Moonlight on Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  Mila thanked Darla and left the store, pausing in the doorway to look surreptitiously up and down the block. No sign of Brandon, she thought with relief, and then she immediately chided herself for half expecting there to be a sign of him. As Ms. Thompson had pointed out many times before, the only way Brandon would find her here was if he traced her directly to Butternut. He wouldn’t just stumble on her. Minnesota, after all, was a big state. Not Texas big, maybe. But still, big enough. Even with this thought in mind, though, she was walking quickly back to the car, keeping her head down, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a sign in the window at Butternut Drugs. END OF JULY SALE, it read. ALL COSMETICS 25% OFF.

  She paused. She didn’t own any cosmetics. Not anymore. They, too, had been a casualty of her relationship with Brandon. She looked beautiful to him without makeup, he’d told her, so if she wore any makeup, he said, it was obviously for the benefit of other men. She’d known this was ridiculous, and she’d told him so too. But as was so often the case with Brandon, she’d opted, finally, for the path of least resistance. The only makeup she’d kept was foundation and pressed powder, both of them ideal, it turned out, for covering bruises. Now, though, looking in the store window, she thought about how nice it would be to have a new lipstick, and she went into the drugstore and spent a very pleasant five minutes at the makeup counter choosing a lipstick and, at the last minute, selecting a mascara, too. And as she waited in line at the register, behind two teenage girls, she felt it again, the tiny but undeniable current of electricity that had been humming through her intermittently all day. It was both vaguely pleasant, and vaguely disconcerting at the same time.

  “What time’s he picking you up tonight?” she heard one of the teenagers ask the other.

  “Eight o’clock. And you know what? I can’t wait,” her friend said. “He’s so hot. I keep thinking about what it’s going to be like to see him again. I don’t know, maybe it’ll be a complete disaster. But maybe not. Something might happen. And knowing that is driving me a little crazy. I mean, remember the night before our chem final? When we drank, like, five cans of Red Bull? That’s how I feel right now. Like I’m totally overcaffeinated.”

  And Mila, listening to them, started to smile and then stopped. Because she knew exactly what that girl was talking about. She knew because she was feeling exactly the same way about tonight. She was feeling that same fizzy excitement, that same jittery anticipation. Call it the Red Bull effect. Call it whatever you wanted. It was the sense . . . well, like the girl in front of her in line had said, it was the sense that something might happen. And knowing she was feeling that way about Reid, and about the party tonight, and knowing that she was behaving like some infatuated adolescent, instead of the mature adult she had thought—or at least hoped—she was, almost made her groan out loud, right then and there, standing in line at Butternut Drugs.

  But she didn’t. She paid for her cosmetics and walked out of the store and back out onto Main Street. And then she drifted distractedly down the sidewalk, only tangentially aware of her surroundings. You like Reid, don’t you? she thought, simultaneously fascinated and appalled by this new knowledge of herself. You like him a lot. And what’s more, you’re attracted to him, aren’t you? Attracted to a man who, seven weeks ago, she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with. Yes, she answered, yes on both counts. But how had it happened? So . . . so suddenly? But it hadn’t happened suddenly, she realized. It had been happening gradually since the day they’d had the picnic at the beach. And she saw an image of him from that day, an image of him skipping stones, his upper body moving with an easy grace that even his wheelchair couldn’t contain, his dark blue eyes focused not on the stones he was skipping so effortlessly over the water, but on her. On Mila.

  She flashed on other images, too, from the last month. An image of her running a washcloth over Reid’s bare chest on the deck the night of the full moon. Another one of her curled up in the armchair in his room in the middle of the night, knowing that they were both awake, and both sharing a strange, silent intimacy with each other. And an image of her sitting with him at the dinner table last night. His brother had taken him to a barbershop in Butternut late yesterday afternoon, and when they’d come back in the evening, right as she was taking dinner out of the oven, Mila had felt so disoriented by Reid’s changed appearance that it was all she could do not to drop the pan of lasagna she was holding. He looked so different. So completely different. For the first time since she’d met him, she could actually see his face. And he’d looked handsome enough to swoon over. Where the tangle of his too-long hair had been, and the scruffiness of his beard had been, there were now only the clean, smooth, strong lines of his forehead, his cheeks, his jaw, and his chin. He was a little pale, of course, from all the hours he’d spent inside since the accident, and he had a scar, too, that she’d never seen before, running in a faint, jagged line across his forehead. But even so, he’d been a revelation to her. And the best part of that revelation, she’d decided, were his eyes. Because now that his hair was no longer falling into them, she could see them in all their deep, bright, blue glory.

  After Walker had left yesterday evening, Mila and Reid had sat down at the kitchen table and had dinner, and then they’d had some kind of conversation, about something, though what it was, Mila couldn’t for the life of her remember now. What she could remember were the pauses in the conversation, the spaces between words, the little silences during which tiny currents of . . . of attraction had eddied between them and around them.

  Oh, my God, what was she thinking? What was she doing? She stopped and leaned against a lamppost for support, and its solidity gave her some measure of comfort. Comfort and resolve. She didn’t know what she’d been doing, but she knew what she was going to do now. She was going to stop pretending that she and Reid were going on a date tonight. Because they weren’t. They were going to a party. That was it. That was all. And whatever was happening between the two of them was going to stop happening. Now. She was his employee, for one thing, or his brother’s, anyway, but it added up to the same thing. And she wasn’t available, for another. Because although she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore, she might as well have been. Her little speech to herself at the ring-throwing ceremony the first night at the cabin aside, she was still technically married. And even in the unlikely event that she could forget that fact, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she had no future with Reid. (Even if, as crazy as it seemed now, she thought she might want one with him.) But no, it wouldn’t be fair to him to put him in the kind of danger he would be in if Brandon ever found her with him.

  Thinking about all this, she felt suddenly dizzy, and, leaning on the lamppost, she wondered for a moment if she was going to faint. But the dizziness passed, and Mila, searching for its source, realized that she’d been too preoccupied to eat lunch today, and too distracted, sitting across the table from Reid, to eat breakfast, either. (She’d pretended, instead, to nibble on a piece of toast.) No wonder I’m dizzy, she thought, with relief. I’m hungry. And the Red Bull effect? That was probably just low blood sugar. And, holding on to this slender hope, she looked around for a place to eat and almost laughed when she realized that this whole time she’d been standing directly outside of Pearl’s. It was well past lunchtime, but, as luck would have it, Pearl’s was still open and still catering to a few late afternoon stragglers. So Mila went in and, avoiding the table she’d sat at on that first unpleasant afternoon, selected a booth in the back and slid into it, settling her shopping bag beside her. She took the menu out of the menu holder, ostensibly to study it, but she ended up studying the cook behind the counter instead, the one she’d seen the day she’d come in here to order her and Reid’s hamburgers. The man was enormous. And there was that same waitress, too, the pretty one with the heart-shaped face and curly hair who seemed sweet but, at the same time, hopelessly confused.

  She came over to Mila now. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Jessica. What can I ge
t for you?”

  “Um, let’s see,” Mila said, looking back down at the menu.

  “The Butternut Burger’s good. Frankie—he’s our cook—grinds the meat fresh every day,” Jessica said proudly, looking at Frankie.

  “I’ll bet he does,” Mila said, taking in Frankie’s gargantuan arms, which were larger in circumference than her own waist. He smiled back at Jessica now, an adoring smile, and Mila realized that she was watching two people who were obviously very much in love with each other. Great, she thought. Just what I need to be seeing now. “You know what,” she said to Jessica, a little abruptly. “I think I’ll just have the vanilla milk shake.”

  “One vanilla milk shake,” Jessica murmured in concentration as she wrote out the whole order on her check pad, and then she hurried away, bumping into a table as she went, and leaving Mila to worry about how she fared when the restaurant was actually busy. Oh well, she thought. I probably wasn’t a very good waitress either. Especially since I always had a chemistry textbook or a letter to Heather waiting for me to come back to between orders.

  But thinking about writing letters to Heather made her feel sad, so she tried to think about something else and immediately thought of Reid, which made her feel jittery all over again. Low blood sugar, she reminded herself, and when Jessica brought her milk shake, which was delicious, she drank it as dutifully as if she were taking medicine. And she did feel better afterward, but she still felt that same strange little quiver of excitement she’d felt all day. She sighed, paid her bill, and, leaving a generous tip for Jessica, she walked back to Lonnie’s car and drove back to the cabin, grateful for once that the twisty road required all her attention.

  After she’d walked into the kitchen and thanked Lonnie for letting her borrow her car, she lingered there for a little while, chatting with her and, at Lonnie’s insistence, showing her the dress she’d bought that afternoon.

  “You don’t think it’s too . . . too dressy?” Mila asked shyly, holding it up to herself. She didn’t really mean dressy, though. She meant something else.

  “Too dressy?” Lonnie repeated. “No, honey, it’s perfect,” she said, with her by now familiar and reassuring smile. “I’m glad you’re going out tonight,” she added. “It’s about time you had some fun up here this summer. Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve survived all these lonely nights out here all by yourself.”

  “Well, not all by myself,” Mila corrected, not looking at her as she put her dress back in the shopping bag.

  “Oh, of course,” Lonnie amended. “You’ve had Reid to keep you company, too. And I must say, he’s doing so much better, isn’t he, Mila? I like to think,” she confided, “that it has something to do with my home cooking. You know, now that he’s actually eating it and not just picking at it.”

  “You know what?” Mila said. “I think your home cooking is definitely doing the trick.” Privately, though, she now had another theory about Reid’s improving mood.

  “Oh, by the way,” Lonnie said, “Allie called while you were out. She told me to remind you that she’d pick you up at five. I wish I could come, too, but my church is having a potluck tonight and I’ve already baked five dozen lemon squares for it.”

  “Your church is very lucky then,” Mila said, and she left Lonnie in the kitchen and went to take a shower. Afterward, she blow-dried her hair with a little more care than usual and then slipped on her new sundress. She didn’t look at herself in the full-length mirror in her room, though. She was afraid if she did, she’d lose her nerve and take it off. But she did use the small mirror above her dresser to put on a little bit of mascara and lipstick. And then she went back to the now quiet kitchen—Lonnie had left already for the night—and tried to keep her nervousness at bay while she waited for Allie to pick her up. But when Allie was late, and her nerves had had time to ratchet up another notch, she decided to call Ms. Thompson at Caring Home Care. Mila had gotten in the habit of calling her at least once a week, and, no matter how busy Ms. Thompson was, she always made time to talk to her.

  “Mila,” she said now when she heard her voice. “I’m so glad you called.”

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “No, of course not,” Ms. Thompson said, though Mila could hear her rustling papers in the background. “I’m just refiling all the filing my niece, Janet, did today.” She sighed audibly. “Is it wrong to call someone who’s your own flesh and blood a dolt?”

  But Mila didn’t know how to answer that so instead she asked, “How’s your book club going?”

  “Oh that,” Ms. Thompson said with another sigh. “Well, I haven’t been drummed out of it yet, if that’s what you mean. But I sense a growing impatience with me just the same. Honestly, I don’t know how those women find the time to always read the book, Mila. I really don’t.”

  “Are they all still working, like you?” Mila asked.

  “Oh, God no. Most of them had the sense to retire years ago. Something I should probably be considering doing, too,” she added, though Mila somehow knew that Ms. Thompson would never retire. Not voluntarily, anyway.

  “What about you, Mila?” she asked. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing fine,” she said carefully.

  “And your patient? How’s he doing? Still being difficult?”

  “Um, no. Not at all. And he’s not—he wasn’t ever, really—as bad as I’ve made him out to be,” she said, knowing she couldn’t explain to Ms. Thompson, or herself, for that matter, the way she was feeling about Reid right now. “He’s getting his cast off today,” she said, redirecting the subject. “And his family’s having a little party for him tonight at their cabin. I’m actually waiting, right now, for his sister-in-law to give me a ride there.”

  “You’re going to a party?” Ms. Thompson asked.

  “Well, a barbecue, actually.”

  “By the lake?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Ms. Thompson said encouragingly. “And you know what? You deserve to have fun, Mila. You haven’t had nearly enough of it lately, have you?” And Mila hesitated, thinking that what Ms. Thompson had just said to her sounded a lot like what Lonnie had said to her a little while ago. But she didn’t say anything, because at that exact moment Allie’s car pulled up outside. “My ride’s here,” she said, her stomach feeling fluttery again.

  “All right, well, have a good time. And call me back soon,” Ms. Thompson said. “It’ll give me something to look forward to.”

  “I’ll do that,” Mila assured her, and then she said good-bye and hurried out to the waiting car.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Allie said as Mila climbed in beside her. “All our guests just arrived at the same time.” Glancing over at Mila, Allie added before she headed up the driveway, “I like your dress. It’s really pretty.”

  “Thank you,” Mila said, relieved to see that Allie was wearing a sundress, too. “How did Reid’s doctor’s appointment go?” she asked casually as they turned onto the main road.

  “Fine, I guess,” Allie said. “They’re not back yet.”

  “No?” Mila said, surprised. But Allie shrugged, unconcerned. “I think Walker was going to run a few other errands while they were in Ely,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

  They drove the remaining five minutes to Allie and Walker’s cabin in silence, and when they’d driven down its long gravel drive and pulled up in front of it, Mila was relieved to see there were only a handful of other cars there. Good, she thought with relief, so it isn’t a big party. And it wasn’t, as it turned out, a big cabin, either. It was small and rustic, and very charming, in its way, but it didn’t look big enough to accommodate a family of four and Mila said as much to Allie.

  “It’s been a tight squeeze,” Allie admitted as they got out of the car. “But it’s been good for us, too, to all be so close together this summer. So literally close together. It was the same way for my family when I was growing up.”

&nbs
p; Mila nodded. The cabin did look like a sweet place, she thought, but it had still been generous of Allie and Walker to turn over their larger and more luxurious cabin to a convalescing Reid for the summer. “Come on,” Allie said now, companionably taking her arm, “I want you to meet our friends.”

  Mila felt her natural shyness intensifying then, but she let Allie lead her around the cabin to where a lawn sloped gently down to the lake and to a small boathouse and dock. On the lawn was a large grill and a long picnic table that was covered with a blue-and-white-checked cloth, weighted down by picnic food that looked so delicious it could only have come from Pearl’s. The guests, not surprisingly, were scattered around this table, sipping drinks, nibbling on finger food, and talking, and their children were at the other end of the lawn, clustered around a tetherball game, which Walker and Allie’s adorable nine-year-old son, Wyatt, seemed to be playing with an almost ferocious determination. It was nice, Mila thought, all of it. Pretty and summery and festive. The sky was shaded the palest pink of early sunset, and the air was tinged with the smell of recently cut grass and charcoal smoke and filled with the sounds of conversation and laughter. And Mila got the feeling she’d gotten sometimes as a child, the feeling that she was on the outside looking in, and that something other people took for granted—in this case, friends getting together for a barbecue on a summer evening—was for her nothing short of amazing. God, I want this, she thought. She wanted now, more than ever, to be a part of something, a family, a group of friends, a town, anything, really, to banish the loneliness that had been the one constant in her life. But what were her chances of ever having anything like this? she wondered, looking around. Almost nonexistent, she decided. No, she amended. Completely nonexistent. As long as Brandon was looking for her, and she knew he was looking for her, scenes like this would always be unattainable to her.