by Mary McNear
Allie smiled, tensely. “We’ll see about that,” she said. “But for now, Wyatt, can you thank Mr. Ford for inviting us here today? And for having Cliff show us all those boats?”
“Thank you,” Wyatt said dutifully.
“Anytime,” Walker said, still feeling like an idiot. “I’ll walk you two out to your car.”
“That’s not necessary,” Allie said, and she handed him back the stack of boat brochures. He watched while they left the showroom, and then he put the brochures back. He’d have to apologize to Cliff. That was one sale they were never going to make.
“Thanks a lot, Reid,” Walker muttered, as he went back up to his office.
When he got there, he sat down at his desk again and tried to concentrate on the stack of paperwork in front of him. But when he realized he’d read the same sentence three times and it still didn’t mean anything to him, he got up and walked over to the window.
He knew he was right. He knew he hadn’t imagined the attraction they’d felt for each other at the party. So either she’d flat-out lied to him when she said she hadn’t felt it, or she was in denial about it. The second one, he decided, fiddling with the cord on the window’s Venetian blinds. She didn’t strike him as a dishonest person. At least not an intentionally dishonest person. But it was one thing to be honest with other people. And another thing to be honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself was infinitely harder.
And now, he thought, it was time for him to be honest with himself. For whatever reason, they weren’t going to have a relationship with each other. So give it up, Walker, he counseled himself, still standing at the window. But the truth was, he couldn’t. He’d already tried. Somehow, in the short time he’d known her, she’d gotten under his skin. And now he couldn’t get her out from under it.
Part of the problem, of course, was the powerful physical attraction he felt for her. But that wasn’t all of it. Because most of the time, when he thought about Allie, he didn’t think about her in that way. Instead, he thought about her cutting her son’s pancakes, as she had been doing the first morning he’d met her, at Pearl’s. He didn’t know what it was about that image that stuck with him. God knows, it wasn’t sexy. It was the opposite of sexy, actually. It was maternal.
He stood very still now. Maybe Reid was right. Maybe he did want marriage and children. The whole nine yards, as Reid had put it. But if that was the case, why, then, had he botched it so badly the first time?
He was still turning this over in his mind when he drove out of the boatyard that night. He had his windows rolled down to the warm summer night, and Bruce Springsteen cranked up on the sound system, but tonight this drive didn’t give him any pleasure. Because tonight, he was remembering what it was like living with Caitlin in the months before she’d lost the baby.
It was like living with a stranger, he thought now. Only worse. Because he and a stranger would have eventually gotten to know each other. Whereas he and Caitlin went backward in their relationship, from knowing each other to being strangers. Strangers who were married. Strangers who were planning on raising a child together.
Once, they’d had at least one thing in common: their attraction to each other. But that was the first thing to go. Once they realized they’d never had anything else in common, they started avoiding each other. Something that wasn’t that difficult to do in Walker’s thirty-five-hundred-square-foot cabin. Walker buried himself in his work. And Caitlin? Walker had no idea what she did. She had no career in Butternut. She’d given that up when she’d moved there. She had no friends, either. The locals, Walker knew, had mistaken her reserve for unfriendliness. And he’d done nothing to help to dispel that misconception.
So how she filled her days was a mystery to him. But he’d suspected at the time, and he knew now, that she’d been lonely—achingly, hopelessly, miserably lonely. And Walker, who’d persuaded her to marry him and to move here, had done nothing to help her.
Why hadn’t he helped her? he wondered, as he left the town of Butternut behind him and headed out to the lake. But he knew why. He hadn’t helped her because he couldn’t admit how unhappy she was. How unhappy they both were. If he’d admitted that, then he would have had to admit that he’d made a mistake in persuading her to marry him. And admitting a mistake generally meant taking responsibility for it, not to mention actually doing something about it. And he couldn’t do either of those things, since doing them, apparently, would have taken more courage than he actually possessed. So instead, he ignored her. And hoped, somehow, she would just . . . just go away. Disappear. And the amazing thing was, she almost had.
Why else would he have been surprised to see her that late autumn morning, when she came into his study and tapped him, hesitantly, on his shoulder?
“Caitlin?” he said, looking up with surprise. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but . . .”
“But what?” he asked, feeling a trace of impatience. He was rewriting the business plan for the Butternut Boatyard.
“It’s probably nothing,” she said. But she looked shaken.
“What is it, Caitlin?”
“I haven’t felt the baby move since I woke up this morning,” she said, finally, looking down at the tiny bump that had only recently appeared on her slender frame.
“Is that unusual?” Walker asked, embarrassed that he didn’t already know the answer to that question. He’d meant to at least look at the pregnancy and childbirth books Caitlin had brought home with her. But he’d never gotten around to it.
“It is unusual,” Caitlin said. “I mean, I’m almost six months pregnant. And I’ve been feeling the baby move for a couple of weeks now. I was feeling it more frequently, not less frequently, and then today . . . nothing.”
“Not even a little?” he asked, feeling the first knife edge of fear.
“Nothing,” she whispered, her white skin so pale it was almost translucent.
“Let’s go then,” he said, springing into action. “I’ll call Dr. Novak’s office and tell him I’m bringing you over.”
Caitlin nodded, and she looked relieved that Walker was taking charge.
But later that evening, sitting up in her hospital bed, her expression was blank. She didn’t look frightened, or relieved. She didn’t look anything. Her pale blue eyes were empty, and her skin, normally pale, was almost gray.
Walker sat on the chair beside her bed. He was looking out the window at the hospital parking lot, where an early dusting of November snow glowed dully under the floodlights.
Caitlin’s doctor, Dr. Novak, came into the room.
“How are you holding up?” he asked Caitlin, picking up her chart from its pocket at the end of the hospital bed and examining it.
Caitlin didn’t answer him.
“You’re probably still in shock,” Dr. Novak said sympathetically, coming around to her side of the bed. “And I don’t blame you. It’s very unusual to lose a baby at this stage of a pregnancy. But it does happen, Caitlin. Even if we don’t necessarily know why.”
Caitlin still said nothing.
“Can I speak to you, Walker?” Dr. Novak asked, indicating the hospital corridor outside the room.
Walker nodded and followed him.
“Caitlin may not be ready to hear this yet,” he told him, in a lowered voice. “But when she is ready, remind her that you’re both still young. You didn’t have any difficulty conceiving a child this time. And there’s no reason to assume you will the next time. You can still have a family. It’s just going to take a little longer, that’s all.”
Walker didn’t know what to say. He doubted, very much, that there would be a next time for the two of them. But he thanked Dr. Novak and went back into the hospital room. Caitlin’s eyes were closed and he thought, for a moment, that she was asleep. But she opened them and said, quietly, “Walker?”
He nodded and moved closer to the bed.
“I’m going to leave when I get out of here, okay? Go home. To
Minneapolis, I mean.”
“Don’t,” he said, feeling a stab of guilt. He couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving the hospital alone. She looked so fragile somehow. So vulnerable.
But she shook her head at his word of protest. “Walker, we got married for the baby. The baby’s gone now,” she said, her voice catching on the word gone. “We don’t need to stay married anymore.”
“Don’t leave,” he said again. And he meant it. “I’ll try harder. I know I haven’t been very good at this whole marriage thing. But I’ll do better. I promise. Just . . . just come home with me. Please?”
In hindsight, he realized that he should have let her go then. It was selfish of him to persuade her to stay, just to assuage his own guilt. But at the time he couldn’t see that. Wouldn’t see that . . .
Walker looked around then, amazed to discover his pickup was idling in front of his cabin. How he’d gotten here was a mystery to him. Because as real as his memories of Caitlin had been tonight, he had no memory whatsoever of the last five miles of the drive.
CHAPTER 15
A couple of days after their visit to the boatyard, Allie was tucking Wyatt into bed when they heard a distant rumble of thunder.
“Finally,” she said, with relief, sitting down on the edge of Wyatt’s bed. “I thought that storm would never come.”
“You wanted it to come?” Wyatt asked, surprised.
“I did want it to come,” Allie said. “Because I knew once it came, it would cool off.”
All day long, the still air had been heavy and humid, the sky overcast, the lake a glassy oval of dark pewter. She’d waited for it to storm, and when it hadn’t, it had set her nerves on edge. Though it was hard to know, honestly, how much of that was the weather, and how much of that was Walker Ford’s words to her the last time she’d seen him. She frowned now, smoothing the sheet around Wyatt and thinking about what a colossal ego that man obviously had. How else to explain the fact that he refused to believe her when she said she wasn’t attracted to him?
There was another rumble of thunder, this one closer, and Wyatt’s body went rigid under the sheets.
“Hey, Wyatt, it’s okay,” Allie said, brushing an errant curl out of his eyes. “We had thunderstorms in Eden Prairie, remember?”
He nodded. “I was scared of them there, too,” he whispered.
“I know that,” Allie said, gently. And then, to distract him, she brought up something she’d been meaning to discuss with him all day. “Wyatt, do you think you might like to go to day camp?”
“You mean, the same one Jade and her sisters go to?”
“Uh-huh. Because I spoke to the director today—her name is Kathy—and she said they still have room for someone your age. She sounds really nice, by the way. And when I told her about you, and all the things you like to do, she said she thought you’d really like it there.”
Wyatt thought about it. “Would you come, too?” he asked, finally. Hopefully.
“Me? No,” Allie said, shaking her head. “It’s just for children, ages five to twelve. But I’ll drop you off and pick you up, and in between, if you need help, Kathy and the other counselors will be there. And so will Joy, Jade’s older sister. She’s a junior counselor there this summer.”
He nodded, distractedly, and she could tell something was bothering him. He shifted under the covers. “I think I’ll like day camp,” he said. “But what about you? What will you do all day? You’ll be here all alone. You might get lonely.”
“Wyatt,” Allie said, after a moment, both touched and saddened by his words. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay? You worry about you. And I’ll worry about you and me, okay? That’s the way it’s supposed to be with parents and children. And another thing, kiddo. I’m not going to have time to be lonely while you’re at camp, because, as it turns out, I’m going to be busy. I’m going to be working.”
“Working? Like at a job?” Wyatt asked, so skeptically that Allie almost laughed. He was too young to remember her having a life apart from him, working for her and Gregg’s landscaping business.
“That’s right. I’m going to be working at a place called the Pine Cone Gallery. It’s a store on Main Street that sells art made by local artists.” There was another roll of thunder now, this one close enough, and loud enough, to make Wyatt tense up again. So Allie went on, quickly, “Anyway, the woman who owns it asked me if I wanted to work for her during the hours you’re at day camp, from nine o’clock to three o’clock, and I said yes. I mean, it works out pretty well for both of us, don’t you think? This way, we’ll both get to do something fun. And afterward, you can tell me about your day at camp, and I can tell you about my day at the gallery. What do you think?” She smiled at him, determined to be positive. This separation, she knew, would be an adjustment for both of them.
But before Wyatt could answer her, there was a brilliant flash of lightning, followed a few seconds later by a boom of thunder so loud it sent Wyatt scrambling into her arms. They listened as the thunder reverberated through the still, evening air and watched as the lights in Wyatt’s bedroom flickered, then went out, then flickered back on again.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she murmured, hugging Wyatt to her and trying to think if there was a storm warning for that day. But she didn’t know. They hadn’t been into town, so she hadn’t listened to the car radio or read the newspaper. Maybe she should turn on the television, she thought, starting to get up. But in the next second, there was a burst of lightning, followed a moment later by an earsplitting crack of thunder that sent Wyatt burrowing deeper into her arms. The cabin’s lights flickered off and on again, then went out for good.
“Hey, you know what?” Allie asked, giving Wyatt an extrahard hug, “It wouldn’t be summer in Butternut if we didn’t lose power at least once. So let’s get the flashlight, okay? Because in a few hours, it’ll be dark.” But as she led Wyatt to the kitchen, it occurred to her that it was already much darker outside than it should be for this time of the evening. And as she was opening the utility drawer in the kitchen, she glanced out the window and discovered why.
On the far shore of the lake, an entire wall of black clouds was amassing. But unlike an actual wall, this wall wasn’t stationary. It was moving. Fast. So fast, in fact, it seemed to be bearing directly down onto the cabin.
Watching it, Allie felt the hairs standing up on her arms. She angled her body between Wyatt and the window, so he couldn’t see it, too.
“Found it,” she said, pulling a flashlight out of the drawer. But when she turned it on, the beam was weak. Wyatt had been using it to play “camping” under his blanket fort in the living room. She sighed and groped in the drawer for batteries. It might be several hours, she knew, before the electricity came on again.
But there were no batteries in that drawer. Or in any other drawer, for that matter. She’d ransacked the last one when her eyes settled on the phone on the kitchen counter. That at least was working. But who would she call? And what would she say to them? Without an answer to either question she picked up the receiver and held it up to her ear. There was no dial tone. So the phone was out, too? She thought about her cell phone. Nope. She still hadn’t switched to a plan with coverage up here. Then she glanced out the window again. The cloud wall was closer. She felt a cold shiver of fear travel the length of her spine.
And then she remembered what she’d said to Wyatt only a few minutes ago. About how it was her responsibility to take care of him. Well, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it right now, was she? She needed to stay calm. She needed to think.
“Wyatt, I think I might have seen an old camping lantern in the hall closet,” she said, giving him the flashlight. “You can help me look for it.” Wyatt followed her over to the closet and directed a wobbly flashlight beam into it as she fumbled around in its mothball-scented depths. Every time there was another peal of thunder, though, she felt him stiffen beside her.
She was standing on her tiptoes, reaching for the closet’
s top shelf, when Wyatt suddenly walked over to the living room window.
“Somebody’s here,” he said, turning back to her.
Allie looked at him, blankly, trying to push a sleeping bag she’d accidentally dislodged back up onto the top shelf. Who in their right mind would be out in this weather? she wondered. And then she froze. Because what if whoever it was wasn’t in their right mind? What if they were like the character in the B movie she’d seen once, the homicidal maniac who’d terrorized a family vacationing at their lakeside cabin? Or had it been flesh-eating zombies who’d terrorized that family? She gave the sleeping bag another shove. She’d definitely seen too many movies.
“Wyatt,” she said warningly, finding her voice, “do not open that door. Remember what we talked about? If a stranger comes to our front door, you come and get me, okay? You don’t let them in.”
“But it’s not a stranger,” Wyatt said, staring out the window. “It’s Mr. Ford. From the boatyard.”
“Mr. Ford?” Allie said, letting the sleeping bag she was holding fall to the floor. Here? Now? She would have been less surprised if it had been flesh-eating zombies.
But a pounding on the door spurred her into action.
“Should I let him in?” Wyatt asked, turning to her.
“No, you stay here,” Allie said, pointing to one of the living room chairs. “I’ll see what Mr. Ford wants.”
No sooner had she slid the bolt on the front door and pushed it open against a surprisingly strong gust of wind, then Walker brushed past her into the cabin.
“Do you have a cellar?” he asked.
“A cellar?” she repeated, startled by his brusqueness. She closed the front door on another brilliant flash of lightning.
“Yes,” he said, quickly. “A cellar, a basement, anything like that? Anything underground?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that,” she said, but her words were lost in a boom of thunder that shook the cabin.
