First Frost (28 page)

She got in her car and drove away, and Josh found himself thinking,
Was it really that simple? Choosing a life?

Maybe you don't have to be
led
into the future. Maybe you can pick your own path.

Maybe you don't
fall
in love. Maybe you jump.

Maybe, just maybe, it's all a
choice.

*   *   *

Henry arrived at the Waverley house later that day and he and Tyler set up the large table and the mismatched chairs in the garden, far enough away from the tree that it couldn't knock them over.

Evanelle and Fred arrived as the afternoon wore on, and together they all took the food outside. Loaves of fig and pepper bread, of course. But there was also lasagna cooked in miniature pumpkins, and pumpkin-seed brittle. Roasted red pepper soup, and spiced caramel potato cakes. Corn muffins and brown sugar popcorn balls and a dozen cupcakes, each with a different frosting, because what was first frost without frosting? Pear beer and clove ginger ale in dark bottles sat in the icy beverage tub. They ate well into the afternoon, and the more they ate, the more food there seemed to be. Pretzel buns and cranberry cheese and walnuts appearing, just when they thought they'd tasted everything.

They laughed and talked about trivial things, because it was a relief to have the mood and the energy to talk about the small things now.

When night began to fall, trick-or-treaters gave the Waverley house a wide berth, because who knew what candy Claire might give out? Something that would make the children embarrassingly honest, or something that would make them listen to their mothers?
No, thank you
, they all thought. Butterfingers and Snickers bars were much more preferable.

The family brought out lanterns and halogen heaters when it got dark, and put them all around the garden. They lit candles on the table, all while the apple tree shook and blossoms continued to fall. When the petals hit the flames of the candles, they hissed and popped into ash, leaving behind a scent that was so beautiful and sweet that it smelled like both yesterday and tomorrow.

Claire thought of all the raking she would have to do over the next few weeks, dragging large bags of apple blossoms to the curb every day, where they would inevitably be taken by women who thought if they bathed in the blossoms, their skin would glow; and men who thought if they stuffed their mattresses with the blossoms, they'd dream of money and fine sons and beautiful wives, all things men were supposed to want, but it really just made them dream of their mothers; and children who would build large white forts in their backyards with them and believe that they could live inside them forever and never grow up.

She was looking forward to the work. She'd missed this.

As things were winding down, they all grew tired of brushing blossoms off their hair and clothing, so they just sat there and let the petals accumulate on them, which the tree seemed to particularly delight in. After a while, they looked like they were frozen in time, covered in dust, like a cursed fairy-tale banquet, waiting for the prince to arrive and wake them up.

Tyler and Henry stood, grabbing beers and going off to the side to have one of their man enclaves. They shook the blossoms off their clothing as they walked, like patient parents or indulgent lovers who had held still and let themselves be decorated.

Evanelle kept checking her oxygen tank. She gave a look to Fred that it was almost time to go. Sydney kept glancing toward the garden gate, looking more and more disappointed until Bay finally asked her, “Who are you waiting for?”

Sydney put her arm around Bay and said, “Prince Charming, I thought. I was wrong.”

And so first frost was almost at an end.

And Claire knew everything was going to be all right.

*   *   *

The lights of the candles flickered as the Waverley women talked at the table. The men watched from across the garden, watched in that way Bay envied, like they were rare birds. Somewhere on the street, children were laughing, their voices trailing on the wind like smoke.

“I have something to tell you,” Bay said to her mom, the words suddenly bursting from her, seemingly without context.

Sydney stopped in the middle of saying something to Claire, and they both turned to Bay.

“That old man, I saw him yesterday afternoon,” Bay admitted. She'd kept this secret for an entire day, but she had to let it out. And maybe if she admitted it now, she would feel that sense of letting go, the happiness that first frost was always supposed to bring. She hadn't felt it yet, and she'd been waiting all evening. Soon, they would all go home and first frost would be over and things were
always
set right by then. That's the way it worked. “I had an idea that he might be staying at the Pendland Street Inn, so I ran over there. He was leaving town with Anne Ainsley. I asked him about your mom.”

“You
talked
to him?” Sydney asked. “Alone?”

“Just for a minute. He was in a hurry to leave. I asked and he said, as far as he knew, Claire
is
Lorelei's real daughter. Then I asked him about Lorelei's Waverley gift.”

The sisters just stared at her, quiet now, and still, as still as stone.

“He said it was frost,” Bay said. “He said she could turn things cold.”

The barest of smiles reached Sydney's lips. But Claire looked confused. “Her Waverley gift was frost?” Claire repeated. “I don't understand. What does that mean?”

“I remember,” Sydney said. “I don't remember much, but I remember that. The way she could blow flecks of ice off her hand in the middle of summer.”

“Evanelle, did you know?' Claire asked.

Evanelle shook her head. Her entire body seemed swallowed by her big coat, like a heap of clothing sitting in the chair next to Bay. “Maybe it happened when she ate an apple. That tree always did love Lorelei.”

Claire seemed bewildered. “Frost. That's pretty amazing, even for a Waverley.”

Sydney looked at Bay and said, “You're grounded for another week.”

“What?” Bay said, surprised. “Why?”

“Something I
know
I taught you. Don't talk to strangers.”

Bay rolled her eyes and slouched into her seat. “Mom, I'm
fifteen.
”

“Fifteen and grounded.”

Evanelle chuckled. “I forget how much I like it here with you girls. I'm sure am going to miss this when I'm gone.”

Fred suddenly got up, to stretch his legs he said, but they all knew he didn't like when Evanelle talked of dying. He walked over to Tyler and Henry.

A wave of melancholy hit them, until Mariah, who was by the tree making snow angels in the blossoms, suddenly laughed and said, “My best friend said don't be in such a hurry to leave, Evanelle. You still have things to do.”

“We've recently discovered that Em isn't real,” Claire explained to everyone.

Everyone at the table said, “Ahhh.” Like it suddenly made sense.

“She is real,” Mariah protested, seeming to be genuinely hurt by the statement. She stood and put her hands on her hips. “You just can't see her.” The tree reached a limb down and fondly placed a crown wreath of blossoms on Mariah's head. Mariah didn't even seem to notice.

Bay, as she always did, took up for her cousin. “Tell us more about this Emily person,” she said, waving her over.

“Who's Emily?” Mariah asked as she walked to the table.

“Isn't Em short for Emily?” Bay asked, putting her arm around Mariah. She loved this kid. No one was as good at being herself as Mariah, magic or no magic.

“No, her name is Mary,” Mariah said. “I just call her M. Like the letter
M.
She says I'm named after her.”

Everyone suddenly went quiet. The voices from the street even faded away.

“Grandmother Mary?” Claire finally asked. She looked over at Tyler, to see if he heard. He hadn't. “She's here?” Her voice had gone lower, as if wanting to keep this secret, this extraordinary new bond she shared with her daughter, just between them.

Mariah shrugged. “She said she's always been here.”

Evanelle slapped her knee. “Nice one, Mary! You always could keep a secret.”

Sydney leaned over and whispered to Claire, “And you were worried Mariah wasn't a Waverley.”

“She says don't worry about the Karl journal,” Mariah said. “All she wrote in it was how much she loved him, and when she didn't love him anymore, she crossed it out.”

“Ask her to tell us which one of us is fig and which one is pepper,” Sydney said to Claire, still whispering, elbowing her.

“Why don't you ask her?” Claire said to her sister, and they turned into bright, bickering little girls, right before Bay's eyes. “She's right here.”

Sydney lifted her chin. “You're just afraid she's going to tell you that you're pepper.”

“I'm
clearly
fig.”

Bay smiled and decided that it was enough that everyone else was settled and happy. She could wait. This was enough.

“She's gone now,” Mariah said. “She said there's someone at the gate.”

Evanelle nodded as if this made sense. “Mary always did run and hide when there was company.”

The tree suddenly began to sway its limbs back and forth, creating a huge breeze that blew out the candles. A great gust of blossoms flew across the garden as if in a blizzard.

Someone coughed at the garden gate and said, “Hello?”

Bay immediately stood, recognizing the voice. No, it couldn't be.

But there he was. Josh Matteson walked forward, looking around the garden in awe. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and he was red with the cold, as if he had been standing outside for a while, working up enough nerve to come in. He looked beautiful here. Well, he looked beautiful everywhere, but he looked
right
here. There was no smoke curling off of him. Why had she never thought of this? Josh in the garden at first frost. It made perfect sense.

“It's even better than I imagined,” Josh said, still coughing. “But I think I just swallowed a blossom.”

Bay shot over to him like she'd been aimed and fired at him. She almost hugged him, but then stopped herself, partly for Josh's benefit, partly because the whole family was watching. She took his hands instead, drawing him closer to the table. “What are you doing here?” she asked happily.

“Your mother invited me.”

“She did?” Henry asked from where the men were standing. As Bay and Josh got closer, Henry put out his arm and stopped him. “Whoa, son.”

Josh stopped automatically. Bay gave her father an exasperated look.

“Men in this family, we learn quickly not to get too near the tree,” Henry said with a smile. “You think the blossoms are bad? Wait until it has apples.”

“Hear, hear,” Tyler said, holding up his beer.

“Stay on this side,” Henry told Josh. “It's the best side to be on.”

Josh smiled and looked at Bay. “I think you're right.”

Bay, in her T-shirt that read,
MY LIFE IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY,
looked up at the petals falling like snow and thought of her dream of Josh, how there were flurries around them in her dream, and it was just as she thought. She just had to wait.

“Definitely right.”

 

16

Sydney let Josh take Bay home, and they were obviously taking the long way, because she and Henry made it back to the farmhouse before them. Henry had left the porch light on and they walked to the door in the cool darkness, their arms heavy with bags containing leftovers.

When they entered, they only made it as far as the couch before they collapsed, setting the bags on the floor beside them.

“We should put this food away,” Sydney said.

“I'm so full I may never eat again,” Henry groaned.

“You're going to have to. I can't eat all these leftovers alone.” She grinned at him. “We could work off some of this tonight.”

Neither of them moved. “You first,” Henry said.

“Come here,” she said, lifting a hand weakly.

“No, you come here.”

“I'm too full. This may take a while. Who needs sleep?”

Henry laughed. “That reminds me of something my granddad once told me. He said that when my father was a baby, he kept my granddad and grandmother up all night so many times that my granddad would fall asleep in the fields in the mornings. He said the cows would roll him into the barn and milk themselves.”

Sydney gave him a skeptical look. “The cows rolled him into the barn?”

“That's what he said. He'd wake up in the barn to find them milked and out in the fields again, as happy as, well, cows.”

Sydney laughed, then snorted, which made Henry laugh, which made her laugh harder. She doubled over and slid off the couch to the floor. Henry went down with her.

They sprawled out side by side on their backs and their laughter subsided. Sydney was lying on something hard, so she reached under her and realized she still had the small night-light Fred had given her in her coat pocket.

She turned it on, and a circle of blue stars reflected on the ceiling.

“Where did you get that?” Henry asked, scooting his head closer to hers as they stared at the ceiling.

“Fred gave it to me.”

“Why?” Henry asked.

“I have no idea,” she said, the moment the doorbell rang. She sat up. “Did you lock the door? Bay must have forgotten her key.”

“Maybe it's late trick-or-treaters,” Henry said.

“I don't have any candy. Wait, maybe I have some gum.”

“Gum will get the house egged for sure.” Henry stood and held out his hand to help Sydney stand. “I'll take these to the kitchen,” he said, picking up the bags as Sydney went to the door and opened it, smiling as she put the night-light back in her pocket.