Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (18 page)

“Let’s go then,” he said, springing into action. “I’ll call Dr. Novak’s office and tell him I’m bringing you over.”

Caitlin nodded, and she looked relieved that Walker was taking charge.

But later that evening, sitting up in her hospital bed, her expression was blank. She didn’t look frightened, or relieved. She didn’t look
anything
. Her pale blue eyes were empty, and her skin, normally pale, was almost gray.

Walker sat on the chair beside her bed. He was looking out the window at the hospital parking lot, where an early dusting of November snow glowed dully under the floodlights.

Caitlin’s doctor, Dr. Novak, came into the room.

“How are you holding up?” he asked Caitlin, picking up her chart from its pocket at the end of the hospital bed and examining it.

Caitlin didn’t answer him.

“You’re probably still in shock,” Dr. Novak said sympathetically, coming around to her side of the bed. “And I don’t blame you. It’s very unusual to lose a baby at this stage of a pregnancy. But it
does
happen, Caitlin. Even if we don’t necessarily know why.”

Caitlin still said nothing.

“Can I speak to you, Walker?” Dr. Novak asked, indicating the hospital corridor outside the room.

Walker nodded and followed him.

“Caitlin may not be ready to hear this yet,” he told him, in a lowered voice. “But when she is ready, remind her that you’re both still young. You didn’t have any difficulty conceiving a child this time. And there’s no reason to assume you will the next time. You can still have a family. It’s just going to take a little longer, that’s all.”

Walker didn’t know what to say. He doubted, very much, that there would be a next time for the two of them. But he thanked Dr. Novak and went back into the hospital room. Caitlin’s eyes were closed and he thought, for a moment, that she was asleep. But she opened them and said, quietly, “Walker?”

He nodded and moved closer to the bed.

“I’m going to leave when I get out of here, okay? Go home. To Minneapolis, I mean.”

“Don’t,” he said, feeling a stab of guilt. He couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving the hospital alone. She looked so fragile somehow. So vulnerable.

But she shook her head at his word of protest. “Walker, we got married for the baby. The baby’s gone now,” she said, her voice catching on the word
gone
. “We don’t need to stay married anymore.”

“Don’t leave,” he said again. And he meant it. “I’ll try harder. I know I haven’t been very good at this whole marriage thing. But I’ll do better. I promise. Just . . . just come home with me. Please?”

In hindsight, he realized that he should have let her go then. It was selfish of him to persuade her to stay, just to assuage his own guilt. But at the time he couldn’t see that.
Wouldn’t
see that . . .

Walker looked around then, amazed to discover his pickup was idling in front of his cabin. How he’d gotten here was a mystery to him. Because as real as his memories of Caitlin had been tonight, he had no memory whatsoever of the last five miles of the drive.

CHAPTER 15

A
couple of days after their visit to the boatyard, Allie was tucking Wyatt into bed when they heard a distant rumble of thunder.

“Finally,” she said, with relief, sitting down on the edge of Wyatt’s bed. “I thought that storm would never come.”

“You wanted it to come?” Wyatt asked, surprised.

“I
did
want it to come,” Allie said. “Because I knew once it came, it would cool off.”

All day long, the still air had been heavy and humid, the sky overcast, the lake a glassy oval of dark pewter. She’d waited for it to storm, and when it hadn’t, it had set her nerves on edge. Though it was hard to know, honestly, how much of that was the weather, and how much of that was Walker Ford’s words to her the last time she’d seen him. She frowned now, smoothing the sheet around Wyatt and thinking about what a colossal ego that man obviously had. How else to explain the fact that he refused to believe her when she said she wasn’t attracted to him?

There was another rumble of thunder, this one closer, and Wyatt’s body went rigid under the sheets.

“Hey, Wyatt, it’s okay,” Allie said, brushing an errant curl out of his eyes. “We had thunderstorms in Eden Prairie, remember?”

He nodded. “I was scared of them there, too,” he whispered.

“I know that,” Allie said, gently. And then, to distract him, she brought up something she’d been meaning to discuss with him all day. “Wyatt, do you think you might like to go to day camp?”

“You mean, the same one Jade and her sisters go to?”

“Uh-huh. Because I spoke to the director today—her name is Kathy—and she said they still have room for someone your age. She sounds really nice, by the way. And when I told her about you, and all the things you like to do, she said she thought you’d really like it there.”

Wyatt thought about it. “Would you come, too?” he asked, finally. Hopefully.

“Me? No,” Allie said, shaking her head. “It’s just for children, ages five to twelve. But I’ll drop you off and pick you up, and in between, if you need help, Kathy and the other counselors will be there. And so will Joy, Jade’s older sister. She’s a junior counselor there this summer.”

He nodded, distractedly, and she could tell something was bothering him. He shifted under the covers. “I
think
I’ll like day camp,” he said. “But what about you? What will you do all day? You’ll be here all alone. You might get lonely.”

“Wyatt,” Allie said, after a moment, both touched and saddened by his words. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay?
You
worry about
you
. And I’ll worry about
you
and
me,
okay? That’s the way it’s supposed to be with parents and children. And another thing, kiddo. I’m not going to have time to be lonely while you’re at camp, because, as it turns out, I’m going to be busy. I’m going to be working.”

“
Working?
Like at a job?” Wyatt asked, so skeptically that Allie almost laughed. He was too young to remember her having a life apart from him, working for her and Gregg’s landscaping business.

“That’s right. I’m going to be working at a place called the Pine Cone Gallery. It’s a store on Main Street that sells art made by local artists.” There was another roll of thunder now, this one close enough, and loud enough, to make Wyatt tense up again. So Allie went on, quickly, “Anyway, the woman who owns it asked me if I wanted to work for her during the hours you’re at day camp, from nine o’clock to three o’clock, and I said yes. I mean, it works out pretty well for both of us, don’t you think? This way, we’ll both get to do something fun. And afterward, you can tell me about your day at camp, and I can tell you about my day at the gallery. What do you think?” She smiled at him, determined to be positive. This separation, she knew, would be an adjustment for both of them.

But before Wyatt could answer her, there was a brilliant flash of lightning, followed a few seconds later by a boom of thunder so loud it sent Wyatt scrambling into her arms. They listened as the thunder reverberated through the still, evening air and watched as the lights in Wyatt’s bedroom flickered, then went out, then flickered back on again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she murmured, hugging Wyatt to her and trying to think if there was a storm warning for that day. But she didn’t know. They hadn’t been into town, so she hadn’t listened to the car radio or read the newspaper. Maybe she should turn on the television, she thought, starting to get up. But in the next second, there was a burst of lightning, followed a moment later by an earsplitting crack of thunder that sent Wyatt burrowing deeper into her arms. The cabin’s lights flickered off and on again, then went out for good.

“Hey, you know what?” Allie asked, giving Wyatt an extrahard hug, “It wouldn’t be summer in Butternut if we didn’t lose power at least once. So let’s get the flashlight, okay? Because in a few hours, it’ll be dark.” But as she led Wyatt to the kitchen, it occurred to her that it was already much darker outside than it should be for this time of the evening. And as she was opening the utility drawer in the kitchen, she glanced out the window and discovered why.

On the far shore of the lake, an entire wall of black clouds was amassing. But unlike an actual wall, this wall wasn’t stationary. It was moving. Fast. So fast, in fact, it seemed to be bearing directly down onto the cabin.

Watching it, Allie felt the hairs standing up on her arms. She angled her body between Wyatt and the window, so he couldn’t see it, too.

“Found it,” she said, pulling a flashlight out of the drawer. But when she turned it on, the beam was weak. Wyatt had been using it to play “camping” under his blanket fort in the living room. She sighed and groped in the drawer for batteries. It might be several hours, she knew, before the electricity came on again.

But there were no batteries in that drawer. Or in any other drawer, for that matter. She’d ransacked the last one when her eyes settled on the phone on the kitchen counter.
That
at least was working. But who would she call? And what would she say to them? Without an answer to either question she picked up the receiver and held it up to her ear. There was no dial tone.
So the phone was out, too?
She thought about her cell phone. Nope. She still hadn’t switched to a plan with coverage up here
.
Then she glanced out the window again. The cloud wall was closer. She felt a cold shiver of fear travel the length of her spine.

And then she remembered what she’d said to Wyatt only a few minutes ago. About how it was her responsibility to take care of him. Well, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it right now, was she? She needed to stay calm. She needed to
think
.

“Wyatt, I think I might have seen an old camping lantern in the hall closet,” she said, giving him the flashlight. “You can help me look for it.” Wyatt followed her over to the closet and directed a wobbly flashlight beam into it as she fumbled around in its mothball-scented depths. Every time there was another peal of thunder, though, she felt him stiffen beside her.

She was standing on her tiptoes, reaching for the closet’s top shelf, when Wyatt suddenly walked over to the living room window.

“Somebody’s here,” he said, turning back to her.

Allie looked at him, blankly, trying to push a sleeping bag she’d accidentally dislodged back up onto the top shelf.
Who in their right mind would be out in this weather?
she wondered. And then she froze. Because what if whoever it was
wasn’t
in their right mind? What if they were like the character in the B movie she’d seen once, the homicidal maniac who’d terrorized a family vacationing at their lakeside cabin? Or had it been flesh-eating zombies who’d terrorized that family? She gave the sleeping bag another shove. She’d definitely seen too many movies.

“Wyatt,” she said warningly, finding her voice, “do not open that door. Remember what we talked about? If a stranger comes to our front door, you come and get me, okay? You don’t let them in.”

“But it’s not a stranger,” Wyatt said, staring out the window. “It’s Mr. Ford. From the boatyard.”

“Mr. Ford?” Allie said, letting the sleeping bag she was holding fall to the floor.
Here? Now?
She would have been less surprised if it
had
been flesh-eating zombies.

But a pounding on the door spurred her into action.

“Should I let him in?” Wyatt asked, turning to her.

“No, you stay here,” Allie said, pointing to one of the living room chairs. “I’ll see what Mr. Ford wants.”

No sooner had she slid the bolt on the front door and pushed it open against a surprisingly strong gust of wind, then Walker brushed past her into the cabin.

“Do you have a cellar?” he asked.

“A cellar?” she repeated, startled by his brusqueness. She closed the front door on another brilliant flash of lightning.

“Yes,” he said, quickly. “A cellar, a basement, anything like that? Anything underground?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that,” she said, but her words were lost in a boom of thunder that shook the cabin.

“Where’s your son?”

“Over there,” Allie said, gesturing to Wyatt. He wobbled the flashlight beam in their direction.

“Well, grab him and let’s go,” Walker said, opening the door again, and Allie saw then that he’d left his pickup truck’s engine running and its headlights turned on.

“Go where?” she asked.

“To my cabin,” he said, quietly but urgently, glancing over at Wyatt. “I don’t want to scare your son, but there’s a tornado watch in effect for this whole county until two
A
.
M
. tonight. At least three of them have already touched down in this area. And you two aren’t staying here.” He glanced around and added, “Because this pile of twigs looks like it would come down in a stiff breeze, never mind a tornado.”

Allie stared back at him.

“And don’t think, for one second,” he said, mistaking her hesitation for a refusal, “that this has anything to do with my asking you out when you were at the boatyard the other day. It doesn’t. Trust me. I don’t have to work this hard to get a date.”