"What?"

"Sydney told me what you were trying to do with the dishes you were giving me."

Claire turned to Sydney, who tried to look sheepish but felt otherwise unrepentant.

"Honeysuckle wine helps you see in the dark," Claire said stiffly. "Have it or don't have it. Walk into a tree when it gets dark. Fall over a curb. I don't care."

Tyler picked up a paper cup and smiled at her. "This means I'll be able to see you you in the dark." in the dark."

"I haven't worked out all the glitches in the recipe yet."

Tyler drank the wine, not taking his eyes off her as he did so. Sydney just sat back and smiled. It was like watching a dance when only one of the dancers knew the steps.

When Tyler walked away, Claire rounded on her sister. "You told him?"

"Why are you so surprised? You should have known. I'm predictable like that."

"You are not."

"I am so."

"Oh, go socialize and stop feeling your Waverley oats," Claire said, shaking her head. But there it was, a hint of a smile, the beginning of something new and close between them.

It felt good.

Henry Hopkins could still remember the day he and Sydney Waverley became friends. Sydney was sitting alone inside the dome of the monkey bars during recess. He'd never understood why other kids didn't want to play with her, but he went along because that's what everyone else did. But that day there was something about her, she seemed so sad, so he went over to her and started climbing the bars above her. He wasn't actually going to talk to her, but he thought she might feel better having someone around. She watched him awhile before she asked him, "Henry, do you remember your mother?"

He'd laughed at her. "Of course I do. I saw her this morning. Don't you remember yours?"

"She left last year. I'm starting to forget her. When I grow up, I'm never leaving my kids. I'm going to see them every day and not let them forget me."

Henry remembered feeling ashamed, a feeling so intense he actually fell off the monkey bars. And from that day forward, he stuck like glue to Sydney at school. For four years, they played and ate lunch together and compared homework answers and buddied up on cla.s.s projects.

He had no reason to expect that, on their first day of middle school after summer break, things would be any different. But then he walked into their homeroom and there she was. She'd grown in ways that made his p.u.b.escent head spin. She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened. She smiled at him and he immediately turned around and left the room. He spent the rest of homeroom in the bathroom. Every time she tried to speak to him that day, he felt like fainting and he ran away. After a while, she stopped trying.

It was so unexpected, that attraction, and it made him miserable. He wanted things back the way they were. Sydney was fun and bright and could tell things about people just by the way they wore their hair, which he thought was absolutely amazing. He told his grandfather about it, about how there was this girl who was just a friend but suddenly things changed and he didn't know what to do. His grandfather said that things happened the way they were supposed to, and it was no use trying to predict what was going to come next. People liked to think otherwise, but what you thought had no practical influence on what eventually happened. You can't think yourself well. You can't make yourself fall out of love.

He was sure Sydney thought he had abandoned her, like her mother, or that he didn't want to be her friend, like the other kids. He felt terrible. In the end, Hunter John Matteson fell hard for her and did what Henry couldn't-he actually told her. Henry watched while Hunter John's friends became her friends and she began to act like them, laughing at people in the hallways, even Henry.

That was so long ago. He'd heard she was back in town, but he didn't think much of it. Just like before, he had no reason to expect that her coming back would make things any different.

Then he saw her, and the whole thing started over again, that curious wanting, that sensation of seeing her again for the first time. Hopkins men always married older women, so he wondered if seeing her change, get older, made him feel like this. Like when she grew up over the summer before sixth grade. Like coming back after ten years looking wiser, more experienced.

"You're staring so hard you're going to knock her over."

Henry turned to his grandfather, who was sitting in his aluminum lawn chair behind the tables. He was holding his cane and every once in a while called out to pa.s.sersby like a carnival barker. "I was staring?"

"For the past thirty minutes," Lester said. "You haven't heard a word I've said."

"Sorry."

"Heads up. She's on the move."

Henry turned and saw that Sydney had left the Waverley table and was walking to the children's area. Her hair shone in the sun, bright like honey. She went to her daughter and laughed when her daughter put a paper hat on her head. Sydney said something to her, her daughter nodded, and together they walked hand in hand toward him.

They were walking toward him.

He wanted to run to the bathroom, just like he did in middle school.

When they approached the table, Sydney smiled. "Hi, Henry."

Henry was afraid to move for fear he would explode from the riot going on in his body.

"Do you remember me?" Sydney asked.

He nodded.

"This is my daughter, Bay."

He nodded again.

Sydney looked disappointed but shrugged it off and discussed the choices of ice cream with her daughter. There was chocolate mint, strawberry rhubarb, caramel peach, and vanilla coffee. It was his grandfather's idea. Give people something they don't know they like yet. They'll always remember you for it. The wives of some of the dairy workers were helping that day. Henry did some scooping, but it was clear the women were in charge.

"Could we have two chocolate mint, please?" Sydney finally asked.

Henry immediately scooped out small b.a.l.l.s of ice cream and put them on the paper cones. Sydney watched him while he did it, her eyes on his hands, then traveling up his forearms, then finally to his face.

She studied him as he handed them the cones. Still, he didn't say a word. He couldn't even smile.

"It's nice to see you again, Henry. You look good." She and her daughter turned and walked away. Halfway across the green, she looked over her shoulder at him.

"That was the most pitiful display I've ever seen," Lester finally said, cackling. "I was shocked by a milking machine once when I was a boy. Knocked me off my feet. You look like I felt."

"I can't believe I didn't say anything," Henry said.

"Zap! That machine got me. Couldn't say a word. I just opened and closed my mouth like a fish," Lester said, and laughed some more. He lifted his cane and poked Henry in the leg. "Zzzzzzzzppppp!" "Zzzzzzzzppppp!"

Henry jumped in surprise. "Very funny," he said, and started to laugh.

Evanelle and Fred sat on the rock bench circling the fountain. They waved as Sydney and Bay pa.s.sed, eating ice cream. Bay had the ugly brooch Evanelle had given her pinned to her pink T-shirt, and Evanelle felt guilty. Bay was so conscientious and concerned for others' feelings that she felt she had to wear the pin just because Evanelle gave it to her. But that wasn't a pin for a little girl. Why on earth did Evanelle need to give her such a thing? She sighed. She might never know.

"I'm nervous," Fred finally said, rubbing his hands on his neatly pressed shorts.

Evanelle turned to him. "You look it."

Fred stood and paced. Evanelle stayed where she was, in the shade of the oak-leaf sculpture. Fred was hot and bothered enough for the both of them. "He said he'd be here to talk. In public. What does he think I'm going to do if we're alone, shoot him?"

"Men. You can't live with them, you can't shoot them."

"How can you be so calm? How would you feel if your husband said he'd show up and didn't?"

"Given that he's dead, Fred, I wouldn't be real surprised."

Fred sat back down. "I'm sorry."

Evanelle patted his knee. It had been nearly a month since Fred had asked for sanctuary in her home, and he had become an unexpected bright spot to her days. The whole arrangement was supposed to be temporary, but slowly, surely, Fred was moving in. He and Evanelle had spent days going through all her old things in the attic, and Fred seemed to enjoy the stories she told. He was footing the bill to renovate the attic s.p.a.ce, and workers with nice posteriors started showing up, which Evanelle enjoyed so much she shoved a chair to the base of the stairs just so she could sit and watch them walk up.

It all had a nice ring of domesticity to it, and Fred would say he knew he deserved better than the way James was treating him. But sometimes, when Evanelle would pa.s.s him the b.u.t.ter at dinner, or hand him a hammer to hold while she hung a picture on the wall, he would look at what she'd given him, then look back at her with such expectation that her heart would crack like dry wood for him. Even with all his brave words, he still secretly harbored the belief that one day Evanelle was going to give him something that would make everything all right with James.

"It's getting late," Fred said. "People are already putting out blankets. Maybe I missed him."

Evanelle saw James approach before Fred did. James was a tall, handsome man. He'd always been very thin, the way moody, creative poets with long fingers and soulful eyes were thin in days of old. Evanelle had never had a bad word to say about James. No one did, really. He worked for an investment firm in Hickory and kept to himself. Fred had been his one and only confidant for over thirty years, but suddenly that had changed, and neither Fred nor anyone else in town could figure out why.

But Evanelle had her suspicions. You stick around long enough in this life and you start to understand its ebbs and flows.

There was a type of craziness caused by long-term complacency. All the Burgess women in town, who never had less than six children each, walked around in a fog until their children left home. When their youngest finally left the nest, they always did something crazy, like burn all their respectable high-neck dresses and wear too much perfume. And anyone who had been married for more than a year could testify to the surprise of coming home one day and finding that your husband had torn down a wall to make a room bigger or your wife had dyed her hair just to make you look at her differently. There were midlife crises and hot flashes. There were bad decisions. There were affairs. There was a certain point when sometimes someone said, I've just had enough I've just had enough.

Fred went still when he finally saw James approach.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I almost didn't make it." James was a little out of breath, and a fine sheen of perspiration dotted his forehead. "I was just at the house. I took a few things, but the rest is yours. I wanted to tell you that I have an apartment in Hickory now."

Ah, Evanelle thought. That was the reason James wanted Fred to meet him here, so James would know when Fred wasn't going to be in the house and he could take things out without having to discuss it first with Fred. One look at Fred, and Evanelle knew he'd figured that out too.

"I'm taking early retirement next year, and I'll probably move to Florida. Or maybe Arizona. I haven't decided yet."

"So that's it?" Fred asked, and Evanelle could tell there were too many things he wanted to say, all fighting to get out. Ultimately, the only thing that escaped was "That's really it?"

"For months, I was angry. Now I'm just tired," James said, and he leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. "I'm tired of trying to show you the way. I dropped out of school for you, I came here to live with you because you didn't know what to do. I had to tell you that it was all right for people to know you were gay. I had to drag you out of the house to show you. I had to plan the meals and what we did with our free time. I thought I was doing the right thing. I fell in love with your vulnerability in college, and when your father died and you had to leave, I was terrified you wouldn't be able to make it on your own. It's taken me a long time to realize that I did you a great disservice, Fred. And myself also. By trying to make you happy, I prevented you from knowing how to figure it out on your own. By trying to give you happiness, I lost my own."

"I can do better. Just tell me-" Fred stopped, and in one terrible moment he realized that everything James said was true.

James squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then he stood. "I should be going."

"James, please don't," Fred whispered, and grabbed James's hand.

"I can't do this anymore. I can't keep telling you how to live. I've almost forgotten how to do it myself." James hesitated. "Listen, that culinary instructor at Orion-Steve, the one who comes into your store and talks recipes with you-you should get to know him better. He likes you."

Fred let his hand drop, and he looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach.

Without another word, James walked slowly away, so tall and thin and stiff-legged that he looked like a circus performer on stilts.

Fred was left to watch him go. "I used to overhear the checkout girls in the break room," Fred finally said softly, to no one in particular. Evanelle wondered if he even remembered she was there. "I used to think they were such silly teenagers, believing the worst hurt in the world was when you couldn't let go of someone who had stopped loving you. They always wanted to know why. Why why. Why didn't the boy love them anymore? They said it with such anguish." didn't the boy love them anymore? They said it with such anguish."

Without another word, Fred turned and walked away.

Sydney sat alone on one of Grandma Waverley's old quilts. Bay had made a few friends in the children's area, and Sydney had spread a quilt near their families so Bay could play with the kids in the violet-blue dusk.

Emma was sitting in a cushioned lawn chair with some other people Sydney didn't know. Hunter John was nowhere to be seen. Emma would sneak glances at Sydney every once in a while but otherwise made no attempt to communicate with her. It felt strange to be so close to her onetime friends, only to find them strangers now. Sydney was making new friends at the salon, but new friendships took time. History took time.

Sydney watched Bay run around the green with a sparkler, but she turned when she saw someone approach from the right.

Henry Hopkins walked to the edge of her quilt and stopped. He'd grown up to be a handsome man, lots of blond hair cut close and practical, and tight muscles in his arms. The last she clearly remembered of Henry was laughing at him with her friends when he tripped and fell in the hallway in high school. He'd been a gangly mess in his youth, but he had a quiet dignity that she appreciated so much when they were little kids. They grew apart as they grew up, and she didn't know exactly why. She just knew she'd been horrible to him once she got everything she thought she wanted in high school. She didn't blame him for not wanting to talk to her when she went to the Hopkinses' table that afternoon.

"Hi," Henry said.

Sydney couldn't help but smile. "He speaks."

"Do you mind if I sit here with you?"

"As if I could refuse a man who gives me free ice cream," Sydney said, and Henry lowered himself beside her.

"I'm sorry about before," Henry said. "I was surprised to see you."

"I thought you were mad at me."

Henry looked genuinely confused. "Why would I be mad?"

"I wasn't very nice to you in high school. I'm sorry. We were such good friends when we were little."

"I was never mad at you. Even today, I can't pa.s.s a set of monkey bars and not think of you."

"Ah, yes," Sydney said. "I've had many men tell me that."

He laughed. She laughed. All was right. He met her eyes after they'd quieted, then said, "So, you're back."

"I'm back."

"I'm glad."

Sydney shook her head. This was an unexpected turn to her day. "You are, quite possibly, the first person to actually say that to me."

"Well, the best things are worth waiting for."

"You don't stay for the fireworks?" Tyler asked as Claire was boxing up the empty wine bottles. He'd come up behind her, but she didn't turn around. She was too embarra.s.sed to. If she turned around, she would become that deeply disturbed woman who couldn't handle a man being interested in her. As long as she kept her back to him she was the old Claire, the self-contained one, the one she knew before Tyler introduced himself and Sydney moved in.

Sydney and Bay had already spread out a quilt, waiting for it to finally get dark enough for the fireworks. Claire noticed earlier that Henry Hopkins had joined them, and she was still trying to get her mind around it. Henry Hopkins liked her sister.

Why did it bother her? Why did Fred helping Evanelle bother her?

Her edges were crumbling like border walls, and she was feeling terribly unprotected. The worst possible time to deal with Tyler.

"I've seen this show before," she said, her back still to him. "It ends with a bang."

"Now you've ruined it for me. Can I help you?"

She stacked the boxes and took two of them, planning to get the other two on her second trip. "No."

"Right," Tyler said, picking up the boxes. "So I'll just grab this."