“So, who are your guests?” he asked.

It took a moment for the words to penetrate. “I don’t have any guests.”

“As I was coming around the front of the house, someone pulled up to the curb with a car full of boxes and bags. I thought they were moving in.”

“That’s strange.” Claire stood and took off her gloves. She turned and walked out of the garden, making sure Tyler was following her. She didn’t trust the tree alone with him, even if he didn’t eat apples.

She walked along the driveway curving beside the house, but then she came to a sudden stop beside the tulip tree in the front yard. Tyler came up behind her, close, and put his hands on her arms, as if aware that her legs had turned boneless.

More ivy.

There was a little girl, about five years old, running around the yard with her arms stretched wide like an airplane. A woman was leaning against an old Subaru wagon parked on the street, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, watching the little girl. She looked small, frail, with unwashed light-brown hair and deep circles under her eyes. She seemed to be holding herself to keep from trembling.

Claire wondered absently if this was how her grandmother felt when her daughter came home after years away, when pregnant Lorelei showed up on her doorstep with a six-year-old clinging to her leg. This relief, this anger, this sadness, this panic.

Finally making her legs move, she crossed the yard, leaving Tyler behind.

“Sydney?”

Sydney pushed herself away from the car quickly, startled. Her eyes went all over Claire before she smiled. That insecure woman with her arms wrapped around her was gone, replaced by the old Sydney, the one who always looked down her nose at her family name, never realizing what a gift it was to have been born here. “Hi, Claire.”

Claire stopped on the sidewalk, a few feet away from her. She could be a ghost, or maybe someone who looked incredibly like Sydney. The Sydney Claire knew would never let her hair look like that. She wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a T-shirt with food stains on it. She used to be so meticulous, so put together. She always tried so hard not to look like a Waverley. “Where have you been?”

“Everywhere.” Sydney smiled that spectacular smile of hers, and suddenly it didn’t matter what her hair or clothes looked like. Yes, this was Sydney.

The little girl from the yard ran up to Sydney and stood close to her. Sydney put her arm around her. “This is my daughter, Bay.”

Claire looked at the child and managed to smile. She had dark hair, as dark as Claire’s, but Sydney’s blue eyes. “Hello, Bay.”

“And this is…?” Sydney asked suggestively.

“Tyler Hughes,” he said, extending a hand past Claire. She hadn’t realized he’d come up behind her again, and she gave a start. “I live over there, next door.”