Read Online First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen - Free Book Online Page A

have to ask her about that.”
    â€œYou’re never going to have this problem with Mariah when she turns fifteen,” Sydney said. “She’s so social. That child is your husband made over.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œEver get the feeling our daughters were switched at birth, six years apart?” Sydney joked. Meaning to Claire: Ever get the feeling your child isn’t anything like you?
    â€œAll the time.” Mariah had no interest in cooking. Like Tyler, she didn’t seem to notice when doors opened on their own, or mysteriously stuck in their frames in the house. When she went out to play, it was always in the front yard, not the garden, though the tree loved her and seemed hurt by her inattention. It morosely threw apples at her bedroom window at night in the summer. And then there was this new best friend, Em. In a period of five days, Em had become everything to Mariah. Em told her what books to read and what games to play and to brush her teeth before going to bed and always to wear pink. It drove Claire crazy. In her mind, Em was a deranged ballerina-child who smelled like bubble gum and only ate McDonald’s Happy Meals.
    But it was all misdirected frustration, Claire knew. Because Claire didn’t have time to meet Em. She didn’t know anything about Em’s parents. But Tyler probably did. Over the past few months, Claire had been so busy with Waverley’s Candies that Tyler had taken over most of the parenting duties. Tyler knew all the particulars that Claire used to. Homework. PTA meetings. Ballet and gymnastics moms by name.
    Grandmother Mary had always had time for the day-to-day minutia of raising her granddaughters. She had memorized school schedules. She’d ordered notebooks and pencils and new shoes and sweaters when the sisters had outgrown their old ones, and the supplies had been delivered (back when downtown stores still delivered). She’d cooked and gardened and ran her back-door business and still made sure the girls were tended to.
    Claire had always assumed the reason Grandmother Mary hadn’t branched out, hadn’t made more money with her special food, was her painful introversion. Now, Claire wondered if Grandmother Mary hadn’t wanted the public to know about her curious recipes because it wasn’t really about the recipes at all, it was about selling the mystique of the person who created them. She also wondered if maybe, just maybe, Grandmother Mary had taken into consideration the effect a growing business would have on her ability to care for her granddaughters, too.
    Which made Claire feel worse.
    And yet, how could she stop? She’d put so much effort into getting her name out there in the world, success making her like a crow collecting shiny things. There was so much to prove. Was it ever going to be enough? Giving up, especially now with all these doubts, would feel like conceding that her gift really was fiction, a belief contingent upon how well she sold it.
    â€œHey, are you okay?” Sydney asked when they reached Henry’s truck in the parking lot and Claire had fallen silent.
    â€œSorry. I’m fine.” Claire smiled. “You know what I thought of last night for the first time in ages? Fig and pepper bread. When I woke up this morning, I could have sworn I even smelled it.”
    Sydney took a deep breath, almost like she could smell it, too. “I loved fig and pepper bread. Grandmother Mary only made it on our birthdays. I remember she always said to us, ‘Figs are sweet and pepper is sharp. Just like the two of you.’ But she would never tell us which one of us was fig and which was pepper.”
    â€œI was obviously fig,” Claire said.
    â€œNo way! I was fig. You were pepper.”
    Claire sighed. “I miss fig and pepper bread.”
    â€œYou’re burned out on candy. You need a vacation.” Sydney hugged Claire then got in the truck with Henry. “See you