Moonlight on Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  “Good, I’ll tell them you can start immediately,” Ms. Thompson said. “Or by the middle of next week, anyway. Let’s say Wednesday, all right?

  “All right,” Mila said, astonished at the speed with which everything was moving.

  “In the meantime, I’ll have to run a criminal background check on you, Mila. You don’t have anything in your past I need to know about, do you?”

  “Nothing,” Mila said, shaking her head.

  “And your driving record?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  Ms. Thompson nodded, already preoccupied by another issue. “I’ll have to figure out a payment plan with the family,” she said.

  “The family?”

  “Well, you won’t technically be working for the patient,” she explained. “You’ll be working for his brother, who lives nearby.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I’ll have him pay the agency, and then I’ll send you cash. Don’t worry about the taxes; I’ll work those out on my end. It will take a little . . . creative accounting. The important thing is that your name not appear anywhere. Not on a bank account, not on tax records, not on anything. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, but Ms. Thompson, my legal married name is Mila Stewart. So you’ll need to do a background check on that name. But going forward I want to use my maiden name, Jones,” Mila said. Ms. Thompson sighed and massaged her temples with the hand that wasn’t holding the file. She seemed suddenly tired and Mila felt guilty, again, about keeping her past closing time. But, in the next moment, Ms. Thompson seemed to get a second wind.

  “Okay, I’ll tell the family you’re working for that your name is Mila Jones, and all my records will be in that name,” Ms. Thompson said.

  “But, Mila,” she said, closing the file and leveling her gaze at Mila, “you’ve got to be absolutely obsessive about secrecy. It used to be that you couldn’t leave a paper trail, but now you can’t leave an electronic trail, either. No cell-phone calls. No e-mails. No credit card charges. It needs to be as if you’ve simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Mila said, without hesitation.

  “Good. Because I don’t think I need to tell you that if your husband were to find you, it wouldn’t just endanger you. It would endanger the client, too. And since this particular client is recovering from a serious car accident, he wouldn’t be in a position to defend himself.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Mila agreed, with an unconscious shiver of dread. She was picturing Brandon in one of his rages.

  “Okay then,” Ms. Thompson said, getting up and returning the file to the file cabinet. “Why don’t you call me here on Monday morning, and I’ll let you know what time to come in on Tuesday so we can confirm everything.” Then she thought of something. “Did you call me from your home phone today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t do that again,” Ms. Thompson warned. “Call me from a pay phone. There’s still a few of those around, believe it or not. Or better yet, buy yourself one of those disposable cell phones. Just don’t let your husband find it. In the meantime, I’ll speak to the agency in Ely. I should have all the details from them by the time I talk to you on Monday. And that should give you plenty of time to pack and arrange transportation for Wednesday. And remember,” she said, ticking the next points off on her fingers. “Tell no one. Pay cash for everything. And destroy all your receipts.”

  Mila nodded, and, for the first time in weeks, she felt a sweet, almost dizzying sense of hope. But when she caught sight of the darkness outside Ms. Thompson’s windows, it ebbed a little and she slid her cell phone out of her purse. Thank God. No missed calls from Brandon. He didn’t like it when she missed his calls. That was how she’d gotten the black eye Ms. Thompson had noticed. But he also didn’t like it when she wasn’t there when he got home from work, and he’d be home soon. “I should get going,” Mila said, feeling a familiar pulse of fear.

  “Of course,” Ms. Thompson said. “Just don’t forget about any of the things we discussed.”

  Mila didn’t forget. And by the time she came to Ms. Thompson’s office, late Tuesday afternoon, everything was in place. She’d bought, with cash, a bus ticket to Butternut, and she’d bought a secondhand suitcase, which was already packed and stored in a locker at the bus station. And Wednesday morning, after Brandon left for work, she’d leave for the bus station. On the way there, she’d throw away her cell phone and her cut-up credit card. She wouldn’t throw away her wedding ring. That, she had a special plan for.

  But sitting in Ms. Thompson’s office that afternoon, that plan was the farthest thing from Mila’s mind. She was anxious and exhausted. She’d worked hard over the last couple of days to keep up an appearance of normalcy with Brandon. To be pleasant to him, and even, God forbid, affectionate. But it had cost her. And, what was worse, it hadn’t prevented another outburst from Brandon, who, in his paranoia, was convinced once again that Mila was being unfaithful to him.

  “You look tired,” Ms. Thompson said, perching on the edge of her desk and holding a couple of files.

  “I am tired,” Mila confessed. “And I’m worried, too. I mean, what if Brandon doesn’t go to work tomorrow? He’s done that before. Called in sick so he can spend the day with me. Or what if he pretends to go to work and follows me instead? He’s done that before, too. Just to keep an eye on me.”

  “We can’t know what he’ll do tomorrow,” Ms. Thompson said, “we just have to hope—pray, really—that he sticks to his usual schedule.” She went on, “Now, I have two files here. One of them is for you.” She handed it to Mila. “It’s the patient’s file. You’ll have to hide it tonight, but tomorrow, on the bus, you can read it over and come up to speed on things.” Holding up the other folder, she said, “This file is my file on you. But I’m not filing it with my other personnel files.” Ms. Thompson indicated the file cabinet. Then she pointed to her desk. “I’m keeping it in my desk drawer. My locked desk drawer,” she added. “I have help here, sometimes. My niece, Janet—who, between you and me, is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree—occasionally does some office work for me. But even she doesn’t know where I keep the key to this drawer. And as for Brandon . . . well, if he were ever to turn up here, he’d have to get through me to get to that file.”

  “Well, then, he wouldn’t stand a chance,” Mila said, only half joking. Ms. Thompson, she imagined, could be very intimidating when the situation called for it.

  “Okay, then, anything else?” Ms. Thompson asked, going to lock Mila’s file in her desk drawer.

  “No, nothing. Except . . . except thank you, Ms. Thompson. Thank you so much. For everything.” Mila felt her eyes start to tear up, but Ms. Thompson, straightening up from the desk, said firmly, “No more crying, young lady. You’ve got work to do. You can call me when you get to the patient’s house, and it goes without saying that you can call me any time after that, too, if you need any advice or have any questions.”

  Mila nodded and stood to leave, still fighting back tears. She was feeling so many different things at once. Elation, excitement, nervousness, and something else, too. Fear. Fear of Brandon. But also fear of this new, as yet unknown, man.

  “Ms. Thompson,” she said, hesitating, “is it really just going to be the two of us, me and the patient, all alone in that cabin?”

  “Well, not all the time. There’s a housekeeper, too. But at night, and on the weekends, yes, it’ll just be the two of you.” And then, understanding Mila’s expression, she said, “But don’t worry about him, all right? Even if he wanted to hurt you, he couldn’t. He’s in a wheelchair.” And then, with the hint of a smile, she added, “If it came down to it, Mila, I’m pretty sure you could take him in a fight.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Is there . . . is there something wrong with the eggs?” Lonnie asked with a slight frown as she refilled Mila’s coffee cup. It was two weeks after Mila’s arrival at the cabin, and she was sitting at the breakfast table, trying, and faili
ng, to eat the eggs Lonnie had scrambled for her.

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with the eggs,” Mila said, eating a forkful of them to prove it. “They’re delicious. It’s just . . .” She paused, not wanting to hurt Lonnie’s feelings. “It’s just that I’m not used to having someone make my breakfast for me. I mean, I’m perfectly happy to do it myself.”

  “But that’s silly,” Lonnie objected, returning to the stove, where she was scrambling more eggs. “I have to make Reid’s breakfast anyway. So I might as well make yours, too.”

  “But it’s not just cooking my breakfast,” Mila said carefully. “It’s everything else you do for me, too. It’s not necessary, really.” But Lonnie, sliding the eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate, disagreed. “It is necessary, Mila. It’s my job. It’s what I get paid to do,” she said, taking three pieces of bacon out of another frying pan and putting them onto the same plate as the eggs.

  “Besides, I like to stay busy,” she added, putting the plate on a tray. And Mila sighed, quietly, and dropped the subject for now. She knew she wasn’t going to make any headway with Lonnie this morning. It had already taken Mila two weeks of delicate negotiations to persuade Lonnie to let her make her own bed and launder her own clothes. Other things, Lonnie hadn’t budged on. Mila still had to vacate her room for a half an hour every day, for instance, while Lonnie vacuumed the already perfectly vacuumed rug and dusted the already perfectly dusted furniture.

  “How does this look?” Lonnie asked now, carrying Reid’s breakfast tray over for Mila to inspect.

  “It looks beautiful,” Mila said honestly. “Worthy of any five-star hotel.” And it was. In addition to a cup of steaming coffee, laced with cream, there was a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a plate of bacon and eggs, a side of toast with a pat of butter on each slice, and a pot of strawberry preserves beside it. Lonnie had even wrapped up the silverware in a linen napkin and tied it with a fancy twist and placed a small bud vase with some freshly picked wild violets in it in one corner of the tray.

  “I hope he likes it,” Lonnie said, a little wistfully, before she left the kitchen to take it to Reid’s bedroom.

  He won’t, Mila thought, nibbling on a piece of her bacon. He doesn’t like anything. But that didn’t stop Lonnie from putting together those trays at breakfast time, and lunchtime, every day. And the food on them! Mila, for one, had never eaten so well in her life. For breakfast, French toast or pancakes or waffles made from scratch. Or biscuits and sausage smothered in gravy. Lunch was chicken pot pie in a flaky crust, or macaroni and cheese with toasted breadcrumbs on top of it. Lonnie left before dinner, but she left the refrigerator well stocked with carefully labeled Pyrex dishes, all filled with delicious food, all ready to be heated in the oven for Reid’s dinner.

  And that was Mila’s responsibility every night, reheating Reid’s dinner and taking it to him on a tray, though she didn’t bother to make it look as elegant as Lonnie did. What was the point? Reid didn’t care. He rarely finished his dinner and often only picked at it. Sometimes, when Mila went back half an hour later to collect his tray, the food on it looked as if it hadn’t even been touched, and Mila was left to scrape it into the kitchen garbage can, feeling vaguely disapproving. How many meals, she wondered, had Reid wasted since coming home from the rehabilitation center?

  Maybe his wastefulness bothered Mila as much as it did because she’d grown up in a household where breakfast cereal and canned soup were the norm at mealtime. Home-cooked food had been a rarity, reserved for special occasions, like birthdays. And even then, Mila’s mother hadn’t been much of a cook. But Lonnie? Lonnie cooked the kind of food Mila saw on cooking shows, and on the covers of glossy checkout counter magazines. Food that deserved to be eaten. No, food that deserved to be worshipped.

  If Mila was honest with herself, though, she wasn’t doing much better with Lonnie’s dinners than Reid was. Because after she took him his tray, and sat down, alone, at the kitchen table to have her own meal, she could barely bring herself to have more than a few bites of it.

  “Well, that was successful,” Lonnie said now, coming back into the kitchen.

  “Was it?” Mila asked, looking up.

  “Not really,” Lonnie confessed, her face falling a little. “He said he wasn’t hungry, and not to bother him again this morning. But I left the tray there, anyway. You never know. He could change his mind.”

  “Well, at least you tried,” Mila said, feeling a flash of annoyance at Reid. How could he be rude to someone as well meaning as Lonnie?

  “More coffee?” Lonnie asked, bringing the coffeepot back over to the table. Mila started to say “no, thank you,” since she hadn’t even put a dent in the cup Lonnie had already poured for her, when the two of them heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel driveway. Lonnie looked casually out the kitchen window, but Mila felt her whole body go taut with fear.

  “Oh, look, it’s the UPS man,” Lonnie said, as the familiar brown truck rolled into view. Lonnie often had packages delivered at the house, since she was away from her own house for most of the day. Now Mila breathed a shaky little sigh of relief. I have to stop doing that, she thought. Panicking every time a car or truck pulled up outside. Because while Lonnie, bless her heart, wasn’t that observant, Reid was. And Mila knew that even in the limited amount of time she’d spent with him, he’d noticed something odd about her behavior. She tried hard to appear relaxed. But every time she heard the phone ring, or a car rattle up the driveway, or a boat putter by the dock, she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She was certain then, all evidence to the contrary, that Brandon had found her. That of course he had found her. That he was never not going to find her.

  She watched as Lonnie bustled out to meet the UPS man, then came back holding a package and shaking her head. “I’m afraid I ordered something else from one of those home shopping networks,” she said, putting the package down on the counter. “I suppose they’re counting on people like me,” she added ruefully. “People who have nothing better to do at night than order some junk they’ve seen on TV.” But she said this without any bitterness, or self-pity, and Mila realized, not for the first time, that Lonnie was one of those rare people blessed with a truly sunny disposition.

  “Do you mind if I sit down and have a cup of coffee with you before I start the housekeeping?” she asked Mila.

  “No, of course not,” Mila said, and as Lonnie poured herself a cup of coffee, Mila realized how out of the habit she’d gotten at moments like this, the little give-and-take of everyday life. There’d been a time in her life when they’d been second nature to her. Chatting with someone in line at the grocery store. Striking up a conversation with someone on the bus. Exchanging pleasantries with your neighbor as you let yourself into your apartment. But during her marriage to Brandon, it had been easier to avoid these interactions, and simpler to not get involved with anyone, no matter how superficial that involvement might be. As Lonnie sat down across the table from her, Mila realized how much she’d missed this most basic human contact. Now if she could only learn to trust someone again, she thought. Even a little bit.

  “How’re you doing, Mila?” Lonnie asked, sipping her coffee. “You’re not too lonely here, are you?”

  “Not too lonely,” Mila said, forcing herself to smile. That was a lie, of course. A spectacular lie. Because sometimes, she thought the loneliness was worse than the fear. Especially at night. At night, as she sat at the kitchen table, pretending to eat her dinner, or as she sat at her desk, trying to do the sample problems in her study guide, she could actually feel the weight of her loneliness pressing down on her, like the real, palpable thing it was.

  It didn’t help that it was so dark here at night. A city girl all her life, she’d never truly understood, until now, how dark the darkness could be. Sometimes, before she went to sleep, she’d stand at her bedroom window and try to see something—anything—beyond where the light from the cabin ended. But there was nothing to see. Onl
y more darkness.

  If the woods were dark, though, they weren’t silent. They were, in fact, full of noises, noises that seemed designed to compound Mila’s feelings of loneliness. The wind rustling in the trees, the mournful call of a loon, and even, occasionally, the faraway howling of coyotes; all these sounds, and others, too, had the effect of making Mila feel not less alone, but more alone.

  Having Reid right down the hall, it turned out, did nothing to relieve this sense of isolation. She’d already known, of course, that being with someone else could be lonelier than being alone, and she was reminded of it again now. Neither she nor Reid had ever mentioned that first night, the night she woke him up from his nightmare. But the memory of it hung in the air between them. Still, they’d reached some kind of accommodation with each other: Mila, cool and professional, or at least striving for cool and professional, over the several layers of doubt and intimidation she actually felt, and Reid . . . Reid, sullen and silent. He barely tolerated what little time they spent together every day, and when they weren’t together, Mila imagined she could still feel his hostility toward her, radiating right through his closed bedroom door.

  “I think it was hard on the other two home health aides,” Lonnie said now, breaking into her thoughts. “The loneliness. And, of course, being with him,” she added, almost guiltily, glancing in the direction of his bedroom. “I mean, he can be difficult sometimes.”

  Sometimes? Mila wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “You know, he wasn’t always like this,” Lonnie said companionably, spooning more sugar into her coffee.

  “No?” Mila asked doubtfully.

  “Well, I didn’t know him that well before the accident,” Lonnie said. “I’d been doing housework for Walker and Allie for several years, but Reid didn’t come up here that often. He was based in the Twin Cities, and, from what Walker said, he was all work and no play. But once in a while he’d come up, usually for some business at the boatyard, and, I must say, when he did . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she smiled and gave a little shake of her head. “Well, when he did come up here,” she said, “he was something to look at.”