Moonlight on Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  She had no idea what she expected him to do as she came up behind him, took hold of the wheelchair’s handles, and maneuvered him out of his bedroom and down the hallway to the kitchen, but she expected him to do something, or to say something. To offer some form of protest. But he didn’t. And neither did Lonnie, who, as they turned into the kitchen, had a stunned expression on her face.

  Oh, of course, Mila realized. The door to Reid’s bedroom was open. Lonnie had heard everything she’d said to him. And maybe, Mila thought, as she sailed through the kitchen, pushing Reid’s wheelchair, maybe she should have felt embarrassed by that. But she didn’t. She felt too . . . too elated to feel any embarrassment or regret. Why, she wondered, had she waited all these days to tell Reid what she thought of him? Why hadn’t she told him the first night she’d gotten here?

  “Lonnie,” she said crisply, “can you get the door for us, please?” And Lonnie, bless her heart, only hesitated for a second before she nodded, hurried over to the kitchen door, and opened it.

  “Thank you, Lonnie,” Mila said, with a quick smile, but she didn’t let her eyes linger too long on Lonnie’s expression, which was still surprised but now a little anxious, too. Instead, Mila pushed Reid’s wheelchair briskly out the door, down the ramp, and out to the van. And after she’d loaded it onto the van, and gotten herself settled into the driver’s seat, she started up the van, turned down the driveway, and drove for several minutes in silence before finally glancing back at him. He was staring straight ahead, a stony expression on his face. He definitely didn’t look happy, she thought, though after the dressing-down she’d given him, was that really so surprising? After all, she’d called him . . . well, actually, she’d called him a lot of things, and she’d implied he was a lot of other things, too. Things like rude and selfish and ungrateful, and . . . She glanced back at Reid again and felt her recent euphoria start to give way to a new foreboding.

  Oh my God, what have I done? she wondered a few minutes later. She shook her head, bewildered by her own actions. What had she been thinking? And, more important, what had she hoped to accomplish? And why had it been so important for her to take Reid to his doctor’s appointment, anyway? Walker would never have blamed her if Reid had refused to go to it. And why, why, had it been so important for her to tell Reid, in excruciating detail, exactly what she thought of him? Because while Walker wouldn’t have fired her for not taking Reid to his appointment, she realized now, with a cold, prickly fear, he most likely would fire her for what she’d said to him today. Fire her for insubordination, or lack of respect, or just general unprofessionalism. And then where would she be? Well, out of a job for one thing. And out of a place to live, for another.

  And not just a place to live, either, she realized. But a place to live that was two hundred and forty miles, and a whole world away, from Brandon. Now, obviously, she would have to leave this place. But where would she go? She’d only been here for one two-week pay period, and the money that she’d earned so far wouldn’t take her very far, or last her very long. And then there was the question of what she would do to support herself once she got to wherever it was she went. She couldn’t ask Ms. Thompson to help her find another job, or even give her a recommendation for one. Not after she’d been fired from this job.

  And all at once, the enormity of what she’d done settled over her like some thick, clammy blanket, and she knew she needed to pull over. She didn’t trust herself to drive any farther. She slowed down, waited until she’d reached a straight stretch of road, and then pulled the van over to the shoulder and turned off the ignition. She felt light-headed, and slightly sick to her stomach, and she had to resist the sudden and overwhelming temptation to put her head down on the steering wheel.

  “Why are we stopping?” Reid asked, intruding on her panic.

  “Oh,” Mila said, turning to him. “I’m just . . . I’m just stopping here for a second,” she said. “Just to, um . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “Just to collect myself, I guess.”

  He frowned, waiting for more information, and Mila, knowing she was only postponing the inevitable, said, “I’m just going to sit here for a second until I feel ready to drive again, okay? And then I’ll take you back to the cabin. When we get there, I’ll call the doctor’s office, and Walker, too. He can take you to your appointment when he gets back. And, in the meantime, I apologize for forcing you to go with me today. Obviously, that was your decision to make. Not mine.”

  “So now we’re not going to the appointment?” he clarified.

  “No, we’re not,” Mila said. “And when I call your brother, I’ll tell him about all the things I said to you, too.”

  “Why would you do that?” Reid asked. He looked genuinely mystified.

  “Because . . .” She hesitated, surprised by his question. “Because it was wrong of me to say all those things to you,” she said, forcing herself to maintain eye contact with him. “I was hired to help you. Not to pass judgment on you. And the things I said . . . they were out of line. I was out of line. But I’ll leave as soon as Walker and Allie get back. Or as soon as they find someone else to take my place.”

  “You’re . . . quitting?” Reid asked, rubbing his temples.

  “Not quitting,” she qualified. “Resigning. Resigning to save your brother the trouble of having to fire me.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Reid said, after considering it for a moment. “You think if my brother knew what you’d said to me today he’d fire you? Assuming, of course, that you didn’t resign first?”

  She nodded. Hadn’t she made that clear?

  But Reid only laughed. Or at least that’s what she thought he did. She’d never heard him laugh before, and she gathered he didn’t do it very often anymore, because his laugh sounded strange. Unused, almost, and rusty. But when he was done laughing, he shook his head. “The only reaction my brother would have to your saying all those things to me is pleasure. Pure pleasure. And the only regret he’d have about it is that he hadn’t been here in person to hear you say them. Trust me. He’s wanted to say the same to me, and worse, since I got out of the hospital.”

  Mila stared at him in astonishment. “You’re not . . . you’re not angry?”

  “Angry? No. I mean, I didn’t enjoy it. How could I? It was pretty unflattering. But it did, at least, have the advantage of being true. Every goddamned word of it. And now, Mila, I think we need to get going, or we really will miss that appointment.”

  Mila nodded, too surprised to speak. But she turned the ignition back on and pulled off the shoulder of the road. She concentrated on her driving again, and Reid settled back into his usual silence. But something, she knew, had happened between them. Something had changed.

  Back in the van after his doctor’s appointment, Reid was surprised to discover that he didn’t want to go back to the cabin yet. That’s strange, he thought. That had never happened before. Usually, no sooner had he left it than he wanted to go back to it. Back to the cabin and, more important, back to his bedroom, with its closed windows, its pulled-down shades, and its securely locked door. Because as much as he hated being in that room—and he did hate it—he hated being there less than he hated being anywhere else.

  Maybe his not wanting to go back to it now had to do with the weather, he reasoned, as the van hummed down a county road in the direction of Butternut. After all, it was a ridiculously beautiful day, so ridiculously beautiful, in fact, that even Reid, who’d been oblivious to this kind of thing since his accident, couldn’t be entirely oblivious to it today. It was warm and sunny, and the air was soft and sweet and filled with the fragrance of the wildflowers that grew in the ditches alongside the road. And the sky, the sky was a brilliant blue, especially when seen against the puffy white clouds that occasionally, and languidly, floated through it.

  But if Reid was honest with himself, the perfect weather was only part of the reason he didn’t want to go back to the cabin. The smallest part, actually. Because the biggest part was her.
The biggest part was Mila. Which was crazy, really, when he considered how much he’d resented her, and how hard he’d worked, over the last several weeks, to avoid her altogether. Or, more accurately, to make her avoid him. Still, being with her now was . . . well, it was not unpleasant, he decided. Unlike his other home health aides, for instance, she didn’t feel the need to talk to him all the time, to fill the space between them with inane, pointless conversations that neither one of them wanted to be having. She was comfortable with silence, he saw, and that was something he’d always considered to be an undervalued quality in people.

  Now she glanced quickly over her shoulder at him as she drove, but she otherwise said nothing. And he appreciated that, too. Since the accident it had felt as though people were constantly asking him questions. Was he thirsty or hungry? Hot or cold? Was he in pain? Did he need a blanket? A magazine? Or how about another pillow to prop himself up with? It had driven him crazy, all the verbal poking and prodding, especially since he didn’t want anything, really, other than to not be in pain, and to be left alone.

  He watched as Mila turned smoothly off the county road and onto one of the local roads. He liked watching her drive, he realized. And it wasn’t just because she was an excellent driver. It was because he liked watching her hands. She was good with them, he saw, and being good with your hands was, in his opinion, another undervalued quality in this day and age.

  On the face of it, of course, her hands looked ordinary. Small and pale, with short, neatly trimmed nails. But it wasn’t the way someone’s hands looked that told the story, he knew. It was the way they moved. And Mila’s hands moved gracefully, with no false starts, and no wasted motion. She could drive a five-thousand-pound van as easily as most people could push a toy car, Reid thought.

  Now Mila turned again, onto the street that led into the town, and they passed the BUTTERNUT POPULATION 1,200 sign, and then the gas station, and then, in the next block, the library and the recreation center. Soon they would drive through the center of town, past Pearl’s and the Pine Cone Gallery and Johnson’s Hardware, and then they would leave the town behind them. After that, it would only be another fifteen minutes before they were pulling up in front of the cabin, and Reid was wheeling himself back into his room, and closing the door behind him. And then . . . well, then he’d pick up where he’d left off, which was . . . which was really nowhere at all.

  “Do you mind if we stop in town?” he asked Mila now, leaning forward in his wheelchair.

  “Oh, no. Of course not,” Mila said, slightly startled. It was the first time he’d said more than a couple of words to her since she’d pulled back onto the road after their conversation that morning. “Where do you need to go?” she asked, stopping at an intersection.

  “I don’t really need to go anywhere,” he said. “It’s just . . .” He grasped at a reason to not to go back to the cabin right away. “It’s just that I’m hungry.” Actually, he hadn’t been conscious of being hungry before, but now that he’d said he was, he realized it was true.

  “Oh, of course,” Mila said apologetically, looking at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was twelve thirty already. Where would you like to go?”

  “How about Pearl’s?” Reid asked.

  “The place your brother brought me that first day?” Mila asked, as she proceeded through the intersection. And Reid groaned inwardly, remembering how he’d behaved then. But Butternut only had a few other options for lunch, and none of them were as good as Pearl’s, so he said, “Yeah, that place. It’s up ahead. On the right.”

  Mila said nothing, but she slowed the van, and then slid, as if by magic, into a parking space directly in front of Pearl’s. “It looks busy,” she said, noting the line of people spilling out the door and onto the sidewalk. “But the woman who owns it is a friend of Allie’s, isn’t she? She’ll probably seat you right away.”

  That was true enough, Reid thought. But he didn’t want any special treatment now, not when he’d had so much of it the last time he’d been there. And he flashed on an image of Caroline sweeping up the glass he’d broken, and soothing the baby he’d made cry, and bringing him a bendy straw to drink his new glass of water with.

  “You know what,” he said, “why don’t we just get something to go?”

  “To take back to the cabin?” Mila asked. She’d turned off the ignition, and now her hand hovered over the door handle.

  “Um, I guess. Or maybe we could take it someplace else. There’s a picnic area at the town beach,” he said, improvising.

  “A picnic area?” Mila asked in surprise, turning around in the front seat and studying him. “You want to have a picnic?”

  “Why not,” Reid said, a little defensively. “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but . . .” She stopped, stymied. And Reid had to admit that his wanting to go on a picnic was a little incongruous, given that only a few hours ago he hadn’t even wanted to leave his bedroom. But now he reached for his wallet and extracted a couple of bills from it and held them out to a still doubtful looking Mila.

  “Would you mind going in?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, regaining some of her equilibrium as she took the bills from him. “What would you like?”

  “How about the Butternut Burger, some fries, and a Coke,” he said. “And, uh, Mila, you should get something for yourself, too.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I can have something back at the cabin.”

  “No, really, get something,” he said. “I mean, otherwise, what are you going to do at the beach, just sit there and watch me eat?”

  “No, of course not,” she assured him. “I’ll wait in the van.”

  “Oh,” Reid said, taken aback. “I thought we’d have lunch, you know, together.” He felt suddenly and undeniably awkward.

  At the word together Mila’s eyes widened slightly. More surprise, Reid saw. But she recovered herself quickly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll get us some burgers.” And then she was gone, leaving Reid to mull over the curious turn the day’s events had taken. And he had to admit, he was almost as surprised by them as Mila was.

  But she was back before he knew it, carrying their lunches in a bulging and slightly greasy paper bag and looking as if she was determined to make the best of their impromptu picnic. And Reid, feeling oddly contented, gave her directions to the town beach, realizing as she pulled into the parking lot there a few minutes later that it was even prettier than he remembered it being. Set at one end of a sheltered bay, and fringed by great northern pines, the beach was a quarter-mile-long crescent of yellow sand that gave way to the blue waters of Butternut Lake. There was only a scattering of people there today, mainly parents with young children who had grouped their beach chairs, brightly colored umbrellas, and striped beach towels near the lifeguard’s stand and the small, roped-off swimming area in front of it. Mila, though, seemed unnerved even by this small crowd, and Reid noticed that she was careful to park as far away from the other cars in the lot as possible, and that when she got out of the van and came around to slide his door open, there was a worry line creasing her otherwise smooth forehead. Once she’d gotten their lunches out and locked up the van, though, she seemed to relax. A little.

  “There’s a paved walkway over there that leads to some picnic tables,” Reid said as he wheeled himself in its direction, and Mila fell in beside him. He remembered, now, the last time he’d been to this beach. It was a warm day in late spring, and Allie and Walker had brought him here, thinking that the fresh air and sunshine might do him some good. They hadn’t. He’d wanted to leave as soon as they’d gotten here. It was only a few days after they’d moved him into the cabin from the rehabilitation center, and he was already resentful of their unflagging cheerfulness and already ashamed, too, of his resentment of it.

  And the truth was, he wasn’t in much better shape today than he had been that day, because by the time he got to the first picnic table, which stood in the shade of a nearby aspen tree, he
was already winded. “Is this okay?” he asked, positioning his wheelchair at one end of the table.

  “It’s fine,” Mila said, setting the drinks and the bag on the table and sitting down on one of its benches. She unpacked their lunches then and slid his Coke and his paper-wrapped hamburger and french fries over to him. He waited for her to start her lunch, but she didn’t eat it right away. Instead, she took a tentative sip of her soda, and then she did that thing he’d seen her do at Pearl’s the first time he’d met her. She made herself smaller somehow, dipping her chin down toward her chest and drawing her shoulders closer together. It was a tiny movement. A subtle movement. He didn’t even know why he noticed it, really. Most people wouldn’t have. But while it had annoyed him the first time he’d seen her do it, now it interested him. The way she closed herself up like that. Closed herself off. Maybe it interested him, he thought, because closing yourself off was something he knew about firsthand.

  Thinking about that, he unwrapped his hamburger and took a bite and then, surprised, took another bite. It tasted like . . . it tasted like real food, he marveled. Since the accident food had seemed somehow unappealing to him. Eating was just another thing he did because other people expected him to do it. But he hadn’t taken any real pleasure in it. This was different, though, he thought, and, suddenly famished, he took another bite of his hamburger.