Garden Spells

Claire Waverley works in her garden during the night and thinks about her childhood. She and her mother lived a transient life until Lorelei, her mother, had Sydney when Claire was six. For Sydney’s birth, Lorelei brought them to Bascom, North Carolina, where Claire’s grandmother lived. Lorelei left the girls to be raised by their grandmother and died in a car crash a few years later.

It is known around town that the edible flowers that grow around the apple tree in the Waverley garden can affect a person’s thoughts, emotions, or memories. This has given the family a reputation for oddity, but Claire likes being identified as a Waverley. She grew up with her grandmother and has been content living alone in the Waverley home since the year her grandmother died, and Sydney turned 18 and left.

Claire’s cousin, Evanelle Franklin, visits. Evanelle is 79 and the only other Waverley still living in Bascom. While all the Waverley women are known to have “gifts,” Evanelle’s gift is to bring people things that they always end up needing. She brings Claire a Bic lighter and laments that summer break at the college means there are no longer young men with shapely posteriors running on the track.