Garden Spells (19 page)

“I don’t know, Hunter John. Have I?”

“That was the wrong answer, Emma,” he said, and walked out.

“Claire, are you awake?” Sydney said from the doorway of Claire’s bedroom that night.

She wasn’t surprised to hear Claire say, “Yes.”

Claire never slept much when they were young. She used to stay out in the garden until their grandmother called her in. And Sydney remembered that Claire would clean the house or make bread while everyone else slept. This was the first and only place she’d felt any real security, and Sydney understood now that Claire had either been trying to make it her own or had been trying to earn her keep so she could stay. Either way, it hurt to think about how Sydney had thought Claire was just anal and odd, how she didn’t understand what Claire had been through.

She walked into Claire’s room, the turret bedroom that had once been their grandmother’s. Grandma Waverley had covered the walls with her quilt hangings, but Claire had replaced them with framed black-and-white photos and a couple of old family prints. The walls were pastel yellow and the floors were covered with calico-colored throw rugs. Sydney’s eyes went right away to the place where Claire obviously spent most of her time in the room, the comfortable window seat. There were stacks of books on the floor beside it.

Sydney went to the bed and looped her arm around one of the bottom posts. “I need to tell you something.”

Claire sat up on her pillows.

“About the past ten years.”

“Okay,” Claire said quietly.

There had been a chance, on the quilts at the beach, to tell Claire this, but she hadn’t been able to do it. She didn’t know it then, but she was waiting for night, because it was the sort of thing that needed darkness to tell. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind now that Claire would understand. And she owed it to Claire to tell her. David wasn’t going away. “I went to New York first, you know that. But after that, it was Chicago. Then San Francisco, Vegas…then Seattle. I’ve known a lot of men. And I did a lot of stealing. I changed my name to Cindy Watkins, an identity I stole.”

“Mom did that too,” Claire said.

“Do you think she did it for the thrill? Because it was thrilling, but it was exhausting too. Then Bay came along.” Sydney moved to sit at Claire’s feet, just to feel her near, to be able to touch her if Sydney got too scared. “Bay’s father lives in Seattle. That’s where I met him. David Leoni.” She swallowed, frightened by saying his name out loud. “Leoni is Bay’s real last name, but not mine. We never married. David was a scary man when I met him, but I’d known scary men before and I thought I could handle him. I was getting ready to leave him—that’s what I always did when things got too intense—but then I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t realize how having a baby could make you so vulnerable. David started hitting me, and he got more and more violent. When Bay turned one, I left him. I took Bay to Boise, went to beauty school, got a job. Everything seemed to be going so well. Then David found us. I lost a tooth and couldn’t see out of my left eye for weeks after his payback. What good would I be to Bay dead? So I went back with him, and he made my world smaller and smaller and more and more hellish until the only three things I knew were Bay, David, and his anger. Sometimes I used to think it was punishment for living the way I did before I met him. But then I met a woman at the park David let me take Bay to three times a week. She knew what was going on just by looking at me. She got me that car and helped me escape. David doesn’t know my real name, and he thinks I’m from New York, so this was the only place I knew to go, the only place he wouldn’t find me.”

Claire sat up straighter and straighter the longer Sydney talked. It was dark, but she felt Claire’s assessing gaze.

“I guess I just want you to know that I understand how you felt when you came here when you were six. I took everything I had here for granted. But I’ve come to realize this is the only security I’ve ever known. I want that for Bay. I want to erase everything she’s seen, everything she’s known because of me. Do you think that’s possible?”

Claire hesitated, and that was all the answer Sydney needed. No, it wasn’t possible. Claire never forgot.

“So, those are my secrets.” Sydney sighed. “They don’t seem as big as I thought they were.”

“Secrets never are. Do you smell that?” Claire suddenly asked. “I’ve smelled it before. It’s like cologne.”

“It’s him,” Sydney whispered, as if he would hear her. “I brought that memory with me.”

“Quick, get in bed,” Claire said, and threw back the sheet. Sydney darted in and Claire tucked the sheet around her. It was a humid night and all the upstairs windows were open, but Sydney was suddenly cold and she snuggled against her sister. Claire put her arm around her and held her close. “It’s okay,” Claire whispered, resting her cheek on the top of Sydney’s head. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Mommy?”

Sydney turned quickly to see Bay in the doorway. “Hurry, honey, get in bed with me and Claire,” Sydney said, throwing back the sheet as Claire had done.

They held on to each other as thoughts of David drifted out the window.

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy. Claire opened her eyes and stared at the bedroom ceiling, the same ceiling her grandmother had woken up to and stared at every day of her life.

She turned her head and saw Sydney and Bay, fast asleep, turned into each other. Sydney had been through and done more than Claire could ever imagine. That much experience, that much change, would devastate Claire.

Or maybe, even as extraordinary as it was, it was life. Everyone had stories to tell.

She looked back up at the ceiling.

Even her grandmother.

Sydney said that Grandma Waverley had gone to Lunsford’s Reservoir. As shocking as that was, Claire assumed she had gone there with her husband-to-be. But then Claire began to wonder about those old photos of her grandmother before she married her husband, when she was a pretty young woman with a joyful smile and hair that seemed perpetually in motion, as if she’d been followed around by a lovesick breeze. The photos were of her with several different boys, all with the same looks of admiration on their faces. On the backs of the photos her grandmother had written
In the garden with Tom
and
At homecoming with Josiah
. Then there was the one with just the name
Karl
.

Her grandmother had a life, a life Claire hadn’t known about or even imagined. She had tried so hard to know everything about Grandma Waverley, to be everything she was. But Grandma Waverley must have sensed something in Sydney, a kindred soul, with Sydney’s brightness and popularity. She gave Claire the wisdom of her old age, but she gave Sydney the secrets of her youth.

Claire didn’t have a single photograph that someone years from now would see and think,
That boy loved her
.

She got out of bed and made breakfast for Sydney and Bay. It was a nice morning, lots of chatter and good feelings, no scent of anything bad in the air. Sydney left for work by the back door, calling over her shoulder as she left, “There’s a whole bunch of apples out here!”

So Claire took a box from the storeroom and she and Bay gathered the apples the tree had thrown at the back door.

“Why did it do this?” Bay asked as they walked to the garden gate in the bright, wavy morning light.

“That tree has a hard time minding its own business,” Claire said as she unlocked the gate. “We were all together last night, and it wanted to be a part of it.”

The tree fluffed itself up when they entered the garden.

“It must be kind of lonely.”

Claire shook her head and went to the shed for a shovel. “It’s cranky and selfish, Bay. Don’t forget that. It wants to tell people things they shouldn’t know.”

She dug a hole by the fence while Bay stood under the tree and laughed as it shed little green leaves all around her. “Look, Claire. It’s raining!”

Claire had never seen the tree so affectionate. Bay was just innocent enough to be able to overlook the pall it cast. “It’s a good thing you don’t like apples.”

“I hate them,” Bay said. “But I like the tree.”

As soon as Claire finished, she and Bay went back to the house.

“So,” Claire said, as casually as possible as they walked. “Does Tyler have a night class tonight, like last night?”

“No. Monday and Wednesday are his night classes. Why?”

“Just wondering. You know what we’re going to do today? We’re going to go through some old photos!” Claire said enthusiastically. “I want to show you what your great-grandmother looked like. She was a wonderful lady.”

“Do you have any photos of your and Mommy’s mother?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Claire thought about what Sydney had said some time ago, about leaving the photos of their mother behind. Did she leave them in Seattle? She had seemed so panicked at the time, when she remembered that she had left them.

Claire made a mental note to ask Sydney about it.

Was a dress too much? Claire looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. Did it look like she was trying too hard? She’d never tried at all before, so she had no idea. The white dress she was wearing was the same dress she’d worn the night she met Tyler, the one Evanelle said made her look like Sophia Loren. She put a hand to her bare neck. Her hair had been longer then.

Was this stupid? She was thirty-four years old. It wasn’t as if she was sixteen, but she certainly felt that way. Probably for the first time in her life.

As she walked down the stairs that evening, her shoes made unnaturally loud clicks on the hardwood. She had almost reached the bottom when she stopped. She heard voices. Sydney and Bay were in the sitting room. She was going to have to walk past them. Okay, so what? This was a perfectly normal thing to do.

She straightened her shoulders and walked down the remaining steps. Sydney and Bay were painting their toenails. Claire was so nervous she didn’t even tell them to be careful not to get polish on the furniture or the floor.

When they didn’t look up, Claire cleared her throat. “I’m going over to Tyler’s,” she said from the archway. “I may be a while.”

“Okay,” Sydney said, still not looking up from Bay’s toes.

“Do I look okay?”

“Yes, you always—” Sydney finally looked up and saw what Claire was wearing, the way her hair was styled, the makeup on her face, the fact that she didn’t have a dish in her hands.
“Oh,”
she said, smiling. “Keep your feet out, Bay. I’ll be right back.”

Sydney duck-walked with her wet toenails into the foyer. “This is certainly a surprise.”

“What do I do?” Claire asked.

Sydney finger-combed Claire’s hair and tucked some strands behind one ear. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seduced a man, honestly. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seduced a man honestly. Huh. But we’re talking about Tyler here, the man who has turned my bedroom walls purple from all his midnight romps around his yard, thinking of you. It won’t be hard to do. He’s already there, he’s just waiting for you.”

“I don’t know how to do temporary.”

“Then don’t. Believe it’s permanent. Either it will be or it won’t.”

Claire sucked in a small, deep breath, like just before a shot at the doctor’s office. “That will hurt.”

“Love always hurts. That’s one thing I know you know,” Sydney said. “But it’s worth it. That’s what you don’t know. Yet.”

“Okay,” Claire said. “Here I go.”

Sydney opened the front door, but Claire just stood there, looking out into the darkening evening.

“Well,” Sydney said when Claire didn’t move, “I suggest you walk, since floating isn’t working.”

One foot in front of the other, Claire walked out the door and down the steps. She rarely wore heels, but she did that night, sandals with long thin heels, so she had to go to the sidewalk instead of walking across the yards.

When she reached his front door, she was cheered by the warm light and the soft music undulating from his open windows. He was listening to something lyrical, classical. She could imagine him relaxing, maybe with a glass of wine. What if he didn’t have wine? She should have brought wine.

She looked over at her house. If she went back there, she wouldn’t have the courage to come back. She straightened her dress and knocked on the door.

He didn’t answer.

She frowned and turned to make sure she did see his Jeep parked on the street. She had her back to the door when she felt it open. It stirred the hem of her dress and she turned back around.

“Hi, Tyler.”

He stood there, as if so shocked he couldn’t move. If he was going to leave this all up to her, they were both in trouble.
Break it down into steps
, she told herself,
like a recipe. Take one man and one woman, put them in a bowl
.

She really sucked at this.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

He hesitated and looked over his shoulder. “Well, sure. Of course,” he said, stepping back to let her enter. She walked past him, almost touching him, letting him feel the static. This was obviously the last thing he expected, because the first thing he asked was, “What’s wrong?”