The dinner Claire was catering that night was being hosted by Anna Chapel, the head of the art department at Orion College, who gave a dinner party at the end of every spring semester for her department. Claire had catered these parties for her for the past five years. It was good exposure to get her name out among the university crowd, because they only expected good food with a splash of originality, whereas the people in town who had lived there all their lives came to her to cater affairs with a specific agenda—to get something off your chest and be assured the other person wouldn’t speak of it again, to secure a promotion, or to mend a friendship.

First Claire took the jelly and vinegar to the farmers’ market on the highway, where she’d rented shelf space at a booth, then she went into town and parked in front of Fred’s Gourmet Grocery, formerly Fred’s Foods, as it had been called for two generations, before a posher college and touristy crowd started shopping there.

She and Evanelle walked into the market with its creaking hardwood floors. Evanelle headed for the tomatoes, while Claire went to the back to Fred’s office.

She knocked once, then opened the door. “Hello, Fred.”

Sitting at his father’s old desk, he had invoices in front of him, but judging by the way he jumped when Claire opened the door, his mind had been on other things. He immediately stood. “Claire. Good to see you.”

“I have those two boxes you ordered.”

“Good, good.” He grabbed the white blazer hanging on the back of his chair and put it on over his short-sleeved black shirt. He walked out to her van with her and helped her bring the boxes in. “Did, um, did you bring that other thing we talked about?” he asked as they walked to the stockroom.

She smiled slightly and went back outside. A minute later she came back in and handed him the paper bag with a bottle of rose geranium wine in it.

Fred took it, looking embarrassed, then he handed her an envelope with a check in it. The act was completely innocuous, because he always gave her a check when she delivered her jelly and vinegar, but this check was a full ten times what his normal check to her was. And the envelope was brighter, as if filled with lightning bugs, lit by his hope.

“Thank you, Fred. I’ll see you next month.”

“Right. Bye, Claire.”

Fred Walker watched Claire wait by the door for Evanelle to pay the cashier. Claire was a pretty woman, all dark hair and eyes and olive complexion. She didn’t look anything like her mother, whom Fred had known in school, but then, neither did Sydney. They obviously took after their fathers, whoever their fathers were. People treated Claire politely, but they thought of her as standoffish and they never stopped her to talk about the weather or the new interstate connector or how sweet this year’s crop of strawberries was. She was a Waverley, and Waverleys were an odd bunch, each in his or her own way. Claire’s mother had been a troublemaker who left her children to be raised by their grandmother and then died in a car pileup in Chattanooga a few years later, her grandmother rarely left the house, her distant cousin Evanelle was forever giving people strange gifts. But that was just how the Waverleys were. Just like Runions were talkers, and Plemmons were shifty, and Hopkins men always married older women. But Claire kept the Waverley house in good shape, and it was one of the oldest homes around and tourists liked to drive by it, which was good for the town. And most importantly, Claire was there when someone in town needed a solution to a problem that could be solved only by the flowers grown around that apple tree in the Waverleys’ backyard. She was the first in three generations to openly share that particular gift. That made her okay.