Garden Spells

by Sarah Addison Allen

  “You haven’t let Hunter John anywhere near Sydney since he went to see her at the White Door, have you? That was another big mistake.”

  “No, Mama. But I can’t keep track of him all the time. When do I trust him? When do I know?”

  “Men are the most untrustworthy creatures on God’s green earth,” Ariel said. “This is entirely up to you. You have to work to keep him. Buy something new and skimpy, just for him. Surprise him.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Clark women don’t lose their men. We keep them happy.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Where is Bay?” Sydney asked, walking into the kitchen on the first Monday since the Fourth of July. It was her day off. “I thought she was helping you.”

  “She was, but she heard a plane overhead and ran out to the garden. Happens every time.”

  Sydney laughed. “I don’t understand it. She was never this crazy about planes before.”

  Claire was at the kitchen island making chocolate cupcakes for the Havershams, who lived four doors down. They were hosting their grandson’s pirate-themed tenth birthday. Instead of a cake, they wanted six dozen cupcakes with something baked inside, a child-size ring or a coin or a charm. Claire had made candy strips from thin shoots of angelica from the garden and was going to make a tiny X on the frosting of each cupcake, like the sign on a treasure map; then she was going to put tiny cards on toothpicks with riddles as to what was buried within.

  Sydney watched Claire with the frosting. “So when is this gig?”

  “The Havershams’ birthday party? Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be glad to take off work to help you.”

  Claire smiled, touched by Sydney’s offer. “I’ve got this one covered. Thanks.”

  Bay came in at that moment, and Sydney laughed. “Oh, honey, you don’t have to wear that brooch Evanelle gave you every day. She doesn’t expect you to.”

  Bay looked down at the brooch she’d pinned to her shirt. “But I might need it.”

  “Ready to go for our walk to see the school?”

  “Will you be okay without me, Aunt Claire?” Bay asked.

  “You were a great help today. Thank you. But I think I can finish up,” Claire said. She was going to be sad when Bay started school in the fall. But then there would be afternoons to look forward to, when Bay got home from school and Sydney got home from work and they’d all be together. She was happy having Sydney and Bay there with her. She wanted to focus only on that, not on how long it would last.

  She wasn’t quite up to admitting that she still thought about how it was going to end. She thought about it every single day.

  “We won’t be gone long,” Sydney said.

  “Okay.” Claire suddenly felt prickly, and she looked at the hair on her arms standing on end. Damn. “Tyler’s about to come to the front door. Please tell him I don’t want to see him.”

  Sydney laughed as soon as there was a knock. “How did you know that?”

  “I just knew.”

  “You know, Claire, if you ever want to talk…”

  Still so many secrets. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. “Ditto.”

  Tyler and Bay waited together on the front-porch swing. Tyler used his long legs to swing them high, and Bay laughed because it was so Tyler. He was easily distracted and ready to have fun. But Bay’s mom said if he was ever concentrating on something not to bother him, that it was like not asking a person a question at dinner until they finished chewing.

  As they swung, Bay thought about her dream, the one of her in the garden. Things here weren’t going to be perfect until she could replicate it exactly. But she couldn’t figure out how to make sparkles on her face in the sun and, even though she’d taken notebooks out to the garden and held paper up to the wind, she could never quite get the sound of paper flapping right either.

  “Tyler?” Bay said.

  “Yes?”

  “What kinds of things would make sparkles on your face? Like if you were lying outside in the sun? Sometimes I see planes go by and they’re shiny and sometimes the sun makes sparkles on them, but when I try lying in the yard when planes pass overhead, they don’t make sparkles on me.”

  “You mean like light reflecting and making sparkles?”

  “Yes.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Well, when a mirror catches the sun, it causes flashes. Metal or crystal wind chimes outside in the sun, when the wind blows, might have reflections coming off them. And water in the sun has sparkles.”

  Bay nodded, eager to try them out. “Those are good ideas! Thank you.”

  He smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  Sydney walked out at that moment, and Tyler stopped the swing so suddenly that Bay had to hold on to the chain to keep from falling off. Her mother and Aunt Claire had that effect on people.

  “Hi, Tyler,” Sydney said, standing in front of the screen door. She looked back into the house, unsure. “Um, Claire said she didn’t want to see you.”

  Tyler stood, which set Bay swinging again. “I knew it. I scared her.”

  “What did you do?” Sydney demanded in the voice she used when Bay tried to cut her own hair once.

  Tyler looked down at his feet. “I kissed her.”

  Sydney suddenly laughed, but then covered her mouth with her hand when Tyler’s head shot up. “I’m sorry. But that’s all?” Sydney walked over and patted his arm. “Let me talk to her, okay? If you knock, she won’t answer. Let her act like Queen Elizabeth for a while. It’ll make her feel better.” Sydney gestured for Bay to get off the swing and they all walked down the steps together. “A kiss, huh?”

  “It was some kiss.”

  Sydney put her arm around Bay. “I didn’t know she had it in her.”

  Tyler said good-bye to them when they reached his house. “I did.”

  “Is Claire upset about something?” Bay asked as they turned the corner. “She forgot where to put the everyday silverware this morning. I had to show her.” It worried her a little, Claire not knowing where things went. If only Bay could get the dream just right. Then everything would be fine.

  “She’s not upset, honey. She just doesn’t like when she can’t control things. Some people don’t know how to fall in love, like not knowing how to swim. They panic first when they jump in. Then they figure it out.”

  “Do you?” Bay plucked a blade of grass out of a crack in the sidewalk and tried to blow on it through her fingers to make it whistle like her new friend Dakota had shown her on the Fourth of July.

  “Do I know how to fall in love?” Sydney asked, and Bay nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “I’ve already fallen in love.”

  “You have, have you?”

  “Yes, with our house.”

  “You get more like Claire every day,” Sydney said as they finally stopped in front of a long red brick building. “Well, there it is. Your aunt Claire and I went here. My grandmother never liked to leave the house much, but she would walk me to school every day. I remember that. It’s a good place.”

  Bay looked at the building. She knew where her classroom was going to be, through the door and down the hall, the third door on the left. She even knew what it smelled like, like construction paper and carpet cleaner. She nodded. “It’s the right place.”

  “Yes,” Sydney said. “Yes, it is. So, are you excited about school?”

  “It’s going to be good. Dakota belongs in my class.”

  “Who’s Dakota?”

  “A boy I met on the Fourth of July.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re making friends. That’s one thing I wish now that Claire had done,” Sydney said. Sydney talked a lot about Claire these days, and there were times when Sydney and Claire were together that Bay could see, in just the right light, them turn into little girls again. Like they were living life over.

  “You should make friends too, Mommy.”

  “Don’t worry about me, honey.” Sydney put her arm around Bay’
s shoulder and pulled her close as the scent of David’s cologne floated by on the wind. It made Bay afraid for a moment, not for herself but for her mother. It was never Bay her father wanted, anyway.

  “We’re close to downtown. Let’s go by Fred’s and get some Pop-Tarts!” Sydney said brightly, in that voice adults always used to try to distract kids from what was really going on. “And you know what I’d really like? Cheetos. I haven’t had Cheetos in a long time. Don’t tell Claire, though. She’ll try to make some herself.”

  Bay didn’t argue. Pop-Tarts were good, after all. And she liked them better than her father.

  When they reached Fred’s, they walked in and Sydney took a basket by the door. They had just passed the produce section when there was a crash. Suddenly there were hundreds of oranges rolling everywhere, into the bread section, under people’s carts, and Bay could almost hear them laughing, like they were suddenly struck with the joy of freedom. The produce man and a couple of bag boys appeared like the ball catchers at tennis games, as if they’d been crouching nearby, waiting for such a thing to happen.

  The culprit was standing by the now-empty orange display, not looking at what he had done but staring straight at Sydney.

  It was Henry Hopkins, the man who’d given them ice cream, then sat on their blanket on the Fourth. Bay liked him. He was still, like Claire. Steadfast. Not taking his eyes off Sydney, he walked over to her.

  “Hi, Sydney. Hi, Bay,” he said.

  Sydney pointed to the oranges. “You know, we impress easily. You didn’t have to do this to get our attention.”

  “Here’s a secret about men. Our foolishness is always unintentional. But it’s usually for a good reason.” He shook his head. “I sound like my granddad. It’s all Don’t take any wooden nickels from here.”

  Sydney laughed. “Bay and I are on a Pop-Tart run.”

  “It must be a sweet tooth kind of day. A couple of weeks ago Evanelle brought my granddad a jar of maraschino cherries. He saw them yesterday and said, ‘Why not make more ice cream and have banana splits?’ The only thing we were lacking was the hot fudge. So I took off early today to get it.”

  “Sweet stuff is definitely worth the extra trip,” Sydney said.

  “Why don’t you come out? Are you busy? There’ll be plenty of banana splits. And I could show Bay around. She could see the cows.”

  Bay’s mind cleared, like the sun peeking through clouds. “Let’s go see the cows!” Bay said enthusiastically, trying to get her mother in on it. “Cows are great!”

  Sydney looked at her, puzzled. “First planes and now cows. Since when did you get to be such a cow lover?”

  “Don’t you like cows?” Bay asked.

  “I’m indifferent to cows,” Sydney said, then turned to Henry. “We walked here. We don’t have a way out there.”

  “I can take you,” Henry offered.

  Bay tugged on her mother’s shirt. Didn’t she see, didn’t she see how calm she was around him, how their hearts were beating in rhythm? The pulses at their throats were in sync. “Please, Mommy?”

  Sydney looked from Bay to Henry. “Looks like I’m outnumbered.”

  “Great! I’ll meet you at the checkout,” Henry said, and walked away.

  “Okay, dairy queen, what gives?” Sydney asked.

  “Don’t you see it?” Bay said, excited.

  “See what?”

  “He likes you. Like Tyler likes Claire.”

  “Maybe not quite that way, honey. He’s my friend.”

  Bay frowned. This was going to be harder than she thought. Usually, things fell into place a lot easier when Bay pointed out where they belonged. She really had to figure out how to reproduce her dream exactly in real life. Nothing was going to be exactly right until she did. It was even now keeping her mother from realizing what was perfect for her.

  They met Henry in front and he showed them to his cool silver truck. It was a king cab and Bay got to sit in the back, which she liked because it was so improbable to be sitting in the backseat of a truck without actually being in the bed.

  The day turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Henry and his grandfather seemed more like brothers, and Bay liked their calm sense of themselves. Sydney liked it too, Bay could tell. Old Mr. Hopkins, upon first seeing Sydney, asked her when her birthday was. When he discovered that she was exactly five months and fifteen days older than Henry, he laughed and clapped his grandson on his back and said, “Oh, well, that’s all right, then.”

  The more Bay saw and the more she knew of Henry and his grandfather, the more she was certain. This was the place. This was where her mother belonged.

  But Sydney didn’t know it.

  Her mother, she realized, had always had a problem knowing where she went.

  Lucky for her, that was Bay’s specialty.

  As Sydney carried Bay up the front steps late that evening, she felt good.

  While Lester and Bay manned the electric ice-cream maker by the chestnut tree in the front yard that afternoon, Sydney and Henry had walked around the field and talked, mostly of old things, elementary school and former teachers.

  Henry drove them home after dark and Bay fell asleep in the back. When Henry pulled in front of the house, he cut the engine and they talked some more. About new things this time, where they wanted to go with their lives, what they thought the future might be like. Sydney didn’t tell Henry anything about the stealing she’d done, or about David. It was almost as if they didn’t exist. She liked that feeling. Denial was a luxury, especially with that memory of David floating around, his cloying cologne not letting her forget. But she could forget with Henry.

  She talked herself hoarse, sitting there in his truck.

  Before she knew it, it was midnight.

  She’d just entered the house, Bay in her arms, when Claire appeared in her nightgown. “Where have you been?”

  “We met Henry Hopkins at the grocery store. He invited us to his place for banana splits,” Sydney said. She took a good look at Claire, and her heart suddenly lurched in fright. Claire’s face was pinched and her hands were clasped tightly in front of her as if she had terrible news. Oh, God. It was David. David had found them. She took a deep breath, trying to smell him. “Why? What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Claire wrung her hands for a moment, then she turned and headed to the kitchen. “You just should have called me to let me know.”

  Sydney followed, clutching Bay to her now. By the time she caught up with her, Claire had already walked through the kitchen and was in the sunroom, putting on her gardening clogs. “That’s all?” Sydney said breathlessly. “That’s it?”

  “I was worried. I thought…”

  “What? What did you think happened?” Sydney asked, scared because she’d never seen Claire like this. It had to be something horrible.

  “I thought you left,” Claire said softly.

  Sydney couldn’t quite get her mind around it. “You’re upset because you thought we left? You mean for good?”

  “If you need me, I’ll be in the garden.”

  “I…I’m sorry I worried you. I should have called. I was wrong.” Sydney was nearly out of breath with all the oxygen Claire’s frustration was consuming in the enclosed sunroom. “Claire, I told you. We’re not going anywhere. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Claire said, pushing open the sunroom door and leaving a smoldering brown imprint of her hand on the casing.

  Sydney watched Claire cross the driveway and unlock the garden gate. When she disappeared into the garden, Sydney turned and went back into the kitchen. There were cupcakes spread out over the countertops. They each had X-marks-the-spot symbols and tiny cards with riddles printed on them, held up by toothpicks. Sydney walked closer to read them.

  You think there’s nothing, but no cause for alarm. Dig deep and you will find your charm.

  Who knows what the future brings? Maybe a broken heart, maybe a diamond ring.

  Have no money i
n order to join? Dig right here and you’ll find a coin.

  And for the ones that didn’t have anything inside, she’d written a very telling riddle:

  No gift, no luck, no play, no toys. Don’t dig here, you’ll find a void.

  Sydney was thoughtful for a moment, then she went to the storeroom and sat at Claire’s desk with Bay cuddled in her lap.

  She reached for the phone.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Like every person who had ever fallen in love, Tyler Hughes wondered what in the hell was wrong with him.

  Claire had all this energy, this frustration, and it came out of her and surged through him when they kissed. Every time he thought of it now, he had to sit down and put his head between his legs, and when he finally caught his breath he had to drink two full glasses of water to cool his fever.

  But what made him light-headed and changed the color of every room he entered to bright, fantastic red had scared Claire to tears. What was wrong with him that he could take so much pleasure from the same thing that caused her so much pain?

  He was doing what he’d always done, making up his own agenda under the guise of it being romantic, carrying it through, and all the while losing track of what was real. Claire was real. And Claire was scared. What did he really know about her, anyway? What did anyone really know about Claire Waverley?

  That afternoon he had been sitting at his desk in Kingsly Hall during office hours before his night class, thinking of that very thing, when he saw Anna Chapel, the head of the department, pass by.

  He called to her, and she popped her head in.

  “How well do you know Claire Waverley?” he’d asked.

  “Claire?” Anna shrugged and leaned against the doorjamb. “Let’s see. I’ve known her for about five years now. She caters all our department parties.”

  “I mean personally how well do you know her?”

  Anna smiled in understanding. “Ah. Well, personally I don’t know her well. You’ve been here a year, I’m sure you’ve noticed certain…peculiarities in this town.”

  Tyler leaned forward, curious to know where this was going. “I’ve noticed.”