Butternut Summer (41 page)

She listened then, or tried to listen anyway, as Jessica reminisced about their growing up together. But as had so often happened that summer, Daisy was having difficulty paying attention. It wasn't that she didn't want to be with Jessica; it was just that if she could have chosen someone to spend the night alone with right now, it wouldn't have been her . . .

Daisy had been with Will a couple of hours earlier. Since she'd gotten home from the hospital, he'd gotten into the habit of driving over to see her in the late afternoons, after Pearl's had closed for the day and her mom and Frankie had left. They were able to find a little privacy then, sitting in one of the back booths, where they talked and kissed, but mainly kissed. It felt wonderfully illicit in its way. But it felt a little torturous, too, to go from spending a whole blissful night alone together to stealing a few hours of kisses in a place where they knew they might be interrupted at any moment.

But it wasn't just the lack of privacy that Daisy was struggling with. It was Will, too. He was still sweet, of course, still incredibly solicitous of her. But he was something else, too. Quieter, maybe, or more intense. He seemed burdened by something. It was hard for her to put her finger on it. But she felt it, just the same. Once, he'd told her he wanted to talk to her about something, but no sooner had he brought it up than he dropped it. And when she'd pressed him about it later, he'd changed the subject. It worried her a lot, almost more than she was willing to admit to herself.

“Daisy, you're not listening to a word I'm saying,” Jessica observed ruefully, bringing her back to the conversation.

“You're right,” Daisy admitted. “I'm sorry.” She felt a rush of guilt then, because she knew she hadn't been a very good friend to Jessica this summer. In fact, she'd barely spoken to her recently, except when she'd asked her to cover for her when she'd gone to Mr. Phipps's cabin with Will.

Jessica didn't seem angry though. “You don't need to apologize,” she said, fishing in the bag for another Oreo. “It's not your fault you can't pay attention. You're in love. And you only get to fall in love for the first time once,” she added, with a smile, biting into her cookie.

“That's true,” Daisy said, feeling a wave of gratitude for her friend. Jessica might never make a good waitress, she thought—she might never even make a
decent
waitress—but she had the sweetest disposition of anyone Daisy had ever known.

“Thank you for being so understanding, Jessica,” she said, leaning over and giving her a hug.

“Oh, it's easy for me to be understanding about this,” Jessica said, hugging Daisy back. “Because it just so happens that I'm in love right now too.”

“You are?” Daisy asked, settling back into her spot on the couch and examining her friend. “When did this happen?”

“It's been happening all summer. I just didn't realize it until recently. For the first time, Daisy, I didn't fall in love fast. I fell in love slow, a little bit at a time, and then, suddenly, all at once,” she added, flushing.

“That's wonderful,” Daisy said, beaming at her. “But who is he?”

“Guess,” Jessica said, her big brown eyes dancing with excitement.

“Um, okay. Is it someone who comes into Pearl's?”

“You could say that.”

“Is it . . . Oh, I know. Is it that new guy who works at the hardware store? The one who likes his eggs practically raw?”

“Nope. Try again.”

Daisy tried again, but it didn't take her long to exhaust the possibilities. There just weren't that many young, single men who came into the coffee shop.

“It's not one of your ex-boyfriends, is it, Jessica?” she asked, at last. “Because as far as I'm concerned, none of them ever treated you the way you deserve to be treated.”

“No, it's not an ex-boyfriend,” Jessica said. “And I agree, Daisy. They were all losers. Keep guessing.”

But Daisy held her hands up in surrender. “I give up. Tell me.”

“No, this game is too much fun,” Jessica said with childish pleasure. “But I'll give you a hint. You know him. Very well. You see him every day.”

Daisy frowned. “I see him at Pearl's?”

Now Jessica was practically squirming with excitement. “Yep.”

Daisy shook her head slowly.

“
And
you said he makes the best hash browns on the whole planet.”

Daisy looked at Jessica in astonishment. “
Frankie?
”

Jessica nodded excitedly. “It's Frankie. We're in love, Daisy.”

Daisy struggled to wrap her brain around this concept. “But Jessica,” she said finally, and not unkindly, “he's so much older than you.”

Jessica looked hurt. “He is not. I'm twenty-one. He's thirty-six. That's only fifteen years. Lots of people who fall in love have a bigger age difference between them.”

Daisy nodded. That was true. But did Jessica know everything about Frankie? And if she didn't, was it Daisy's place to tell her?

She deliberated, briefly, then asked, “Jessica, what has Frankie told you about his past?”

“Everything,” Jessica said promptly. “He told me he killed a man, in self-defense, and that he went to prison. He told me everything; he said he doesn't want there to be any secrets between us.”

Daisy was relieved. She wasn't worried about Frankie's propensity for violence. Because while she didn't know all the details of the incident that had ended in Frankie being convicted of voluntary manslaughter, she believed, privately, that he must not have had any choice in the matter. Besides, he'd paid his debt to society, and he'd been a loyal and trusted friend and employee to her mother, though her mother, she knew, had always worried that Frankie was lonely.
Well, not anymore
, Daisy thought with a smile. Not if he cared as much about Jessica as she cared about him.

“Does . . . does he love you too, Jessica?” she asked her friend gently.

Jessica nodded, flushing again. “He calls me his little doll,” she said shyly. “You know, because he's so much bigger than me. And because he can pick me right up, just like a little—”

“Yeah, I get it,” Daisy said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “That nickname requires no explanation. But you know what does? The fact that I've been so oblivious this summer. I mean, not even noticing the two of you falling in love with each other, right in front of me?” And it wasn't just Jessica and Frankie falling in love either. Something was happening between her parents, too. She was sure of it. Even now, they were having a drink at her dad's cabin. Her mother had insisted that they were meeting there to discuss business, but Daisy had her doubts.

Now she shook her head in bemusement. So . . . Will and her, Jessica and Frankie, and now, maybe, her mom and dad. “Jessica,” she said suddenly, “is everybody around here falling in love this summer? I mean, do you think there's something in the water at Pearl's?”

“I don't know,” Jessica said, considering this. And then her eyes widened with solemn wonder. “But you know, Daisy,” she whispered. “Frankie and I
did
both drink the water there.”

T
he first thing Caroline saw when she turned into Jack's driveway that evening was a bright red mailbox with “J. Keegan” stenciled neatly on its side.
So Jack really is planning on staying here
, she thought, putting down roots
and
mailboxes at the same time. She remembered now what she'd said to him at the beginning of the summer about his living in Butternut.
I'll give you two weeks, Jack. A month, tops
. Well, she'd been wrong about that. What else, she wondered, had she been wrong about?

But she didn't have much time to consider this question as she drove down the gravel driveway, because the next thing she knew she was pulling up in front of the cabin, and Jack was coming out of it to meet her.

“Hey,” he said, as she got out of her pickup. “You're right on time.”

“Am I?” she murmured, staring at the cabin, and seeing it, but, at the same time, not really seeing it, because being here was giving her the strangest feeling, a feeling that was the opposite of déjà vu. She'd been here many times before, most recently a few years ago when she'd brought an ailing Wayland a casserole, but right here, right now, she felt as if she'd never been here before. It was totally different, and totally unfamiliar.

“Jack . . . what did you do to this place?”

“What
didn't
I do to this place?” Jack said, pleased by her reaction. “But come on inside. I'll show you around.”

“All right,” she said, following him up the cabin's front steps. There hadn't been any front steps the last time she'd been here; there hadn't been any front porch, either. But now there were steps and a porch, straight and smooth, and built out of a clean, pale yellow pine that hadn't had time to mellow and darken with age.

Jack opened the front door, but she paused for a moment on the porch to admire the window boxes, which were painted the same dark green as the trim on the cabin's windows, but which did not yet have any flowers in them.

“I built those last week,” Jack said. “I had some extra wood, and some extra paint, but the flowers . . .” He shrugged. “I'm not much of a gardener.”

“They're nice,” she said, thinking that they would look even nicer with some impatiens in them.

“Are you coming?” Jack asked quizzically, standing in the doorway, and she nodded and walked past him into the cabin's living room, where she stopped and looked around, momentarily speechless.

“What do you think?” he asked, but he didn't wait for her to answer. Instead, he led her through the rooms, explaining as he went all the work he'd done. And Caroline tried to pay attention to what he was telling her, but it wasn't easy. Her eyes didn't know where to rest. There was so much to see, so much to absorb: wide-planked pine floors, sparkling new windowpanes, freshly painted walls, a pretty tiled floor in the bathroom, and shiny new appliances in the kitchen. The rooms were still sparsely furnished, but they were so well lit, so comfortable, and so inviting that it was all Caroline could do not to curl up on the buttery leather couch in front of the living room fireplace and demand that Jack give her a book to read right then and there.

But Jack had other plans.

“I want to show you the back deck,” he said.

“Jack, I can't believe what you've done with the place,” she said, as he led her out through a sliding glass door. “I mean, I knew you were working on it, but it's, it's . . .” She stopped when she saw that a string of tiny white lights had been strung through the arbor above the deck. They were glowing softly in the evening light. She turned to him in surprise, and he shrugged. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I found a box of lights in the attic. So either Wayland decorated his Christmas tree with them, or he was a secret romantic.”

Caroline laughed. “The first one, I think,” she said, wandering over to the deck's railing and admiring the view of the sun setting over the lake in a swirl of pinks and golds and reds.

“Well, either way it seemed like a shame to let those lights go to waste,” Jack said, coming up beside her. “And I thought they might be nice to look at while we had a drink out here.” He gestured to a little iron table, with two iron chairs. On the table was a bottle of sparkling water, two glasses filled with crushed ice and lemon twists, and a plate with red grapes, cheese, and thinly sliced French bread on it.

“Jack, you didn't have to go to all this trouble,” Caroline protested.

“It wasn't any trouble.” He pulled out one of the table's chairs for her.

“Well, it's very nice,” she said, hesitating. She'd never seen Jack play the role of gracious host before, and watching him do it now only added to her sense of disorientation. But she sat down on the proffered chair and watched as Jack sat down across from her, opened the bottle of sparkling water, and filled both of their glasses. Then he handed one to Caroline and picked one up himself.

“Are we celebrating your finishing the cabin?” she asked, holding her glass. “Because you've done an amazing job, Jack. You really have.”

“Thank you, Caroline. That means a lot to me. But we're celebrating something else, too, the fact that we can now be in the same place, at the same time, without you wanting to kill me.” He clinked his glass against hers. And he smiled that long, slow smile, the smile that had been her undoing more than once in her life. She took a long drink of her sparkling water, hoping to tamp down an odd feeling that had just begun. It was like the buzzing she'd felt in her head the night she'd drunk too much, only this buzzing wasn't in her head. It was in her body, her
whole
body. She wondered again if coming here tonight had been a good idea. She suspected it hadn't been. In fact, looking at the tail end of that smile, she
knew
it hadn't been.

“I'm sorry I don't have anything stronger than this,” he said teasingly, indicating his glass of sparkling water. “But I don't keep any vodka in the house.”

Caroline raised her eyebrows, amused in spite of herself. “That's all right,” she said. “I'm a nondrinker, remember? You said I should know my destiny. And my destiny, apparently, is to not drink.”

“Well, not to drink the way you were drinking that night at the Corner Bar,” Jack agreed. “But that was unusual for you. Most of the time, you understand moderation.”

“And you don't, Jack,” she said. It wasn't a question but a statement.

“No,” Jack agreed. “For me, it's all or nothing,” and he smiled that smile again. Caroline suppressed a little shiver, remembering what the “all” in the all or nothing had been like with Jack.
Stop it
, she told herself, and she took another large gulp of the sparkling water for good measure.