First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
To the magical Andrea Cirillo
For your faith in a strange little garden book
1
Bay Waverley-Hopkins raced down Pendland Street, her backpack bouncing and her dark hair flying behind her like blackbirds. The neighborhood homeowners always knew when she ran by, because they suddenly felt the desire to organize their sock drawers and finally replace those burned-out lightbulbs they’d been meaning to. We need to set things in order, they all thought as Bay ran down the street every afternoon after school. But, as soon as she passed, their thoughts quickly drifted back to where they’d been before—what was for dinner, why was a husband so moody lately, could a load of laundry wait another day.
Bay sped up as she approached the Waverley house. It was a rambling old Queen Anne with a wraparound porch and, Bay’s favorite thing about it, a single, lovely turret. It had been the first house built in the neighborhood in the late 1800s, before even Orion College was founded, back when Bascom, North Carolina, had been nothing more than a muddy rest stop for people traveling through to the western mountains. The surrounding houses on the street had later tried to imitate the Waverley house in architecture, but nothing could ever compare. At least, not to Bay.
Instead of taking the steps from the sidewalk to the house, Bay ran up the steep lawn, sliding on the wet grass. Last night it had rained in sheets and strong winds had finally blown autumn into Bascom as if by the sharp sweep of a broom. There was a discernible chill in the air now, and wet leaves were everywhere—in yards, on the sidewalks, in the street, stuck on cars. It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.
Bay hung her backpack on one of the bare branches of the tulip tree in the front yard, and it was still swinging as she took the front porch steps two at a time and opened the door.
The outside world might have finally turned into autumn, but inside the Waverley house it still smelled of summer. It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart scent that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds shaped like true-love hearts.
Maybe it was Bay’s imagination, but the house always seemed to preen a little when she entered, the dim windows shining a little brighter, the quilts straightening themselves on the backs of couches. Bay’s mother said that Bay loved this place too much, that she was a lot like her great-grandmother Mary that way. Bay had never met her great-grandmother Mary, but all the same, she knew that her mother wasn’t giving her a compliment. Her mother had never truly felt at home growing up here.
Trying to catch her breath from her autumn dash, Bay walked through the foyer, past the sitting room decorated with the same old furniture from when her great-grandmother Mary ran a boardinghouse here, and into the large renovated commercial kitchen. Her sneakers, almost covered by the frayed hems of her baggy jeans, squeaked against the polished floor.
The air in the kitchen was heavy with sugary steam. Bay found her quiet aunt Claire at one of the stoves, her short, dark hair pulled back with mismatched clips belonging to Claire’s nine-year-old daughter, Mariah. Claire’s shoulders were tense from stirring and pouring the sugar and water and corn syrup, in the same position, in the same large, copper sugar pots, into the same molds, every day for months now.
Her aunt Claire used to run a successful catering business, Waverley’s Catering. What Claire could do with the edible flowers that grew around the cranky apple tree in the backyard was the stuff of legend. Everyone knew that if you got Claire to cater your anniversary party, she would make aioli sauce with nasturtiums and tulip cups filled with orange salad, and everyone would leave the party feeling both jealous and aroused. And if you got her to cater your child’s birthday party, she would serve tiny strawberry cupcakes and candied violets and the children would all be well behaved and would take long afternoon naps. Claire had a true magic to her cooking when she used her flowers. Each Waverley had something different about her, but Claire was the most unusual in a family of unusuals. And Bay loved that about her.
But everything changed when Claire started Waverley’s Candies less than a year ago. Last winter, Claire had been desperately looking for something to soothe her daughter Mariah’s sore throats, ones that made Mariah lose her voice and kept her home from school for days on end. Rooms became tight when Mariah was sick, like the house wringing its hands. One day, when Claire had been fretting over another bout of Mariah’s laryngitis, she heard something fall in her kitchen office, and she walked in to see that one of her grandmother Mary’s old kitchen journals had fallen to the floor. That’s when Claire found the hard candy recipe, tucked between instructions on how to rid the garden of shiny green beetles, and ingredients for husband-catcher cake.
The candies soothed her daughter’s throat, and then became the newest thing everyone in town had to try. If it came from a Waverley, after all, there had to be something curious about it. When mothers at school heard about the candy, they found themselves knocking on Claire’s door at two in the morning, bleary-eyed and desperate for something to ease sore throats that were keeping their children (and therefore the mothers) up all night.
When winter passed, the candies—beautiful, jewel-colored confections the size of wren’s eggs and covered with powered sugar—began to be asked for as add-on orders for birthday celebrations Claire catered, then as bulk orders for trendy candy bars at graduations and weddings. It was at Lux Lancaster’s wedding at Harold Manor, where the gift bags all contained small jars of Claire’s honey-filled lavender hard candies, that Lux’s cousin’s girlfriend, who worked for Southern Living magazine, first tasted them. She wrote an article about the magical light purple drops on her plane trip back to Alabama, the words pouring out like water. She barely remembered writing the piece, feeling euphoric and a little drunk. When the article appeared in the magazine, then was shared through social media, orders began to flood in. People outside of Bascom were now curious about this curious candy, curious about the curious Claire Waverley who made them.
With her catering business, Claire used to hire help for bigger parties, but did the rest by herself. Her catering business had been the only size it could have been, just big enough for her to handle. But her candy business was getting so much attention now that it was busting at the seams. Bay worked for her aunt Claire every day after school. And Claire had another employee, a culinary student from Orion College named Buster, who was putting in so many hours that he was almost full-time.
And yet it always felt like they were running behind.
Changing from catering to candy had changed Claire, too. She was always tired, always working, and sometimes she would get this look on her face that was almost homesick. But she never asked for help, and no one could approach her about it. One of many peculiar things about Claire was that if she didn’t want to talk about something, she could spring shut as quickly as a mousetrap.
When Bay walked into the kitchen that afternoon after school, Buster was talking, as he usually was. He could go on for hours, filling the kitchen with constant chatter that bounced off the stainless steel walls.
“So I told him his bread was ugly, and he called me a dough diva. A dough diva. Of all the nerve! We’re going out on Saturday.” Buster was tall and full-lipped with cropped hair that was dyed blue at the tips. When he finally noticed Bay had arrived, he stopped sifting the fine powdered sugar over a large batch of hard candies, just popped from their molds. “Hello, beautiful. Took the late bus again? I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.”
“‘Dough diva’?” Bay asked. “I like it.”
“I’m so tired of bread. I can’t wait for next semester, when we do things with meat. What does your T-shirt say today?” Buster asked Bay. Bay showed him and he read, “‘I Have Not Yet Begun to Procrastinate.’ Oh, please. You probably had all your homework done before the bus dropped you off. Do you have any big plans this weekend? I hear there’s a Halloween dance at your school on Saturday. Are you going with anyone special?” He wagged his eyebrows, one of them pierced.
Bay felt her face get hot, so she turned away and crossed the kitchen. She washed her hands and put on an apron.
Claire watched her, but didn’t say a word. Unlike with Bay’s mother, Bay had a silent understanding with her aunt Claire. Claire understood things about Bay without Bay having to say a word. Two months ago, when Bay had walked into this kitchen after her first day of tenth grade, her first year in high school after the purgatory that was junior high, Claire had known something had happened. Bay’s mother had, too, but in a vague way. Claire had honed in on the problem right away and had asked, “Who is he?”
“No. No one special,” Bay said to Buster, still turned away from him. “I’m just helping with the dance decorations.”
“A face like that and the boys aren’t falling over you.” Buster tsked. “I don’t understand it.”
“If you were from here, you would,” Bay said.
“Oh, please. Everyone in this town always says that, like you have to be born here to understand things. I understand plenty. You’re only as weird as you want to be. Okay,” Buster said to Claire, taking off his apron, “now that reinforcements are here, I’m off to my shift at the market.”
“How many jobs do you have now?” Bay asked him.
“Just three.”
“And yet you still have time to date?”
He rolled his eyes. “Like it’s that hard. Bye, girls!” he said as he walked out of the kitchen. Seconds later, they heard him yell, “The front door won’t open again! I’m trapped! I’m going to die in this house, having never known true love! Oh, wait. Now it’s open. Oil your hinges!”
After the door closed, Claire turned to Bay. “I’ve been thinking. I could make something for you. To give to the boy, the one you like,” she said, careful not to mention his name. “I could make mint cookies, and tea with honeysuckle syrup. Mint to clear his thoughts and honeysuckle to help him see. He’ll be sure to notice you then.”
Bay shook her head, though she’d considered it dozens of times, sometimes just because she wanted her aunt to cook something that wasn’t hard candy again. “I doubt he would eat anything I gave him. He would know it came from you.”
Claire nodded in understanding, though she seemed a little disappointed.
Bay suddenly put her hand to her chest, as if she just couldn’t take it anymore, as if there were a knot there, all sinewy and hard, pressing against her rib cage. Sometimes it was an actual, physical ache. “Is it always like this?”
“You should talk to your mother,” Claire said simply, her dark eyes calm and sympathetic. As different as they were in looks, in temperament, in everything, Claire and Bay’s mother talked every day. Sometimes, when Bay would walk into the living room at home, she’d find her mother, Sydney, leafing through hair magazines, the phone at her ear, saying nothing. No sound came from the phone either.
“Who are you talking to?” Bay would ask.
“Claire,” her mother would answer.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“We’re just spending some time together,” her mother would say, shrugging.
The Waverley sisters hadn’t been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice. Bay didn’t know many particulars about their childhood. But from listening to conversations through open windows and behind couches as a child—the only way she’d been able to learn any of the good stuff—Bay had gleaned that they were basically orphans. Their mother, a wild, lost soul, had brought them here to the Waverley house when Claire had been six and Sydney a newborn. They had been raised by their reclusive grandmother Mary. Claire had embraced everything Waverley as easily as breathing, but Sydney had rejected the notion that she was anything but normal until much later in life.
And, as magical as her mother was, Bay still wasn’t sure she totally accepted it. It was one of many reasons Bay felt closer to her aunt.
Regardless, it was just a matter of time before Claire told Bay’s mother about the boy.
“I don’t think Mom would understand,” Bay said.
“She would understand. Trust me.”
“You know me better than she does.”
Claire shook her head. “That’s not true.”
Bay turned to look out the window over the sink. The back garden was surrounded by a tall iron fence covered in honeysuckle vine two feet thick in places, and topped by pointy finials, like that of an old cemetery. She couldn’t see the tree, but she knew it was there. That always gave her a small measure of comfort.
“It’s finally getting cold. When will the apple tree bloom?” she asked. It was autumn, and the only time the strange apple tree in the Waverley’s backyard, the one that had been there long before the house was built, was dormant. For no reason anyone could explain, the tree bloomed all winter, then it produced small pink apples all spring and into the summer. Some of Bay’s fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into playing catch. But as fall approached, the tree would lose its leaves overnight, and then it could do nothing but shake its bare branches miserably until the first frost of the season startled it back awake. The entire family felt its frustration.
“The almanac is calling for first frost on Halloween this year,” Claire said. “A week from Saturday.”
“That’s late. Later than I ever remember. Will you have a party?” Bay asked hopefully.
“Of course,” Claire said, kissing the top of Bay’s head as she passed. Copper pot in hand, she began to pour the tart, yellow, lemon verbena candy syrup into small round molds to harden. “We always celebrate first frost.”
On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it. It was a relief, putting their world back in order. They always got restless before first frost, giving their hearts away too easily, wanting things they couldn’t have, getting distracted and clumsy and too easily influenced by the opinions of others. First frost meant letting go, so it was always reason to celebrate.
Everything was okay after that.
To Bay, the day couldn’t get here soon enough.
Because the way things had been building up lately, there was a lot that could go wrong between now and then.