Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (36 page)

“Not even
half
a fire engine?” Caroline asked, glancing at Allie in amusement.

But Wyatt ignored the question. “I’m going to get changed into my bathing suit,” he announced, breathlessly, before disappearing into the cabin.

“Bathing suit? Are we going swimming?” Caroline asked, sitting down on the top step beside Allie.

Allie shook her head. “Oh no. Wyatt has much bigger plans for you. You’re going to be catching tadpoles.”

Caroline raised her eyebrows. “Tadpoles?”

“Catching tadpoles is his new calling in life. That, and digging up worms. Between the two of them, it’s basically a full-time job. But you don’t have to help him if you don’t want to,” she added, quickly. “He’d probably be just as happy having you watch him catch tadpoles.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Caroline said, slipping off her sandals and rolling up her blue jeans.

But when she looked back up at Allie, her expression was suddenly serious. And even, Allie thought, a little angry.

“Do you mind telling me something?” she asked, tightly.

“Of course not,” Allie replied, surprised by Caroline’s sudden change of mood.

“What on earth was Jax thinking, driving alone out here last night, with that baby about to drop?”

“She
wasn’t
thinking,” Allie said, feeling guilty. “At least not about herself. She was thinking about me. About whether or not I’d heard about . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Caroline sighed. “That is so like Jax,” she said, finally, with a mixture of affection and exasperation.

“I know,” Allie agreed, unhappily. “And I feel terrible about it, Caroline. I really do. I mean, what if something had gone wrong last night? I never would have forgiven myself.”

“Allie,” Caroline said, “even if you’d known Jax was planning on coming out here last night, there wouldn’t have been anything you could have done to stop her. She’s as stubborn as a mule. Always has been. Always will be. And what’s more”—Caroline put an arm around Allie’s shoulder—“nothing
did
go wrong. Everything worked out all right, thanks to you. Once you realized Jax was in labor, you stepped up, and took charge.”

“Ha!” Allie snorted. “I was a complete coward. I would have hidden in the kitchen all night if one of the paramedics hadn’t given me a talking-to about how much Jax needed me.”

“Well, maybe you needed a little encouragement.” Caroline smiled. “Who wouldn’t have, under the circumstances? The important thing is that you were there when it mattered. That’s what counts.”

“Maybe,” Allie said. But she appreciated Caroline’s loyalty. Whatever she did, Allie knew, Caroline, and Jax, too, would always see the best in her.

“Listen, I’ll take over now,” Caroline said. “And you, I hope, will take a nap. A
long
nap.”

“I’ll try,” Allie promised, starting to stand up. But Caroline grabbed her hand.

“Allie? One more thing. Don’t believe everything you hear. About Walker, I mean. I’m sure Caitlin is here for a reason. A
good
reason. I trust Walker. I really do. After all, you don’t pour a man’s coffee for three years without learning
something
about him.”

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” Allie said, honestly. And, amazingly, it was true. As soon as she’d realized Jax was in labor last night, she’d forced the thought of Walker Ford and his ex-wife out of her mind. The only thing that mattered, she’d told herself, was that Jax and the baby were safe. Everything else could wait.

After everyone had left that morning, she hadn’t let herself think about him then, either. It seemed wrong, somehow, to be preoccupied by her own problems. They were so insignificant when compared to the birth of a child.

Now, of course, it would be harder. With Jax and the baby in good hands, and Caroline watching Wyatt, it was going to take some effort not to think about Walker. Not to mention his houseguest.

Caroline started to say something else just then, but Wyatt came barreling back out on to the front porch, wearing his favorite red bathing suit.

“Are you ready, Caroline?” he asked, jumping up and down.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Caroline said, winking at Allie.

Wyatt took Caroline’s hand and tugged impatiently on it as she followed him down the cabin’s front steps. “Don’t worry, Caroline,” he said, earnestly. “I’ll teach you how to catch tadpoles. It’s easy. You can even have your own bucket for them, if you want. That way you can take them home with you.”

“That would be very nice,” Caroline said, swinging Wyatt’s hand.

Allie smiled, a little wearily, as she went back into the cabin.

But a moment later, she heard Caroline calling to her through the screen door. “Allie,” she said, “I think you might have to postpone that nap. You have a visitor.”

Allie came back out on the porch in time to see Walker’s pickup roll into view. In an instant, her tiredness fell away from her. But it was almost immediately replaced by a stomach-churning dread. Suddenly, she felt certain she knew why Walker was here. But she forced herself to come down the steps and walk out to his truck to meet him.

Caroline tried to coax Wyatt down to the lake with her, but once he realized it was Walker, he ran up to him.

“Walker! You’re here, too,” he said, beaming at him and then back at Caroline, who’d come up beside him and taken his hand. He looked as if he could not believe his luck.

“Hey, buddy,” Walker said, looking genuinely pleased to see Wyatt.

But Allie shot him a warning look. If he was here to break things off with her—and she felt sure that he was—she didn’t want him making promises to Wyatt he couldn’t keep.

“Do you want to catch tadpoles with us?” Wyatt asked. But Walker, taking his cue from Allie, seemed suddenly noncommittal. “Maybe some other time,” he said. “Today I’m here to talk to your mom, okay?”

“Okay,” Wyatt said. “But my mom’s really tired,” he warned. “She helped Jax have a baby last night. Caroline said she’s supposed to take a nap.”

“Hello, Walker,” Caroline said, now. And despite defending Walker only moments ago, there was a coolness to her tone that Allie had never heard before. Walker, she saw, noticed it, too.

“Hi, Caroline,” he said, a little uneasily.

And then to Wyatt he said, “Listen, you’d better catch those tadpoles. They won’t wait all day, you know. And don’t worry about your mom. I know she’s tired. I won’t keep her long.”

Wyatt nodded happily and let Caroline lead him away.

“Hi,” Walker said to Allie, his blue eyes serious. “Is it okay if we talk now? I tried to get ahold of you yesterday, but I couldn’t. Your line was busy. And your cell—”

“I know,” Allie said, sighing inwardly. She’d forgotten to charge her cell phone. What a day for her to be out of reach, she thought. First Jax, and then Walker . . .

“Anyway, judging from what I heard in town this morning,” he said, “you’ve had your hands full here. And if you’d rather I come back later, after you’ve had a chance to get some rest, that’s fine.”

But Allie shook her head. “No, now is as good a time as any,” she said, walking back toward the cabin. And she meant it. Whatever Walker had come to say, she knew, wouldn’t be any easier to hear later.

“Would you like an iced tea?” she asked, pushing the cabin’s screen door open.

“Sure,” he said. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She poured their iced teas from the pitcher in the refrigerator and sat down across from him. It was hard not to think about another night in this kitchen. A night when he’d kissed her, passionately, just a few feet from where they were now sitting awkwardly.

He put some sugar in his iced tea. She fiddled with a lemon wedge in hers. But he didn’t say anything.

Finally, she got impatient. “Look, Walker, we both know why you’re here.”

“We do?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes, we do. And since you can’t seem to tell me, I’ll make it easy for you. You’re here because you don’t . . . you don’t want to see me anymore.”
There,
she’d said it, never mind how much hearing herself say it had hurt.

“
What?
No,” Walker said, obviously blindsided. “Why would I not want to see you anymore?”

“Because your ex-wife is back in your life.”

He frowned. “You mean back in my life
to stay
?”

She shrugged, a tiny shrug.

“Allie,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong. That is
not
why I’m here. First of all, my ex-wife and I have been separated for over two years. And we’ve been divorced for over a year. We are
not
reconciling. That’s not why she’s here.” He shook his head, looking less surprised now than disappointed. “You know, Allie,” he added, “I wish, instead of listening to the Butternut rumor mill, you’d just picked up the phone and asked me why she was here.”

Allie’s cheeks flushed with anger. “And I wish you’d told me she was coming. Instead of leaving me to rely on the Butternut rumor mill for my information.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Walker said, calmly. “And I would have told you she was coming, if I’d known ahead of time.”

“You mean, she just dropped by?”

“Yes, she did,” he said. “And believe me, I was as surprised as you are.” He added quickly, “She’s not staying with me, by the way. She’s staying at the White Pines resort. She drove over there last night after we had dinner.”

After Jax saw her car in your driveway,
Allie thought, tracing the pattern in the tablecloth with her fingertip.

“Look,” he said, after a short silence. “My ex-wife—her name is Caitlin—isn’t here because we’re reconciling. She’s here because we have some loose ends we need to tie up.”

“Loose ends?” she echoed.

He sighed. “It’s complicated. It turns out we haven’t quite finished what we started.”

“So you still care about her?” Allie asked, surprised by how hard the words were to say.

“Yes, I do—though not in the way you mean. But I realized, Allie, that I can’t start things with you until I’ve ended things with her.”

“I thought that was the point of getting a divorce, Walker. You ended things with someone.”

“Well, divorce doesn’t always bring closure. Or it didn’t for us, anyway.”

Allie felt impatient again. She needed him to get to the point. “Walker, why are you here, exactly?”

“I’m here to ask for more time,” he said, quietly. “I’m here to ask if we can . . . put things on hold until I can figure this out. Not that long ago, Allie, you needed more time, too,” he added gently.

Allie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had needed more time. But this was different, wasn’t it? And, suddenly, she knew what she needed to do. What she needed to say. “No,” she said, opening her eyes.

“No what?”

“No, Walker, I’m sorry. You can’t have more time. You can’t have more time because it’s over between us.”

He looked stunned. “Allie, that’s
not
what I want,” he said.

“Well, maybe it’s not about what
you
want, Walker,” she said, studying the tablecloth with renewed interest and trying to ignore the hot, prickly sensation of tears building up in her eyes. “Maybe it’s about what
I
want, too. And I want it to be over.
Now
. I knew, from the morning we met at Pearl’s, that it would be a mistake for us to get involved with each other. I should have listened to myself, Walker. I shouldn’t have gotten caught up in the moment. Because I was right. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t believe that. And I don’t think you believe it either.”

“You’re wrong,” Allie said, but her voice quavered slightly when she said it.

“So that night we spent together, that was mistake? And that day on the boat? That was a mistake, too?” he asked, his blue eyes dark with anger.

“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. “They may not have felt like mistakes at the time. But in retrospect, I think they were.”

There was a burst of laughter from down at the lake, and Allie got up and walked over to the kitchen window. If she craned her neck, she could glimpse Caroline and Wyatt through the trees, splashing in the water at the lake’s edge.

Walker got up and joined her at the window. He watched for a moment, too, then asked, quietly, “Allie, where is this coming from?”

Allie looked at him, then back out the window. When she spoke again, her voice was mercifully calm, betraying none of the emotional turmoil she felt inside. “Walker, I don’t expect you to understand. You’re not a father. But that little boy down there? He’s my whole world. And I’m his whole world. Because except for a few other people—Caroline, Frankie, Jax’s daughter, Jade—I’m it for him here. He’s already had one parent taken away from him. So I’ve got to be here for him. Every day. All day long. It takes a lot of energy. Physical and emotional. But I have to have that energy. I have to be present in his life. Fully present. I can’t spend my time waiting for you and your ex-wife to find closure. Or hoping that you and I can have a relationship of our own one day. I can’t put my life on hold, Walker. Wyatt deserves better than that. And you know what? I deserve better than that, too. And now,” she said, turning to him, “I need you to go. I really do need to get some rest.”

Walker stared at her, wordlessly, frustration and sadness mingling in his face. Then he shook his head and started to say something, but changed his mind. He left the kitchen, left the cabin, and drove away.

Allie turned and watched out the other kitchen window as his truck disappeared down the driveway. Then she turned back to the window in front of her and found Wyatt’s red bathing suit through the trees. A single, hot tear slid down her cheek. But that was the only one she allowed herself. She’d cried enough for one day.

Later that night, as she was putting calamine lotion on Wyatt’s many mosquito bites, she looked for a way to broach the subject of Walker Ford with him. Wyatt needed to know that their Sunday morning fishing trips had ended. But she wanted to break it to him gently, in language he could understand. That meant skipping the part about her relationship with Walker. Or rather, her
former
relationship with Walker.