Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel by Mary McNear Page A

So you should stop work at three o’clock, and go home and do . . . well, whatever it is you like to do.” Here, her imagination failed her. Frankie had been working for her for three years, but she still had no idea how he spent his free time.
    “But what I like to do is work here,” he said, bringing the conversation full circle. “And,” he added, “while I don’t feel like I owe it to you, exactly, maybe I should feel that way. You took a chance on me, Miss Caroline, when no one else would. It’s not easy for an ex-con to find work.”
    “I know that, Frankie,” she said, gently. “But it was the right decision. You have more than justified my faith in you. And it hasn’t been a one-way street, either. You may have gotten a job, but I got the best fry cook I’ve ever had. Not to mention an air-conditioning repairman to boot.”
    Frankie smiled one of his rare smiles. “Well, I guess I’ll be going now, Miss Caroline.”
    “That’s fine. And Frankie?”
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to persuade you to stop calling me Miss Caroline?” she asked, hopefully.
    Frankie thought about it, then shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said. “It just wouldn’t seem respectful to call you anything else.”
    “Well, I thought it was worth a try.” Caroline sighed as Frankie turned to leave the office. This was no simple matter. He had to practically pivot in place to turn his gigantic body in such a small space, and then he had to more or less launch himself through the narrow doorway.
    When he’d left, closing the door behind him, Caroline stood up from her desk, stretched again, and left the office, too.
    Then she walked down the narrow hallway behind the coffee shop and up the flight of stairs to her apartment above it. She paused at the front door and took longer than necessary taking her keys out of her apron pocket and fitting one of them into the lock. She dreaded this moment every single day. Had dreaded it, in fact, ever since her daughter, Daisy, had moved to Minneapolis two weeks earlier.
    She turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and went straight to the kitchen, where she turned on the radio. It was still tuned to the classic rock station that she and Daisy liked, and she turned the volume all the way up, trying to drown out the silence. But she was only partially successful. The music was loud. There was no doubt about that. But music had been only one of the many sounds ricocheting off the walls of their apartment when Daisy had lived there.
    Now, as Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” played, Caroline left the kitchen and walked over to the bathroom. She undressed and stepped into the shower, trying not to think about the silence that lay below the lyrics to the song. She shampooed her hair and lathered her body, washing away the odor of bacon grease that clung to her like a second skin by the end of every workday. Then she turned off the shower and stepped out of it, dripping on the bathmat. She toweled herself off, put on a bathrobe, and brushed out her wet hair, twisting it into a knot on top of her head.
    Then, and only then, did she let herself do what she really wanted to do, which was to flop down on her double bed and bury her face in the pillows. But she didn’t cry. She wasn’t big on crying. Maybe because if life had taught her anything, it had taught her that crying was a waste of time. She’d had many opportunities to learn this firsthand. She’d lost both her parents, for instance, when she was still a young woman. She’d lost her husband, too, not to death but to serial infidelity on his part. She’d also raised a daughter alone and run a business by herself. If she’d let herself get into the habit of crying, she reasoned, it wouldn’t have left much time for her to do anything else.
    But Daisy’s leaving . . . That had hit her hard. The phone rang then, interrupting her thoughts. She reached over to the bedside table and