Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (25 page)

And as he was kissing her there, his hands moved to the front of her blouse and felt for the first of its many tiny buttons. He worked at them, patiently, unbuttoning one, then moving on to the next. When he’d unbuttoned several, she heard him give a little sigh of frustration.

“Too many buttons,” he murmured, his breath warm against the nape of her neck.

Is this really happening?
Allie wondered. Are we actually undressing each other? In my kitchen? And are we going to make love here? On the countertop? On the floor? It seemed incredible. But also, in some crazy way, possible.

She felt, for all the world, as if she was having an out-of-body experience. Not that she couldn’t feel her body. God knows she could feel it—every single cell of it—but it was like someone else was temporarily inhabiting it. Someone who cared about one thing and one thing only: how amazing everything Walker was doing to her felt.

He finished unbuttoning her blouse and pulled it open, carefully, exposing her cream-colored, lacy bra and her suntanned cleavage. “Beautiful,” he said softly, gazing down at her. He peeled back one side of her blouse and slid it down one shoulder, then started kissing that bare shoulder with exquisite tenderness.

Allie shivered again, violently, even though the night breeze coming in through the open kitchen windows was sultry and warm. She waited for Walker to take off her blouse, but instead he turned his attention back to her lips. The difference now, though, was that Allie could feel his bare chest through the filmy material of her bra. Her nipples hardened, almost painfully sensitive to the touch of him against her, and she pressed into him with a new, almost frantic hunger.

Walker groaned, low in his throat, and Allie knew he was finally losing his grip on control. It scared her a little, but it thrilled her even more. She knew the logical conclusion—or maybe the
illogical
conclusion—to their shared passion would be mind-shatteringly pleasurable. She just needed to let go, she told herself. She just needed to stop listening to that tiny alarm going off somewhere in her brain and relax. Relax and let it happen.

But no sooner had she told herself this, then a memory came to her, seemingly from out of nowhere. A memory that was so fully formed, so minutely rendered in every detail, that it was less like remembering something than being catapulted back to another time in her life. A heart-wrenching time in her life . . .

It was a warm night in late spring, a few nights before Gregg’s National Guard Unit was deployed to Afghanistan, and Allie woke up to find his side of their bed empty. She sat up, immediately alert, and called out to him, but he didn’t answer. Then she heard the familiar, rhythmic sound of someone dribbling a basketball. She got out of bed, walked over to the window, and looked out in time to see Gregg sink a basketball neatly into the basketball hoop in their driveway.

She left the window and went to check on Wyatt, sleeping soundly in his brand-new, toddler-sized bed. Then she padded, quietly, through the house and came out through the open garage door. She watched, unseen, while Gregg did a few more layups.

When she came out from the shadows and he saw her, he looked a little sheepish.

“I’m sorry,” he said, coming over to her. “Did I wake you up?”

“No,” she said, taking the basketball away from him. She let it roll off her hands, and then she folded herself into his arms and pressed her cheek against his sweat-dampened T-shirt. “You didn’t wake me up. But you might wake up the neighbors.”

“I know. I’ll stop,” he said, hugging her back.

“Are you okay?” she asked, looking up at him now.

“I don’t know,” he said, quietly. And then, “I’ve just been thinking. And that’s probably a mistake. I should be trying to
not
think now, right?”

“What were you thinking?” she asked, putting her cheek back on his chest. She was afraid to look at him. Afraid to know, really, what he’d been thinking about.

He didn’t answer her right away. She listened to the sound of his breathing, to the sound of the crickets, to the whisper of a breeze in the trees.

“What if I don’t come back?” he said, finally. “What if these next couple of nights are all the time we have left together?”

She tensed in his arms. “Of course you’ll come back,” she said, hugging him to her. “Of course we’ll be together again.”

She made him come back to bed then, and they made love to each other until the sun rose on their quiet suburban cul-de-sac. But neither of them was able to go back to sleep.

Suddenly, Allie felt Walker jerk away from her and the present come rushing back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, disoriented.

“I don’t know what’s wrong. You tell me,” Walker said, breathing hard.

“Nothing . . . nothing’s wrong,” she said, feeling confused. It was strange, somehow, to find herself back in this kitchen with him. In her mind she had been so far away.

“One minute you were here. And the next minute, you were gone,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

“I . . . I was distracted,” she admitted, her body already aching for his. “I’m sorry. I’m here now.”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “You’re not ready for this,” he said, picking up his shirt from the kitchen floor and putting it back on.

“I
am
ready,” Allie corrected him, automatically.

“Maybe physically,” he said, reaching over and trying to button her blouse back up. “But not emotionally.”

“That’s not true,” she said, tears springing into her eyes.

“Allie,” he said, struggling with the buttons on her blouse. “How can you say you’re ready when you’re still wearing your wedding ring?”

She looked down at her finger. There it was, glowing softly in the kitchen light. The fact that she wearing it was indisputable. Incontrovertible. She sighed, shakily, and quickly wiped a tear away. She had no idea why she was crying.

Walker buttoned the last button on her blouse, his fingers unsteady, his breath still coming unevenly. Stopping now was hard for him, too, Allie realized. There was a part of him, a big part of him, that wanted to keep going. To see where this would take them.

“Stay,” she said softly.

He shook his head, his blue eyes so dark they looked almost black. “God knows, I want to. But I wouldn’t feel good about it later. And neither would you.”

She nodded, dumbly. She had nothing to say to that. She knew he was right. She also knew she still wanted him so badly right now that she was experiencing the desire almost as a physical pain.

“I’m going to go,” he said, almost apologetically. “But I meant what I said about taking Wyatt fishing. I’ll pick him up at your dock Sunday morning. Five thirty sharp, okay?”

She nodded. But as he started to leave, something occurred to her.

“Walker?”

He stopped and came back.

“Walker, what about . . . what about us?” she asked, making a gesture that included both of them.

“Us?” he said. “Well, I guess ‘us’ will have to wait until you’re ready.”

She thought about this. It sounded straightforward enough. There was just one problem. “How will I know when I’m ready?” she asked, softly.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I guess you’ll just know.”

“And then I’ll come to you and say, ‘I’m ready’?” she asked, skeptically.

“Something like that,” he said, with a half smile. He kissed her quickly on the forehead and then he was gone.

Allie felt suddenly weak. She sank down on the kitchen floor and sat there for a long time, fighting back more tears and considering the absurdity of the situation. She was trapped. Caught between two worlds. One—her marriage to Gregg—had ended. The other—her relationship with Walker—was poised to begin. But she wouldn’t—
couldn’t—
let it begin. Not now. Maybe not ever.

So much for baby steps,
she thought, miserably, remembering Caroline’s words.

CHAPTER 20

N
eed help, buddy?” Walker asked.

Wyatt shook his head. “No, I got it,” he said, frowning in concentration. He was holding a fishing hook in one hand and a wriggly pink worm in the other.

Ordinarily, Walker preferred to fish with lures, but he’d decided that fishing with live bait would be more exciting for someone Wyatt’s age. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was how hard it could be to get a worm on a hook when your hands were as small as Wyatt’s. Not that Wyatt complained. He didn’t. He just kept trying.

“It’s harder than it looks,” Walker said now, encouragingly. He marveled, once again, at Wyatt’s determination to do everything by himself.

Wyatt pinched the worm tightly between his thumb and his index finger and guided the end of the hook through its midsection. “There,” he said, with satisfaction, getting ready to cast off.

“Now, remember what I told you,” Walker said, leaning forward in his seat.

Wyatt nodded, then put his rod over his right shoulder, and, after a slight wobble, cast his line over the water in an almost graceful arc. When his hook hit the water, the red-and-white bobber Walker had attached to the line floated on the surface. If a fish took the bait now, the bobber would bounce and slide on the water, alerting Wyatt to its location.

“And now we wait,” Wyatt said solemnly, borrowing a phrase from Walker.

“Hopefully, not too long.” Walker said, smiling and thinking, as he had for over a month of Sunday mornings now, what a cute kid Wyatt was.

Wyatt was sitting now in one of the two seats in Walker’s fishing boat, dressed in a sweatshirt, blue jeans, a Minnesota Twins baseball cap, and red Converse sneakers. His chin was resting on the voluminous padding of the bright orange life preserver Walker had strapped him into, and his feet, which didn’t reach the bottom of the boat, dangled off his seat.

This was one of the things that had surprised Walker the most about Wyatt, he reflected now. How small he was. All young children were small, of course. But it was one thing to observe their smallness from a distance, and another thing to see it up close and personal.

It made Walker feel protective of Wyatt in a way he’d never felt protective of anyone before. It made him take extra care in fastening the straps on Wyatt’s life preserver, in helping him in and out of the boat, and in driving him around in the boat, too. Normally, Walker liked to drive fast. But with Wyatt beside him, he steered cautiously around the lake’s bays and inlets.
Like an old man,
he thought.
Or like a father
.

But no sooner had he had that thought than he pushed it away. Wyatt could do better than to have him for a father. Wyatt had
already
done better, he was sure. He wouldn’t be such a sweet kid, Walker figured, if his dad hadn’t been a nice guy. A guy who knew what Walker couldn’t imagine knowing. Namely, how to be somebody’s father.

But if Walker didn’t have what it took to be a dad, he figured he could at least begin by being something else to a young child. A coach, for instance. Or maybe just a friend.

And that, probably, was what had surprised him the most about Wyatt. How much being with him felt like being with a friend. The kid, it turned out, was surprisingly good company.

For one thing, he never complained. Not about the early hour they went fishing. Not about being tired. (Although Walker had seen him yawn, discreetly, and even rub his eyes when he thought Walker wasn’t looking.) And he never complained about being cold, either, despite the frequent early morning chill on the lake. He also didn’t complain about having to sit still, something Walker had thought would be the most challenging part of these mornings for him.

Instead, he soaked up everything Walker taught him like a little sponge. He learned quickly. Amazingly quickly. And far from asking questions all the time, something Walker had assumed all children did, he asked them only occasionally. And when he did ask them, they seemed to Walker to be unusually intelligent and perceptive questions. Although here again, Walker was struck by how little he knew about children. Maybe Wyatt was a typical five-year-old boy. But he didn’t really believe that. He seemed too exceptional, somehow, to be anything close to ordinary.

“Look!” Wyatt said now, interrupting his thoughts. He was pointing at his bobber, sliding sideways on the water’s surface.

“Hey, you got a bite,” Walker said. He wanted to help him, but he reminded himself that Wyatt didn’t want any help. Still, he couldn’t resist the urge to coach him a little.

“Okay, not too fast. No sudden movements. You want to keep him on the line.”

Wyatt nodded, resolutely, and started to turn the reel, slowly but steadily.

“He’s coming in,” Wyatt said, his excitement momentarily breaking through his seriousness. “He’s still on the line.”

“Nice work,” Walker said, as the line tugged the bobber across the water. When it got close enough, both Walker and Wyatt could see the fish’s silver scales flashing below the surface of the green water.

“Okay, now for the hard part,” Walker said, feeling suddenly tense. He didn’t want Wyatt to lose the fish now, not when it was so close. It had happened once before, and while Wyatt had survived, he’d been disappointed.