*
Parked in front of the inn, Anne Ainsley sat and waited behind the wheel of her old Kia SUV, a relic from her last marriage, but at least it was paid off. It was well after five o’clock now. She’d almost been late because she’d forgotten that Halloween was tomorrow and Andrew had wanted her to buy candy, the expensive kind, so they’d have it for the trick-or-treaters that always came to the inn. Anne had raced to the nearest drugstore, bought the candy, and had arrived back with three minutes to spare.
But she’d been waiting in her car ever since.
Russell wasn’t coming.
She leaned over to look up at her old family homeplace, and she knew she couldn’t go back in. She’d packed all her clothing and her few belongings. Then she’d taken some things from the inn she thought they might need. A card table and folding chairs from the basement. Some of the good linens, pillows and towels. A digital radio. Some cookware. In addition to the cash from the safe, she’d also taken a few good pieces of her mother’s jewelry, pearl necklaces and ruby earrings, to sell in case she needed to. Andrew kept them in a cigar box in his closet. He’d probably forgotten about them. The only reason he kept them was because he hadn’t wanted Anne to have them.
She thought about Russell Zahler’s suitcase and how little he carried with him. How little he needed. She wanted to be like that. She wanted a life not full of things, but stories, so many stories that, if they’d had weight and heft, they wouldn’t have fit into a thousand suitcases.
With one last look at the inn, she started the engine.
She was about to put the car in gear when the passenger door suddenly flew open, and Russell Zahler got into the seat beside her, his suitcase on his lap.
“So you were going to leave without me?” He nodded. “I approve. It’s much less pressure on me, not being the reason you’re going. Next time, don’t wait so long.” He stared out the windshield.
Her mouth fell open. A test? Really? “You were watching?”
“I’ve been sitting in your alcove all day. I wanted to see if you’d really do it.”
She stared at him, her mouth still agape.
He seemed to grow uncomfortable with her silence. “Okay, I left through the back door this morning, but then I sat down in one of your chairs and I couldn’t make myself get up again.” He paused. “I’m tired, Anne. I’m very, very tired.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to go with me now,” she said, a little put out with him. “Maybe I want to do this alone.”
Russell straightened his shoulders, still staring straight ahead. “I’ll give you a story a day, in exchange for a ride to Florida. A story a day, for meals, and care, if I ever need it. But I require a promise that you’ll always remember them. If you remember the stories, you’ll remember me the way I want to be remembered. That has become curiously important to me.”
“What happens when you run out of stories?” Anne asked.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “That will never happen. Trust me.”
So this was it, Anne thought. She was escaping her bubble and flying loose in the air.
“Put on your seat belt,” Anne said, pulling away from the curb.
Immediately, she heard someone yell, “Wait! Wait!”
She and Russell both turned in their seats to look out the back windshield. Bay Waverley was running down the sidewalk toward them, waving her arms madly to get their attention.
Anne turned back and hit the gas.
“No,” Russell said. “Wait. It’s me she wants to see.”
Anne braked. “She’s going to get my brother’s attention.”
“It will just take a moment,” he said, lifting his suitcase into the backseat, then reaching for the door handle.
*
When Bay caught sight of the old man getting into the SUV with his suitcase, she’d taken off into a full sprint, yelling for them to wait.
She’d gotten this close. She couldn’t just let him go without some answers.
She kept yelling as she ran, but the SUV pulled away.
Bay slowed to a stop, the photo clutched in her hand.
Then, to her surprise, the vehicle suddenly stopped, and the old man got out. “We’re in something of a hurry, child,” he called to her in that smooth voice she remembered.
Bay ran up to him on the sidewalk. “Do you have any more photos of her?” Bay asked breathlessly, holding up the photo and pointing to Lorelei’s image. “My name’s Bay. I’m a Waverley. Lorelei was my grandmother.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “And, no. I just have a copy of that one. Nothing more.”
“What did you know about her?” Bay asked quickly, gulping air. “Is there anything you could tell my mom or aunt Claire about their mother?”
He sighed impatiently, then looked up and squinted his silver eyes at the darkening sky. “I met Lorelei in a bar in Shawnee. I was working the carnival there. We had some fun. That was it. I only knew her for three weeks.”
“But Claire is Lorelei’s real daughter, isn’t she? Lorelei didn’t steal her.”
He looked down and met her eyes. He let some tension build, like it was a reflex. “As far as I know, yes, Claire is her real daughter.”
Bay wanted to jump on that, to ask why he would lie about such a thing, why he decided to come to town and disrupt the lives of perfectly decent people. But a few day-early trick-or-treaters appeared down the street and Russell turned quickly at their voices. She sensed his unease. Her time with him was short, so she didn’t linger on judgments.
“Then who are these people?” She pointed to the dark-haired couple in the photo.
“Friends of mine from the carnival. They had nothing to do with Lorelei, or Claire. That was just a moment captured in time. It was the only time they met, I believe. And that’s all I can tell you,” he said, making a move to get back into the SUV.
Bay leaned down to see who the driver was. It was Anne Ainsley, the sister of the owner of the inn. Strangely, that made sense. Bay had caught glimpses of her over the years, and it always struck her that this wispy, rail-thin woman who flitted around the Pendland Street Inn like a ghost didn’t belong here. Anne belonged in the wind, not confined to a house.
“Wait!” Bay said before he could get back inside.
Russell turned, his hand on the car door. “What is it, child?” he said. “We really need to go.”
Bay hesitated. “What was her Waverley magic?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand. A strange look came over his face. “Lorelei Waverley was very fond of the cold.”
Bay felt her shoulders drop. “That’s not magic.”
Russell smiled. “It is when you can touch an apple and cover it in frost in the middle of the hottest summer on record. She could have made a fortune on the carnival circuit. But she kept it to herself, for reasons she never told me.” Russell lowered himself into the passenger seat and closed the door without another word. As Anne drove them away, Russell rolled down the window and called out blithely, “My sincerest of apologies for any trouble I may have caused.”