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?”
“Because it’s Josh Matteson.”
“Hoo-boy,” Evanelle said. “He’s a cute one. But that’s tough luck for her. Mattesons and Waverleys have never been a good combination.”
“I know,” Claire said unhappily as Bay brought the shoe box downstairs and handed it to Claire, then went back to the window.
“I remember these,” Evanelle said as she and Claire went through the box. “Your grandmother was so pretty. All these men loved her. They were her boarders. She had a waiting list a mile long.” Evanelle hesitated when she saw one photo. She took it out of the box and held it up. “There’s Karl. Never thought I’d see him again.”
“Who is he?”
Evanelle made a clicking sound with her false teeth. “He’s your grandfather. Didn’t you know that? Mary got rid of him when she was pregnant with your mama. Cheating son of a gun. She was never the same after that. He changed her.”
“Changed her? How?” Claire took the photo from her and looked at it. Karl was standing outside the garden gate. There were apples at his feet, as if the apple tree had been throwing them at him. He was smiling, his hands in the pockets of his striped suit. He looked jaunty and a little smug. As many times as she’d seen this photo over the years, finding the box of photos always when looking for something else, she’d never known.
“People like us will never really understand,” Evanelle said. “We fell in love with the men we were supposed to be with right off the bat. But women with broken hearts, they change.”
Evanelle took a few deep breaths through the tubing at her nose. A slightly alarmed expression came over her face, the way she always looked these days when she thought she’d been out too long and might run out of oxygen.
“I should go home. Fred?” Evanelle called in an airy voice.
In a few steps he was there, as if he’d been waiting close by. “I’m here.”
“Did that boy teach you a thing or two?” Evanelle asked as she stood.
Fred took the portable oxygen tank from her. “Evanelle, I’m forty years older than he is.”
“I’m just saying you need practice.”
Claire set the photos and the spatula aside, then she and Fred walked Evanelle to the front door. The air was as sharp and cool as lime ice when they stepped onto the porch, and they all stopped with the invigorating shock of it.
“It’s getting colder,” Evanelle said, pulling her fuzzy black coat up around her neck. “First frost should be here soon.”
“On Saturday, according to the almanac,” Claire said. “Halloween. I’ve been going out to check the tree every day. I think it’s almost ready.”
“Are you going to have a party?” Evanelle asked.
“Of course.”
“I can’t wait. You know, I’m a little antsy this year.” Evanelle shivered. “I don’t know why. Have you had any unexpected visitors?”
“No,” Claire said. “Why?”
“Autumn winds bring strangers. That’s what my daddy used to say. He wasn’t a Waverley. He was a Nuguet. Nuguets know their weather,” Evanelle said as Claire and Fred helped her down the front steps and into Fred’s Buick, parked at the sidewalk.
“I worry about her,” Fred said, once they’d gotten her inside the car and closed the door.
“I know you do,” Claire said, folding her arms across her chest against the chill. “She’s getting a little off track. But still doing great for eighty-nine.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do without her,” Fred said pensively. “It’s like I miss her already.”
Claire waved good-bye and waited until the car was out of sight before finally going back inside. Bay was still at the window and followed her to the kitchen.
“It’s about a boy,” Buster announced when they entered.
Claire looked at Bay, who had just washed her hands and was putting on clear plastic disposable gloves to funnel the hard candies into jars. “You told him?” Claire asked with surprise.
“She didn’t have to,” Buster said, shaking his head. “I always know when it’s about a boy.”
“You know that old man in the gray suit I saw a few days ago?” Bay said, changing the subject quickly. “I just saw him again when I was standing at the window.”