Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (41 page)

She looked down and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said finally, softly. “I just don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” he asked. He was staring, involuntarily, at the hollow at the base of her neck. Remembering all the kisses he’d lavished on it. And all the pleasure he’d elicited from her by doing so. But sitting across the table from her now, it was as if there was an invisible wall separating them from each other. She was so close to him now, so tantalizingly close, but he couldn’t reach out and touch her. Couldn’t touch her neck. Couldn’t even touch the pretty fingers of her suntanned hand resting lightly on the table. He swallowed some lemonade.
This is torture,
he thought. With no apparent end in sight.

“Walker, I’m sorry. But I don’t know if I trust you,” she said now, speaking so quietly that he had to lean forward to hear her. “And not just for my sake. But for Wyatt’s sake, too. Because if it doesn’t work out again, Walker, I’m not the only one who is going to get hurt. He’s going to get hurt, too.”

“I know that,” he said quickly. “And I know I must seem like a poor risk to you. But, Allie, I can’t prove to you that I’ve changed unless you
let
me prove it to you.”

“So I’m just supposed to take some gigantic leap of faith?” she asked, doubtfully.

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.”

“I . . . I need time to think,” she said, finally. “I can’t give you an answer right now.”

Walker nodded. “Take as much time as you need. And, Allie, if you decide it’s a no, that you don’t want to try again, then I’ll spare you the awkwardness of having to run into me in line at the grocery store anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother, Reid, wants me to move back to Minneapolis. He’s been trying to persuade me to do it all summer. He says the Butternut Boatyard doesn’t need me there full-time anymore, and he’s right. It doesn’t. Cliff, our GM here, is more than capable of running it by himself.”

“And if we did decide to try again?” she asked, frowning.

“I’d stay here, with you and Wyatt, and run the Butternut Boatyard. And Cliff would move to Minneapolis and be Reid’s right-hand man. That’s my preference, obviously. But if I can’t have you, then I don’t want this,” he said, gesturing around him.

“But you love your cabin,” she objected. “And you love the lake.”

“I do,” he admitted. “But they won’t mean anything without you and Wyatt in my life.”

“Walker,” she murmured. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I know it is. I don’t want to rush you, Allie. Take your time. And when you’ve made up your mind, call me. Or come over. Any time of the day or night.”

He smiled, remembering the last time she’d come over. And the night of lovemaking it had led to. She saw that smile and frowned. She knew what he was remembering.

“Walker? Whatever happens, you know it’s not just about you and me, right? It’s about you, and me and Wyatt.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said, immediately. “He’s an amazing little boy.”
And I miss him,
he almost added.
I miss him like crazy.

He watched her glance at her watch and saw the surprise register on her face. He glanced, guiltily, at his own watch. Had they really been sitting here for that long? She needed to get back to the gallery.

She reached into her handbag and took out her wallet, but Walker intercepted her.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I’m sorry I kept you so long.”

She said a quick, preoccupied good-bye and was gone.

Walker exhaled, slowly. He’d done everything he could do. He’d said his piece. It was out of his hands now. And whatever decision she made, he’d have to respect it. Live by it. The best that he could.

He left some bills on the table. Then glanced across at her plate. She hadn’t taken a single bite of her sandwich. He sighed and wondered if he should have Caroline wrap it up so he could drop it off at the gallery. But he decided against it. He didn’t know if she ever wanted to see him again or not.

CHAPTER 30

C
aroline rang the front doorbell again, but this time she left her finger on it. She knew somebody was home. Lights were blazing from all the windows. And, from somewhere inside the house, she could hear the repetitive thudding of rock music. She wasn’t leaving until somebody—
anybody
—opened this door.

Finally, after five minutes, she heard a voice. An exasperated voice.

“All right, knock it off. I’m coming, damn it.”

The door opened, and there was Jeremy, looking thoroughly irritated. And thoroughly disheveled. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and an old pair of jeans. His hair was uncombed, he had at least a three days’ growth of razor stubble on his face, and his brown eyes were shadowed with fatigue.

“Oh, Jeremy,” Caroline said sadly. “You look like hell.”

“That’s sweet of you to say,” he growled, sarcastically. Caroline frowned. It wasn’t in Jeremy’s nature to be sarcastic. In fact, before his separation from Jax, he’d been unfailingly good-natured, not to mention polite. It was amazing, really, how much one person could change, and in how little time they could change, under the right circumstances. Or, in Jeremy’s case, under the wrong circumstances.

“Are you going to ask me in?” Caroline asked coolly, when he made no move to do so.

He shrugged. “I assume you’re here on some errand for Jax?”

“Actually, Jeremy, Jax doesn’t know I’m here. But, yes, now that you mention it, I am here on her behalf.”

“Well, I have nothing to say on that subject,” he said, starting to close the door on her.

“Jeremy, don’t you dare close this door in my face,” Caroline said, warningly.

He looked at her defiantly, then lost his nerve. He looked down at the floor and sighed. A defeated sigh. “Fine, suit yourself,” he said, opening the door wider.

Caroline came into the house and followed him into the living room. She looked around the room, speechless. The place was in a shambles. There were clothes, books, toys, and DVDs strewn everywhere, and dirty dishes were stacked on every surface.

“Jeremy, what happened here?” she asked, appalled, as she righted a large potted plant that had been tipped over, spilling dirt onto the living room rug.

“Three little girls happened here,” he said, with an indifferent shrug.

And one presumably adult man,
she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“I’d ask you to sit down,” he said, “but as you can see, there’s nowhere to sit down.”

Caroline nodded, frowning. The two armchairs had been dragged together and draped with blankets in some attempt at building a fort. And the couch, she saw, with surprise, was made up like a bed, though it was so rumpled she wondered how anyone could sleep on it. Staring at it now, something occurred to her.

When her husband had left her, it had been too painful to sleep alone in her suddenly too-big bed, so she’d slept on the couch instead. She wondered, sadly, if Jeremy was doing the same thing now.

She heard a commotion from upstairs now, angry, childish shrieking, followed by a door slamming.

“That’s Joy and Josie fighting,” Jeremy offered, glancing in the direction of the stairs. “That’s all they do now. I don’t know how Jax ever got them to stop.”

“They’re still awake?” Caroline asked in surprise.

He nodded, and even in his surly mood he had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Jeremy, it’s almost eleven o’clock,” she objected. “It’s way past their bedtime. Especially on a school night.”

“I can’t get them to go to sleep,” he admitted. “They miss Jax. And the good-night phone calls don’t seem to be helping.”

Caroline winced. She’d heard these phone calls, or Jax’s side of them, anyway. They were pathetic things. Jax saying good night to each of her daughters in turn, while she tried, valiantly, not to cry.

“Jeremy,” she said, something occurring to her. “What exactly do the girls think is going on here? With you and Jax, I mean?”

“They think Mommy and the baby are staying with you because Mommy needs some rest,” he said.

Caroline sighed. “And how long do they think this arrangement is going to continue?”

“I have no idea,” he said, still not looking at her.

She edged over to the couch and sat down, gingerly, on the edge of it. “We need to talk,” she said, gesturing to the couch beside her.

“We
are
talking,” Jeremy pointed out.

“No, I mean
really
talk,” Caroline said.

“I have nothing to say,” Jeremy said sullenly. He didn’t sit down next to her on the couch. But he did pull one of the armchairs over and sit, noncommittally, on the arm of it.

“Well, even if you have nothing to say for yourself,” she said, not bothering to keep the irritation out of her voice, “I assume you’d like to know how your wife and daughter are doing.”

“I don’t need to ask. I know they’re being well taken care of by you.”

Yes, but you should be the one taking care of them,
she almost said. But she caught herself.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I
am
doing my best to make them comfortable. But there are certain things I can’t do. I can’t, for instance, persuade Jax to stop crying. All she does, Jeremy, all day long, is cry and nurse that baby. At the very least, I’d say, she’s in serious danger of dehydration.”

She smiled, trying to inject a little humor into the conversation, but Jeremy only said, wearily, “Get to the point, Caroline.”

“The point,” she said, “is that I want you to ask Jax to come home. Where she belongs. Because you and I both know that no matter how angry or how hurt you are, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Caroline, I told you. I’m not having this conversation,” Jeremy said, starting to stand up.

“Well, at least have the decency to hear me out then,” she said, sharply.

He sighed and sat back down.

“Jeremy, how much do you know about Jax’s childhood?” she asked, changing tack.

He shrugged. “Jax doesn’t like to talk about it. But I assume it wasn’t exactly the whole white picket fence thing.”

“That’s an understatement,” Caroline said. “But I’m going to tell you a little more about it.”

“Don’t bother, Caroline. Because if you think the fact that her parents were both drunks excuses what she did, I disagree.”

“It doesn’t
excuse
it,” Caroline said, carefully. “But it might
explain
it. Do you know, for instance, that when Jax’s parents got drunk, they used to fight with each other. I mean
really
fight. Physical stuff? And that when they fought, she would hide in a closet. She was generally safe in there. The only problem was, as she got older, the fighting got worse. That was when she started walking over to Pearl’s. Which, I should point out, was a three-mile walk for her. She did it at all hours of the day and night, too. During the day, my parents would give her breakfast or lunch. And they’d give her something to do around the place and pay her a little money for doing it. They liked her, of course. You couldn’t
not
like Jax. But mainly, I think, they felt sorry for her.”

Jeremy still sat stony faced, not looking at her. But Caroline kept talking. “When Jax would come at night, my dad would let her sleep in the storage room. He’d bring down a blanket and pillow for her, and she’d sleep right on top of those enormous bags of flour he kept stacked in there. Then he’d wake her up early, when he came down to start the coffee, so she had enough time to walk home and get changed for school.

“One night, I remember so clearly. It was in the dead of winter. It must have been twenty degrees below zero. And Jax showed up at around two o’clock in the morning. She was freezing. She’d walked the whole way there through the snow. My mother brought her right up to the apartment and put her to bed. She must have put five blankets on top of her. But it was almost morning before she got her to stop shivering.”

“Okay, I get it,” Jeremy snapped, finally shaken out of his torpor. “She had a lousy childhood. But, Caroline, it still doesn’t explain why she did what she did. She lied to me. Every day of our marriage. And I let her lie, it’s true. But I never expected this to happen. She took our money—money that we worked so hard to save—and gave it away.
Threw
it away, really. And she didn’t tell me. She played me for the fool I was, I guess. But I’m not going to be that fool anymore.”

Caroline shook her head, thinking, desperately,
he’s got this all wrong
. But she knew there must be some way to get through to him.

“Jeremy,” she said suddenly. “Did Jax ever tell you why she didn’t want a dishwasher?”

He looked at her and frowned. “Caroline, I really don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

But she persisted. “Did Jax ever tell you why she didn’t want a dishwasher?”

He shook his head, impatiently. “I don’t know. She said she liked doing dishes.”

“
Nobody
likes doing dishes,” Caroline said. “Jax did them for a special reason. She told me about it once. She didn’t tell you, probably, because she didn’t want to burden you with how unhappy her childhood was. But I was here one day, after you two had gotten married and moved into this house. And I was sitting in your kitchen, watching Jax hand wash the breakfast dishes. I wanted to help her. But she wouldn’t let me. And I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have a dishwasher put in, aren’t you?’ And she said no. And she told me that when she was a child, her family didn’t have any dishes. None at all. It wasn’t because they were poor, though money was scarce, of course. They didn’t have any dishes because her parents would always break them when they fought with each other. So eventually, I guess, someone had the brilliant idea of just not replacing them anymore. So they ate off paper plates, or napkins, or nothing at all, I guess.