Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (2 page)

All at once, Allie felt exhausted. “The rest of his body . . . isn’t here,” she said finally, opting to skip the gory details. “And after tomorrow, his head won’t be here either, okay?”

Wyatt nodded, apparently satisfied. At least for the time being. As he snuggled back down into her arms again, Allie felt a surge of sympathy for him. She’d taken him away from everything that was familiar to him: his home, his extended family, his friends. And all she had to offer him in exchange was this creaky old cabin.
Make that this
creepy
old cabin,
she corrected herself, taking another look at the buck’s head.

She tried to push any negative thoughts out of her mind. Maybe she
had
made a mistake bringing them here. But that didn’t change the fact that she needed to get Wyatt to bed. And the sooner the better.

But first she looked around for something,
anything,
that would reassure him. Something that would help him understand, even a little, what it was about this place she had loved as a child.

She settled on the leather couch in the living room. It was old and worn with age. But she knew from experience that it felt deliciously buttery and smooth to the touch. She walked over to it, lowered Wyatt onto it and sat down beside him.

“This couch was my favorite place to read when I was a child,” she said, patting one of its arms. “Especially on rainy days.”

Wyatt frowned, a tiny line creasing his adorable brow. “I don’t know how to read,” he reminded Allie.

“I know that,” she said, tousling his hair. “But you’ll
learn
how to read. You’ll start kindergarten here this fall.”

But Wyatt shook his head. “There are no kindergartens here,” he said, sadly.

“Of course there are,” Allie said, smiling. “There are kindergartens everywhere.”

Wyatt gave her a pitying look, almost as if he thought she’d lost her mind. “There’s nothing here but trees,” he said, twisting his little body around and looking out one of the cabin’s many windows.

Allie resisted the urge to smile. “It’s true. There
are
a lot of trees here. And you’re right that there aren’t any kindergartens in these woods. But,” she said, pulling him into her arms and kissing the top of his head, “there
is
a kindergarten in Butternut. I’ve already told you all about Butternut, the town this lake is named after. It’s only fifteen minutes away from here by car. We’ll drive there tomorrow morning, and I’ll take you to Pearl’s, the little coffee shop there. And if it’s still open—and I hope it is—I’ll order you the best blueberry pancakes this side of the Mississippi. What do you say?”

Wyatt didn’t say anything. He just sighed wearily.

“Time for bed,” Allie said brightly. Maybe a little
too
brightly. She was fighting that by now familiar sense of guilt. The feeling that she’d failed Wyatt, that she’d somehow been less than the mother he needed her to be. But what was done was done, she reminded herself. They were here now and she needed to make the best of it.

So she helped him change into his pajamas. And she watched while he brushed his teeth. She had another tense moment when she turned on the faucet in the bathroom. There was an alarming gurgling sound before dirty brown water came sputtering out. But after a few seconds, the water ran clear. And Wyatt, fortunately, was too tired to have noticed anything amiss.

Of course, she was working hard to distract him. She kept up a steady, one-sided conversation about all the things they’d do that summer: fish off the pier, swim in the lake, and paddle around in the canoe.

By the time she delivered Wyatt to his bedroom, he seemed reasonably content. The room had been Allie’s room, too, during her childhood summers at the lake. And she was pleased to see that, like the rest of the cabin’s interior, it seemed remarkably well preserved. It was a tiny room, with a steeply sloped ceiling, and knotty pine furniture. There was a colorful braided rag rug on the floor, cheerful red-and-white-checked bedspreads with matching curtains, and an oilskin-shaded lamp that threw a soft glow over everything its light touched.

Being in this room again, Allie felt a wave of nostalgia. But none of this meant anything to Wyatt, she reminded herself. As far as he was concerned, they might as well be spending the night in a motel room. So now he watched, with solemn detachment, while she opened the windows, made up the bed with fresh sheets, and plugged in the night-light she’d remembered to pack in the tote bag.

As she tucked him in, she tried to reassure him. Tried to make an unfamiliar place seem more familiar. “Wyatt, did you know this is the same room I stayed in as a child?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

He shook his head.

“Well, it is. And do you know what the best part of staying in this room is?”

Again he shook his head.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s that when you wake up in the morning, you can see the lake from your window. You can’t see it now because there’s no moonlight tonight. But tomorrow morning, when you look out your window, the lake will feel close enough to touch. And, if it’s a nice day, the water will be the bluest blue you’ve ever seen.”

He stared skeptically at the black square of window above his bed.

“It’s there,” Allie reassured him. “And you’re going to love it.”

She reached over now and tried to smooth his hopelessly tangled brown curls, but she quickly gave up. It was impossible. The gesture, though, seemed to soothe him. He sighed and his eyes blinked closed. She waited as he hovered on the edge of sleep.

A moment later, though, he opened his eyes. He seemed suddenly wide-awake again. “Mom?” he asked, a worried expression on his face.

“Yes,” she said, reaching out to stroke his hair again.

“What if Dad can’t see me here?” he asked softly. So softly that Allie had to lean closer to hear him.

At the word
Dad
she felt the familiar tightening in her chest. But she forced herself to look directly at him. “What do you mean by ‘see you here’?” she asked.

He squirmed a little under the covers. “Well, you said he would always be watching over me. Only now we’re not at home anymore. We’re here instead. So how will he know where to look for me?”

Allie felt her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them back. She was determined not to cry. Not in front of Wyatt, anyway. There’d be plenty of time for that later, after he’d fallen asleep.

“Wyatt, he’ll always know where you are, wherever you go,” Allie explained. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

“And he’ll always be watching over me?” Wyatt prompted.

“Always,” Allie said with a smile.

He squirmed again. “Even if I’m getting into trouble?” he asked.

Now it was Allie’s turn to frown. “What do you mean by ‘trouble’?”

“Well, remember when Teddy came over, and we caught that frog?” he asked, suddenly animated. “And we put him in the sink in the laundry room? To live there. Only I didn’t tell you about it. Because I didn’t think you’d let me keep him there. And then you found him anyway. And you got mad. Was he watching me then? Because if he was, he might have been mad at me, too.” He collapsed back on his pillow, slightly out of breath.

Allie shook her head vehemently, still fighting back the tears. “No, Wyatt. He wasn’t mad at you. Not at all. And neither was I. Not really. I was just a little . . .
surprised
when I found the frog, that’s all.”

Then she smiled, remembering something. “You know, Wyatt, your dad did much more mischievous things than that when he was a little boy. I’ll tell you about them sometime, okay?”

He nodded, obviously relieved.

“And Wyatt? From now on, why don’t we say that your dad is only looking down on you when you need him to, all right? I mean, he’ll always be there for you. But he doesn’t have to watch you every minute of every day. He knows you’re a big boy now. He knows that most of the time you can take care of yourself.”

Wyatt nodded again, this time sleepily. And Allie made a mental note to be more careful of how she phrased things in the future, given how literal Wyatt’s thinking still was.

Now, he snuggled deeper under the covers and Allie looked out the window. She found the break in the trees that denoted the lake. It was too dark to see the water, but her eyes followed what she knew to be the shoreline. About half a mile away, across the bay, she saw a lighted dock. She frowned. A dock meant a house, and a house meant a neighbor. There hadn’t been any neighbors the last time she was here. Her family’s cabin had had the whole bay to itself.

She sighed. She should have known there would be changes here, too. Even in Butternut, Minnesota, time didn’t stand still. But a neighbor? That hadn’t been part of her plan. Her plan had been to come to a place where there were no neighbors. At least not any close by.

She thought of their neighbors back home in Eden Prairie. They’d tried to be helpful. They’d brought her and Wyatt an endless procession of casseroles. They’d raked their leaves, shoveled snow out of their driveway, and mowed their lawn. All without asking.

She knew she should have been grateful. And she was, to a point. But she couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been easier to grieve privately. Without feeling that you’d somehow become a curiosity. Someone to stare at, surreptitiously, at the grocery store, or speak to, a little self-consciously, at the playground.

Of course, the novelty of her widowhood had eventually worn off, but what had replaced it was worse. Because what came next were the suggestions, sometimes from family and friends, sometimes from only casual acquaintances, that it might be time to move on, to pick up the pieces. She was still young, they’d pointed out. There was no reason to think there wouldn’t be another husband someday. Maybe even another child.

These conversations, it turned out, and not the pitying glances, had been Allie’s breaking point. When they’d started, she’d known it was time to leave.

Now, sitting on the edge of Wyatt’s bed, she gave herself a little shake, trying to throw off some of the exhaustion that had settled over her. She listened, for a moment, to Wyatt’s breathing. It had settled into the regular rhythm of sleep. He was down for the count, she knew. He rarely woke up after he’d fallen asleep for the night. She turned off the lights and left the room, careful to leave the door open. She would be able to hear him, from her bedroom across the hall, if he needed her for any reason.

Then she made up the bed in her room, changed into a tank top and pajama bottoms, and brushed her teeth. It wasn’t until she’d gotten into bed and turned off the bedside table lamp that she let herself contemplate the enormity of what she’d done. She’d sold their house, the only home Wyatt had ever known. She’d put most of their belongings in storage. And she’d bought out her brother’s share of the lakeside cabin they’d been given by their parents, who now lived full-time in a retirement community in South Florida.

And now she’d returned to a place she hadn’t been in years. A place she hadn’t even spent a whole summer in since childhood. She had no relatives here. And no friends to speak of. The few friends she’d once had here had probably long since moved away. There was nothing here for her now, she knew. Nothing for either of them. Which begged the question of why, exactly, she’d decided to come back.

She heard a faraway sound, haunting but familiar. It had been a long time since she’d heard it, but if you heard it even once, you never forgot it again. It was the sound of coyotes howling. Not an uncommon sound in the woods of northern Minnesota, but not exactly comforting, either. She felt a tremor of fear. Even knowing they were safe inside the cabin it was unnerving. Tiredness, however, quickly overcame her, even if it didn’t completely obliterate her anxiety.
I must be crazy,
she thought as she fell into a troubled sleep.
Why else would I have thought moving here was a good idea?

CHAPTER 2

B
y eleven o’clock that night, when Walker’s cell phone rang, his mood had gone from bad to worse. He glanced at the caller ID. It was his brother, Reid, the last person he wanted to talk to right now. But in addition to being his brother, Reid was also his business partner. And a demanding one at that. Walker ignored phone calls from him at his own peril.

He picked up his cell phone and hit the talk button. “What is it?” he growled, by way of a greeting.

“Jeez, Walk, is that the way you answer your phone now?” Reid asked mildly.

“It’s eleven o’clock at night,” Walker pointed out, leaning back in his leather desk chair. “We’ve been through this before, Reid,” he said, massaging his temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. “Remember? You may work twenty-four hours a day, but I’m more of an eight-to-eight man myself.”

“Well, that may be,” Reid said, sounding faintly disapproving. And despite his bad mood, Walker felt a corner of his mouth lift in amusement. Only a workaholic like Reid would find evidence of laziness in a twelve-hour workday. “But your character defects aside,” Reid continued, “I finished running the numbers on the Butternut Boatyard tonight.” He paused for effect.