12
Claire paced the floor after she called Sydney, allowing herself now to go over everything Russell Zahler had said. It all made sense. Every insecurity she’d ever had about not being born here, about not being a real Waverley, rose like sweat on her skin, and she was now drenched with it. All the doors upstairs were opening and closing worriedly.
She was in the sitting room when she heard footsteps on the porch. She ran to the front door and opened it to find not only Sydney, but also Bay, Evanelle and Evanelle’s companion Fred.
“I brought wine!” Sydney said, holding up the bottle as she walked in.
“And I’d just made this casserole when Sydney called us,” Fred said as he breezed past her wearing oven mitts and carrying a foil-covered baking dish.
“He made way too much of it, like he knew we were going to need it,” Evanelle said, handing Claire her portable oxygen tank and walking to the sitting room, giving Claire no choice but to follow. “I said to him, ‘Why are you making all of that? It’s just the two of us.’ Then Sydney called about you needing us, and it made sense.”
“What is all this?” Claire asked, confused. She’d expected her sister’s somber face, and then a serious discussion about the possibility that Claire wasn’t a Waverley and what that would mean. Somewhere along the way, Sydney would probably encourage Claire to call the police, then Russell Zahler would be taken into custody. They would discuss what they would say to the local paper when contacted for a piece they would write, which would probably have the headline LOCAL FOODIE FAKE. Tyler and Mariah would probably want to leave town for a couple of weeks, maybe to spend some time with his parents in Connecticut until this all blew over. Tyler would say to her, I knew it all along. This magic was all in your head.
“I called Evanelle,” Sydney said. “I thought she should be here to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?” Claire tried to remember what exactly she’d said to her sister on the phone. It was all a jumble of emotion, tumbling out before she could catch it. “Someone is trying to blackmail me.”
“Oh, we know,” Sydney said, putting the wine bottle on the coffee table and falling back onto the couch. She was wearing old jeans and one of Bay’s T-shirts that read, EITHER YOU LIKE BACON, OR YOU’RE WRONG. Claire was gratified at least that she hadn’t taken the time to get all dolled up, that she’d hurried right over. But still. “We’re celebrating that you called for help. Even though, in this case, you don’t really need it. The fact is, you asked. No matter how hard we’ve tried over the years, we’ve never been able to get you to do that.”
Bay came from the kitchen with plates and forks.
“What are you doing here?” Claire asked Bay, completely confused now. Had Bay been on the porch when she’d opened the door? She couldn’t remember now. If she hadn’t been, then what had Bay been doing in the kitchen? Claire looked at the clock on the mantle. It wasn’t time for school to let out, not time for her shift to begin. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“I overslept. This is better than school.” Bay put the plates and forks on the coffee table. “What happened in the kitchen? It smells like you set a bouquet of roses on fire, then tried to put it out with sugar. It made me think of J—” Bay stopped herself from saying what Claire knew she was going to say. Josh. “It made me think of something I don’t know how to fix.”
“I was having a little trouble with the candy.”
“You tried to work after he left?” Sydney asked. “Whatever you do, don’t give what you made to anyone!”
“I threw it in the trash,” Claire said.
“Good. Because the last time you made something when you were upset, we all cried at the slightest provocation for weeks.”
Fred began to scoop the casserole with its creamy sauce onto the plates, as if Claire had asked them all over for tea.
After a few moments of silence, Claire reminded them, “A man just walked into my life and told me I wasn’t a Waverley.”
“That’s nonsense,” Sydney said, taking a plate from Fred. “Out of all of us, you are the most Waverley. This looks great, Fred.”
“Thank you. It’s hash browns and ham casserole. I’ve had the recipe for years.”
“I’m not the most Waverley,” Claire said. “Grandmother Mary taught me what I know, and it’s not even half of what she could do. Now that I think about it, why didn’t she wait for a Waverley trait to show in me? She just started teaching me. Recipes to memorize. Steps to take. Do you think she knew? Oh my God … Mariah.” Claire suddenly felt sick. She sat down beside Sydney on the couch as Fred pushed a plate into her hands. “If this is true, then it explains so much.”
Claire had watched Mariah all her life, waiting for her gift. While she was doing homework, Claire would wonder, Is she better at it than anyone? Did the answers just appear to her on the paper? When she would draw, Claire would watch to see if the image changed overnight. Did the tigers move around? Did they look fatter, as if they’d caught prey while no one was looking? Were the deer in the landscape painting in the sitting room missing? Grandmother Mary had once mentioned a great-aunt who could only draw the truth, which made her an in-demand, if terrible, portrait painter. People kept coming to her, knowing she could paint something beautiful, but only for people beautiful on the inside. But, while Mariah’s drawings were pretty—her father was an artist, after all—they weren’t magic.
As she got older, Claire held out hope that maybe Mariah’s gift would present itself when she was a teenager, when everything dormant rose to the surface, like a pot of soup left to boil, all the ingredients sitting at the bottom until there was enough frenzy to roll them to the top.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Stop it. You’re being ridiculous,” Sydney said. “Our mother didn’t want children in the first place. Why would she steal one?”
“She was always trying to do something big, dangerous, drastic,” Claire pointed out.
“Because she ate an apple?” Bay asked, obviously enjoying this as she forked mouthfuls of casserole into her mouth, not taking her eyes off the sisters.
“Yes,” Claire said, at the same time Sydney said, “No.”
“Wait, did she or didn’t she?” Bay asked.
“We don’t know if seeing how she would die made her the way she was,” Sydney told her daughter. “We’ll never know. I think it might be interesting to talk to this man, just to ask him some questions about Mom. We never even knew what her Waverley magic was. You said he’s coming back tomorrow? Maybe I could meet him.”
“No!” Claire said immediately. “No one is talking to him.”
“Where is the photo he gave you? I want to see,” Sydney said, making a give-it-here gesture with her hand.
Claire reached into her apron pocket and handed it to her. Sydney grabbed it and studied it in detail.
“Oh, look how young she was,” Sydney said, passing it around like it was a baby photo.
“Evanelle, did Mom or Grandmother Mary ever say anything to you about me not being her real daughter?” Claire asked.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Evanelle said, passing the photo to Fred, who smiled and passed it to Bay, who secretly put it in her pocket. “She loved you, Claire. You were her own.”
“But you don’t sound surprised,” Claire said. “Do you think it’s true?”
Evanelle shrugged. “It could be true. But it doesn’t matter. Of course you’re a Waverley. It’s in you, no matter where you came from. I tell Fred that all the time. He has my gift of anticipation. It’s been in him all along. He just hasn’t realized it yet. He’s so fixated on me not dying, he can’t see what’s right in front of him.”
Fred eyed her sadly as she said that. He took another bite of casserole before putting his plate down and reaching into his jacket pocket. “That reminds me, Sydney, I was sorting through some of Evanelle’s things and I came across this. I thought you might need it.” He handed Sydney a night-light, no bigger than a small flashlight. “When you turn it on at night, it reflects stars on the ceiling.”
Sydney smiled indulgently. “Thank you, Fred. If ever I need stars on the ceiling, I’m all set.”
“What did I tell you?” Evanelle said proudly, clicking her dentures. “He’s just like me.”
“I’m getting out of the candy business,” Claire announced, more dramatically than she intended, but this was getting out of hand.
“Well, I’m glad for that. I miss our Sunday dinners. Remember those?” Sydney asked everyone. “We used to sit around like this for hours.”
“I loved those Sunday dinners,” Bay said.
“Speaking of food, this casserole is delicious,” Sydney said.
“I’ll email you the recipe,” Fred said. “It’s just hash browns, cubed ham, sour cream and Cheddar cheese. The secret is cream of chicken soup. My mother used to say that every good Southern casserole had cream of chicken soup in it.”