First Frost (6 page)

After the adults left, Bay put some frozen dinners (a dreadful staple in the Waverley house lately) in the microwave and she and Mariah ate and talked. Mariah mainly liked talking about her new best friend, Em. Apparently, they'd only met this week, but Em was already Mariah's entire world. Mariah was such a normal kid—a braces-wearing, dirty-fingernailed, bright-eyed
normal
kid. In this family, that was curious. Sometimes Bay thought her own mother should have had Mariah, and Claire should have been Bay's mother. That would have made more sense. Everyone would have been happier that way. Her mother would then have a normal daughter she didn't have to worry about being made fun of, and Claire would get someone just like her, someone who accepted being strange, whose entire identity counted on it.

When Mariah fell asleep in the sitting room later that night, Bay set aside the book she'd been reading. The furnace fired up on its own. Like an old woman, the house hated a chill. Bay lifted Mariah's feet off her lap and grabbed her hoodie off the back of the old couch. She walked through the kitchen and out the back door, crossing the driveway to the garden gate. She found the key hidden in the honeysuckle vines and entered, closing the gate behind her. The place was completely enclosed. The nine-foot fence covered in honeysuckle was as thick as a wall. Because the tree was dormant, nothing else would bloom in the garden, either, not even the rosebushes, which were still in bloom around town in clusters of pink and magenta from Indian summer.

The solar-powered ground lamps glowed with steady yellow light, marking the footpaths all the way to the back of the lot, where the apple tree was.

It was a short tree, barely reaching the top of the fence, but its limbs were long and wide, almost like vines. This tree was a presence, a personality, an influence on every Waverley who had ever lived here. Legend around Bascom was that if you ate an apple from the Waverley tree, you'd see what the biggest event in your life would be. Claire had once told Bay that the mere fact that someone wanted to see the biggest event in their life meant they weren't concentrating on what was good about every day, so Claire kept the gate locked and the finials sharp so no one could get in. As for the Waverleys themselves, they were all conveniently born with a severe dislike of apples, so they were never tempted to eat one. There was a long-ago saying that was still heard from time to time in town:
Waverleys know where to find the truth, they just can't stomach it.

Bay reached the tree and touched its weathered trunk, the swirls and ridges of the bark like a mysterious chart to untold places. She lowered herself to the brown grass and looked up through the bare branches at the half moon like a black-and-white cookie in the sky.

This was Bay's thinking place. It had been since she was five, since she'd first arrived in this town and knew,
knew
she was home. Just a girl and her tree. Being here in the garden always made her feel better.

She thought about how she wished Josh Matteson would love her the way her dad loved her mom, and her uncle loved her aunt. The Waverley sisters had married men as steadfast and normal as the women were mercurial and strange. The men in their lives loved them the way astronomers loved stars, loved the promise of what they were, knowing there was something about them they would never truly understand.

“I wish you could tell me what to do, tree.”

She thought she saw the barest movement along its limbs, just a slight tremble, the way eyes flicker under lids while dreaming.

Maybe it wished so, too.

*   *   *

Russell Zahler was too late for afternoon tea at the Pendland Street Inn, but purposely so. It was best not to be noticed by too many people, and the inn guests were all from out of town, anyway. They had nothing useful to share with him about what he needed to know.

The proprietor of the inn, Anne Ainsley's brother, Andrew, was at the front desk when Russell came back from his walk. Anne was clearing away the dishes in the dining room from tea. She smiled at him when she saw him. Her teeth were crooked and yellow, but she always showed them when she smiled, as if she didn't care.

“Hello, Mr. Zahler. You missed tea,” Andrew said from the front desk. He was a fat man, but his movements were small and birdlike, his elbows always held closely to his sides, his footsteps clicky and dainty. From the way he was sitting back in the desk chair, his hands resting on his rotund belly, Russell guessed Andrew had eaten what had been left over from afternoon tea.

Russell had yet to offer any payment or ID, but Anne had obviously worked around that. Her brother had no idea. Andrew Ainsley was curious about Russell, though. He was probably wondering if Russell was a man of substance or means. He had peppered Russell with questions during breakfast, probably wondering if he deserved a photo on the wall. Russell had given him the story he gave most: he was a retired businessman on vacation from Butte, Montana. If ever asked what business, Russell would say he'd once owned a plant that manufactured clips for pegboards. Most people would lose interest after that.

“I lost track of time, exploring your lovely neighborhood,” Russell said. “There's one house that's quite extraordinary. The yellow one with the turret, on the small hill.”

“The Waverley house,” Andrew said, waving his hands dismissively. “It was the first house built in the neighborhood. The Pendland Street Inn here, our Ainsley family home, was built by my great-grandfather, a mere seven years later. Our house still has all its original—”

“Waverley,” Russell interrupted, before Andrew could hit his stride. “The name sounds familiar.”

Andrew frowned. “Yes, well, they're an odd bunch. They keep to themselves.” The phone rang and Andrew leaned forward with a small, involuntary grunt to pick it up.

Russell saw Anne catch his attention as she pointed toward the kitchen. She picked up the last of the plates and teacups and he followed her through the dark, doilyed dining room to the small kitchen. There was a nice oak butcher block island in the center, littered with crusts and flour, where Anne had obviously prepared the tea sweets and savories that afternoon.

His stomach grumbled. Though Anne had made sure he'd had extra large portions of scrambled eggs, bacon, and berries that morning, it was the last time he'd eaten today.

The large breakfast was a direct result of last night. When he thought everyone had gone to sleep in the inn, he'd crept downstairs, having automatically memorized where the creaks were on the staircase and along the old floorboards. He'd entered the kitchen for food, only to find Anne there, puffing on a cigarette in the dark, standing next to a window she'd cracked open to let the smoke out.

She'd reached over and turned on the light when he'd entered.

Because things like that could happen—and he always considered every possibility—he'd taken care to cover his old, torn pajamas with his heavy silk paisley robe, which had a gold rope sash with tassels on the ends. It made him look elegant and old-fashioned. He'd used the robe in his act as the Great Banditi, after the original Banditi had met his demise under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps he'd had too much to drink and hit his head on a rock in that field in northwest Arkansas. Or perhaps the rock had been wielded by an unknown assailant. The original Banditi had had many enemies on the carnival circuit. Russell had been one of many young boys he'd taken to his trailer on moonless nights, to do things no one would speak of.

After Russell had walked into the kitchen last night, Anne had fed him a snack of salad, cheese, and beer. In exchange, he had regaled her with the story of the time he'd watched the sausage and pepper stand explode at the carnival when he was a boy. The smell of fried sausage had brought every feral cat and stray dog in the city to the midway. There had been hundreds of them, so many it had been like wading through sand. The city hadn't known what to do. Russell told Anne that he'd had the genius idea to fence in the midway and turn it into a pet sanctuary. To this very day, he said, children of all ages still visited the sanctuary to throw sticks for the dogs and let the cats sit on their laps.

The story wasn't true, of course. Well, part of it was true. He had watched the sausage and pepper stand explode, but it had been his fault for spilling the grease when he'd tried to steal a sausage.

Anne hadn't seemed to care if it was true or not.

He got the feeling she'd given up on expecting the truth a long time ago.

That afternoon, when Russell followed her to the kitchen, Anne smiled as she set the pink, hand-painted teacups and plates into the sink. “I saved you some sandwiches and tea cakes,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans and reaching under the butcher block to produce a plate covered with a white cloth napkin. “Otherwise, Andrew eats all the leftovers.” She removed the napkin with the flourish of a skilled magician's assistant. There were several triangles of crustless sandwiches and a few small scones and petit fours on the plate. Anne was, if nothing else, fairly competent in the kitchen.

“Thank you, Anne,” he said as he took the plate, giving her a slight bow, like it was a gift of some great importance.

She liked that. “Come with me,” she said, opening the kitchen door, which had lace curtains on it. She led him outside and around the house, away from the windows, to a small corner alcove formed by the heat pump and a nearby rose trellis. There were two cheap plastic picnic chairs there. “Until the sun goes down, it's still warm enough to find some peace outside. Andrew never finds me here.”

Russell sat down. Anne took the other chair, obviously a new addition to her hidey-hole. She apparently didn't invite many people back here. Russell supposed he should feel honored. But one would need a heart for that.

“I heard you asking about the Waverleys,” Anne said as she took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from under an overturned flowerpot.

“Yes,” Russell said simply.

“Andrew doesn't like to talk about them. He thinks their house gets too much attention. And Claire Waverley is sort of a local celebrity, especially since she got featured in a magazine. Andrew has been trying to do that for years. He's always saying about them, ‘You can't compete with strange. Strange always wins,'” Anne said, lighting a cigarette. “But I'll tell you anything you want to know about them.” She paused to exhale a plume of smoke. “But first, tell me another one of your stories.”

Russell sat back and popped a petit four into his mouth.

It was a small price to pay.

“I once saved an entire town from bankruptcy when I was twelve. It was in Nero, Nebraska, and I was walking along the carnival midway, minding my own business, when I saw the cops chasing a man carrying a huge bag of money. He'd just stolen it from the town bank, and it was all the money they had. Bills were flying out as he ran. Most people at the carnival darted around, trying to catch the money. But not me. I was eating cotton candy, but I dropped it in the dirt and ran to the shoot-the-bottle-booth. I grabbed the rifle. I knew the sight had been tampered with to keep people from winning the game, so I aimed high and shot the robber in the knee, sending him down. The town threw a parade in my honor, and the carnival owner made sure I had cotton candy every day for an entire year.”

“That's good,” Anne said with a smile, taking another puff of her cigarette. “I almost think you believe it.”

“You wound me. Would I lie?”

Anne snorted, and he smiled back at her.

The real story was that one day Sir Walter Trott had chased one of his employees out of his trailer with a riding crop, after discovering he'd been stealing from him. The employee ran wild, pushing people out of the way and knocking things over as he fled. Russell had taken advantage of the distraction to steal dozens of funnels of cotton candy from one of the vendors. He'd sat behind the shoot-the-bottle-booth and ate them all. It had made him sick, but, to this day, he still considered it one of the best days of his childhood.

He didn't know why he didn't just tell Anne the truth. There would have been no real harm to it.

But, somehow, it's the real stories that are hardest to tell.

*   *   *

Claire, Tyler, Sydney and Henry were the last to leave the campus gallery. The showing that night had been for the same art student who had won the honor of designing that year's sculpture on the downtown green in Bascom, the one of the founder of Orion College's half-buried head. All the student's sculptures on display that night had the same theme: Horace J. Orion's face hidden in a bouquet of flowers; Horace J. Orion's hand emerging from a book; Horace J. Orion seemingly tangled in a long sweep of a lady's hair—that one presumably referencing the fact that Orion had been a school for women when it had been founded.

Horace J. Orion had been a man ahead of his time. He'd been an effeminate creature with a high voice and a close shave, and he'd moved to Bascom at the turn of the twentieth century with a mysterious man-friend he called, simply, “My love.” A champion of women's rights, he'd used most of his family money to start a college for women in this small North Carolina town in the middle of nowhere, a sanctuary for women around the world who wanted to learn. Years later, upon his death, it was discovered by an understandably startled undertaker that Horace J. Orion had actually been a woman, a one Ethel Cora Humphreys. Her family had been cruel, dyed-in-the-wool misogynists. She'd been determined that her family line would end with her, but first she would do all the good she could for her fellow women. And, as many student term papers would posit over the years, living as a man was the only way she could do it.

After the lights in the campus gallery were turned out and poor Horace could finally get some rest, Claire, Tyler, Sydney and Henry walked across the old college campus with its brick towers and wall murals. It wasn't a sports college, so students spent Friday nights at Orion on the quad with picnic baskets full of culinary students' latest efforts, or mapping the stars with their college-issued telescopes.