First Frost (22 page)

She was losing it.
Losing it.

She slid her back down the cabinets and sat on the floor, close to tears.

What was she supposed to do now?

The answer came to her suddenly. It had been there all along—ever since the Year Everything Changed—waiting for her to finally realize it.

Call your sister.
She almost heard the words out loud, like steam hissing softly.

She wasn't alone. She had to stop acting like she was.

She lifted herself up and went to the phone.

 

12

Claire paced the floor after she called Sydney, allowing herself now to go over everything Russell Zahler had said. It all made sense. Every insecurity she'd ever had about not being born here, about not being a real Waverley, rose like sweat on her skin, and she was now drenched with it. All the doors upstairs were opening and closing worriedly.

She was in the sitting room when she heard footsteps on the porch. She ran to the front door and opened it to find not only Sydney, but also Bay, Evanelle and Evanelle's companion Fred.

“I brought wine!” Sydney said, holding up the bottle as she walked in.

“And I'd just made this casserole when Sydney called us,” Fred said as he breezed past her wearing oven mitts and carrying a foil-covered baking dish.

“He made way too much of it, like he knew we were going to need it,” Evanelle said, handing Claire her portable oxygen tank and walking to the sitting room, giving Claire no choice but to follow. “I said to him, ‘Why are you making all of that? It's just the two of us.' Then Sydney called about you needing us, and it made sense.”

“What is all this?” Claire asked, confused. She'd expected her sister's somber face, and then a serious discussion about the possibility that Claire wasn't a Waverley and what that would mean. Somewhere along the way, Sydney would probably encourage Claire to call the police, then Russell Zahler would be taken into custody. They would discuss what they would say to the local paper when contacted for a piece they would write, which would probably have the headline
LOCAL FOODIE FAKE.
Tyler and Mariah would probably want to leave town for a couple of weeks, maybe to spend some time with his parents in Connecticut until this all blew over. Tyler would say to her,
I knew it all along. This magic was all in your head.

“I called Evanelle,” Sydney said. “I thought she should be here to celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” Claire tried to remember what exactly she'd said to her sister on the phone. It was all a jumble of emotion, tumbling out before she could catch it. “Someone is trying to
blackmail
me.”

“Oh, we know,” Sydney said, putting the wine bottle on the coffee table and falling back onto the couch. She was wearing old jeans and one of Bay's T-shirts that read,
EITHER YOU LIKE BACON, OR YOU'RE WRONG
. Claire was gratified at least that she hadn't taken the time to get all dolled up, that she'd hurried right over. But still. “We're celebrating that you called for help. Even though, in this case, you don't really need it. The fact is, you asked. No matter how hard we've tried over the years, we've
never
been able to get you to do that.”

Bay came from the kitchen with plates and forks.

“What are you doing here?” Claire asked Bay, completely confused now. Had Bay been on the porch when she'd opened the door? She couldn't remember now. If she hadn't been, then what had Bay been doing in the kitchen? Claire looked at the clock on the mantle. It wasn't time for school to let out, not time for her shift to begin. “Why aren't you in school?”

“I overslept. This is better than school.” Bay put the plates and forks on the coffee table. “What happened in the kitchen? It smells like you set a bouquet of roses on fire, then tried to put it out with sugar. It made me think of J—” Bay stopped herself from saying what Claire knew she was going to say. Josh. “It made me think of something I don't know how to fix.”

“I was having a little trouble with the candy.”

“You tried to work after he left?” Sydney asked. “Whatever you do, don't give what you made to anyone!”

“I threw it in the trash,” Claire said.

“Good. Because the last time you made something when you were upset, we all cried at the slightest provocation for weeks.”

Fred began to scoop the casserole with its creamy sauce onto the plates, as if Claire had asked them all over for tea.

After a few moments of silence, Claire reminded them, “A man just walked into my life and told me I wasn't a Waverley.”

“That's nonsense,” Sydney said, taking a plate from Fred. “Out of all of us, you are the
most
Waverley. This looks great, Fred.”

“Thank you. It's hash browns and ham casserole. I've had the recipe for years.”

“I'm not the most Waverley,” Claire said. “Grandmother Mary taught me what I know, and it's not even half of what she could do. Now that I think about it, why didn't she wait for a Waverley trait to show in me? She just started teaching me. Recipes to memorize. Steps to take. Do you think she knew? Oh my God … Mariah.” Claire suddenly felt sick. She sat down beside Sydney on the couch as Fred pushed a plate into her hands. “If this is true, then it explains so much.”

Claire had watched Mariah all her life, waiting for her gift. While she was doing homework, Claire would wonder,
Is she better at it than anyone? Did the answers just appear to her on the paper?
When she would draw, Claire would watch to see if the image changed overnight. Did the tigers move around? Did they look fatter, as if they'd caught prey while no one was looking? Were the deer in the landscape painting in the sitting room missing? Grandmother Mary had once mentioned a great-aunt who could only draw the truth, which made her an in-demand, if terrible, portrait painter. People kept coming to her, knowing she could paint something beautiful, but only for people beautiful on the inside. But, while Mariah's drawings were pretty—her father was an artist, after all—they weren't magic.

As she got older, Claire held out hope that maybe Mariah's gift would present itself when she was a teenager, when everything dormant rose to the surface, like a pot of soup left to boil, all the ingredients sitting at the bottom until there was enough frenzy to roll them to the top.

Now she wasn't so sure.

“Stop it. You're being ridiculous,” Sydney said. “Our mother didn't want children in the first place. Why would she steal one?”

“She was always trying to do something big, dangerous, drastic,” Claire pointed out.

“Because she ate an apple?” Bay asked, obviously enjoying this as she forked mouthfuls of casserole into her mouth, not taking her eyes off the sisters.

“Yes,” Claire said, at the same time Sydney said, “No.”

“Wait, did she or didn't she?” Bay asked.

“We don't know if seeing how she would die made her the way she was,” Sydney told her daughter. “We'll never know. I think it might be interesting to talk to this man, just to ask him some questions about Mom. We never even knew what her Waverley magic was. You said he's coming back tomorrow? Maybe I could meet him.”

“No!” Claire said immediately. “No one is talking to him.”

“Where is the photo he gave you? I want to see,” Sydney said, making a give-it-here gesture with her hand.

Claire reached into her apron pocket and handed it to her. Sydney grabbed it and studied it in detail.

“Oh, look how young she was,” Sydney said, passing it around like it was a baby photo.

“Evanelle, did Mom or Grandmother Mary ever say anything to you about me not being her real daughter?” Claire asked.

“This is the first I've heard of it,” Evanelle said, passing the photo to Fred, who smiled and passed it to Bay, who secretly put it in her pocket. “She loved you, Claire. You were her own.”

“But you don't sound surprised,” Claire said. “Do you think it's true?”

Evanelle shrugged. “It could be true. But it doesn't matter. Of course you're a Waverley. It's in you, no matter where you came from. I tell Fred that all the time. He has my gift of anticipation. It's been in him all along. He just hasn't realized it yet. He's so fixated on me not dying, he can't see what's right in front of him.”

Fred eyed her sadly as she said that. He took another bite of casserole before putting his plate down and reaching into his jacket pocket. “That reminds me, Sydney, I was sorting through some of Evanelle's things and I came across this. I thought you might need it.” He handed Sydney a night-light, no bigger than a small flashlight. “When you turn it on at night, it reflects stars on the ceiling.”

Sydney smiled indulgently. “Thank you, Fred. If ever I need stars on the ceiling, I'm all set.”

“What did I tell you?” Evanelle said proudly, clicking her dentures. “He's just like me.”

“I'm getting out of the candy business,” Claire announced, more dramatically than she intended, but this was getting out of hand.

“Well, I'm glad for that. I miss our Sunday dinners. Remember those?” Sydney asked everyone. “We used to sit around like this for hours.”

“I loved those Sunday dinners,” Bay said.

“Speaking of food, this casserole is delicious,” Sydney said.

“I'll email you the recipe,” Fred said. “It's just hash browns, cubed ham, sour cream and Cheddar cheese. The secret is cream of chicken soup. My mother used to say that every good Southern casserole had cream of chicken soup in it.”

With a clatter, Claire set her plate on the coffee table and stood. “Did you all happen to miss the fact that my livelihood is at stake, that my entire identity is being questioned?”

Sydney rolled her eyes. “Your identity isn't being questioned. What's yours is yours. No one can take that away from you. You can only give it away. Are you going to give it away to some stranger?” Sydney leaned over and took Claire's hand in hers. “Claire, listen to me. You're being conned. I know what that looks like. Why do you think this man has been asking around town about you and the family? He saw an article about you, recognized your name and the town, and remembered a photo he had of Mom that he could use. He mentioned your financials. That means he did his research. He found out all he could about you, which means he found your vulnerabilities. But he had
nothing,
until you believed him. Then you gave away your magic, just like that.”

“No. It started happening before that. I stopped using flower essences from the garden in the candy, and no one noticed.” Everyone but Bay, who had known all along, seemed vaguely surprised, but again, not like Claire expected. “I don't understand it, I don't understand how people can say they're still affected by what I do when it's not from the garden.”

“That's because it's you, not the garden,” Sydney said. “It's always been you.”

Claire sat back down. She looked at each of them, one by one, then covered her face with her hand. She felt drained and abashed, like when you completely overreact to something—a spider, a misunderstood comment, someone walking up behind you.

“Tell this man to go, and he'll blow away like smoke,” Sydney said. “You'd be surprised how much is bluster.”

“How do you know all of this?” Bay asked her mother suspiciously.

“That's a story for when you're older,” Sydney said.

“He said my birth certificate was probably forged. He said if I had to take a DNA test, it would prove I wasn't who I say I am.”

Sydney, Bay, Evanelle and Fred all exchanged glances. And, well, yes, when Claire said it out loud, it did sound a little absurd. But he'd been so convincing. Magnetic. He'd known exactly what it would take to get her to buy what he'd been selling.

“Claire, don't take this the wrong way,” Sydney said. “You make beautiful candy, but you didn't come over on the
Mayflower.
No one cares about your DNA.”

Claire rubbed her forehead. “I was really scared,” she admitted.

Sydney shook her head and looked at Claire fondly. “Then you should have asked for help sooner.”

*   *   *

“Who would ever believe Claire wasn't a Waverley? That's ludicrous,” Fred said, buckling himself up behind the wheel of his Buick and starting the car.

“No one,” Evanelle said as he pulled away from the curb. She was holding the empty casserole dish in her lap like a pet. “But those girls are always trying to prove something, prove that they're worthy of the happiness their mother and grandmother didn't have, like being miserable is the only way to be a Waverley.”

After a few minutes of driving, Fred adjusted the heat to the level he knew Evanelle liked, then said, “What did you mean when you said I had your gift of anticipation?”

“I meant just that. You've got my gift.”

“I'm not a Waverley.”

“Sure you are. You're one of us.”

That made Fred smile.

“And being a Waverley means you have to find someone who loves you just as you are, like my husband did with me,” Evanelle continued, not missing a chance to critique his love life, or lack thereof. Next to watching sci-fi movies, it was her favorite pastime. “I'm leaving you my house, you know. You'll have your own home and your own business. You'll be quite a catch.”

Fred shook his head. It had taken him a long time to realize that the best relationship he'd ever had was with
her.
“I spent thirty years with James before he left me. I've known for a while that I wasn't going to do that again. Fall in love. I'm not good at it. I've been happier by myself, living with you, than I have in my entire life. That's the biggest gift you've ever given me.”