Bay walked from the school to her aunt’s house in the growing darkness, having just missed the late buses because of the meeting. She didn’t feel like running today like she usually did, always so anxious to get to the Waverley house. So she crunched slowly through the red leaves on the sidewalk, her face to the sinking sun, thinking about Josh. When she saw herself with him, she saw snow, so maybe this winter something would happen. Maybe she just had to be patient. She’d discovered long ago that getting things to where they belonged was sometimes a timely process, so she’d become good at waiting. If only there wasn’t this longing that felt like actual pain sometimes. No one ever told her it was going to be like this. It was a wonder that anyone fell in love at all.
“Hello again.”
She had just reached the Waverley house. She stopped on the sidewalk and turned. Across the street, she saw the same man she’d seen yesterday on the green downtown, the elderly man in the gray suit. He didn’t have his suitcase with him today.
Bay smiled in surprise. “I see you found Pendland Street.”
“Indeed, I did. Thank you.”
“Are you visiting someone?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said.
Bay was momentarily distracted by the Halloween lights flipping on in Mrs. Kranowski’s yard behind him—orange twinkle lights strung in her boxwood bushes, tattered glow-in-the-dark ghosts hanging in her spindly maple tree. The decorations had obviously been in storage, because Bay could smell mothballs from across the street. Mrs. Kranowki’s elderly terrier, Edward, was at the front window, barking wildly at the man.
When Bay’s eyes flicked back to the man—it had only been seconds—he was gone.
Edward stopped barking, as confused as she was.
Bay’s dark brows knit and she slowly backed away, then ran to the house. She slid up the wet hill, then hurried to the front door, looking over her shoulder as she entered, half expecting the man to have followed her.
First frost falling on Halloween this year seemed to be making everything just that much weirder.
It had been rose candy day in the Waverley house, the scent still permeating the air, even though the kitchen was closed for the evening. It smelled as if there were a garden hidden in the walls somewhere.
The back labels on all the rose candy jars read:
Rose essence is for memory
of long ago first loves,
have a taste and you will see
the one you once dreamed of.
Bay took a deep breath and felt her shoulders relax. But then she gave a start when her aunt appeared at the top of the staircase. She was in a bathrobe, obviously getting ready for her night out. “Bay?” Claire asked. “What’s wrong?”
Bay pushed herself away from the front door. “Oh, nothing. Just this elderly man I’ve seen outside two days in a row. He wanted to know where Pendland Street was.”
“It’s a popular street.”
“He just seemed strange. He was wearing this shiny gray suit, like a salesman, maybe.”
“Hey, Bay!” Mariah said, running down the stairs past Claire. She had brown eyes and curly brown hair like her father, hair that always looked somehow in motion, even when Mariah was still, as if someone were running their fingers through it, lovingly.
“Hey, squirt,” Bay said, giving her a hug. “I’ve got homework. How about you?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s do it together in the sitting room.”
As Bay walked into the sitting room with her backpack, she almost missed the look on Claire’s face, the look that maybe this man in the silver suit was not someone Claire was unfamiliar with.
* * *
Sydney arrived not long after Bay and Mariah had settled on the floor in the sitting room with their homework. She had just come from work and looked beautiful, as always, that perpetual scent of sweet hair spray floating around her like she was encased in fine mist. Again, her hair seemed a little more red than it had that morning. The change was subtle, but getting more noticeable. Her mother was slowly but surely turning into a redhead. Something like this happened to Sydney every year around first frost—an unexplained cut, or an odd change in color. But it was worse this year than most. Her restlessness was worse. It was for all of them, as if they all wanted something they suddenly feared they couldn’t have.
Sydney asked how school was, and Bay gave her vague answers. Sydney finally gave up and headed upstairs to help Claire with her hair. Honestly, if it weren’t for her mom’s skill with hair, they would all have birds’ nests on their heads.
Henry showed up next. He sat with the girls in the sitting room and waited, his blond hair still wet and the scent of Irish Spring soap clinging to his skin from his recent shower. Henry was a good man, a steady man who worked hard and loved unconditionally. He was a grounding force as strong as gravity in Bay and her mother’s lives. Henry was Bay’s adopted father, the only father she’d ever really known. She lost her biological father years ago. Bay could barely remember him now, the edges of his existence corroding like faxed paper. Her mother, always trying to make things right, never talked about him, for the same reason she kept trying to make Bay go out more and be more social, less Waverley. She was trying to make up for things that weren’t her fault. Sometimes Bay just wanted to hug her and tell her that it was all right. But that would put a serious crimp in her effort to avoid talking to her mother, an effort so concerted that it baffled even her sometimes.
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.
As the sisters walked ahead, Tyler and Henry lagged behind. The tall, lanky art professor and the shorter, muscular dairy farmer didn’t have much in common except their wives, but that was enough. Sometimes one big common bond is stronger than a dozen tiny ones. They frequently got together on their own, Henry meeting Tyler at the college for lunch, or Tyler stopping by the dairy after work. When Claire asked what they talked about, Tyler always said, “Man stuff.” She wanted to believe that meant electric shavers, athlete’s foot and maybe golf. But she was pretty sure “man stuff” meant “you and Sydney.”
“Thanks for letting Bay stay over at your house tonight,” Sydney said, looping her arm through Claire’s as they walked.
Sydney was sparkling tonight in a beaded navy dress that looked like something a tiny, pampered housewife would wear to a cocktail party in the 1960s. Her hair was in a French twist, and her blue wrap fell off one elbow and fluttered behind her. Claire’s hair was in a sleek bob, and she was wearing a red floral dress, one of Sydney’s, but it was a little too short and tight on her tall frame. Claire had long ago accepted that she would never have the fine bones and blue eyes most Waverley women had. She was tall and dark-eyed and curvy, genes probably donated by the father she would never know.
“You know it’s no problem. I appreciate her baby-sitting Mariah tonight,” Claire said. It had been a much-needed night out, with wine and laughter, and yet Claire’s mind kept going back to the business she needed to take care of at home, the extraneous things that had nothing to do with making the hard candy itself: email to check, labels to print, boxes to unfold, orders to track.
“I’m looking forward to spending some time alone with Henry,” Sydney said with a wink.
Claire looked over her shoulder at their husbands following them. She wondered if Henry knew what Sydney had in store for him. Probably not. Sydney had been secretive lately.
“Maybe tonight we’ll finally…” Sydney let the words trail off. Claire knew what she was going to say. It came and went in cycles, but never fully went away, Sydney’s desire to have more children. It had taken a while, probably five years of living back in Bascom, married to Henry, life going well, for Sydney finally to trust it, to realize she was back for good. And with that realization came the desire to make it more, more stable, more settled, more to keep her here, as if she were really afraid she might leave again and never come back this time, just like their mother had done.
“Maybe tonight,” Claire agreed. “Love your red hair, by the way.”
“Thank you. I can’t seem to help myself. I just look at it lately and it gets more red.”
“You’re going to have to tell Henry what you’re doing,” Claire said in a low voice. “He’s going to figure out what the red hair and all these nights you’re spending alone together mean. And he’s going to be hurt that you didn’t come to him.” Secrets were in the nature of the Waverleys. The men they chose never expected to be totally enlightened. Claire’s husband Tyler’s way of dealing with this was to be unfailingly patient, in addition to his good-natured disbelief of anything odd. Henry was different, though. He’d been born in Bascom. And he was a Hopkins. All Hopkins men were born with old souls. It was his nature to be depended on.
“I know. I will,” Sydney whispered back. Once they reached the parking lot, she changed the subject and said, “You’re not going to let Bay work for you tomorrow, are you? Saturdays should be spent doing something fun at her age.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll shoo her out of the kitchen,” Claire assured her, though she’d never understood why Sydney never wanted Bay to spend too much time at the Waverley house. But she didn’t question her. Motherhood is hard enough without judgment from others who don’t know the whole story. And the way the sisters mothered was as different as they were. Their own mother had abandoned them here, the names of their fathers long forgotten, to be taken care of by their agoraphobic grandmother, Mary. Claire and Sydney were, the both of them, forging new ground with their own children, having no firsthand knowledge of how to do it right. Just the fact that Sydney wanted to do it again made her seem so brave to Claire.
“And the backyard,” Sydney added.
“And the backyard.”
Sydney shook her head. “I’ll bet you a million dollars she’s out there right now, with that tree.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“She’s doing okay, isn’t she?” Sydney asked.
“I think she’s doing fine. Bay knows herself. She likes herself. She doesn’t care what other people think.”
“But I want her to have a good time in high school.”
“You want her to be popular,” Claire said. “She doesn’t want to be popular. She just wants to be herself.”
“She doesn’t date, or go out with friends, or anything. Has she talked to you about anyone she likes?”
Claire hesitated. She didn’t want to keep this from her sister, but it was Bay’s secret to tell, not hers. “She’s mentioned a boy once or twice. You’ll have to ask her about that.”
“You’re never going to have this problem with Mariah when she turns fifteen,” Sydney said. “She’s so social. That child is your husband made over.”
“I know.”
“Ever get the feeling our daughters were switched at birth, six years apart?” Sydney joked. Meaning to Claire: Ever get the feeling your child isn’t anything like you?
“All the time.” Mariah had no interest in cooking. Like Tyler, she didn’t seem to notice when doors opened on their own, or mysteriously stuck in their frames in the house. When she went out to play, it was always in the front yard, not the garden, though the tree loved her and seemed hurt by her inattention. It morosely threw apples at her bedroom window at night in the summer. And then there was this new best friend, Em. In a period of five days, Em had become everything to Mariah. Em told her what books to read and what games to play and to brush her teeth before going to bed and always to wear pink. It drove Claire crazy. In her mind, Em was a deranged ballerina-child who smelled like bubble gum and only ate McDonald’s Happy Meals.
But it was all misdirected frustration, Claire knew. Because Claire didn’t have time to meet Em. She didn’t know anything about Em’s parents. But Tyler probably did. Over the past few months, Claire had been so busy with Waverley’s Candies that Tyler had taken over most of the parenting duties. Tyler knew all the particulars that Claire used to. Homework. PTA meetings. Ballet and gymnastics moms by name.
Grandmother Mary had always had time for the day-to-day minutia of raising her granddaughters. She had memorized school schedules. She’d ordered notebooks and pencils and new shoes and sweaters when the sisters had outgrown their old ones, and the supplies had been delivered (back when downtown stores still delivered). She’d cooked and gardened and ran her back-door business and still made sure the girls were tended to.
Claire had always assumed the reason Grandmother Mary hadn’t branched out, hadn’t made more money with her special food, was her painful introversion. Now, Claire wondered if Grandmother Mary hadn’t wanted the public to know about her curious recipes because it wasn’t really about the recipes at all, it was about selling the mystique of the person who created them. She also wondered if maybe, just maybe, Grandmother Mary had taken into consideration the effect a growing business would have on her ability to care for her granddaughters, too.
Which made Claire feel worse.
And yet, how could she stop? She’d put so much effort into getting her name out there in the world, success making her like a crow collecting shiny things. There was so much to prove. Was it ever going to be enough? Giving up, especially now with all these doubts, would feel like conceding that her gift really was fiction, a belief contingent upon how well she sold it.
“Hey, are you okay?” Sydney asked when they reached Henry’s truck in the parking lot and Claire had fallen silent.
“Sorry. I’m fine.” Claire smiled. “You know what I thought of last night for the first time in ages? Fig and pepper bread. When I woke up this morning, I could have sworn I even smelled it.”
Sydney took a deep breath, almost like she could smell it, too. “I loved fig and pepper bread. Grandmother Mary only made it on our birthdays. I remember she always said to us, ‘Figs are sweet and pepper is sharp. Just like the two of you.’ But she would never tell us which one of us was fig and which was pepper.”
“I was obviously fig,” Claire said.
“No way! I was fig. You were pepper.”
Claire sighed. “I miss fig and pepper bread.”
“You’re burned out on candy. You need a vacation.” Sydney hugged Claire then got in the truck with Henry. “See you later.”
Tyler put his arm around Claire as they walked to his car, a few spaces away. When Tyler hesitated getting in the car, Claire looked up at him, his curly hair in need of a cut, his beloved Hawaiian shirt almost glowing in neon under his blazer.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, because sometimes he did that, just stopped and daydreamed. She loved that about him. Her own sense of focus never ceased to amaze him. She wasn’t magic to him. She never would be. What she cooked had never had an effect on him, either. Years ago, when they would argue, she would serve Tyler chive blossom stir-fry, because Grandmother Mary always said chive blossoms would assure that you would win any argument, but it never seemed to work on him.
Tyler gestured behind her. “I’m just waiting for Henry to start his truck. Do you think anything’s wrong? He was talking about winterizing his truck. I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe he did it wrong.”
Claire looked over to Henry’s king cab. The windows were beginning to steam and a faint purple glow was emanating from inside. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Wait,” Tyler said. “Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”
“Voyeur,” Claire teased, getting in the car. “Stop looking.”
Tyler got behind the wheel and grinned at her. “We could give them a run for their money.”
“And risk getting caught by one of your students? I don’t think so. Stop it,” she said, when he reached for her. “Let’s go home.”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Home. Okay.” He started the car. “But I have plans for home now.”
“Oh no,” Claire said with a smile. “Plans.”
The road leading off campus was lined with hickory trees, their leaves so bright yellow they shone like fire, as if the road were lined with giant torches. Claire rested her head back as Tyler drove, his hand on her knee. Houses in town were decorated in full Halloween regalia, some more elaborate than others. Jack-o’-lanterns flickered on porches, and red and yellow leaves swirled. This wasn’t her favorite time of year, but it certainly was gorgeous. Autumn felt like the whole world was browned and roasted until it was so tender it was about to fall away from the bone.
Stop feeling so anxious, she told herself. It was just this time of year making her feel this way, making her have these doubts. First frost was almost here. If she could make it until then without a big drama, she felt sure everything would be okay, everything would fall into place and feel right again.
Tyler turned down Pendland Street with its winding curves, uneven sidewalks and sloped yards, which suddenly made Claire remember her grandmother Mary walking her and Sydney to school on this street on autumn mornings. Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She’d hold the girls’ hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year—pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond.
Claire settled back in her seat, starting to relax a little from the wine that evening. She began to wonder, if she had the time, what she would make for first frost this year. Fig and pepper bread, because she’d been thinking about it. (Of course she was fig. Sydney was definitely pepper.) And pumpkin lasagna, maybe with flowers pressed into the fresh pasta before she cooked it. And—
She sat up straight when she saw him again, out of nowhere. The old man on the sidewalk. And not just his gray suit this time. She saw his skin and his eyes and the tiny smile on his lips. He was standing near the corner, his hands in his pockets, like he was on a summertime stroll.
Tyler drove right by him.
“Wait. Did you see that?” she asked.
“See what?” Tyler asked.
Claire looked behind her and he was gone, as if he hadn’t been there at all.
But if that was the case, how could he leave behind that scent, like a smoky bar, now coming through the car vents?
* * *
When Tyler parked in front of their house, his wife got out quickly. She stood on the sidewalk and looked down the street from where they’d come.
Tyler got out and locked the car with the remote, then he walked over to Claire, who was silhouetted by the light from the street lamp, her curves like a map that took him to a different place every time he consulted it. He put his arms around her from behind and bent to rest his chin on her shoulder. Her arms were cold, so he rubbed them.
“What do you see?” he asked.
She stepped away and turned to him. “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Why don’t you go inside and check on Mariah and Bay? I think I’ll take a quick walk around the neighborhood.”
One side of his mouth lifted into a half smile, confused. “At this time of night? In those heels?”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
He took off his blazer and put it around her shoulders. “I’ll go with you, for protection. That Edward is a slippery one. He might have escaped and is now on the prowl.”
Claire laughed at his reference to Mrs. Kranowski’s elderly terrier, who only prowled a few feet into his yard every day, long enough to do his business. Then he skittered back inside, where he stood at the window and barked at birds and bugs and the occasional threatening leaf.
Claire held the lapels of his blazer together, then looked back down the sidewalk. “No, you’re right. It’s too late. Too cold,” she said, turning to walk up the steps to the house.
Tyler watched her navigate the concrete steps slowly in her heels, her hips swaying. All the lights in the house were out except the porch light, which appeared to flutter in happiness as Claire approached. If lights could actually feel happiness, that is.
Tyler had grown up in a manner similar to Claire’s. His parents were potters and potheads who still ran an artists’ colony in Connecticut. Their version of reality wasn’t based on anything anyone else considered normal, either. His parents fed him kale sandwiches, let him draw on their Volkswagen, often walked around nude but dressed him in ridiculous things like T-shirts that read POTTERS DO IT ON WHEELS for school pictures.
A lot of it was embarrassing to remember, but Claire often reminded him of the better parts of his childhood, back when everything seemed possible. He wouldn’t exactly say he’d lost his ability to believe now, but his role with Claire was to be the rational one. He laughed out loud, there on the sidewalk, when he thought of that. He was spacey and forgetful and, before he’d met Claire, he’d traveled restlessly, chasing happiness like it was something he secretly believed couldn’t be caught. He’d taken a teaching position here in Bascom, North Carolina, because, like every decision he’d made up until meeting quiet Claire that night she’d catered an Orion art department party, he thought this was only the next step. He thought he would soon be on his way to someplace different, as distracted and easily led as a cat following a fly. He loved that, within their relationship, he was the grounded one. He loved that she made him something he never thought he’d been capable of being. Someone who stayed.
Tyler snapped out of it, realizing he’d been staring into space. He saw that Claire had reached the front porch. He loped up the steps to catch her. But she crossed the threshold and the door closed just as he reached it. He turned the knob, but it was locked. He took out his key and tried it, but the door still wouldn’t open. He wasn’t surprised. It had done this for years.
He knocked on the door and called, “Claire, I can’t get in!”
He heard the tick of her heels on the hardwood floor as she walked back to the door and opened it. She smiled at him. “If you ask it nicely, it will open for you. All you have to do is talk to it.”
“Mmm–hmm,” he said, putting his arms around her and backing her up. He closed the door with his foot as he kissed her. “So you say.”
He could no more talk to the door than accept the apple-throwing tree. He’d once even developed an elaborate system of strings and bells in the garden as an experiment. As long as the warning system was up, no apples were thrown in the garden, which he took as proof that the tree wasn’t really doing anything. He knew Claire wanted him to believe her explanation instead of trying to make sense of it. But, whether she knew it or not, she needed someone who believed in her, not everything else in this crazy house.
Claire stepped away from him after a few kisses. “Go on upstairs. Check on the girls. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the kitchen,” she said. “I have some catching up to do.”
Her dark eyes were tired. When he held her, he could feel the tension she was holding in her back muscles. The air around her was cool lately, as if she were creating a vacuum with her unhappiness. His wife would tell him what was wrong in time. He’d learned that long ago. He shook his head and took her hand.
“Not tonight,” he said, leading her up the staircase. “Plans. I have plans.”