Sydney wasn’t expecting that one. She thought about it and said, “I don’t remember her very well. She left Bascom when she was eighteen, too. She came back for a while. She was nine months’ pregnant with me and Claire was six. A few years later, she left again for good. She was a troubled person. Evanelle once said that it was because she ate an apple from the tree in the backyard and saw what the biggest event in her life would be. She saw how she would die in a horrible car pileup, and that’s the reason she went so wild, like she was trying to make something even bigger happen, so it wouldn’t come true.”
“She ate an apple?” Bay grimaced involuntarily at the thought of it. “Waverleys never eat the apples!”
“I don’t know if it’s true, sweetheart. I’ve never put much stock in it. It’s like a lot of things when it comes to our family. Rumor. Myth. I think she might have had mental problems. What I remember of her was manic, and when she wasn’t manic, she was depressed. And Grandmother Mary tried her best with me and Claire, but she was a peculiar lady.”
Bay started playing with the ends of her long hair, making tiny braids. “What was your mother’s Waverley magic?”
“Claire and I have talked about it. We don’t really know.” Sydney shrugged.
“Is that all you remember of her?”
“I have one strange memory of her. It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this,” Sydney said with a laugh. “I was young, maybe three or four, and I was sitting in the grass somewhere, maybe the garden, sweating and crying because I’d fallen and scraped my elbow. My mother knelt in front of me, trying to tell me it was all right. That didn’t work. The more attention I got, the more hysterical I became. I was a little … dramatic as a child.”
Bay smiled, as if not much had changed.
“Anyway, I remember her saying to me, ‘Watch this.’ She opened her hand in front of me, but nothing was there. But then she blew on the palm of her hand and sparkles of ice flew into the air and landed on my face. It was so soft and cool.” Sydney put her hand to her face, remembering. “I’ll never know how she did that. It was the middle of summer. I was so startled I stopped crying.”
Bay was transfixed, like Sydney was telling her a fairy tale. Which she supposed she was. The Waverley version. “Who is your father?”
“I don’t know,” Sydney said. “She never told me. Claire doesn’t know who her father is, either. But we’re fairly certain it’s not the same man.”
“What did Grandmother Mary think of you dating Hunter John Matteson?” Bay asked, dashing Sydney’s hope that they wouldn’t get back to that.
Sydney took a deep breath, trying to remember something she’d tried so hard to forget. She reached for the Mallomars. She took one and handed one to Bay. “She liked it. I think she was a little conceited when she was younger, and she liked to think of me marrying into the Matteson family as her coup. A little like how teaching Claire to be such a good cook was her coup. We are her legacies, for good or for bad.”
“Josh is different,” Bay said with absolute certainty.
Sydney looked her daughter in the eye, the serious look, the one that said pay attention. “I’ve always challenged you to explore more, to look outside of this Waverley legacy, because I never wanted you to limit yourself. But you’ve always challenged me right back. There’s never been a time in which you weren’t absolutely certain of who you were and where you belong. I never, ever want a boy to take that away from you. I don’t want anyone to ever make you believe you’re someone else, and then take it all back and say, ‘I thought you understood.’”
“I can’t make him feel what I feel for him. I know that,” Bay said. “But I do know, without a doubt, that I’m meant to be in his life in some way. And he’s meant to be in mine.”
“If you’re meant to be in his life, why is he sneaking around with you?” Sydney pointed out. “Why not just be open about it?”
Bay was silent, that stubborn tilt to her chin a familiar sight to Sydney. She always looked like that when someone disputed her sense.
“Bay, I can guarantee you one thing: Josh knows about me and his father. He knows, and he’s doing this anyway. And while his parents are away.”
“He’s not like that,” Bay said again.
“We’ll see,” Sydney said. “But no more sneaking around.”
Sydney made a move to get off the bed, but Bay stopped her and said, “Will you stay with me for a while?”
Sydney smiled at her daughter, who had this amazing ability to turn from woman to child in a matter of seconds. She sat back and welcomed Bay into the crook of her arm.
And that’s where they stayed, until late into Thursday morning, Bay having slept through her first classes and Sydney through her first appointment.
It was the phone that woke them up, Claire on the other end, hysterical.
The Waverley first frost woes, it seemed, had finally decided to pay Claire a visit.
11
It happened earlier that morning when Claire was in her kitchen office, taking a break from the stove to check her orders. Her mornings were usually spent alone. Buster and Bay came in the afternoons, then Tyler picked Mariah up from one of her dozens of after-school activities and brought her home in the evenings, and that’s when everything became lively, the air becoming light, like it was dancing across her skin. But mornings, like this morning, were quiet, save the bubbling of syrup in the kitchen and those particular creaks and sighs old houses occasionally made, as if complaining about their bones.
The doorbell rang.
Claire turned in her desk chair, startled, when she heard it. The chime started out strong, but then faded, like a plug being pulled. Maybe the bell was broken. Or maybe the house was just reminding her to go back to the kitchen and watch the sugar pot boil before she burned the entire place down.
A knock followed the chime.
No, someone was there. A delivery, maybe? She wasn’t expecting anything.
She got up and walked through the house to the front door, but it stuck when she tried to open it.
“Stop it,” she told the house. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
But it still wouldn’t let her open it.
“Is everything all right in there?” a muffled voice called from the front porch.
“Yes, fine,” Claire called to him. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Claire turned on her heel and walked back through the kitchen and left by the screen door on the back porch, which never stuck because it was a new addition.
She rounded the driveway to the front of the house. She was wearing her yoga pants and one of Tyler’s old dress shirts, covered with her apron. She wished she would have grabbed a jacket because the morning was still chilly and slightly foggy, like the neighborhood was wrapped in wax paper.
The person at the front door turned when he heard her footsteps in the fallen tulip tree leaves. He crossed the porch and stood at the top of the steps and looked down at her.
It was the old man in the gray suit.
“Claire Waverley?” he asked in a voice as smooth as warm butter. “My name is Russell Zahler.”
Claire tucked her hair behind her ears nervously, not taking her eyes off the man. It was him. The stranger, the specter who had haunted the edges of her life all week. “You’ve been outside my house for days,” she said.
“It’s a very nice house.” He walked down the steps and stopped a few feet in front of her. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and looked at the house. It gave her time to study him, his closely cropped silver hair and his pale skin. His eyes were pale, too, a silvery gray like dimes. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
He took a step away from her, as if to assure her. “I’ve scared you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I had no idea how to approach you. I wasn’t sure what to say.”
“You were speaking to Patrice Sorrell and her sister Tara about me, weren’t you?” she asked. “On Saturday afternoon, downtown.”
He nodded. “I was just making sure I got the right person.”
“The right person for what?”
He reached into his interior suit pocket and brought out a folded page that looked like it had been ripped from a magazine. “It’s a long story, but it starts with this. I was waiting to see my doctor last month when I read this in a magazine.”
He handed her the page, and she immediately recognized it. It was the article in Southern Living about her candy. She found herself smiling, because her initial thought amused her. Was this her first fan?
“I have this bad heart, you see. Oh, it’s nothing serious. I’ve got my pills for it. That’s why I was at the doctor’s office. My kids always make sure I go to my appointments. I saw this story about you, and I knew I recognized your name. When I looked you up on my granddaughter’s computer, I found this, too.”
He took another page out of his pocket, this one a photocopied interview Claire had given to a popular foodie blog called “Sweet Baby Mine,” right after the Southern Living article hit the stands. She’d given a lot of interviews back then, giddy with it, before everything got so busy, so complicated.
He had not one but two features about her? Who was this person?
“I’m an old man now,” Russell said. “Before I die, I had to set this straight. I had to come see you. You see this quote, right here? If you’ll allow me,” he said, taking the page of the blog interview back from her. “You say here, ‘If I weren’t a Waverley, then these candies wouldn’t sell. Because what I’m selling is my name, my heritage. Waverley women are mysterious and magical women with a long and well-known history in the South. These candies are their candies, made from their secrets. Their blood flows through me. That’s what makes the candy special. That’s what makes me special.’”
Claire raised her brows at him when he finished reading.
“This article, you see, it’s all wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean?”