First Frost Read Online Free

tears to her eyes, and the thought of losing him felt like standing on the edge of an endless black pit, about to fall in.
    She shook her head as she walked down the hall. She was catastrophizing again. Tyler wasn’t going anywhere. She knew her husband was as patient and happy as a leaf in the wind, blowing in whatever direction Claire went. But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do.
    Claire stopped at the end of the hall. She opened their daughter Mariah’s bedroom door and saw that Mariah’s window was open, too. Mariah was sleeping in a position similar to Tyler’s, arms and legs outstretched, like she was dreaming of floating in warm water. She was so much like her father, and so little like Claire, that sometimes Claire thought it felt like loving another piece of him, wholly unattached from herself.
    She picked up Mariah’s ballet clothes and backpack as she crossed the room, looking around and feeling her child’s normalcy like a crossword puzzle clue that made no sense to her. Mariah had wanted a pink room, perfect pink, the shade of watermelon cake frosting. She had wanted white furniture and a tufted princess comforter. She hadn’t wanted old wallpaper or antiques or handmade quilts. Her daughter took ballet and gymnastics and was always invited to sleepovers and birthday parties. She even made friends easily. Just this week, she’d said she made a new best friend named Em, and Em was now all she talked about. That kind of normalcy never came so easily to a Waverley. And yet, here Mariah was, as normal as her father, as happy as he was, as oblivious to the eccentricities of Claire and this house as he was.
    She reached the open window in Mariah’s room and pulled it down. She thought of all she needed to do downstairs. She would make sure all her Friday candy orders were boxed and labeled. Then she would answer business emails in her office and save them in a draft folder to send during business hours so no one would know she was awake at 2:00 A.M. , worrying about things that didn’t need to be worried about.
    Everyone was excited about Waverley’s Candies, how much it was growing, how it was bringing so much attention to Bascom. Tyler, his brows raised when he’d found out what the profit margin had been over the summer, happily remarked that the new business was definitely good for Mariah’s college fund. And even Claire had to admit that it was thrilling—seeing the Waverley name on the candy labels for the first time; the unfamiliar, but not unpleasant, jangle of nerves the moment she truly realized there were untold numbers of people out there, buying something she’d made. Claire. A Waverley. It was so different from catering, no longer personal, opening her talent up to a wider pool. It felt like the precipice of something big, and she wasn’t immune to the idea of success. In fact, she was overcome with it, putting all her effort into the candy, thinking how proud her grandmother would have been. Grandmother Mary had been an intensely withdrawn woman who had sold her wares—her mint jellies and secret-love custard pies and rose geranium wine—only to people who would come to her back door, like it was a secret to be kept by all.
    But as first frost approached, bringing with it that noticeable uncertainty, Claire could no longer deny that something about Waverley’s Candies was distinctly off.
    When orders from gourmet grocery chains and specialty stores around the South flooded in after the Southern Living article, Claire couldn’t keep up with making the flower essences that flavored the candy herself. The demand became too great for what she could harvest from her garden, so she’d had to quickly make the decision to buy the essences,