First Frost (15 page)

He seemed flummoxed by her response. “I don't know,” he said. “I get cold sweats when I sit in my car in the mornings, trying to make myself go to school. I go to sleep at nine at night because I'm so exhausted. Sometimes my cheeks hurt from smiling, from pretending I'm okay with where my life is heading.”

The answer was so obvious that she thought he was playing with her at first. Then she realized he wasn't. “Then stop pretending,” she said.

He gave her a look, like she'd said something cute. “I bet you've never pretended a day in your life,” he said.

“You say that like it's easy.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I daydream of mowing,” he said. “I love watching when the soccer fields are mowed. It seems so soothing, to ride on a lawn mower, back and forth, for hours.”

The late buses pulled in, and the Wide Open Spaces kids grabbed their backpacks and band instrument cases and started lining up.

Bay stood. “You could get a job at the soccer arena in Hickory. I bet they do a lot of mowing there. And playing. And teaching,” she said.

Josh watched her as she shouldered her backpack. He looked a little bewildered, as if he had steeled himself for something unpleasant. Bay did a mental eye-roll. Did he really think just talking to her would be so awful?

“Would you like a ride home?” he asked.

“As thrilling as it was the first time, no, thanks. The buses are already here.” She didn't mention she was grounded.

Josh stayed seated as she descended the steps.

“Will you be out here tomorrow?” he called.

“I'm here every day,” she said as she got in line.

Just before she stepped onto the bus, Josh called, “Bay!”

She turned to him. He stood up, wincing a little, his hand on his side, favoring his rib cage. “Tell your friend Phin I said thanks.”

“For what?”

“Watch the video,” he said, then slowly walked up the steps and disappeared.

*   *   *

She tried to watch the video on her phone on the bus ride to her aunt Claire's, but her battery was dead and she needed to recharge it. It didn't matter anyway, because she had to give her phone to her mom when she got home.

The initial terms of Bay's inaugural grounding were as follows:

1) Sydney would take Bay to school in the mornings and pick her up at her aunt Claire's in the evenings.

2) Bay would surrender her phone, as soon as she found it.

Sydney said there might be more items to add to the list, she just hadn't thought of them yet. Bay had gone over the terms in her head, finding all sorts of loopholes. Like, there was nothing that said she couldn't actually sit on the steps of the school and talk to Josh, though the likelihood of such a thing happening was so astronomically slim that her mother probably thought it wasn't worth mentioning at the time.

Another loophole: Her mom didn't actually say she couldn't leave the house for specific purposes, although that was what a grounding implied.

Her mother seemed to be playing this by ear. This surprise grounding, which happened a full twenty-four hours after the alleged crime, was supposedly because Bay didn't ask permission for someone other than Phin's mother to take her home. At least, that's what Bay's obviously confused father told her, trying to make her mother's decision make sense.

But Bay knew there had to be more to it than that.

Because as many times as Sydney had encouraged Bay to get out and meet people and date, the moment Bay told her she liked someone, she reacted like
this.
Which led Bay to the conclusion that it wasn't the crime her mother had a problem with. It was the boy.

Bay's mother didn't like Josh Matteson. And Bay had no idea why.

*   *   *

“Claire, you need a website,” Buster said as Bay entered the kitchen in the Waverley house a half hour later.

Claire smiled at Bay. Bay gave her a faraway look in return, perhaps a little too content for someone who had just been grounded for the first time.

“Who doesn't have a website?” Buster continued. “I can't believe you still fax.”

“I don't know how to make a website,” Claire said as she stirred the large copper pot of sugar and water and corn syrup, waiting for the mixture to boil. Once it boiled, she would watch the food thermometer rise until it was time to add the flavoring and coloring. Lemon verbena again today.

The labels on all the lemon verbena candy jars read:

Lemon verbena essence is to soothe,

producing a comforting quiet.

Wise is a voice with nothing to prove.

Everyone should try it.

Buster looked around furtively, then whispered, “Okay, don't tell anyone this, but there's a top-secret profession called
web designers
who will do it all for you. I'll hook you up, but you have to swear to secrecy.”

Claire shook her head at him. She'd met him last summer at one of her catering jobs, where he'd been a waiter. Later, out of all the applicants from Orion's cooking school looking for part-time work, she'd chosen him. Sometimes she doubted this decision. He never shut up.

“Okay, forget the website,” Buster said. “You need to accept the offer from Dickory Foods. That business advisor you consulted said you should sell within a year, before you lose momentum. So, you sell the business, but still stay in charge of it. Think of it: expansion, advertising, the plant in Hickory. Can you imagine? Not having to stir every day? Not having to put labels on jars? Not having to assemble mailing boxes? No more of those biodegradable packing peanuts stuck to my butt with static when I leave this house?”

“You like when the packing peanuts stick to your butt,” Claire pointed out.

“I do enjoy the attention.”

“Just crack those molds and get to work.”

The doorbell rang and Bay went to get it. She hadn't said a word since she'd arrived.

“What's with her?” Buster asked.

Claire just shrugged.

“You have some visitors,” Bay said, smiling as she walked back into the kitchen with Evanelle Franklin and her companion Fred. Evanelle was eighty-nine now, tethered to oxygen and wearing thick glasses that made her rheumy eyes look huge. Fred, calm and pressed, was always beside her, carrying her portable oxygen container like a purse. He let her do all the talking, content to be her straight man.

Fred had lived with Evanelle for years, and Claire knew he loved the tiny old woman as much as Claire did. He'd become a fixture in their family over the past ten years. He'd been shy and uncertain when he'd first moved in with Evanelle, coming to parties in the Waverley garden with some trepidation, as if worried he might be asked to leave.

Evanelle and Fred went everywhere together now, and most people referred to them as a single entity, EvanelleandFred, which tickled Evanelle.

“Evanelle, I didn't know you were coming by!” Claire couldn't leave the pot, but she wanted to go hug her. Evanelle was like a favorite story she didn't want to end. She'd known Evanelle, a distant Waverley cousin, most all her life. Her childhood memories were full of strange gifts Evanelle would give her that Claire would always need later, and of how Evanelle and Grandmother Mary would sit in the kitchen and share stories and laugh. It was the only time Grandmother Mary ever laughed, with Evanelle.

Evanelle's health had been declining lately, and every time Claire saw her she seemed smaller, like she was slowly burning away and soon Claire would hug her and step back with only ash in her hands.

“I have something to give you,” Evanelle said, holding up a paper bag. “It came to me the other night.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Claire asked Evanelle and Fred. “I can get Bay to make some. I don't think her mind's on candy today, anyway.” Bay had been staring at her shoes, a slight smile on her lips, but looked up, blushing, when Claire said that.

“No, that's okay,” Evanelle said. “We were just on a drive and thought we'd stop by. Fred said I needed to get out of the house for a little while, that I needed airing out.”

“I never said that,” Fred said.

“Okay, I added the airing-out part,” Evanelle amended.

“How was your doctor's appointment last week?” Claire asked.

“He gave me some bad news. I'm old.”

That made Buster laugh. He walked over to Claire and took the spoon from her. “I'll take care of this. You visit with Evanelle.”

Claire lifted off her apron, then took the bag from Evanelle, finally getting to hug her. She smelled like Fred's cologne, which always amused Claire. Evanelle said it was just because she spent so much time with him, but Fred and Claire had a theory that she would dab some on her neck when Fred wasn't looking. She always said she liked the way men smelled. “Come to the sitting room with me, Evanelle. Bay, you come, too.”

“Stay here and talk with Buster,” Evanelle told Fred when he started to follow them. She took her portable oxygen purse from him and stage-whispered, “He's a cute one. You should flirt with him.”

“Evanelle!” Fred said. “He works for me at my market!”

“I'm just saying it can't hurt. You're a little rusty.”

“I'm currently in a short-term relationship with someone in my bread class, but you can practice on me,” Buster said. “I don't mind.”

Fred clasped his hands behind his back awkwardly, not looking at all happy. “So this is what you do before you come to work at the market in the evenings,” Fred said, eyeing Buster warily. “You said you couldn't work afternoons for religious reasons.”

“Candy is my religion.”

Claire led Evanelle out of the kitchen. Once in the sitting room, Bay went to the window and stared out as Claire sat beside Evanelle on the couch. As small as Evanelle was becoming, her large tote bag containing things like paper clips and plastic flowers and red ribbon and vinegar, all things she might feel the need to give someone, seemed huge now in comparison, like it was now carrying
her.
She set her tote bag and portable oxygen on the floor with a sigh.

It seemed like just yesterday the old woman was energetically walking around the college track every morning, ogling fine male posteriors, then stopping by for coffee and cake here at the Waverley house. That was before the Year Everything Changed, when Claire met Tyler, when Sydney came home, when Fred moved in with Evanelle. Claire wouldn't trade her life now for anything, but sometimes she thought fondly of that time before. Things had been so much simpler, clearer, than they were these days.

“Go on,” Evanelle said, pointing to the paper bag. “Open it.”

Claire opened it and pulled out an old wooden-handled spatula.

“That belonged to your grandmother Mary,” Evanelle said. “She gave it to me one of the times she tried to show me how to cook. When she was younger, she didn't want anyone to compete with her in the kitchen, even though she was so talented no one could compare. She was mesmerizing, wasn't she? The way she would pour and stir and chop. It was like music. She even danced to it, remember?”

Claire smiled, staring at the spatula. “I remember.”

“In her later years, she didn't mind so much, sharing what she knew. I think it was a little vanity on her side. She wanted to pass her gift along, so she would be remembered. But I didn't care for cooking, so she liked having you in the kitchen with her, to teach. I had a dream about Mary the other night. I knew I had to give that spatula to you.”

“Thank you, Evanelle. I'm sure it will come in handy,” Claire said, though she knew it wouldn't, not right now, with all this candy. Maybe later, when everything calmed down. “You know, I was thinking recently, why didn't Grandmother Mary ever do anything big with her talent? Why did she keep it at the back door?”

“Mary didn't do big because it would have been too much work,” Evanelle said with a smile. “She just wasn't motivated. She liked when things were easy.”

“So she never thought she needed to prove anything?” Claire asked.
Like me.

Evanelle's eyes, magnified by her glasses, blinked twice, as if a memory had suddenly come to her. “I wouldn't say that. She had her share of insecurities, especially after her husband left.”

“But she never cared what people thought of her,” Claire said. “She was confident in what she could do, right?”

Evanelle shook her head. “She thought
too
much about what other people thought. That's why she became such a homebody.”

Claire was skirting around what she really wanted to ask:
But her gift was real, wasn't it? Not some hoodoo she used to trick locals into thinking she could affect their emotions by using flowers from her garden? Not something she kept small, because her secret could stay small that way?

But she didn't ask. It would sound ludicrous, and it might even offend Evanelle and Bay, two of the most clearly gifted people she knew. Of
course
Waverley gifts were real. At least, theirs were.

Evanelle looked over at Bay, silhouetted in the window. “How's your mama, Bay? I need to make an appointment with her to get a perm.” Evanelle patted her frizzy gray hair.

Bay turned and smiled at Evanelle. “She's fine.”

“Bay went to her first Halloween dance on Saturday night,” Claire told Evanelle. “She dressed as Grandmother Mary. She wore one of the old dresses from Grandmother Mary's fairy picnics. We found some old photos. Why don't you go get them, Bay?”

Bay left the room and went upstairs.

“What's wrong with her?” Evanelle leaned over and whispered in her loud nonwhisper.

Claire turned to make sure Bay was already up the stairs before she said, “She's in love, and her mother isn't happy about it.”

“Why not?”