“Claire?” Tyler asked, walking into her office late that night. She’d told him she’d be up to bed in a few minutes, but that had been three hours ago. She often worked late on Thursday nights. Fridays were the days she normally shipped her orders, so she liked to double-check everything. Buster had come in to work that afternoon, perplexed that there had been no candy in production. She’d instructed him to box and label the orders, then sent him off to the shipping store a day early in her van that still had WAVERLEY’S CATERING on the side of it. She’d never gotten around to changing the lettering. Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to.
When Buster had come back from mailing the orders, she’d told him he could take tomorrow off, that she had some personal matters to tend to.
“Personal?” Buster had asked, intrigued. “Do tell.”
“Not a chance,” Claire had answered.
“Fine. Have it your way.” Buster had handed her the keys to her van and walked away with some packing peanuts stuck to the seat of his pants.
“Claire?” Tyler asked again.
She looked up at him from her chair at her computer. He was standing next to her now, wearing only his pajama bottoms, heat radiating from him in such a comforting way that she reached up and put her hand on his chest just to feel it. “Sorry. I must have lost track of time.”
“I thought you were still working,” he said, nodding to her dark computer screen. “But you’re still thinking about that journal you found, aren’t you?”
Among other things. There was no denying that she was holding the Waverley Kitchen Journal she’d found last weekend, having flipped through its blacked-out pages hundreds of times now. “There’s so much she didn’t tell me. This one may contain the most important thing—maybe it was about my mother, maybe it was about why Grandmother Mary never made her back-door business bigger—but she blacked it all out.”
“Maybe she blacked it out because she didn’t think it was important, ever thought of that?” Tyler kissed her, then walked away. He knew something was wrong, but he didn’t press her. “Come to bed soon,” he said.
She got up and walked to the opposite wall in her small office, where her bookshelves were. All her cookbooks were there. One shelf was dedicated entirely to Grandmother Mary’s journals. The journals were all small and thin, more like hand-sized notebooks. And all the covers were black except for a few red ones Claire assumed Mary had bought when the store happened to be out of black. They were all numbered on the inside flap, so Claire knew the order they were supposed to be in, a chronicle of her grandmother’s life in recipes and gardening tips, and occasionally observances about the weather or on what Mary happened to be wearing that day. She never wrote about people, but Claire could glean certain big events in Mary’s life by what she wrote about cooking. For instance, in journal number sixty-four, she began to write about jelly and chocolate cake and poultices to ease the itch of chicken pox, so Claire knew that was around the time her two granddaughters had moved in.
Claire looked in the flap of the Karl journal. Number seventeen. She counted her way from the left on the shelf and slid it in with the others. She ran her hand along the thin spines. There were one hundred and ten. Numbers three, nine, twenty-seven and sixty-one were still missing—along with any others over one hundred and ten—presumably still hidden around the house somewhere.
Her hand went back to the Karl journal, wanting to pull it out again and try to figure it out, but instead she pulled out the journal next to it, the next one in chronological order. Journal number eighteen, if she remembered correctly, contained simple recipes, nothing from the flower garden, no tulips or violets or angelica, just things anyone would have around the house. Claire had always thought of it as Mary’s back-to-the-basics journal.
She opened the journal and there, on the very first page, was the recipe for fig and pepper bread.
Claire smiled, because it made her think of her sister. And Sydney’s words earlier that day suddenly made sense. It’s you, not the garden.
Food is just something you grow and recipes are just words written in notebooks.
They are nothing until the right person comes along.
And that’s when the real magic happens.
* * *
Claire had been baking since before daylight that next morning. Dough was rising in bowls everywhere, and the more she baked, the more the loaves seemed to multiply on their own. Every time she opened the oven, she took out more than she’d put in. The air in the kitchen was flecked with flour and scented with yeast.
Claire was kneading roughly chopped figs into a mound of dough when she heard a tap at the back door telling her Russell had finally arrived.
“Come in,” she said, shaping the dough into an oval and setting it on a baking sheet. Then she cut three straight lines into the top of the dough.
Russell opened the door slowly. He was wearing the same gray suit as yesterday. It was a little threadbare, she now realized. He looked around cautiously, to see if anyone else was there. He must be wondering, Had Claire told anyone? Had she changed her mind? This, she thought, was probably the hardest part of the game for him, the most dangerous. Now that she could view the situation more objectively, she was beginning to understand why her mother had associated with him, however briefly. Lorelei had always loved the wild ones, the ones who balanced themselves on moral cusps. It had made her feel alive.
“I was wondering,” Claire said when he finally entered, “when you were asking about me around town, did anyone ever tell you about my grandmother?”
“Your grandmother?” Russell repeated. “No, not in detail.”
“When you knew my mother, did she ever talk about her?” She put on oven mitts and leaned over to pull a baking sheet with two more loaves out of the oven.
He skirted the question by saying, “Now, Claire, Lorelei wasn’t your mother.”
Claire took the loaves off the baking sheet and set them on wire racks to cool with the others. “My grandmother Mary once sold a woman a bottle of her snapdragon oil, and the next day the woman found her family’s lost emeralds, buried in a bean tin in their backyard,” Claire said, as she slid off her oven mitts. “There are all sorts of stories like that about her. I’m actually surprised you haven’t heard them.”
“Smoke and mirrors,” Russell said.
“Maybe in your world, but not mine.”
Russell was confused, and Claire could tell he didn’t like it. “Do you have my check or not?”
“Not yet,” Claire said.
“Today. I said today.”
Claire went to the knife block and slowly pulled out a bread knife. “First, you need to satisfy my curiosity about something.” She took one of the cooled loaves of bread on the counter and cut a thick slice of it. “You read about my candy business, but did you ever actually taste the candy?”
“I don’t have a sweet tooth,” Russell replied.
“That doesn’t surprise me. I’m thinking you could have saved us both a lot of trouble if you had.” She put the slice of bread on a blue plate. She even put a pat of butter beside it. “Here, try this,” she said, sliding the plate in front of him, where he was standing at the end of the kitchen island.
Russell’s eyes briefly fell to the plate, then he focused back on Claire. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” he said.
“Maybe I didn’t make my terms clear. Try this, or we have nothing to discuss.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her, but his feelers were twitching. “You do realize that trying to poison me would just draw more attention to what you don’t want anyone to know?”
“I’m not trying to poison you,” Claire said with a laugh. “That’s fig and pepper bread, made from staples I already had in the cabinets.” She sliced off a piece from the same loaf and took a bite. The crust was hard, but the bread was moist, and the sharp spice of the pepper was a strange complement to the exotic sweetness of the fig. She chewed and swallowed, making a production of how good it was.
But Russell said, “I’m still not eating it.”
Claire smiled. “What do you think this bread will do to you, Mr. Zahler? Change your mind? Make you forget? Make you ashamed? Because I’m capable of making all those things happen. That’s how good I am. That’s how well my grandmother taught me.” She leaned forward and whispered, “Take a bite. I dare you.” She could feel it tingling under her skin, her gift, her intent. It made her feel powerful and grounded. Rooted.
Russell shifted his weight, just slightly. “As I said, I’m not hungry.”
Claire leaned back and shook her head. “I have to admit, the DNA test and forged birth certificate were nice touches,” she said. “But I’m calling your bluff.”
Russell stared at her with those silver eyes, waiting her out, but she simply stared back. He seemed to be using the silence to search for another angle. But suddenly, for whatever reason, Russell decided to break eye contact. He lost his bluster, and it was almost a physical transformation, making him a size too small for his suit. “I left you with too much time to think about it.” He put his hands in his pockets and paced a few steps away. He paced back and said, “If I had demanded the money yesterday, you would have given it to me. I could tell. What happened?”
“I talked to my sister,” Claire said simply. “You underestimate the power of family, Mr. Zahler. I almost did, too.”
“But, Claire, as I said, Lorelei wasn’t your—”
“Don’t insult me again with that, Mr. Zahler.”
Without another word, he turned and walked out. Maybe he decided she wasn’t worth it. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he had bigger fish to fry somewhere else. How he ended up here, with the story of Lorelei, she would never know. His departure was so sudden, she thought of going after him. She wanted to ask questions about her mother, what he really knew about her, what relationship they really had. Small things that might make Lorelei more solid to her. But she didn’t. In the end, she decided she could live with all she would never know about her mother and grandmother. She could live with not knowing what was in the Karl journal. The one true thing was that these women were a part of her life, a part of who she was.
And who she was, was a Waverley.
* * *
Anne Ainsley was washing the dishes from breakfast (her brother said an automatic dishwasher was out of the question for his fine china) when she thought she smelled something burning. She stopped and turned her head, making sure the oven was off. Earlier, she’d cracked the window over the sink to let out some of the hot air from breakfast preparations. She sniffed at the window a few times. It was coming from outside.
She left the dishes in the sink and opened the kitchen door.
Drying her hands on her jeans as she walked out, she looked around and saw smoke coming from her private alcove. Was the heat pump on fire? Oh, great, she thought. She’d lose her one private spot outside.
As she jogged closer, though, she realized that the smoke was coming from the ground, where there were papers burning on the large metal lid from the garbage can. Russell was sitting in one of the chairs in her alcove, tossing papers onto the fire one by one, watching each of them burn.
He didn’t acknowledge her as she sat in the chair opposite him.
She watched as he burned the magazine article about Claire Waverley and her candy business. Then copies of Claire’s tax records. Anne’s knee bounced anxiously, thinking she would have loved to have had a closer look at those. Next, he burned copies of death certificates for two people named Barbie Peidpoint and Ingler Whiteman.
Last, he tossed two identical photos onto the pile (but there had been three copies, Anne remembered, from the suitcase). At the last moment, he reached in and snatched one of the photos back. He shook the singed photo quickly, cooling it off. Then he put it in his interior jacket pocket, where thin tendrils of smoke escaped from his buttonholes.
Russell hadn’t stayed long at breakfast, like he usually did. For a slender man in his eighties, he sure could put it away. But this morning he’d seemed in a hurry. He’d only taken coffee and a few slices of bacon. Then he’d disappeared. Anne thought at first, since this was checkout day, that he’d left without so much as a farewell. She’d even gone to his room to make sure.
But his suitcase had still been there, and she’d felt unaccountably relieved.
“What was all that?” Anne asked, after the flames had died down.
“A ritual of mine,” Russell said, still staring at the smoldering ash. “I’m tying up loose ends before I go.”
“Was that one of your files?” she asked, because by now he’d surely known she’d snooped. As good as she thought she was, not much escaped Russell’s attention.
He didn’t respond.
“The file on Lorelei Waverley?”
He finally nodded.
“What are you doing here, Russell?” Anne said, leaning forward. “I can’t figure you out, and it’s driving me crazy.”
His eyes lifted to meet hers. Instead of answering, he said in his most polite voice, “You have my thanks for the most comfortable stay I’ve had in a while. Checkout is at eleven, correct?”
She sat back in her seat, disappointed. She’d spent the past few nights staring at the carnival flyer she’d taken from his suitcase, staring at the photo of him from when he was young. He’d been a handsome devil. She’d tried Googling Sir Walter Trott’s Traveling Carnival and the Great Banditi, but nothing came up. What a life he must have lived. Her skin itched at the thought of all his secrets. She couldn’t imagine the stories he could tell. The burning sausage and pepper stand. Catching the robber. That was just the tip of the iceberg. She couldn’t believe he was leaving. Nothing, nothing was ever going to be this interesting.
But, then, disappointment was nothing new. She stood. “Take some water from the hose over there and make sure this is out before you leave. Andrew will have a fit if something gets damaged.”
She caught a look of sadness on his face, like her leaving him triggered a sense of loss. He wanted her to be fascinated by him. He wanted her attention. But, stubborn as men were, he wouldn’t tell her. She turned and walked away.
“I was here hoping to blackmail Claire Waverley,” Russell suddenly called after her.
She turned back around and gave him a grunt. “I could have told you that wasn’t going to end well.”
He held his hands out, palms up. “My options are limited these days.”
She walked back to him. He seemed smaller, frailer, sitting there as she stood over him. “What are you going to do now?”
“I told you. I’m going to Florida.”
“How are you going to get there?” She glanced at his polished shoes with the holes in the soles.
“By bus.”
“I have a car. I could take you,” she said, the words out of her mouth before she realized she’d said them. But once they were out, she thought they sounded wonderful, like the first time you hear what will become your favorite song.
Russell shook his head. “I don’t have a heart anymore, Anne.”
“And I don’t have expectations anymore. What?” she asked with a laugh. “You thought I wanted a love affair? You’re old enough to be my father.”
He clutched at his heart dramatically. “I’m wounded.”
She scoffed as she sat back down. “Hardly.”
He considered her for a moment. “If not a love affair, then what?”
“I want stories,” she said. “And I don’t care if they’re lies. I’m tired of picking around in other people’s lives, making things up on my own. I want to hear everything you have to say. I’ve lived here all my life, and all the stories are the same. Every one of my husbands, the same story. But you’ve been everywhere, haven’t you? I want to follow you where you go, and see what you do. I think you’ve been on your own for a while, haven’t you? At some point, you’re not going to make it on your own. I could be there for you. I’m a decent cook. I could take early retirement and get a little money in the mail every month. And there’s over six thousand in the inn safe that my brother won’t miss until he discovers I’m gone.”
He hesitated for just a moment. Then he shook his head dismissively. It was ridiculous, but she was offended, offended that she wasn’t deviant enough for him. “Too messy,” he said. “He’d call the police.”
“In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m nosy,” Anne pointed out. “That’s how I know my brother has flash drives full of video chats he’s recorded, showing him having virtual sex with some woman in Finland who calls herself Karma-licious. He spends hundreds of dollars a month on her. I could take one of the flash drives and then leave one in the safe so he’ll know I know. He won’t call the police.”
That tempted him. She could tell. Food. Money. Those were his weaknesses. He took a deep breath and exhaled with a long, drawn-out sigh. He stared into the smoldering ash of his failed attempt at cash. “Oh, Anne, it’s not as glamorous as you think it is. You have a good life here. I’m going to a charity camp for retired circus workers.”
“Do I look like someone who wants glamour? I think that sounds fantastic.” She reached into her jeans pocket and brought out the flyer she’d taken from him. She unfolded it and showed him. “What do you say, Great Banditi?”
He studied the flyer, looking at the old photo as if through a telescope pointed back in time. “You can keep that, if you’d like. But on the condition that you remember me fondly. There are so few people who do.”
“I find that hard to believe. Who could forget you?”
He smiled derisively. “Oh, many people remember me. But not fondly.”
Anne pushed the flyer into his hands. “I’m not keeping it. I’m going with you. Meet me in front of the inn at five o’clock, after tea. All the new guests will be checked in by then. My brother won’t know I’m gone until the morning.”
She felt her nerves tingling and her stomach jumped with excitement as she walked away, even though Russell called sadly after her, “It’s been a pleasure, Anne.”
* * *
“Checkout is at eleven, Mr. Zahler,” Andrew Ainsley said, sitting at the front desk like a large, lazy sentinel.
“Thank you. I am aware. I’ll be down shortly,” Russell said as he walked up the staircase after making sure the ashes of his Lorelei Waverley file were cool. He reached his room and closed the door behind him. He’d left the curtains open and warm autumnal sunshine was covering the bed, making it glow. He wanted to lie down, to absorb the softness of the mattress one last time.
But he didn’t. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and waited for sounds of other guests leaving for checkout. He would sneak out behind them and avoid Andrew Ainsley at the front desk.
He took the photo out of his pocket, wondering why he had saved it at the last minute. He certainly didn’t like being reminded of his failures.
He was usually good at reading people, and he’d been almost certain Claire Waverley wouldn’t tell anyone about his visit to her, that she wouldn’t immediately call her family for support. Everything he’d learned about her had pointed to a singular, contained person who liked her mysterious air. She wasn’t the kind of person who would risk others thinking there was nothing special about her.
He’d obviously pegged her wrong.
And then there was the moment she’d leaned in and said, Take a bite. I dare you. He’d had such a clear image of Lorelei that it had startled him and he’d felt a cold chill go down his spine.
He hadn’t expected that, either.
But in everything else, in every other detail, he had been meticulous. It should have gone so smoothly. He’d spent countless hours in libraries over the past few decades, when he couldn’t find a place to stay in towns he’d drifted to. He would charm librarians into helping him search for information. Because of his time with the carnival, there were thin lines connecting him to so many people that, if the lines were visible, Russell’s life would look like a string map. He stored away secrets and collected photographs, always on the lookout to add to the folders he’d amassed on people he’d once known. Stories formed this way. Angles.
He looked at the photo of himself, Lorelei, Ingler, Barbie and the child. It all made perfect sense, the story he told. Barbie and Ingler and their solemn little girl. Lorelei and her wild streak, stealing the baby away. Russell an innocent bystander, watching the drama unfurl forty years ago. Naming the child Donna had been a nice touch.
But that was all it was. A story.
The truth was, Russell had met the beautiful, tragic Lorelei at that bar in the photo the very night the photo had been taken. She’d waltzed in with her child, a daughter, Claire. No one told her to leave, to take the baby out of the bar. Lorelei could charm anyone. Russell had bought her a beer and invited her to sit with him and his new friends Ingler and his wife, Barbie. They were drifters, newly hired at the carnival as ticket takers. Barbie had wanted to hold the toddler Lorelei had on her hip, so Lorelei handed her over, and at that moment the bartender had taken a photo with the new camera he’d been showing off.
Later that evening, Russell had taken Lorelei back to his travel trailer. She’d smiled as she’d shown him the camera she’d stolen from the bartender. For the three weeks the carnival was in town, Lorelei had stayed with him, her quiet little girl sleeping in a corner. Russell often forgot she was there. He and Lorelei had fun. She was sly, with a sleight of hand that impressed even him. She was also beautiful and charming and could make everyone love her. She was just the kind of restless soul, the misfit, the society runaway that carnivals attracted. She could have stayed and fit right in. But Russell knew she wouldn’t. At the time, she had been too young to realize you can’t outrun your demons.
On the day the carnival broke camp and hit the road again, Lorelei disappeared with her silent daughter in tow. She stole a few hundred dollars from Russell, but left the camera for him.
In some ways, she had been no different from the many women he’d picked up to share time with in every town. But in other ways, she’d been wholly unique.
He remembered once, one night when they’d gotten drunk in his trailer, she’d told him the story of her strange North Carolina family and their apple tree and the vision she’d had when she’d eaten an apple. He remembered her reaching over and grabbing an apple he’d had on a small plastic table. She’d touched it, and a thread of white frost had snaked over the apple, eventually covering the entire thing. She’d then tossed the cold apple at him with a laugh. “Take a bite. I dare you.”
And he remembered thinking, Everything I make up is nothing compared to her reality.
They’d woken up the next morning, hungover, and she’d never said another word about the incident. Sometimes he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing.
He heard some voices in the hallway, the shuffling of luggage. The couple in the room next to his were walking downstairs to check out.
Russell tucked away the photo, then picked up his suitcase and looked around the room, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
He thought of Anne Ainsley, and he really did hope she would think of him fondly. That was unusually important to him right now. For once in his life, maybe he would leave something good behind, a few conversations and stories she’d remember with a smile, the Autumn the Great Banditi Came to Visit.
He took out the folded carnival flyer she’d given back to him and he set it on the bed.
Then the Great Banditi did what he did best.
He vanished.