Moonlight on Butternut Lake Read online

  “What about bathing?” Mila asked.

  “Oh, I help him with that.”

  “Well, I can take over now.”

  But Walker shook his head. “I don’t think so. He won’t let anyone but me help him.”

  “But are you trained to help him?”

  “Trained?” Walker repeated, looking sheepish again. “Not really. I just kind of, you know, wash him up.” He made a washing gesture with his hands.

  “All right, well, I’ll wait to broach the subject with your brother. But ultimately, I think I should be the one doing that. Now, what about the cooking? What will that involve?”

  “Nothing on your part. We’ve hired someone to do the cooking and the housekeeping. Her name is Lonnie Hagan. She comes every day, from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. She brings Reid his breakfast and lunch—he prefers to have them in his room—and she also prepares his dinner before she leaves. All you’ll have to do with it is heat it up and take it to him on a tray, then collect the tray when he’s done.”

  Mila almost asked, Why are you taking him his meals on a tray, instead of having him wheel himself in to wherever his housekeeper or his home health aides are having their meals, too? But she didn’t. Still, it was her opinion that if Reid wasn’t a complete invalid, he shouldn’t be treated like one.

  “Okay,” she said. “No cooking or cleaning. But there must be other things you need me to do?”

  “Well, Allie and I have been taking him to his doctor’s appointments, but I’m hoping that Reid will eventually let you take him, too. Same with his physical therapy appointments. Those should start as soon as he gets his long leg cast off, which, unfortunately, is still several weeks away. In the meantime, though, we’ll need you to pick up his prescriptions and run an occasional errand. Oh, and check his vital signs and monitor his general health. But that’s about it, I guess.”

  “I can do all those things,” Mila said, “and I’ll still have plenty of time left over to provide companionship for your brother.”

  “Companionship?” Walker echoed skeptically.

  “Uh-huh. Taking him for walks in his wheelchair. Playing board games. Or even just having conversations.”

  “Conversations?”

  “Yes, you know, talking,” Mila prompted.

  “Yeah, about that,” Walker said, looking worried. “Maybe I didn’t really make myself clear before. But Reid doesn’t do the whole . . . companionship thing. He doesn’t do the conversation thing, either.”

  “You mean he doesn’t talk?”

  “I mean he doesn’t like to talk. Not since the accident. He likes to be alone. In his room.”

  “What does he do in there?” Mila asked.

  “Nothing,” Walker said. “We’ve offered to put a television in there. Or a computer. But he said no. I even bought him an iPad, which I couldn’t get him interested in. Honestly, I don’t know what he does all day. Stares out the window, I guess. Except he doesn’t do that, either, because he likes to keep the shades down. It bothers me, actually,” he added, “that it’s so dark in there all the time.”

  “Well, then I’ll add raising his shades to my to-do list,” Mila said determinedly. “It will come right after confiscating his medications.” But something else was bothering her now. “Mr. Ford—”

  “Walker,” he corrected her.

  “Walker,” she amended. “If I’m not providing companionship for your brother, I’m not . . . I’m not going to be very busy. I mean, the responsibilities we’ve discussed will take, at most, a couple of hours a day.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “But you’re paying me to work full-time.”

  “That’s definitely true,” he smiled. “Is there a problem with that?”

  “No problem, except that what you’ve described, it’s not a full-time job. I’m not even sure it’s a part-time job.” Even as she was saying this, though, Mila was regretting saying it. Because what would she do if he decided not to hire her to live in, full-time? And where, exactly, would she go? There was no backup plan. Not for her, anyway.

  “Look,” Walker said, shifting in his seat. “It doesn’t matter how many hours a day you’ll actually be working, especially when what little time you spend with Reid will probably seem like much more time than it actually is. What matters is that you’ll be there if he needs you, especially if he needs you at night. If you can be that person for him, Mila, you’ll be giving my wife and me our peace of mind back, and right now, honestly, I couldn’t even begin to put a price on that.”

  Mila hesitated, still uncomfortable with the idea of working only a couple of hours a day. She had a formidable work ethic, and so far, this job description was not jibing with it.

  Walker sensed her ambivalence but misunderstood the cause of it. “Look, don’t worry about being bored this summer,” he said. “Especially if you like the outdoors. The cabin is right on Butternut Lake, and it’s beautiful, really. And when Lonnie’s there, during the day, you’re welcome to explore the area, on foot or in one of the boats we own. Then, on your days off, you can borrow one of our cars and go into town. There’s not much to see there, of course, but it should provide a few distractions. It’s got a good coffee shop, for one thing, and a handful of other stores, some of which even sell things you might need. It’s not exactly the Twin Cities,” he added, with a smile. “But we like it.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Mila said quickly. “I don’t need a lot of entertainment.” And besides, she was planning on spending as little time as possible in public. The cabin’s secluded location suited her just fine. It was the perfect place to get lost. Or at least to not be found.

  “All right, then,” Walker said, with obvious relief. “I think we’ve covered everything.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re late,” he said, shifting the pickup into drive and pulling back onto the road. “I kept you too long. We were supposed to be at Pearl’s, the coffee shop I mentioned, fifteen minutes ago. Are you ready to meet Reid?” he asked, stepping on the gas.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Mila joked. But she found herself wishing that Walker had been a little less forthcoming with her. The more she heard about his brother, frankly, the less confident she felt that she could do the job.

  Here they are now,” Allie said, watching the front door at Pearl’s. She shot Reid a warning look and, in the next moment, composed her face into a welcoming smile. Reid followed her eyes to his brother, Walker, and the young woman with him, as they threaded their way through the coffee shop’s tables.

  “Hey,” Walker said. “I’m sorry we’re late. My meeting ran over at the boatyard, and I found Ms. Jones waiting in the rain.”

  “Walker,” Allie said reprovingly. And then, to the young woman with Walker, “You must be Mila.”

  The young woman—Mila—nodded her assent, but there was something about hearing her name said out loud that seemed to unnerve her. She cringed, almost imperceptibly, and glanced furtively around. Reid frowned. That was odd. He watched her thoughtfully as Walker made the introductions. She wasn’t unattractive, he thought. Far from it. She was petite and slender, with straight shoulder-length brown hair, watchful brown eyes, delicate features, and fair skin. But there was something about her that Reid found slightly unsettling. Maybe it was because, when she and Walker joined them at the table, she chose a chair that faced the front door and then looked up every time it opened and the little string of bells above it rang. Or maybe it was because of the way she sank down, ever so slightly, in her chair, drawing her slender shoulders together, as if she were trying to make herself smaller. As if she were trying, he realized, to hide in plain sight.

  All this was interesting to him. For about two minutes. And then it was just annoying. Because this was the trouble with bringing virtual strangers into your home. They didn’t just bring their actual baggage with them, they brought their personal baggage with them too. All their problems, big and small, not to mention all their annoying personality quirks a
nd irritating habits.

  Mrs. Everson, for instance, who’d been his first home health aide, had brought with her a fondness for cheap red wine, though she’d been careful to drink it only at night, and only in her own room. Reid hadn’t mentioned it to Walker or Allie. He’d figured her habit of drinking herself into a stupor every night gave him a modicum of privacy he wouldn’t have if she were sober. But he’d wondered, idly, what would happen to him if there were a nighttime emergency, as Allie and Walker worried there might be. A fire, or a tornado. In either of these unlikely events, Reid knew, Mrs. Everson—lying facedown on her bed, snoring lustily into her pillow—would be useless to both of them. Still, as much as Reid had enjoyed speculating about how Mrs. Everson smuggled all those empty wine bottles out of the cabin without attracting the notice of Lonnie or his brother, he still hated having her there. Because the truth was that for someone who liked to drink so much, she was surprisingly little fun, and once Reid made it his mission in life to make her quit, she was really no fun at all.

  Mrs. Bolger, the home health care aide who replaced Mrs. Everson, didn’t have a drinking problem. But she did have a grating tendency to have long, one-sided conversations with Reid, most of which were about her relationship with her daughter-in-law—which was lousy—or about her beloved collection of china dolls, which she referred to as if they were actual people. Add to that her constant, tuneless humming, and the cloying, too sweet odor of her perfume, and, within three days of her arrival, Reid found himself longing for the return of Mrs. Everson.

  And now, he thought, watching Mila Jones as she tentatively sipped the iced tea she’d ordered, now someone else would be living with him. Someone who was acting as if she’d robbed a bank and was waiting for federal marshals to catch up with her.

  “Isn’t that right, Reid?” Allie said, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Isn’t what right?” he asked, entering into what he imagined would be an interminable conversation.

  “Mila’s welcome to use any of the recreational equipment in the boathouse. The kayak, for instance, or the Jet Ski.”

  But Reid barely grunted.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Mila said quickly. “I’m sure I’ll find plenty to keep me busy.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Reid mumbled, under his breath.

  Allie shot him a warning look and then turned her attention back to Mila. “Mila, what do you like doing in your free time?”

  Reid watched her hesitate for a moment and then shrug. “I’m not used to having a lot of free time,” she said, her eyes cutting to the coffee shop’s front door again. Reid felt another wave of annoyance. His promise to Allie, he knew, was about to go right out that door.

  “Can we stop this?” he asked now, addressing the table at large. “Can we stop pretending that Ms. Jones and I are going to become good friends? Because we all know that’s not going to happen. If we’re lucky—very lucky—we’ll be able to stand each other just enough to tolerate the very short amount of time we’ll need to spend together every day.”

  Allie’s face flushed then from some combination of anger and embarrassment, and Mila, Reid saw, was startled. But only for a moment. Because in the next moment she slid down a little more in her chair and drew her shoulders even closer together, as if she was hoping to simply disappear altogether.

  “Oh, come on,” Reid said. “I’m only saying what everyone here already knows. I don’t want Ms. Jones to be here any more than she wants to be here. I’d like to live alone now. Something, by the way, I’m perfectly capable of doing. And Ms. Jones—well, I don’t know Ms. Jones well enough to know what she’d rather be doing—but I imagine it’s almost anything but this.”

  “But this is what I want to be doing,” Mila said, sitting up a little straighter. “Taking care of people, I mean.”

  Her apparent sincerity threw Reid, but only for a moment. “Well, you may want to do it, but you can’t be very good at doing it,” Reid pointed out. “Because if you were, your agency wouldn’t have to send you two hundred and forty miles away to do it, would they? What’d you do, Ms. Jones, at your last job? Steal a patient’s fur coat? Or was it their family silver?”

  “Reid, that’s outrageous, even for you,” Allie objected, and she looked, Reid thought, like it was taking all her willpower not to strangle him. “Mila was referred to us by a reputable agency. And her record, I’m sure, is spotless.”

  “Actually,” Mila said, looking not at Allie, but at Reid, “I don’t have a record yet. This is my first placement.”

  Reid rolled his eyes, ignoring the warning hand Allie had placed on his arm. “Great,” he said. “So you basically have no idea what you’re doing. Which means you’re going to be even less competent than your predecessors. Who, trust me, already set the bar pretty low.”

  He’d expected this to silence her, but she continued to look steadily at him before she said. “I can’t speak for whoever came before me, obviously. But I can promise you that I’ve received excellent training, and that I’m fully qualified for this position. So I’ll do my best to make you comfortable, Mr. Ford. And, if you’re concerned about your valuables, I suggest you keep them locked up. But since you don’t strike me as the kind of man who would own either a silver tea service or a mink coat, I don’t think my stealing them is a real possibility, do you?”

  Reid, surprised, sat back in his wheelchair, but Mila was still staring at him, a challenge in her brown eyes. And then she seemed to remember herself, and she glanced around, nervously, as though she’d said too much.

  “Okay, fine,” Reid said, still not quite willing to concede the point. “I won’t worry about my valuables. Especially since I don’t have very many of them to worry about. But I still think it’s strange that you’d want to spend your summer so far from home, with someone you’ve never even met before. I mean, seriously, if that doesn’t smack of desperation, what does?”

  “Reid, stop,” Allie said, but Mila interrupted.

  “Actually, the reason I chose to come here was because I was ready for a change of pace,” she said. “I’ve lived in the city all my life, and I thought this might be a nice change, living here for the summer.”

  “Change of pace?” he repeated, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “I think we both know that’s not why you’re here. I think it’s much more likely you’re running away from something. Or someone. A bad breakup, maybe? Or some guy in Minneapolis who—”

  But he stopped when Mila stood up from the table so suddenly that she knocked over her iced tea, and then he watched, silently, as she rushed out of the coffee shop, bumping into a few more tables and chairs on her way out.

  “Uh, Caroline,” Reid called out to the coffee shop’s owner, who was still hovering nearby, holding the baby. “I think we’re going to need your help over here again.”

  He glanced over at his brother and sister-in-law, who both looked appalled.

  “What?” he said, with mock innocence. “I thought that went very well.”

  Mila was standing down the block from the coffee shop, under the dripping awning of the hardware store, when Allie caught up to her. She’d brought her baby with her—a girl, judging from the pale yellow sweater she was wearing—and the baby, as if sensing somehow how miserable Mila was, smiled at her.

  And Mila, trying not to cry, smiled back at her. Even in her present misery, it was impossible not to. Most babies were cute, she supposed, but this one seemed especially so, with her downy brown hair and wide blue eyes.

  “She likes you,” Allie said encouragingly.

  “She’s adorable,” Mila said, watching as the baby now sucked contentedly on her chubby little hand.

  “She missed her nap today, in all the excitement,” Allie said, resettling the baby on her hip. “So far, so good, though. But I’m . . . I’m sorry about that.” She gestured in the direction of the coffee shop. “I’m not going to ask you to excuse Reid’s behavior, since, obviously, there is no excuse for it.”
<
br />   Mila shrugged, but she didn’t say anything. She was afraid if she did, the tears would start. She could feel them gathering behind her eyes and burning in her throat. They were tears of anger, and humiliation.

  “Look,” Allie said now. “He’s not like that all the time. Most of the time, yes. But sometimes, every once in a great while, he can be almost pleasant to be around.” She smiled at Mila, and Mila saw that she was joking. A little. Mila tried to smile back. She didn’t blame Allie for her brother-in-law’s behavior. She and her husband both seemed like nice people. A little overwhelmed, maybe. But nice.

  “No, seriously,” Allie said. “He was different before the accident. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Even then, he didn’t expend a lot of energy on, um . . . personal relationships. But that was mainly because he was a complete workaholic. It was all about the business with him.”

  “The business?”

  “He and my husband own a couple of dozen boatyards, all over the Midwest,” Allie explained. “Walker did some of the work, of course, building their company. But Reid was the driving force behind it. He worked all the time. We’re talking sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. And he’d be on the road two hundred and fifty days a year. It was crazy.” She shook her head. “Walker and I visited him once at his apartment in Minneapolis, and I swear, he had nothing in the refrigerator. Nothing. Not even, like, a jar of mustard or something. The only sign that someone even lived in that apartment, as I recall, was some dry cleaning hanging in the hall closet.” She shuddered at the memory.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “that was the way he lived then. If he had any friends who weren’t his brother and I, or his business associates, I wasn’t aware of them. There were some women, of course. Quite a few of them, actually. But I never met any of them. I don’t think he was interested in a real relationship. I think he was the kind of guy who didn’t like to stick around in the morning, if you know what I mean.”

  Mila knew what she meant, but she was having trouble believing it. Reid, the man in the wheelchair, didn’t look like he could have been a womanizer for the simple reason that no woman in her right mind would have been interested in him. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He wasn’t. Even his long hair—long enough to be falling in his eyes—and his scruffy beard couldn’t hide the fact that he was a good-looking man. But his personality was so unattractive. Yuck, she thought. Who would have wanted to spend time with someone as boorish and as rude as he was?