Garden Spells (23 page)

“All right,” David said. “I guess we know now which one you’re fucking. Everything here looks just
fabulous
.” He lifted a foot, and with one push the table went over, plates breaking, ice skittering into the chicory. Tyler had to jerk Claire back to keep her from getting hit by the falling debris.

“How did you find me?” Sydney asked, to get him to look at her, not Claire. If he kept that up, Tyler was going to do something about it and get shot too. She glanced at Henry. Evanelle had taken a blue crocheted scarf out of her tote bag and was pressing it to his shoulder. There was blood everywhere.

“I found you with these, you stupid bitch.” He held up a stack of photos. One mistake. One of many mistakes. She’d done everything to deserve this, but Henry hadn’t. Claire hadn’t. Maybe she should try to run, give the others time to call for help. Or grab an icicle-size piece of glass from the broken dishes on the ground and try to stab him. She thought she was getting stronger here, but he could still terrify her into submission. She didn’t have the courage to stand up to him then, and she didn’t know how to now.

David was carelessly leafing through the photos. “This one in particular was of great help.
No More Bascom! North Carolina Stinks!
” He held up the photograph of her mother at the Alamo. The tree shrugged, as if recognizing Lorelei. He tossed the photos at Sydney as she backed away from him, away from the table and everyone she loved there.

“Do you realize how you made me look? I brought Tom home from L.A. Imagine my surprise when you and Bay weren’t there.” Her fingertips had gone numb with that news. Tom was his college buddy and business partner in L.A. Looking foolish in front of him had driven David to find her with a gun. He hated to look foolish. She knew that. She knew that over every inch of her body. “Stop backing away, Cindy. I know what you’re doing. You don’t want me,” he turned and faced Claire, “to notice her. And who might you be?”

“I’m Claire,” she said fiercely. “Sydney’s
sister
.”

“Sydney,”
he laughed, shaking his head. “I still can’t get over that. Sister, hmm? You’re taller, more sturdy. You don’t look like you’d break as easily. You’re not quite as pretty, I think, but you have bigger tits. But you’re probably just as stupid or you would have
known
not to take in what was mine.”

Tyler stepped in front of Claire, and David never turned down a fight. He took a step toward Tyler, but Sydney said, “Don’t!”

David rounded on her. “What are
you
going to do about it? You’ll let me do anything. And you know why.” He smiled evilly. “Where is Bay? I saw her here. Come out, kitten. Daddy’s here. Come give Daddy a hug.”

“Stay where you are, Bay!” Sydney yelled.

“Don’t you ever undermine my authority in front of our daughter!” David advanced on her, but then an apple rolled to a stop at his feet. He looked over to the apple tree bathed in shadows. “Is my little Bay behind the apple tree? Does she want Daddy to eat an apple?”

Sydney, Claire, and Evanelle all watched, afraid to move, as David picked up the apple.

Tyler started to move, to take advantage of David being distracted, but Claire caught his arm and whispered, “No, wait.”

David brought the perfectly round pink apple to his lips. The juicy crack of him biting into it echoed throughout the garden, and the flowers twitched and shrank as if in fright.

He chewed for a moment, then he went unnaturally still.

His eyes darted back and forth, like he was watching something only he could see, a movie projected only for him. He dropped the apple and the gun at the same time.

He blinked a few times and looked at Sydney. He then turned and met the eye of everyone in the garden. “What was that?” he said, his voice trembling. When no one answered, he yelled, “What in the hell was that?”

Sydney looked down at the photographs of her mother, scattered around the grass at her feet. She felt a strange sense of calm come over her. She could remember clearly when David found her in Boise, when he beat her with such force in the back of his car. At one point, she knew she was going to die. As his fists came down, she was positive she was watching him kill her. It had been such a surprise to wake up, to find him on top of her. It might have been a surprise to him too. The death of someone else meant nothing to him, after all. But what he just saw meant something. It meant a lot to him.

“You just saw your death, didn’t you?” she said. “Was it your biggest fear coming true, David? Was someone actually hurting you this time?”

David went white.

“Years and years of doing it to other people, and finally someone is going to do it to you.” She walked up to him, close, not intimidated now, not scared anymore. Somewhere in her she had believed he would always be around to scare her at night, to torment her thoughts. But David was going to die one day. And now they both knew it. “Go as far away as you can, David,” she whispered. “Maybe you can outrun it. As long as you’re here, it will come true. I’ll make damn sure it will come true.”

He turned and stumbled a few steps before he ran out of the garden.

As soon as he disappeared, Sydney called out, “Bay! Bay, where are you?”

Bay came running from the side of the garden, nowhere near the tree. She ran into her mother’s arms. Sydney held her tight before they both went to Henry. Sydney went to her knees beside him.

“He’s going to be okay,” Evanelle said.

“You’ve got to stop being a lifesaver,” Sydney said tearily.

Henry smiled slightly. “You really think I’m going anywhere before you tell me what you were trying to make sure of in the kitchen?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. How could he love someone so bad for him? How could she love someone so good?

“I’ll go call the ambulance,” Evanelle said.

“Get the police out here too! Give them a description of him,” Tyler yelled after Evanelle, going for the gun and picking it up. “They might be able to catch that lunatic. What kind of car does he drive, Sydney?”

“He’s gone for good,” Sydney said. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry? What is the matter with you people?” Tyler was looking at them, suddenly realizing they all, even Henry, knew something he didn’t. “Why did he go crazy like that? And how in the hell did an apple roll to a stop at his feet if Bay was all the way over there?”

“It’s the tree,” Claire said.

“What about the tree? Why am I the only one wigged out about this? Did you see what just happened here? Someone needs to get his license-plate number.” Tyler started to run out, but Claire grabbed his arm.

“Tyler, listen to me,” she said. “If you eat an apple from this tree you’ll see the biggest event in your life. I know it sounds impossible, but David probably did see how he was going to die. It chased him away. It chased our mother away. To some people, the worst thing to ever happen to them is the biggest thing to ever happen to them. He’s not coming back.”

“Oh, come on,” Tyler said. “I ate one of those apples and I didn’t go off screaming into the night.”

“You ate an apple?” Claire asked, aghast.

“The night we met. When I found all those apples on my side of the fence.”

“What did you see?” she demanded.

“All I saw was you,” he said, which made Claire’s features go soft as she looked up at him. “What—” He didn’t get to say anything else, because Claire had decided to kiss him.

“Hey,” Bay said. “Where did all the photographs go?”

CHAPTER

14

I
can’t reach them,” Sydney said. Bay was lying on her side on the grass, her head resting on her arm. She’d been dozing that Sunday afternoon in the garden, but the sound of her mother’s voice caused her to open her eyes. Claire and Sydney had propped an old wooden ladder against the trunk of the apple tree. Sydney was at the top, reaching toward the branches. Claire was holding the bottom of the ladder steady.

“I might be able to reach that one,” Sydney said, pointing to a lower branch on the other side, “if we move the ladder.”

Claire shook her head. “It will move it before we get there.”

Sydney made an exasperated sound, hissing through her teeth. “Stupid tree.”

“Hey, I thought I’d find you out here,” someone called. The sisters looked over their shoulders. Evanelle was walking down the path.

“Hi, Evanelle,” Sydney said as she backed down the ladder. She stopped at the fourth rung from the ground and jumped the rest of the way, her skirt billowing in the air like a parasol. That made Bay smile.

“What are you girls doing?” Evanelle asked as she got closer.

“Trying to get the photographs of Mom away from the tree,” Claire said, even though she was only doing it because Sydney wanted to. Bay noticed that Claire had been distracted lately. Today she was wearing two different earrings, one blue and one pink. “It’s been six weeks. I don’t understand why it won’t let us have them.”

Evanelle looked up at the black-and-white squares sticking out among the leaves and apples on its highest branches. “Let it have the pictures. That tree always loved Lorelei. Leave it be.”

Sydney put her hands on her hips. “I’m going to cut off its branches.”

“The branches won’t break,” Claire reminded her.

“It’ll make me feel good to try.”

“It will conk you with apples.” Claire sighed. “Maybe we can get Bay to talk to it again.”

“The only time we’ve even been close to getting to the photos was when Bay said she wanted to see what her grandmother looked like,” Sydney explained to Evanelle. “It lowered a branch to show her but snapped it back when we tried to grab it.” Sydney turned to Bay, who closed her eyes quickly. Ever since that night, the only time she got to hear the good stuff was when no one thought she was listening. “Let’s not wake her.”

“I see she’s still wearing that pin,” Evanelle said affectionately.

“She never takes it off.”

Bay wanted to touch the pin, like she did when she got worried. But they were all watching.

“What brings you by, Evanelle?” Claire asked. Bay cracked an eye open. They had their backs to her now. “I thought you and Fred were having lunch with Steve today.”

“We are. I can’t wait. Steve is going to make something fancy again. I told Fred he was lucky he had a culinary instructor in love with him. He looked at me like I’d told him he had bees in his hair.”

“He still thinks he has to date Steve because of the mango splitter?”

“Oh, it gets better.
I
might as well be dating Steve these days. Just about everywhere they go now, Fred wants me to come along. He’s having a good time. He’s happy. He just doesn’t want to admit it yet. He’s going to figure it out sooner or later. I’m not going to tell him what to do. And Steve is letting Fred call the shots, which is what he needs to do. In the meantime, I get to eat fancy cookin’. I ate snails for the first time last week! How about that.” Evanelle gave a little cackle. “I like gay men. They’re a real hoot.”

“I’m glad you’re having fun, Evanelle,” Claire said.

“Fred’s waiting in the car, but I had to stop by to give you this.”

Bay couldn’t see what it was, just a flash of white paper as Evanelle took something out of her tote bag.

“Baby’s breath seeds?” Sydney said. “For which one of us?”

“Both of you. I had to give it to both of you. Fred took me to the garden shop by the farmers’ market to get it. Oh, and I saw Henry at the market. He was buying apples. He looks real good. He said his shoulder was coming along nicely, that he’ll be as good as new soon.”

“Yes, and he thinks it’s because of the apples.” Sydney smiled and shook her head. “Ever since that night, he can’t eat enough apples.”

“I wish Tyler felt that way,” Claire said. “He won’t go anywhere near the tree now. He still can’t get over it. He says it’s probably the only official police report in history that claims an apple tree ran the suspect off and no one found that unusual.”

They all tried to keep the details of what happened to David after he ran out of the garden that night from Bay, but she would hide behind doors or put her ear to the furnace grates to secretly listen when they talked about it. Her father had been arrested just outside Lexington, Kentucky. He wrecked his SUV during a police chase. When they hauled him out of the wreckage unhurt, he begged them not to take him in. He couldn’t go to prison. He
couldn’t
. He begged them to kill him first. That night he tried to hang himself in the county jail. Something bad was going to happen to him in prison, and he knew it. That had to be what he saw when he ate the apple, the reason he ran, the reason he didn’t want to get caught.

When Bay thought about him, she felt sad. Her father had never belonged anywhere. It was hard not to feel sorry for a life that had no purpose of its own. He was the son of faceless parents who died many years ago. He was the friend of many who were too scared not to be. His only purpose, it seemed, was to come into her mother’s life in order to send her home.

For that, Bay decided, she would be grateful.

For the rest, though, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him. She hoped she wouldn’t remember him long enough to find out.

It had been so scary, seeing her father here. She’d almost forgotten him, what he looked like, how angry he could get. She’d been lulled into happiness before he showed up, and she wanted to be lulled again. It was already starting; just lying in the garden made things better. It was going to take her mother a little longer, but Sydney was being lulled again too. Sometimes Bay would sit at the bottom of the staircase inside the house while Henry and her mother were on the porch, and she would hear Henry sing to her mother, not in song, but in promises. Bay wanted Henry in their lives in a way she couldn’t fully explain. It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good. Her father never did that. Even when her father would laugh, it made everyone around him cringe with the anticipation of that good humor ending. And it always ended.

But she wasn’t going to think of that.

“These must be for you,” Sydney said, handing the seed packet to Claire. “Baby’s breath is for a bride, right? You and Tyler have a wedding date.”

“No, they’re for you,” Claire said, trying to hand them back. “You and Henry are going to elope if he has anything to say about it.”

Bay hoped that was true. Some nights Sydney would sit on the edge of the bed before Bay drifted off to sleep, and she would talk about Henry. She spoke in broad and tentative terms, obviously not wanting to overwhelm Bay with the thought of a new man in their lives. But Bay wasn’t overwhelmed. She was
impatient
. With her dream not exactly replicated yet, Bay was anxious about the way things were going to turn out. What if her father had ruined everything? What if his coming here had thrown everything off?

“Maybe the seeds don’t mean marriage, maybe they mean a baby,” Evanelle said.

Sydney laughed. “Well, that rules me out for now.”

Claire looked thoughtfully at the packet in her hand.

“Claire?” Sydney said.

Claire looked up with a small knowing smile, one that Bay had never seen before, but one that Sydney seemed to immediately recognize.

“Really?”
Sydney exclaimed, taking her sister’s face in her hands. Bay thought she’d seen her mother growing happier lately, but she’d never seen her like this. Yellow joy was radiating from her. When you’re happy for yourself, it fills you. When you’re happy for someone else, it pours over. It was almost too bright to watch. “Oh, my God.
Really?
”

Claire nodded.

Bay watched the three of them hug, then they walked out of the garden in a Waverley cluster, talking with their hands, touching, laughing.

The tree was shaking with excitement, like it was laughing along with them.

It threw an apple after them.

Bay rolled onto her back after they’d left the garden. She stretched in the grass under the tree. As the tree shivered, there was the sound of paper flapping above her. She looked up at the photographs the tree had picked up that night six weeks ago. They were fluttering slightly. The sun was now beginning to fade the images, and Lorelei was slowly disappearing.

The longer Bay stayed out here, the more her father faded too.

She loved this place so much.

Things were only halfway perfect, because there still weren’t any sparkles and rainbows on her face, but wasn’t this good enough? Everyone was happy. It was as close to her dream of this place as she was probably going to get. And it was close. So close. She really shouldn’t worry.

She put her hand to the brooch automatically, for comfort.

Her fingers suddenly clutched the pin.

Wait a minute.

Was that it? Was it really so easy?

She pinched her lips together as she unhooked the brooch from her shirt. She was so excited that her fingers were clumsy and it took several tries.

The grass was soft like in her dream. And the scent of herbs and flowers was exactly like in the dream. There was the sound of paper flapping all around her as the tree continued to shake. She lifted the starburst rhinestone pin above her head breathlessly. Her hand was trembling now, not wanting to be disappointed. She moved the pin back and forth until suddenly, like a Christmas cracker, the light broke through and multicolored sparkles rained down on her face. She could actually feel them, the colors so cool they were warm, like flakes of snow.

Her entire body relaxed and she laughed. She laughed like she hadn’t laughed in a long time.

She needed this. She needed this proof.

Yes, everything was going to be okay now.

Perfect
, in fact.