugged at his consciousness now: Allie, the woman he’d met at the coffee shop last weekend, and her little boy, Wyatt. Strangely enough, he’d been thinking about them lately, too. He had no idea why. Probably because Caroline had told him about Allie’s late husband. It had made sense to him, somehow. Somewhere beneath her prickly defensiveness, he’d guessed there was a deep sadness. And a soft vulnerability.

  He should have gone to Minneapolis today, he thought. Because here he was worrying about two people he didn’t even know. Didn’t even want to know, really. He forced them out of his mind and drained the last of the coffee from his cup. It was like drinking mud. If he did nothing else tomorrow, he decided, he’d buy a new coffeepot at the hardware store. Then he’d have something, however small, to show for staying here this weekend.