Wild Flower Read online

  “I’ll hitch a ride on the pontoon,” I said, as Millie caught sight of us and barreled down the dock, her enthusiastic bare feet making the boards shudder with the impact. Her curly hair was tied into two pigtails, her small, plump torso buckled into a lifejacket that was patterned like a ladybug’s wings.

  “Hi, darlin’,” Mathias said, catching her into a hug as she raced to him with arms extended. Love has many guises, a lesson I’d learned over and over again since becoming a mother. Watching my man as he cuddled my daughter, bouncing her on his strong forearm, listening with rapt attention as she rambled on in her cheery, high-pitched voice, a nearly unbearable sweetness caught me directly in the heart. Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes but I blinked them away.

  “You gonna ride on the big boat?” Millie Jo asked Mathias.

  “Not right now.” Mathias kissed the end of her nose. “I’m going to ski for a little while,” and he pointed at the motor boat, where Uncle Justin had finished his ministrations and stood wiping his hands on a grubby towel. Clint reached the boat and climbed up the rope ladder draped over its side, Tish and Ruthie not far behind.

  “We’ll clap for you!” Millie said, and then looked my way, ordering, “Mama, you ride with us!”

  Mathias handed her over to my waiting arms and kissed my forehead before stripping his shirt and jumping into the lake to follow after my sisters and Clint. I slipped out of my sandals, leaving them on the damp, grassy shore.

  “Camille, you want a burger?” Aunt Ellen asked as I stepped carefully onto the deck of the swaying pontoon, holding Millie; Aunt Ellen and my grandma were also stationed in lawn chairs, while Mom, Blythe, and little Rae sprawled on the starboard bench seat; I claimed the port side for Millie and me. Rae scampered across the bow to join us. Millie Jo wriggled free of my arms and immediately began roughhousing with Rae. One of Grandma’s dogs, Chief, lying quietly on the deck, barely stirred as the girls tumbled over him, used to such antics. His tail thumped twice.

  “Yes, thank you, with extra cheese,” I told my great-aunt. I beamed at little Matthew, who reached his chubby arms my direction. I begged Blythe, “Can I hold him? Pretty please?”

  “I’m too nervous to let him out of my arms when we’re on the water,” Blythe said. “Sorry, Milla.”

  “It’s all right,” I assured, hiding a smile, touched by his just-slightly-overzealous devotion. Blythe was so protective of his son that I was surprised he didn’t make the little guy wear a helmet at all times. The expression in Mom’s eyes was both tender and amused as she smiled and tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears. She slipped her hand under Bly’s elbow and leaned to kiss his temple.

  “He hardly lets me take him when we’re out here,” Mom said.

  “Tilson, he’s about the age when you just pitch ’em in so they learn to swim,” Dodge said, with no trace of a smile. I knew Dodge was only teasing, but the look of horror that crossed Blythe’s face effectively ruined the joke.

  “He ain’t kidding!” Uncle Justin called over from the deck of his boat, using both hands to shade his eyes, bare feet widespread to maintain balance. “I think I was about that age. It was all sink or swim for us in the Miller house!”

  “Not helping!” Aunt Jilly called to her grinning husband. “Bly is turning green over here.”

  Mathias reached the motor boat and I admired from afar the way the powerful muscles of his back and shoulders bulged as he climbed the rope ladder, black hair sleek from the water. I went all weak-kneed and shivery-hot at the sight of him, thinking about how later tonight I would glide my hands and mouth all over those muscles. His fireman’s hat was still on the floor on the far side of our bed, from last night when he wore it while I—

  “Camille, you want a beer, hon?” Grandma asked, and I jerked instantly from my daydream.

  “Sure,” I said, and Grandma passed it to Aunt Jilly, who passed it to me, with a wink. I almost held the icy-cold can to my neck.

  Clint and Tish whooped as Uncle Justin fired the outboard to growling life. He goosed it a little as he hung a sharp left and took the five of them out toward the widest part of Flickertail. Dodge hauled in the anchor rope and got the pontoon rolling, and we followed in their wake at a much more sedate pace, the engine issuing a comforting, purring putt-putt-putt. Millie Jo and Rae crawled onto the bench, settling themselves on their knees, facing the water and clutching the top railing.

  “Those two,” Aunt Jilly said fondly. “Camille, that may as well be you and Tish, once upon a time.”

  “It seems like yesterday you were that little,” Mom said, sitting cross-legged on the bench seat. “And now look at you, a big girl getting married.”

  I knew she chose her words to make me smile, but even still I heard the note of wistfulness in her tone. I noticed things like that now, an extra-perceptive set of senses I’d inherited along with motherhood. I longed, suddenly, to confess to the womenfolk that Mathias and I were no longer attempting to prevent pregnancy.

  Soon, I thought. Maybe after our road trip.

  “I can’t wait to see the progress on your cabin,” Aunt Jilly said, ruffling her golden hair with both hands before resting them on her growing belly. “I remember partying out there back in high school, with Tina and those guys. But you two will make it a home.”

  “Everyone has been so wonderful about pitching in,” I said. Mathias’s father, Bull Carter, was so happy that we were restoring the cabin that he’d shed tears on numerous occasions. I dearly loved my future father-in-law, with whom I shared a deep bond; he and I, after all, had worked together to save Mathias last Valentine’s Day, the agonizing night I’d known something was wrong and demanded that Bull leave White Oaks in the midst of a busy dinner crowd to help me find Mathias. And Bull had listened to me, without thinking I was crazy, without questioning. We’d very nearly been too late—even now, months later and with no reason to believe anything was currently wrong, my eyes swept after the motor boat, seeking reassurance that Mathias was all right.

  When I looked back at Aunt Jilly, I found her gaze more speculative than normal, and worked to sound calm as I offered, “We brought the blueprints over. We can look at them when we get back to Shore Leave.”

  “Camille, sweetheart, I know you’re doing what’s right, but we’ll miss you something fierce at home,” Grandma said, leaning to pat my knee.

  “Oh, Gram.”

  “Mom,” Aunt Jilly scolded Grandma. “It’s not like they’ll be far away. Just a canoe ride away.”

  “But Millie Jo has lived with us since she was born,” Grandma said, with a deep sigh, pushing her yellow sunglasses to the top of her head. Her silver hair hung in its customary braid over her left shoulder. “I don’t know what I’ll do with myself if I don’t see her every day.”

  “I’ll bring her over all the time,” I promised. Grandma’s steady presence was one of the main reasons I’d survived the first two long years of single motherhood. She and Aunt Ellen had helped me immeasurably; worlds better than any help I would have received from Noah, errant drunk that he was. And then I thought, Stop that. You’re being unnecessarily mean.

  “Lookit, there’s Daddy and Clinty!” Rae yelped, pointing at the boat skimming the waves, now across the lake from us and no bigger than a toy as it flew along the gleaming surface. Clint gripped the tow rope, skiing slalom-style, as he’d been practicing since the moment the water was warm enough. Rae and Millie giggled as Clint jumped the wake and landed as smooth as whipped cream.

  “Wave to them!” Aunt Jilly said, giggling at the excitement on Rae’s face, mirrored on Millie Jo’s.

  “Are you leaving on the fourth?” Mom asked, referring to the trip Mathias and I had been planning since last winter, when we’d learned that one of Bull’s cousins out in Montana had a potential lead on Malcolm Carter. Though I was reluctant to be away from Millie Jo for the week that we planned to be gone, I would be lying through and through if I didn’t acknowledge the intensity of my elation at the p
rospect of all that time alone with Mathias. We kept calling it our “pre-honeymoon.”

  “July fifth,” I reminded Mom.

  “We can’t wait to have Millie Jo all to ourselves for the entire week,” Grandma said, reaching for my daughter, who ran and burrowed into Grandma’s hug. Grandma smoothed tangled hair from Millie’s cheeks. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Can we make cinnamon rolls?” Millie asked.

  “Every morning!” Grandma said.

  “Here, hon,” Aunt Ellen said, handing me a plate. As Dodge was busy driving the pontoon, Aunt Ellen was taking care of grill duty.

  Dodge used the back of his free hand to swipe at sweat on his forehead. “Nothing ever came of those gold bars from last winter?”

  “No, unfortunately,” I said. “I wish there was a logical explanation. I might be able to deal with everything a little better, if so.”

  “It reminds me of a story about Bull’s grandpa, Grafton Carter, and the stories he’d tell about lost gold,” Dodge said.

  “Justin has mentioned that story a time or two,” Aunt Jilly said, shifting to a more comfortable position.

  “Bull, too. One night after…” I stumbled even still over the words, finally concluding, “After the attack, Mathias and I were talking late one night with Bull and Diana, over at their house.” The pontoon was currently putt-putting past White Oaks Lodge, as grand as ever on the far shore, the setting sun caught in its windows and throwing sizzling rectangles to dazzle our vision.

  “Gold lost from where?” Blythe asked, gently bouncing Matthew in his carrier, feathering the baby’s downy hair. “And when?”

  Aunt Ellen explained, “It’s a Carter family legend. Dodge, you tell it best.”

  Dodge assumed his storyteller voice, the one we’d all listened to a thousand times sitting around the fire. I was certain that behind his aviators, his dark eyes had taken on a faraway sheen. “I heard the tale for the first time when I was just a boy. My pa was still alive then and he knew Grafton Carter well. Grafton was Pa’s second cousin, on the Jacob Miller side, that is…”

  “No, for the love, don’t get into family connections,” Jilly scolded. “We’ll never get to the point!”

  Dodge draped his wrists over the top of the big steering wheel, gazing into the middle distance as he considered—surely he was seeing into the past rather than the gleaming surface of Flickertail. In that familiar, half-dreaming tone, he continued, “Grafton swore that there was a legend in the Carter family about a letter scribbled with a map, with directions to a stolen haul of gold from sometime back in the 1870s. Not that the Carters would ever admit to thievery, being an honest lot, so surely there was a good reason for the theft. That is, if the story had any truth to it. Somewhere out west was all Grafton knew.”

  “Does it have anything to do with Malcolm?” I asked, hearing the reverence in my voice as I spoke his name. The old, fading picture of Malcolm Carter and his horse, Aces, was still in the top drawer of my nightstand. I’d found it over two years ago; fate, I was certain, as the discovery led me to White Oaks, and eventually Mathias.

  Speculation ripe in his tone, Dodge said, “The time frame would be right. From everything I know, Malcolm was the boy who disappeared from the family history, but I don’t know if he’s directly connected to Grafton’s story or not.”

  “There’s no record of Malcolm after the telegram from 1876,” I affirmed, heart increasing in speed at the thought; I saw the way Mom’s eyebrows drew inward as she worried over what I was saying.

  Aunt Jilly leaned forward, bracing her fingertips to her forehead. “There may be no record, but he lived beyond 1876, I’m certain.”

  “We’ve searched through everything that Bull could find in the attic at home and at White Oaks,” I said, goosebumps shivering over my arms at Aunt Jilly’s words. I believed wholeheartedly in her Notions, which she had once explained as striking her with all the unexpectedness of lightning on an otherwise clear summer night. They were often enigmatic, but when she told you something you’d do well to heed it.

  “But there’s more, I know there’s so much more. That’s what we’re hoping to find in July,” I added, catching my ring between the index finger and thumb of the opposite hand; just as I touched it, part of my dream from last night sprang forth, as though breaking from a leash in my mind. The disjointed flash struck me almost like a blow, and the memory of a voice, a girl’s terrified, pleading voice, sent discomfort racing with little cat-feet up my spine.

  “Lookit, Mama!” Millie Jo cried, pointing, and I turned to see that Mathias was skiing now. Uncle Justin angled the boat our way, cutting close enough so that the pontoon swayed with the aftershocks of the waves stirred up by the speedboat. Mathias waved to us and Millie Jo shrieked as they roared away. I refocused all my attention upon my daughter, willing away the sense of unease; I hadn’t even remembered dreaming last night, until this moment.

  Later, after we’d eaten our fill of burgers and chips, and the last of the day’s light receded into a mauve sunset, Uncle Justin maneuvered his boat back to the dock, catching up with us. Mosquitoes grew increasingly annoying but the air was warm and soft, and we were all reluctant to retire. It was so lovely on the water, a waning half-moon crisp against the indigo sky; long fingers of translucent pink light stretched from the western horizon. Uncle Justin cut the motor and the quieter sounds of the lakeshore again took precedence in the evening, the peepers and crickets, the gentle lapping of water against the hull of both boats. Grandma and Aunt Ellen were laughing about something Dodge was saying, Aunt Jilly was collecting lifejackets from Clint, who swam over to the pontoon with an armload of them. Above our heads, little brown bats swooped through the air with their strange, choppy flight patterns, feasting on insects. A few trees down the shoreline, a crow rasped at us.

  “Honey, you should come swim!” Mathias called to me, flopping into the water with both arms extended. Millie Jo and Rae shrieked and clapped as he made a gigantic splash. I hadn’t wanted to get my hair wet again today but I shucked down to my swimsuit and climbed onto the bench seat to hop feet-first into the water; no belly flops for me.

  “Yay, Mama!” Millie Jo cheered as I surfaced, smoothing back my hair with both hands. The water felt warm and murky this close to the dock. I kicked quickly out of the marshy weeds that waved from the bottom and ducked under as I swam, loving the feeling of submersion into this liquid existence which muffled sounds and amplified the beat of blood in my veins. Tish jumped in no more than ten feet from me, creating a maelstrom of bubbles beneath the water. I broke the surface and inhaled the evening air, kicking out my toes so that I could float on my back, hair streaming in ribbons around my head. Mathias swam close and grinned down at me as he tread water.

  “I’m so glad it’s summer again,” I murmured, my voice sounding distorted to my ears, both under the water.

  “Same here,” he agreed, resting one hand on my belly, before joining me on his back. “It’s so pretty out here. Look at that moon.”

  “I’m excited for our trip.” I tilted my face his way, our arms making continuous, languid fluttering motions under the water, fingertips brushing.

  “July can’t get here fast enough,” he agreed. “I can’t wait to have you all to myself for a whole week, selfish or not.”

  I grinned at his words, tasting lake water. “Camping out, roasting marshmallows. I can’t wait to see the mountains. I never have.”

  “They draw you in like magic, it’s a little dangerous. I remember thinking as a kid when we’d drive out there that I didn’t want to drive back home.”

  We would be following the exact route the Carters took in summers past; I thought, Maybe this can be our family’s annual trip. Wouldn’t Millie love it?

  “Daddy! Catch me!” Rae begged from the deck of the pontoon, as Uncle Justin leaped gracefully into knee-high water to draw the speedboat to its lift on the far side of the dock.

  “Rae-Rae, not now,” Aunt Jilly said, catching
the back of her daughter’s lifejacket.

  “Listen to your mama, teddy bear,” Uncle Justin said. “We’ll swim tomorrow.”

  “We better get out before Millie decides to jump in, too,” I said, righting myself in the water, swimming for shore.

  Mom and Grandma helped Aunt Jilly herd the girls away from the temptation of the lake and up the bank toward the cafe; Aunt Ellen elected to ride with Dodge over to the filling station, just around Flickertail, where the pontoon was stored at night. I covertly studied my great-aunt and Dodge, who was more a grandfather to me than anyone I’d ever known, as they chugged away, wondering when they would openly admit that they harbored feelings for each other.

  “Who took my towel?” Tish yelped, hefting herself onto the dock, Ruthie on her heels. Clint waded directly to shore, bypassing the dock altogether. He found Tish’s beach towel crumpled on the bank and made a show of wrapping it around his dripping body.

  “Clint!” Tish yelled, and he ran, Tish in pursuit, Clint’s hee-hawing donkey laugh trailing in his wake. It was somewhat reassuring to realize that despite being high school graduates, they hadn’t changed much in the past few years.

  Ruthie was polite enough to wait for me; I wrapped one arm around her shoulders, squeezing out my hair with the other hand, droplets falling to the dock boards like a miniature rainstorm. Mathias helped Uncle Justin grab the last of the gear from the speedboat. Up on the porch, Mom lifted Matthew out of the baby sling while Millie Jo tugged on the hem of Blythe’s t-shirt, begging to be tossed into the air.

  “You doing all right?” I asked my little sister as we walked through the purple twilight, keeping my voice low; I knew she’d recently broken up with her boyfriend of the past few months. Though we didn’t live in the same house anymore, I tried my best to keep up with all of the matters in my sisters’ lives, important or trivial. And this was far from trivial. Ruthie had been the one to end the relationship, but still. Both of my sisters had for a time “kind-of” dated Aunt Liz’s sons—Aunt Liz was Uncle Justin’s little sister; between Aunt Liz and her husband, Wordo, there were five kids, Lisa and Jeff from Wordo’s first marriage, and then his and Aunt Liz’s triplets, Fern, Linnea, and Hal—but because Ruthie was good friends with Fern and Linnea, she’d been reluctant to seriously date Hal, and decided they should just be friends.