First Frost (11 page)

That was it.

That wasn't much of a story. She was a little disappointed.

She frowned as her fingers touched the bottom of the suitcase. It didn't feel like she had reached all the way down. She tapped at it with her fingernails. It sounded hollow. She found the corners and pulled the divider up, revealing a secret space.

Ha!
she almost said out loud, satisfied as she always was when she discovered something someone didn't want found.

Inside was an old deck of tarot cards, a small white crystal on a cheap chain necklace and a thick pile of tattered office folders held together by a large rubber band.

Anne took the file folders out and slid off the rubber band. The tabs on the folders had names of people on them, each folder containing newspaper clippings and photographs and copies of public documents like land deeds and marriage certificates. She didn't recognize any of the names until she came to the tab on the folder that read:
Lorelei Waverley.

That was Claire and Sydney Waverley's mother. Anne had been a few years younger than Lorelei. Lorelei had been odd, like all the rest of that family. But wild and sad, also. Lorelei had left town years ago and died somewhere in Tennessee, from what Anne had heard. Was that why Russell Zahler was so interested in the Waverleys? Because of Lorelei? Had he once known her? Anne looked inside the folder. There were several copies of a single old photograph. It was taken in the 1970s, judging by the pointed collars and the mustard and brown colors of the clothing. In the photo, there was Lorelei Waverley when she looked to be in her twenties, sitting next to a middle-aged Russell and another dark-haired couple with a baby. They were in one of those curved corner booths found in older bars and Pizza Huts. She glanced at the rest of the contents of the folder, which, interestingly enough, seemed to be all about Claire Waverley, not Lorelei; articles about Claire's business, and tax documents, which she wanted to take a closer look at, but she nearly jumped out of her skin at a knock on the door.

“Anne?” her brother called. “Are you in there?”

“Yes,” she said calmly. She was about to put the file folders back when she suddenly noticed a few antique flyers, yellowed with age, that had been under the folders in the suitcase. She picked one up. It was an old advert for a traveling carnival, featuring a magician and psychic called the Great Banditi.

On the bottom right-hand side of the flyer was a circular photo of a man wearing a large turban with a jewel in the center. He had his hands out in front of him like he was going to shoot lightning out of his fingertips.

It was Russell Zahler.

Now
here
was a story.

“Anne!” her brother called again.

“Coming,” she said as she folded one of the flyers and put it into her pocket, then put the rest of the things back into the suitcase, exactly in the places they'd been. She snapped the case closed, then went to the door.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asked.

“I'm changing the sheets,” she said with a shrug, “like I do every day.”

He pointed to the sign hung on the doorknob. “There's a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign here. We take these things very seriously.”

She hated when he referred to himself as
we.

“Oh. I must have missed it.” She went back into the room and grabbed the folded sheets she'd left on the bed. “Sorry,” she said as she walked out.

“Don't let it happen again.” Andrew glanced around the room, then firmly closed the door behind him.

*   *   *

Several hours later, Claire, Sydney and Bay were searching through the Waverley house for one of Grandmother Mary's dresses for Bay to wear to the Halloween dance, which felt to Bay like trying to find a specific drop of water in a well. The Waverley house was large and stuffed to the rafters. The only place that had any order was the commercial kitchen, which made sense, because that's where Claire spent all her time. As for the rest of the house, Claire had apparently kept everything that had once belonged to her grandmother. And when Tyler had moved in, he'd brought all his things, including his painting stuff, which took up most of the guest room.

Bay was secretly hoping they wouldn't find a dress in time, then she could take these ridiculous daisies and green leaves out of her wildly curled hair and go as herself. All she wanted to do was make sure Josh saw her, saw her ignoring him, not making a scene, then she'd leave. He said she wouldn't come. She'd show him. He had no idea who she was or what she would or wouldn't do. He'd never even
talked
to her.

They'd just come from the attic when they met Tyler and Mariah in the hallway, home for the day.

“What are you doing?” Mariah asked brightly, instantly intrigued. She was still in her gymnastics uniform. Her hair was in a messy bun that her father had obviously tried to execute. “Is this a game? Why do you have flowers in your hair, Bay? You look so pretty, like my new best friend.”

Bay put her arm around her cousin, who smelled like peanuts. “Thanks, squirt.”

“Hi, baby,” Claire said, almost guiltily, like she was caught doing something that wasn't work. “How was gymnastics?”

“It was fine. What are you doing?” Mariah asked again.

“We're looking for old dresses for Bay to wear to a Halloween dance, dresses that once belonged to my grandmother,” Claire explained.

Mariah screwed up her face for a moment, thinking, then said, “Have you tried the guest room closet?”

“Not yet. That's a good idea.”

Mariah turned and ran into the guest room, where the springs of the bed were soon heard squeaking as she jumped on it.

Claire turned to Tyler. “When you get time, would you caulk around the vents in the attic? I felt some cold air coming in when we were up there.”

“You'd feel cold air if you were standing on the sun,” Tyler teased.

Claire smiled. “Did you and Mariah have fun today?”

“Gymnastics, and then office hours. It's been the longest day anyone has ever had, ever. Seriously, I win.” Tyler scrubbed the stubble on his cheeks tiredly.

“Sorry. Don't forget to eat. I bought some rotisserie chicken at Fred's today.” Claire leaned in and said in a low voice, “Was Em at gymnastics practice?”

Tyler shook his head, as seemingly perplexed by this new best friend as Claire was. “Apparently Em doesn't do gymnastics. Or ballet.”

“Wait,” Claire said, drawing back. “You mean you haven't met her yet?”

“You two can play old married couple some other time,” Sydney said. “The dance is in two hours!”

Bay snorted. “Like you and Dad don't act that way all the time.”

“I feel like I'm in competition with good old Henry. Come here,” Tyler said, grabbing Claire and bending her back over his arm and kissing her.

“Please,” Bay said. “Not in front of the kids.” She turned and walked to the guest room, rolling her eyes for effect. Tonight, of all nights, she really didn't want to see how well love worked when two people felt the same way about each other.

Claire and Sydney soon followed her. The guest room closet was so small only one person could get inside it, so Claire went in and started bringing out boxes. Sydney and Bay opened them while Mariah jumped on the bed, happy to be with them. They found old linens, a box of antique cracked leather purses, candles that had gone soft and melted into each other, and a cat bed. But no dresses.

“There's one last box in here,” Claire said from the back of the closet. “They have to be in this one. Otherwise, I don't know where they might be.”

“That's okay,” Bay said, reaching up to scratch her head, which felt tight and itchy. “I really don't want to wear a costume.”

“Don't you dare touch that hair,” her mother warned, and Bay dropped her hand.

“It's stuck in a corner. Wait, I've almost got it!” Claire pulled the box free, hitting her head on the low shelf in the closet as she stood, upsetting the contents on the shelf. A shoe box fell, scattering old photos all over the bedroom floor.

Bay started to duck inside the closet to help Claire. “Are you all right?”

“Stop!” Sydney said. “You'll mess up your hair!”

Bay threw her hands in the air with exasperation. “I think you used thirteen cans of hair spray on me. My hair is not going to move for a decade!”

Claire emerged from the closet with the cardboard box in one hand, rubbing the top of her head with the other. When she noticed the photos on the floor, she immediately set the box down and went to her knees, her mouth forming the word
Oh.
“These are photos of Grandmother Mary! I'd forgotten about them.”

Sydney went to her knees beside Claire, helping pick up the photos. She stopped to examine one. “Hey, Claire, look at this. This must be the fairy picnic Grandmother Mary told me about.”

Claire leaned over to look. “Must be. Grandmother Mary told you a lot more about that time in her life than she told me.”

Claire and Sydney were shoulder to shoulder now, an image Bay would always think of when she thought of them together, how close they were, like they knew what was inside each other's pockets.

“Why did Grandmother Mary tell you more than she told Claire?” Bay asked, curious.

Claire looked up at her and answered, “Because your mom was pretty and popular, like Grandmother Mary was when she was young.”

Bay felt her world shift slightly, like when you think you're on the last step of a staircase, only to discover there was still another step left. “
You
were popular?” Bay said to her mother.

That made Sydney laugh. “You sound so surprised.”

“But you're a Waverley.”

“One has nothing to do with the other,” Sydney said, staring at the photo. “Grandmother Mary had a lot of suitors when she was young, before she married, before she got old and … strange.”

“Agoraphobic,” Claire corrected, putting the rest of the photos in the shoe box and crawling back to the last box she'd taken from the closet. As soon as she lifted the lid, she laughed in surprise. “We're finding everything of Grandmother Mary's but her dresses. Look, here's another one of her kitchen journals. She hid these things all over the house. I once found one inside a mattress.” Claire brought out a small, thin black notebook with
Waverley Kitchen Journal
on the cover, as all her journals had. But written beneath this one was also the word
Karl
.

“How many journals have you found now?” Sydney asked.

“Over a hundred.” Claire opened the journal and her brows fell in confusion.

“What is it?”

“Look at this,” Claire said. “She blacked out every single page.” On each page, every line Grandmother Mary had written had been crossed out with thick black horizontal ink stripes, obscuring the original script.

Sydney shook her head. “She was a funny old lady. She was always scribbling in those journals. She was almost manic about it.”

“She did the best she could,” Claire said, leafing through the journal. “I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Raising us couldn't have been easy for her.”

“You always gloss over the fact that when Mom brought us here, she stayed for almost
six years
before she left again,” Sydney pointed out.

“But it was still Grandmother Mary who took care of us.”

“Mom took care of us while she was here. Evanelle said it took Grandmother Mary almost a year to get used to people being in her house again. She barely talked to any of us.” Sydney waved her hand dismissively at Claire, as if this was a familiar argument. “But you never remember those parts.”

Claire seemed to think about it, then said, “Well, after Mom left, Grandmother Mary took care of us.”

“After she left, Claire,
you
took care of us.”

“No, it was Grandmother Mary,” Claire argued. “She ordered food and clothes and shoes for us. Washed our sheets.”

“
You
did all of that. You were twelve when Mom left us. I remember getting so frustrated with the things you would pick out for me to wear. You dressed me in gray dresses and black sweaters, like an old lady, for most of elementary school.”

“I did not.” Claire paused. “Wait, I did, didn't I?”

Sydney shook her head with a snort. “You and your revisionist history.”

As Bay watched them bicker and coo, she began to realize how much she didn't know about the Waverley sisters, their histories, their lives before Bay knew them as the unit they were now. She knew, she'd always known, how protective they both were of her, so they'd never offered up much information. Then again, Bay had never asked before, and questions now overwhelmed her. Who was Mary, really? Why was she one person when she was young, and another when she was old? Why was she raising her own daughter's daughters? Why did Lorelei leave?

Claire reluctantly set the journal aside and looked in the box again. She took out several sheets of yellowed tissue paper, then said, “Jackpot! Here's a dress.” She brought out something so thin and delicate it looked like it was made of vellum. Claire put it to her nose. “It even smells like her soap.”

Sydney set aside the photo of the fairy party and took the dress. “Her gray smoke soap. I loved that stuff.” Sydney stood and held the dress against Bay. “Yes, perfect for a garden nymph.”

Bay looked down at the wispy dress, her fingers trailing over it. It really was perfect. It was a faded teal green with layers of beige netting forming a sheer cowl neck. Old sequins were sewn down the side, forming the shapes of flowers, and a silk sash sat below the hips.

“It's the same dress she's wearing here,” Sydney said, bending to pick up the fairy picnic photo. The picnic table in the photo was an old door set up on sawhorses, and the seats were old tree stumps, or maybe thick pieces of firewood, topped with square cushions. Six men were sitting there, not looking at the camera, but at the beautiful woman with long, dark hair, almost to her waist, standing at the head of the table. She was smiling, her arms outstretched, as if welcoming everyone to her world. The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.