Moonlight on Butternut Lake (29 page)

T
hat night, in Minneapolis, Brandon swung his refrigerator door open and reached in for a beer. But his hand came back empty. No beer. No nothing, really. He swore and slammed the door shut. He thought about using what little money he had left to go to the grocery store and buy a six-pack but decided against it. Drinking would have to wait. Eating, too. Because he wasn't spending another night in this apartment without getting to the bottom of this. Despite what Mr. Tuck had said, nobody, not even Mila, could disappear into thin air. She had to be somewhere, didn't she? And tonight he was going to figure out where that was.

He walked back into the living room, which was so hot it was almost suffocating, and sat down on the couch. Then he turned his attention back to the cardboard box on the coffee table. Inside of it was every single bill, certificate, document, letter, or photograph that Mila had left behind. And she'd left almost everything behind, as far as he could tell. The only things she'd taken with her were her birth certificate, her Social Security card, and her driver's license. That was it. Everything else was here, from
childhood report cards to recent credit card statements. And he was convinced that somewhere in this box was the clue to wherever Mila was now. He'd already been through it several times, but he was willing to go through it again. And again after that, if necessary.

After all, he had unlimited time to do it in now. He'd lost his job that morning, due to “unexcused absences.” (Although what, he'd wanted to know, was more deserving of an unexcused absence than the fact that he was looking for his missing wife?) Still, he hadn't been that disappointed. The lack of money would be a problem—the bills were starting to pile up—but at least getting fired freed him up to search for Mila full-time. And not only that, but it meant that now he truly had nothing left to lose. Except, maybe, his life. And that was somehow fitting. Because he'd decided that he'd either find Mila and bring her home, or he'd die trying.

Now, he used his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face and started to go through the box again, one item at a time. He struggled, at first, to focus. It had been weeks since he'd slept more than a couple of hours at a time. But he worked like this until the box was almost empty. By then, it was almost dark in the stifling living room, and he had a knot between his shoulder blades from bending over the papers.

He got up to turn on the light and stretch. He came right back to the box, though. No rest for the weary. No food and no drink, either. He'd do this twenty-four hours a day if he had to. He wasn't willing to consider, now or ever, the possibility that he wouldn't find Mila. When he took the next piece of paper out of the box, though, it wasn't with high hopes. He'd seen it before. It was a certificate Mila had gotten from her home health aide class showing that she'd completed seventy-five hours of training and skills
testing. He shook his head, mystified. He'd never understood why she wanted to work in health care. It had seemed to him a career that was at best boring, and, at worst, just plain disgusting. But maybe she'd changed her mind about it, he thought, because by the time their first anniversary had rolled around she'd stopped mentioning nursing school. He'd been relieved. He'd never had any intention of letting her be a nurse. Anything that would take her away from him, even for short periods of time, was unacceptable. Besides, being a nurse would have brought her into contact with other men. Medical technicians, doctors, patients. And while Mila had insisted that she'd never been unfaithful to him, he still didn't trust her. He needed her at home. Where she belonged. And where he could keep an eye on her.

Now he set the certificate down on the coffee table and started to take the next piece of paper out of the box. But he changed his mind and looked at it again. It didn't have a lot of information on it. Her name. The name of the community college that she'd taken the class at. The date she'd received the certification on. But if it wasn't going to lead him to Mila, he thought, it might at least answer one question he'd been asking himself: what was Mila doing to earn a living now?

After all, according to his calculations, she'd taken less than two hundred dollars with her when she'd left him. And if she wasn't staying with her mom or Heather, she had to somehow be earning her own keep. She could be working as a waitress, of course. She knew how to do that, and it was the kind of job where you could get paid cash, under the table, if necessary. But for some reason, he didn't think she was waitressing. It was too public. Too out in the open. And if she was really hiding from him, which she obviously was, working in a busy coffee shop was the wrong way to do it.

But working as a home health care aide . . . that was different. You'd spend most, if not all your time, in someone else's home. Taking care of someone who wasn't able to take care of themselves, which meant taking care of someone who probably wasn't up to spending a lot of time out in public, either. In some ways, it would be the perfect cover.

He thought about Mila doing this now and found that it actually brought him a measure of relief. His greatest fear—his only fear, really, beyond not getting Mila back—was of her meeting another man. He'd imagined her doing this in the months since she'd left, and it always left him feeling the same: first sick with jealousy, then white hot with rage. But if Mila was a home health aide, he reasoned, the chances of her having met someone her age were slim to none. He pictured her now wiping the drool off some senile old man's chin, and it pleased him. She'd thought she'd wanted to run away, but by the time he found her, he figured she'd probably be thrilled to come back home.

But as comforting as he found this thought, he banished it from his mind. He needed to focus. He stared at the certificate and tried to think calmly. Logically. What could this piece of paper tell him about where Mila was? Well, for one thing, he decided, certifications for things like home health care aides probably varied from state to state. Just because Mila was licensed to be an aide in Minnesota didn't necessarily mean she was licensed to be one in Michigan or South Dakota. So chances were good that she was still in Minnesota. But if that were the case, then how had she found a job? She could have found it over the Internet, but if she had, she hadn't used their home computer to find it. He'd already taken it to some computer geek to check the browser history. Of course, there were other ways of finding
jobs. Help wanted ads, bulletin boards, employment agencies . . .
employment agencies
.

Brandon pushed himself up off the couch and headed for their bedroom where their desktop computer was. But he stopped midway there. The computer was gone. He'd sold it to pay Mr. Tuck. He hesitated, then turned and headed for the kitchen instead, where he ransacked the cupboard until he came up with a copy of the Yellow Pages. He took it back to the couch with him and thumbed through it until he found what he was looking for. Home Health Agencies. There was a whole page of them. He ran a finger down the columns of listings looking for . . . looking for what? He didn't know. But he'd know it when he found it. His finger slid over a listing for Caring Home Care, then paused and came back to it. What was it about that name that sounded familiar? He thought, hard, closing his eyes. Then he rifled through one of the stacks of paper on the coffee table and pulled out a record of his account that he'd printed from the phone company website. It was an itemized list of phone calls made from their landline in the month before Mila left. He'd called all the numbers on the list to identify them and then he'd written the name of the person or business in the margin next to the number. Scanning the list now, he saw one of the numbers had been for Caring Home Care. When he'd first dialed the number and the woman on the other end of the line had answered with Caring Home Care, he'd hung up immediately. He'd assumed that Mila had dialed a wrong number. Of course, he'd also assumed, wrongly, that Caring Home Care was a housecleaning business. The only reason he'd written its name down was in the interest of being thorough. His eyes scanned the record of the call. It had been made at 5:30
P.M.
on May 30, and it had lasted three minutes.
Too long, he decided, to be a wrong number, but long enough to discuss job possibilities.

“Bingo,” he said softly, and he felt a rush of adrenaline that might have been amplified by hunger or sleeplessness. He glanced at his watch. It was eleven o'clock at night. He doubted the agency would be open before nine o'clock the next morning. But he'd be there then. And he wasn't leaving until he knew everything the people there knew about Mila.

T
he next morning, Reid slowly stirred awake. He was aware, from the gray light behind his eyelids, that it was morning, and he was also aware, from a steady tapping on the window, that it was raining. So the rain had finally come, he thought, rolling over onto his side, and, as he did so, he became aware of something else. He wasn't alone in his bed. There was someone else in it with him. And there was really only one person who that could be.

He opened his eyes and, miraculously, there she was, sleeping beside him.

“Mila?” he whispered, reaching out tentatively to stroke her cheek. He hated to wake her up when she looked so peaceful, but he needed to confirm that she was actually there. She was. Her eyes opened, and, seeing him, she smiled and snuggled into his arms, then sighed contentedly. “Good morning,” she said.

“When did you get here?” Reid asked cautiously, brushing a strand of hair off her cheek. It was the first time since the alarm had gone off that they'd slept in the same bed, and he did not quite trust his luck.

“Mmmmmm,” she said, nuzzling her lips against his neck. “Sometime during the night.”

“What . . . what made you decide to come in here?” he asked, though he didn't want to interrupt the thing she was doing to his neck with her lips.

“I woke up and it was raining,” she said. “And it was cool again, for the first time in days. And I wanted to be with you. And I thought, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? He's right down the hall,'” She gave a little laugh. “I hope it's okay,” she added, and her lips started doing that thing to his neck again.

“Are you kidding? Of course it's okay. I
want
you to be here,” he said. “I want you to be here every night. You know that, don't you, Mila?”

She pulled away from him and smiled, and he realized that for the first time in a long time, she didn't look anxious or fatigued or worried. She looked . . .
she looked amazing
. And he didn't know if it was because the heat wave had finally broken, or she'd slept in the same bed as him, or she'd just
slept,
period, but she looked as relaxed and as happy as he'd ever seen her look before. Her skin, for instance, was rosy and warm, and her golden-brown eyes were shining. Her auburn hair was brushing her almost bare shoulders, and her sleeveless white cotton nightgown showed off her tan.

“You are so beautiful—” he started to say, but she put a finger to his lips to silence him, and then she leaned over and kissed him so he couldn't say anything else.

And Reid kissed her back and marveled at how delicious her mouth tasted. It was as sweet and as fresh, he imagined, as the rain falling outside the window. And her body, pliant and relaxed against his, told him that she had let down her defenses. She wanted him. And he wanted her.
Oh God, he wanted her.
But
he needed to go slowly, he reminded himself. Very slowly. She'd been through so much, though what exactly she'd been through, he didn't know. Still, he could hazard a guess. He knew she'd been hurt. Badly. And he knew she was afraid. But he thought he knew something else, too: if he could translate the way he felt about her into the way he made love to her, he could erase a little of her hurt and fear. Erase it and replace it with something else.

So he pulled her, lovingly, into his arms, and kissed her as tenderly as he knew how to. He would take his time, he decided.
Really
take his time. But Mila, it turned out, didn't want him to take his time. She pressed herself against him, kissed him more deeply, and ran her hands up under his T-shirt, touching his chest and stomach and back with some indefinable combination of impatience and delight.

“Let's take this off,” she said, breaking away from their kiss, and easing his T-shirt up over his head. “I want to feel you against me.”

“I want to feel you against me, too,” he said, or
groaned,
really, at the thought of his bare skin touching her bare skin. He reached down then and took the hem of her nightgown in his hands and peeled it up, slowly, over her body, until everything was revealed to him—her slender legs, her cream-colored panties, her flat stomach, and, finally, her small, perfect breasts.

When he'd pulled her nightgown all the way off and dropped it on the floor, he pulled her back into his arms. She anchored herself firmly against him so that her breasts crushed softly against his chest, running her hands over his back. “You're so warm,” she said.

“You're warm too,” he said, kissing the nape of her neck in a place he already knew was especially sensitive. He did this for a little while, using his tongue, until she started to squirm, and
then he reached down and caressed one of her breasts with his fingertips, feeling her smooth nipple harden beneath his touch. She made an appreciative sound in her throat, and he stroked her nipple harder, until she let out a little moan that excited him almost beyond measure. Then he leaned down and kissed that same nipple, tracing it with his tongue, and took the very tip of it between his lips and sucked on it gently. Mila cried out, louder this time, and brought her hands up to the back of his head and arched her back so that he would take more of her nipple into his mouth. He obliged her, happily, and as he did so he felt her whole body move beneath him in an undulating wave of excitement.

After a few moments, though, he started to edge his mouth downward, toward her navel, then thought better of it and came back to the other nipple. It wasn't fair, he'd decided, for only one of them to get all the attention. So now he kissed and tongued and sucked this nipple, too, until Mila moved beneath him again, burying her fingers in his hair and tilting her hips against his hips. She was hungry, he thought with satisfaction. And greedy, too. He left his mouth on her nipple and skimmed a hand down to her panties, then caressed her through the silky material.

“
Reid,
” she whimpered, not in protest but in need, and he decided that this article of clothing needed to come off, too. He freed up his other hand, which had stayed behind to stroke a swollen nipple, and, using both hands, he started to peel down her panties with the same care that he had peeled off her nightgown. In about sixty seconds, he thought, she'd be naked, and he'd be the only one wearing any clothes. But maybe not for long. Because even as he was thinking this, Mila's hands were moving down his stomach, her fingers dipping briefly into the waistband of his pajama bottoms, and then settling on the outside of them, and squeezing his hardness through them in a way that
made Reid groan loudly. He slid her panties down, until, without warming, he felt her stiffen in his arms and she sat up in bed.

“What is it?” Reid asked.

“It's a car, in the driveway,” she said breathlessly, looking out the window. She glanced at his bedside table clock. “Reid, it's eight o'clock,” she said, astonished. “It's Lonnie.”

“Damn it,” he said without thinking, and then, grabbing Mila's hand, he said, “Don't go.”

“Reid, I
have
to,” she said. She pulled up her panties, then groped around on the floor for her nightgown.

“Please don't,” he said, already missing the feel of her body against his.

But she shook her head. “Reid, we can't make love with Lonnie in the next room.”

“
Yes,
we can,” he said, but Mila ignored him as she picked up her nightgown and pulled it over her head, covering up, in reverse order, everything she had just revealed to him: first her breasts, then her stomach, then her legs.

She started to get out of his bed, but when she looked at him, something about the expression on his face made her laugh.

“Reid, I swear,” she said, “you look like a little boy who just dropped his ice cream cone.”

“Oh, no, Mila,” he said seriously. “This is
much
worse than that. Trust me.”

She smiled at him affectionately and, kneeling on the bed, kissed him one more time, letting her tongue linger in his mouth for a moment before pulling regretfully away. And then she was gone, and Lonnie was letting herself into the cabin, and Reid was left to wonder if Mila had ever been there at all. Except he knew, of course, that she had been there. Her side of the bed was still warm, and he was so aroused by the taste and touch and feel of
her that it was all he could do to fall back on the bed, his body aching with his need for her.

B
y late morning the rain had stopped, and by early afternoon, the sun had burned off the low-bellied clouds, the cottony mist over the lake, and the fat, quivering drops of water that hung from the pine needles on the pine trees, and the day was as beautiful as any day that Mila had seen that summer. Even at four thirty in the afternoon, as she puttered around in the kitchen, everything outside the cabin, and inside of it, too, seemed to be suffused with the same warm, golden light, a light that was the exact same color, to Mila's mind, as the little jars of clover leaf honey Lonnie bought at the farmers' market in Butternut.

It was an afternoon that practically begged you to be outside, but Mila was perfectly content inside, doing a few of the chores Lonnie hadn't had time to do before she'd left that afternoon. She hummed as she languidly wiped down the kitchen counter with a dishcloth, then paused to rinse the cloth out in the sink and, as a cloud of steamy water rose up to meet her face, she remembered the scene in Reid's bed that morning. She turned off the faucet, wrung out the dishcloth, and wandered over to the kitchen window, letting the sweet breeze blow over her and savoring the earthy smell of the woods after the rain.

She was happy, she realized, happier than she'd been all summer. Happier than she'd ever been before in her life. After she woke up but before she went to Reid's bed, she'd made a decision. She wasn't going to live this way anymore, with one foot in a painful past and the other in an uncertain future. Tonight, she was going to start living in the present. She was going to tell Reid everything about her life before she'd met him.
Everything.
And then, she was going to tell him one more thing.
She was going to tell him that she loved him. After she told him that . . . well, after that, it would be in his hands. He'd have to decide what would happen next. But she wasn't afraid, as she had been once, that he'd ask her to leave. She thought she knew how he felt about her now. And it was the same way she felt about him. She sighed happily and glanced at her watch, then went to take out of the refrigerator the shepherd's pie Lonnie had made that morning. She wanted them to eat early that night, because the sooner they had dinner, the sooner they could talk, and the sooner, she hoped, they could finish what they'd started this morning. She was done waiting. Once she told Reid about her marriage, she'd decided, that marriage would be all but dissolved, in her mind anyway.

God, she missed Reid, she thought, sliding the pan of shepherd's pie out of the refrigerator. She missed him even though she'd only seen him a little while ago. He was in the study, looking over something Walker had e-mailed him. She thought about going to him now. He wouldn't mind the interruption, she knew. In fact, he would welcome it if it was from her. But there was something else she needed to do first. She needed to call Ms. Thompson before Caring Home Care closed for the day. She wanted to check up on her and see if her cough was any better. And if it wasn't, she'd need to lecture her, again, about seeing a doctor. After all, Mila might not be a nurse yet, but she knew a nasty cough when she heard one.

So she picked up the cordless phone and climbed onto the high stool that Lonnie liked to sit on while she peeled vegetables at the kitchen counter, and after she'd dialed Ms. Thompson's number, she waited for her familiar voice at the other end of the line. But when someone did answer, with “Hello, Caring Home Care,” it was a voice she didn't recognize.

“Oh, um, hi,” Mila said, feeling disoriented. Nobody but Ms. Thompson had ever answered the phone before. “Is Ms. Thompson there, please?”

“No, she's not. But maybe I can help you.”

“Is . . . is she all right?” Mila asked haltingly. But she already knew she wasn't all right.

The voice on the other end of the line hesitated, then said, “Ms. Thompson has pneumonia. We all told her—I'm her niece, Janet, by the way—to go to the doctor, but she wouldn't listen to us. By yesterday evening, though, she was having trouble breathing so my dad drove her to the emergency room. They checked her right into the hospital.”

“Oh, my God, I'm so sorry,” Mila murmured, her eyes filling with tears. “But she's going to be all right, isn't she?”

Janet hesitated again. “I, I don't know. It's very serious. She's in the ICU right now. But we're all pulling for her,” she added. “I'm going to visit her later today, as soon as I'm done here.”

“That's good,” Mila said, wiping a tear away. “Well, I won't take up any more of your time.”

“Oh no, that's fine. I'm just trying to come up to speed. The only thing my aunt has ever let me do here is file, but for the short term, at least, I'm going to be filling in for her. By the way,” she said, “I didn't catch your name.”

“I, I didn't give it to you,” Mila said, after a moment's struggle. “It's Mila. Mila Jones. But Ms. Thompson and I have a . . . a special understanding,” she went on, wondering how she would explain this understanding to Janet. But Janet interrupted her.

“Oh, Ms. Jones,” she said, eagerly, “I'm so glad you called. Your brother was here first thing this morning.”

“My brother?” Mila repeated, her mind a blank.

“Uh-huh. Kevin, right? He came into the office. He said he'd
been out of the country, you know, doing a tour of duty, and he'd lost your contact information.”

It was so quiet in the kitchen then that Mila could hear every single drip from the still wet dishcloth she'd hung up on the sink's faucet. “I don't have a brother,” she heard herself say.