Butternut Summer (28 page)

“So you've, um, never been in love before?” he asked, feeling again like he was in uncharted territory.

She shook her head emphatically.

“But you must have known, Daisy, that you'd fall in love one day?”

“Well, I
hoped
I would. But I thought when I did, it would happen gradually, as I got to know someone, got to know them really well. And not over a period of weeks, like now, but over a period of months, years even.”

“Years?” he echoed, trying hard not to smile.

She nodded solemnly. “Yes, years. Because I wasn't going to do things the way other people did them. I was going to take my time, go slowly, make sure whomever I fell in love with was the right person. For me, anyway. You know, someone I respected, and someone who respected me, someone whom I was compatible with. It would be someone who shared my interests and my values, someone who would make a good husband and father, a good, you know, life partner. I wasn't that concerned about the whole ‘being in love' thing. I thought that was probably overrated, anyway.”

“Overrated?” he repeated, and now he couldn't help it; he really was smiling. She was so young.
Had he ever, ever, been that young?
he wondered. He didn't think so. But she was looking at him now expectantly, waiting for some kind of response from him, so he said, still smiling, “Daisy, did you really think all the books and songs that have been written about love would turn out to be about something that was overrated?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. But somehow I didn't think it could be that big a deal. I mean, it's one thing to read a book about something; it's another thing to actually do it.”

“So how does being in love stack up against reading about being in love?”

“Oh, Dad,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “It's
so
much better,” and here she blushed again, a soft pink blush that made her look especially lovely, even under the American Legion hall's harsh lighting. “But, Dad? It's so much scarier, too.”

Jack nodded seriously. Because now, of course, he knew what she meant. He wished he'd known that when he was her age—how big, and serious, and scary love could be. If he had known it then, he could have saved himself a lot of time.

“It
is
scary,” he said. “But try not to let it scare you. Does that make sense?”

“Actually, it does,” Daisy said, smiling and putting another biscuit fragment into her mouth.

They were quiet for a few moments and then Jack said, “Oh, by the way, I saw your Facebook posting today, the one about your volleyball team's reunion. That sounds like fun.”

“It
is
fun. We've done that every Labor Day weekend since we graduated.”

“You were a good team, weren't you?”

“We were. I mean, not to sound conceited, but it's going to be a while before that high school has another volleyball team as good as that one.”

“I wish I'd seen one of your games,” Jack said, without thinking.

“Me too, Dad,” Daisy said, without any bitterness, but with a disappointment that seemed, for a moment, to hang in the air between them, like a thread connecting them to each other. And Jack knew that that disappointment would never,
ever
, go away. Not completely. But here was the thing about his daughter: she never let it hang there for very long. Like now, for instance, she smiled at him and said, “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“You know that other thing we talked about?” she asked. She meant him and her mother.

He nodded.

“Don't . . . don't give up on it, all right?”

“Daisy, I wouldn't dream of it,” he said.

C
aroline?”

“Jack?” Caroline said with surprise, turning to see her ex-husband standing in line behind her at the Butternut IGA. She felt suddenly flustered. Maybe that was because she hadn't seen him since the night a few weeks ago when she'd tried rather clumsily to seduce him. “You're the last person I expected to see here on a Saturday night,” she said.

“Why?” he said, as the line edged forward. “It's as good a time to go grocery shopping as any.”

“Maybe,” she murmured, starting to unload her groceries onto the checkout counter. But she was thinking that the Jack she'd been married to, the old Jack, wouldn't have been caught dead in a grocery store on a Saturday night. No, she corrected herself, he wouldn't have been caught dead in a grocery store
period
. He'd been one of the least domesticated men she'd ever known, though when she turned now and saw that the only things in his grocery basket were a couple of frozen pizzas, she wondered if that aspect of his personality had changed all that much.

“Jack, one of those pizzas isn't all you're having for dinner, is it?”

His eyes followed hers to the basket. “Um, yeah,” he said, a little sheepishly. “But it's fine.”

“It's not fine,” she said, without thinking. “And it's not real food, either.”

“Well, I could always make a grilled cheese sandwich,” Jack said, his blue eyes teasing, and Caroline almost smiled, but she caught herself before she did. And she didn't know what was worse: the fact that she was worried about what Jack was having for dinner or the fact that it had been so easy for her to almost fall back into the habit of flirting with him again.

Caroline finished unloading her groceries and maneuvered her cart down to the register. But, as luck would have it, Alice Brody was working. She'd worked at the Butternut IGA forever—or at least for as long as Caroline could remember—and she was an efficient, if vicious gossip.

“Hello, Alice,” Caroline said warily, sliding her wallet out of her handbag.

Alice nodded, taking in both Caroline and Jack in one meaningful look. Caroline sighed internally. This was the problem with living in a small town—everyone knew everyone else's business. By tomorrow morning, half the town would know she'd run into Jack at the grocery store the night before. Everyone already knew, of course, that Jack was back in town; she'd spent the last several weeks deflecting questions about his return from curious customers at Pearl's.

Now Alice rang up and bagged Caroline's groceries and waited, with a smirk on her face, while Caroline paid for them.

“If you wait a minute, Caroline,” Jack said, “I'll help you carry those out to your truck.”

“I can manage,” Caroline said breezily. But she hesitated a moment too long and ended up watching Alice ring up Jack's frozen pizzas and put them in a plastic bag.

“Jack, look, why don't you come over for dinner tonight?” she asked impulsively.

“Are you sure?” he said, hesitating.

“I'm sure,” Caroline said, not at all sure. But she heard Alice snicker a little as Jack paid for his groceries, and it made up her mind for her. “I have to make dinner for myself anyway, so it won't be any extra work. Besides,” she added pointedly, staring straight at Alice, “there's nothing wrong with two old friends having dinner together, is there?”

“No, there isn't,” Jack said, noting her tone, and her look, with amusement. “Come on, let's go.”

H
alf an hour later, Jack and Caroline were sitting at her kitchen table, sipping iced tea and eating chicken salad on butter lettuce and slices of freshly baked French bread.

“Thank you for taking pity on me,” Jack said, buttering his bread. “It's a nice change from eating frozen pizza at the cabin. It can get . . .” He shrugged.

It can get lonely eating by yourself?
Caroline said silently. Because she knew all about that now, now that she and Buster had stopped going out for dinner every Saturday night. But she didn't tell Jack that. She wanted to keep their conversation on a polite, but impersonal, footing. Otherwise, Jack might think that her inviting him over for dinner tonight meant more than it did, or at least more than she
wanted
it to mean.

“Anyway, this is nice,” Jack said again, and he smiled at her—smiled
that
smile at her, that long, slow smile.

Caroline put down her fork, folded her arms across her chest, and leveled what she hoped was a cool gaze at him. a gaze she hoped said,
I'm immune to that smile, Jack. Completely and utterly immune
.

“What?” he said, looking at her warily.

“Jack, I've asked you before not to smile that smile at me.”

“You have asked me that. But I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You know
exactly
what I'm talking about.”

“So I can't smile at you?”

“No, you can smile at me. You just can't smile
that
smile at me, that slow smile you smile when you . . .”
When you want something
.
Or someone
.

“Okay, no slow smile,” he said, his expression playful. Then he had the wisdom to change the subject. “By the way, where's Daisy tonight?”

Caroline rolled her eyes. “At the Black Bear. Where else?”

“She told me she went there,” Jack said, bemused. “I can't believe that place is still around.”

“I know. Even twenty years ago it was a throwback. But Daisy must like it; she's there every night.”

“But not . . . not drinking, right?”

“No, not drinking,” Caroline said, and she saw relief in his expression. It had never occurred to her before that Jack worried about Daisy drinking. “No, Daisy doesn't drink, as far as I know,” she said now. “She just goes there to hang out with that guy.”

“You mean Will?”

She nodded curtly.

“You don't like him, do you?”

She hesitated a moment too long.

“What's wrong with him?” he asked.

“There's nothing's
wrong
with him,” she said. “He's just not right for Daisy.”

“But that's your opinion, isn't it? As opposed to, say, Daisy's?” Jack said. His blue eyes were teasing again, but also gentle.

“Yes, it's my opinion,” Caroline conceded. “But I don't know if Daisy knows her own opinion right now.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she hasn't been herself this summer, Jack,” she said. No, since before this summer, since Jack had come back into her life, since she'd started keeping secrets from Caroline. But she didn't say this out loud.

“How hasn't she been herself?” Jack pressed.

Caroline sipped her iced tea, a little fretfully. “I don't know, Jack. It's hard to explain. It's sort of like one of those
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
movies. Remember those? She looks like herself on the outside, but on the inside, Jack, there's nobody home. I mean, she walks around all day in a complete daze. This morning, I had to ask her the same question three times.
Three times
, Jack.”

“Caroline, she's in love,” he said, his blue eyes gentle again.

“Did she tell you that?” she asked, and she was suddenly jealous of Daisy and Jack's new closeness. Last week, for instance, Daisy had gone to a fish fry with him, and the two of them had ended up staying for hours.

“Not in those exact words. But she's exhibiting all the symptoms. You remember what those are, don't you?” he asked, with the hint of a smile.

Caroline flushed, and so he wouldn't notice, she got up and took the pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator. But after she'd brought it back to the table and refilled both of their glasses, she was suddenly aware of his maddening proximity to her. This kitchen, she decided, wasn't big enough for the two of them—not with Jack looking so . . .
so good
. If living in a run-down cabin and subsisting on frozen pizza was his secret, then millions of other men might want to try it, too.

He brushed his hair out of his eyes now, and Caroline was reminded of how much she'd always liked his brown hair when it had started to get a little too long, and he'd have to brush it out of his eyes.
And those eyes
. They were almost criminally blue, especially against his summertime tan. He'd gotten that working outside on the cabin, obviously, but that wasn't all he'd gotten. Because through his pale blue work shirt and darker blue jeans, she could see that his body had changed this summer too. It had gotten harder, and leaner, better defined, though if she were honest with herself, there had been nothing wrong with it when he'd walked into Pearl's at the beginning of the summer.

When Caroline realized that she'd been staring at Jack for a long time and that he was staring back at her with a quiet intensity she didn't usually associate with him, she looked away and busied herself with tearing off another piece of French bread.

“So you feel like Daisy is there, without really being there?” Jack asked when they'd been silent for a little while.

“Yes, exactly. I know you'll think this is silly, and that I'm one of those parents who can't let go or who insist on living their life through their child. But that's not it, Jack. It's just . . . I miss her. I do; I can't help it.”

“Caroline, she's been away at college for three years,” Jack said, surprised.

“Oh, I don't mean I miss her
that
way,” she said. “I'm used to her living away from home by now, during the school year, anyway. I mean I miss being close to her, Jack. I miss the way we used to talk about everything. And now, this summer . . . nothing. She comes home at night and goes straight to her room. She's so secretive, all of a sudden; it's like living with a stranger.”

“A stranger you happen to know very well,” Jack pointed out.

“I . . . I don't know if that's true anymore,” Caroline said honestly. “The other day, our lives happened to overlap for about five minutes at the breakfast table. She was sitting where you're sitting now, eating a bowl of Raisin Bran, and I looked over at her and I thought, ‘Who is this person? Really, who is she?'”