Moonlight on Butternut Lake (17 page)

Y
ou look like you could use a little more coffee,” Lonnie said, refilling Mila's cup at the breakfast table that morning.

“Do I?” Mila said, barely suppressing a yawn. But it wasn't her tiredness that was worrying her. It was her neck. She rubbed the crick in it now, making a mental note to sleep in a different position if she ever slept in that armchair again. Still, it had been worth it. As far as she knew, Reid hadn't had the dream again, and when she'd left his room, in the gray light of dawn, he'd been sleeping peacefully, one arm thrown over his head.

“Do you think Reid liked his oatmeal?” Lonnie asked now, a little worriedly. She was standing at the kitchen sink, elbows deep in soapy water and that morning's breakfast dishes.

“I can't imagine he didn't,” Mila said. “It was delicious.”

“I don't know,” Lonnie fretted. “I think I may have put too much brown sugar in it. You know me, I have a hopeless sweet tooth.” But before she could reassure her again that the oatmeal had been fine, Mila heard the familiar rumble of the UPS truck coming up the driveway.

Lonnie heard it, too. “Oh, that'll be Hank,” she said, reaching for a dish towel to wipe her hands on. Hank, Mila now knew, was the name of the driver who delivered Lonnie's packages to the cabin.

“I'll be right back,” Lonnie said, using her fingers to fluff her blond hair a little before she rushed out the door. And Mila, going back to her coffee, smiled to herself. Lonnie got
a lot
of packages. Enough packages for Mila to wonder if her home shopping habit had more to do with her feeling lonely at night, as she'd told Mila, or with the idea of Hank delivering packages in the morning. Probably a little bit of both, Mila decided, as Hank handed Lonnie a cardboard box. Like Lonnie, Hank was in his late fifties or early sixties. But whereas Lonnie was soft and round all over, his long, lanky body appeared to be all angles and edges in his brown uniform. They looked nice together, though, Mila thought, a little wistfully.

After a quick conversation, Hank got back into his truck and Lonnie came back inside. “Something else I don't need,” she said to Mila, a little shyly, indicating the package.

“Oh, I'm sure you'll find some use for it,” Mila said, putting her coffee cup down, and it was at that exact moment that Reid wheeled himself into the kitchen, his breakfast tray balanced in his lap.

“
Reid!
” Lonnie said, so surprised that she almost dropped her package. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong,” he said.

But Lonnie, unused to his presence in the kitchen, didn't believe him. “It's the oatmeal, isn't it?” she asked, putting down her package on the counter and wringing her hands. “It had too much brown sugar in it, didn't it?”

“What? No,” Reid said, looking a little mystified. “The oatmeal
was fine. I'm done with it so I just thought I'd bring my tray in and, um, get another cup of coffee.”

“Oh, of course,” Lonnie said, hurrying over to collect the tray from him. “I'm sorry I didn't check back with you sooner about the coffee. But you usually have just the one cup, and sometimes not even that.” As she busied herself at the counter, refilling the empty cup, Reid looked at Mila and said quietly, “I hope you're not too tired today.”

“I'm fine,” Mila said, noticing how blue his eyes looked in the kitchen's morning sunlight. She felt strangely warm then, though the day hadn't heated up yet and there was a nice breeze coming in through the open kitchen windows.

“You don't need to wait for this, Reid,” Lonnie said, nervously sloshing cream into his coffee and stirring it in so vigorously that some of it splashed onto the counter. “I can bring it to your room for you.”

“No, that's okay,” he said, wheeling himself closer to the table. “If you don't mind, Lonnie, I'll have it out here in the kitchen.”

“If I don't
mind
?” Lonnie repeated, turning around. “Why would I mind? It's your place, isn't it? Or you brother's, anyway. Which is the same thing, really.” She carried his coffee cup over to the table, set it down, and then started to rearrange the chairs. And Mila, feeling suddenly self-conscious about Reid's being there, too, stood up and tried to help her.

“Now, where would you like to sit?” Lonnie asked.

“Anywhere is fine.” Reid shrugged. But Lonnie kept moving chairs around, and Mila kept standing there, not quite sure what to do with herself, either.

Reid sighed finally, and Mila waited for him to make a sarcastic remark. Or to announce that he'd changed his mind and that he'd be having his coffee back in his room after all. But instead
he said, “Look, I didn't mean to interrupt your routine. So why don't you two just go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before I came in, and I'll figure out where to sit. All right?”

This seemed somehow to get though to them, because after a moment Lonnie left the chairs alone and went back to the sink and started washing the dishes again, and Mila sat back down at her usual place at the table and tried to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary about Reid's being there.

“Jeez,” she heard him mutter, as he wheeled himself closer and reached for his cup. “I just wanted some more coffee.” But he didn't sound angry.

E
veryone has a breaking point, and Mila reached hers less than a year into her marriage to Brandon. It was a bitterly cold, late December afternoon, and the two of them had just carried their first Christmas tree into their apartment. It should have been a festive occasion, but Brandon was full of a silent fury that had Mila rushing into the kitchen as soon as they'd leaned the tree up against the living room wall.

“I'm going to make something hot to drink, cocoa, maybe,” she said, pulling off her hat and gloves and coat and depositing them on a chair at the kitchen table. She went to fill the teakettle, but Brandon intercepted her at the sink.

“What was that?” he asked her quietly. So quietly it scared her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don't play dumb, Mila. You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

Her hand shook slightly as she set the teakettle down. He was right. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

“What was that, between you and our neighbor?” he asked.

“Brandon, that was nothing,” she said, turning to him. “I've told you before. There is
nothing
going on between us. I mean, you were there. You saw it.
All
of it. He got on the elevator with us, and I didn't even say hello to him. I didn't even
look
at him. I ignored him. That was it. That was all.”

“You did
not
just ignore him, Mila,” he said, with barely suppressed rage. “You were flirting with him.”

“I was
not
flirting with him,” she insisted, anger rising in her. She tried to tamp it down now. If she'd learned anything over the last year it was that her anger only added fuel to Brandon's fire, and his fire already burned white hot all on its own.

“Stop denying it,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Stop denying that even with your husband right there beside you, you sent him a message, loud and clear. You said ‘I'm interested.' You said, ‘I'm available.' You said, ‘Hey, my husband's at work during the day, and I'm all alone. Why don't we—'”

“That's enough,” she broke in, too full of disgust to let him go any further. “This is
ridiculous
. There is
nothing
between us. My God, Brandon, even
you
should be able to see that.”

She didn't see it coming. She never saw it coming. It was an explosion of heat and light and pain, and she screamed once and brought her hand reflexively to her left eye. “This is
not
over,” Brandon said, and he picked up the kettle and threw it against the wall above the stove with such force that Mila was afraid it would bounce back and hit her, too. But it clanged onto the floor instead, and Brandon stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the apartment door behind him. And Mila, who knew she needed to do something about her eye, and do it now, before it got too swollen, did nothing about it, and instead slid down, her back against the counter, until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.

She waited for the tears to come, but for once, they didn't.
She decided it was because she was too angry to cry. Brandon's accusations, always unfair, seemed doubly unfair today. She had never flirted with their neighbor; she avoided him, and everyone else in their building, whenever possible. (She was convinced that they'd all heard Brandon shouting at her through the walls of their apartment or, worse, seen her with the black eye her sunglasses couldn't completely hide or the bruised cheek her makeup couldn't completely cover.)

Besides, not only was she not attracted to that neighbor, she wasn't attracted to
anyone
anymore, and that included her husband. The night before, for instance, when Mila was changing into her nightgown, Brandon had come into their bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his skin still wet from the shower, and Mila had felt revolted at the sight of him. Maybe this was why she'd bought the nightgown she was putting on then. It was flannel, ankle length, with long sleeves and a high neck. And why not? Sex was the furthest thing from her mind. And she figured if she covered every inch of herself, maybe it would be the furthest thing from Brandon's mind, too.

Now, sitting on the kitchen floor, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying simultaneously to calm herself down and ignore her throbbing eye. But it wouldn't be ignored. Already it was so swollen she could barely see out of it. She got up to get some ice and realized she was still shaking all over. Not from fear, but from anger. There was so much of it that had built up inside her, and not all of it, it turned out, was directed at Brandon. Some of it was directed at herself.

How could she have been so stupid as to marry a man who'd already hit her once? she thought now, filling a plastic bag with ice. And how could she have been so idiotic as to believe him when he'd promised it would never happen again? Brandon was
a classic abuser, and theirs was a classic abusive relationship. She knew this now; she'd researched domestic violence at the public library. The warning signs had been there from the beginning. Brandon's jealousy and possessiveness, his need to know where she was and who she was with at all times, and his attempts, mostly successful, to isolate her from her family and her friends.

But understanding this didn't change anything. She was still married to him, still sharing an apartment with him, still expecting him, at any minute, to walk through that front door. And she knew exactly what he'd be like when he did. When they were first married, he'd come home ashamed, and remorseful, and repentant. But lately, he'd come home still angry and, worse, resentful. He'd explain to Mila, at length, that what had happened was actually her fault, she'd backed him into a corner, provoked him, really, and given him no choice but to respond the way he had. And Mila, sickened by this logic, tried to remain as neutral as possible as she listened to his lecture. If he so much as glimpsed her disgust for him, the whole cycle would simply start over again.

But this wasn't going to be like all the other times, she realized, her heart pounding with the knowledge of what she was about to do. She left the bag of ice in the sink, walked to the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase out of the closet, and threw it on the bed. Then she started tossing clothes into it. She did this haphazardly, without considering what she might actually need wherever she was going. But she filled the suitcase and jammed it closed, put on a pair of oversized sunglasses that would hide her swollen eye, and detoured to the kitchen to pull on her coat. She paused to rifle through her handbag. Her wallet had only forty dollars in it, but for now, that would have to be enough; she didn't have time to go to the ATM. She stuffed the wallet in one of her
coat pockets, stuffed her cell phone in the other, and, after a moment's hesitation, threw her apartment keys in the wastebasket. She wouldn't be needing those anymore.

And then she left. When Brandon came back, she'd be gone for good. The only problem, she thought, as she rode down in the elevator, was that she didn't have any place to go. Brandon, with his constant neediness and insane jealousy, had chased everyone in her life away. She considered calling Heather or even her mom, but decided not to. It wouldn't be fair to either of them. She'd gotten herself into this; she'd have to get herself out of it, too.

So the plan she'd settled on by the time the elevator doors opened was this: board a city bus, get off at the last stop, then board another one. And another one after that. Until she'd run out of buses. Or money. The point was to get as far away from Brandon as possible. After that, she'd figure things out. She wasn't worried about being able to support herself. She was young and healthy and willing to work hard. There was no reason why she couldn't start over again somewhere else, somewhere where there was no Brandon.

When she'd hurried though her apartment building's small lobby and pushed through the front door, though, the blast of icy evening air that hit her was almost enough to weaken her resolve. In her hurry, she'd forgotten her hat and gloves and scarf. But there was nothing she could do about it now. So she turned right and hurried down the block, glancing nervously over her shoulder at their building receding behind her. No sign of Brandon yet. She walked faster, as fast as she could without attracting attention, her suitcase careening down the sidewalk after her, her eye throbbing with pain. When she got to a bus stop six blocks from their apartment, she stopped. She never took this bus, so
Brandon wouldn't think to look for her here. She sat down on the bench and tried to blend in with the dozen or so other people waiting for the bus. She was freezing. She pulled her coat collar up and pushed her hands deep into her pockets, then clenched her teeth so that they wouldn't chatter and prayed silently that the bus would come soon. She stood up and walked to the curb, craning her neck to see if she could see it in the distance. She couldn't. She sat back down on the bench and continued her vigil, praying silently for the bus to come.
Please come. Please come. Please, please
.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Mila saw the other people waiting with her at the bus stop stir with movement. The bus was coming, its oversized headlights shining in the bluish twilight. She sat up straighter, pulled her suitcase closer, and watched as it approached.
Oh thank God,
she thought. Relief broke over her. Inundated her. Buoyed her. She was practically floating on it as she tightened her grip on the suitcase's handle and started to stand up. And that was when she felt a hand on her shoulder. A strong, possessive hand that gripped her too tightly to be friendly and that pushed her, forcibly, back down onto the bench. She cried out in surprise, but nobody noticed over the squeal of the bus's brakes.

“Mila,” Brandon said softly into her ear, leaning over the back of the bench. “Did you really think you were going to be able to leave me? Just like that?”

And Mila, watching people board the bus, felt an unbearable sadness. “No,” she said, quietly, after a moment. “I didn't really think so.”

He came around and sat down beside her on the bench. Together they watched the bus pull away. Outwardly, Brandon was almost eerily calm and in control. Inwardly, she knew, he was full
of a cold, black rage that was Brandon at his most volatile. And most dangerous.

“I came home, Mila,” he said quietly, “and you were gone. And your suitcase was gone. And you'd thrown your keys in the wastebasket. Why would you do that, Mila? Why would you throw your keys away?”

She didn't answer.

“Well, I'll answer that for you, Mila,” he said. “You threw them away because you didn't think you'd need them again, did you? You weren't planning on coming back. But you should have known I wouldn't let you leave.” His voice was even as he continued, “Not now. Not ever. And, Mila? If you ever try to do this again, I'll do the same thing I've done today. I'll come and find you. Wherever you are. I'll follow you to the ends of the earth and back again, if necessary. But I will never, ever,
ever,
let you go. Do you understand me, Mila?”

She nodded miserably. She understood him.

“One more thing,” he said, leaning closer. “I don't know what's happening between you and our neighbor, but if I ever find you with him or with any other man, I will kill him. So help me God, Mila, I will kill him.” He let that sink in for a moment. “Now, let's go,” he said, picking up her suitcase.

She followed him home. She was amazed, actually, that she was able to. Her limbs felt so leaden, and so heavy, that she could barely make them work. She wondered distantly if it was the cold that was making them feel that way, but she decided it wasn't. It was hopelessness.

S
everal months later, on a warm and balmy May morning, Mila was standing on her tiptoes, putting a winter blanket away on the top shelf of the closet, when something caught her
eye. It was the cardboard box she kept Heather's letters in, and though it had been over a year since she'd opened it for any other reason than to put a new letter in it, she lifted it off the shelf now, and flipped its lid open. Then, still in her nightgown—it seemed pointless, lately, to get dressed in the morning, just as it seemed pointless to get out of bed—she knelt down on the floor and started to go through the box. One of the first things she saw was a photograph of her and Heather, taken by the school secretary when Mila was in fifth grade. She'd seen it many times before, but now, as she took it out and studied it, she felt as if she was seeing it for the first time. How different she'd looked then. Most of the difference, of course, was due to age. But not all of it was. No, there was something else, too. In the picture, she looked so . . . so full of life, she decided. So full of hope. She didn't look that way anymore. Not that she spent a lot of time looking in the mirror. She didn't. In fact, on the few occasions recently she'd caught a glimpse of herself in it, she'd been frightened by what she'd seen. Her reflection looked dull, flat, and lifeless.

She touched her fingertip to her image in the photograph, as if trying to recapture something from it. But she knew she couldn't. She'd had a dream then. She'd wanted to be a nurse. And though she'd finished her prerequisites for nursing school, she knew there was no point in even applying. She couldn't go. Not now. Not when it was all she could do to just hang on from one day to the next. So that dream was gone. Another casualty of her marriage to Brandon.

She thought sometimes about being a home health aide. She'd gotten her certification before she'd met Brandon. But again, what was the point? Brandon didn't want her to do it—didn't want her to do
anything,
she'd come to realize, but sit in the apartment and wait for him to come home. And so she waited,
and she hoped it would make her unbearable marriage a little easier to bear.