Connecting (23 page)

“Listen, Jacy,” she says as his hand lingers on her cheek even now that he’s brushed her hair away. “I don’t have a choice about Florida.”

“Sure you do. Don’t go.”

“I have to go.”

“I keep thinking about you, flailing underwater . . .”

That does give her pause. “Can you tell if I am in Florida in your vision?”

“I don’t know where you are. It could be anywhere. Here, even.”

With a shudder, she thinks about the choppy black-gray waters of Cassadaga Lake, not so far from where they’re sitting now.

“Well, I can’t live my life not knowing what happened to my mother,” she says resolutely, “and I can’t live my life being terrified that something might happen to me around the next bend.”

“I get that,” Jacy says quietly, moving his hand away from her face at last. “I don’t blame you. But I can’t just let you go without warning you.”

“Thanks.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

Her heart flutters at the mere thought of it, but only for a few seconds. Then he adds, “I can’t, though. Even if Walt and Peter would let me—and could afford it, on top of the adoption expenses—I have a track meet on Saturday. I can’t miss it. The coach is down on me for missing practice yesterday as it is.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“I know, but . . .”

She smiles. “I know. It would have been good to have you with me. We should get going, I guess.” She gets up, brushes off her jeans, and turns toward the school.

Darrin is clearly visible among the trees, watching them.

“Jacy!” She whirls toward him and clutches his arm. “He’s here!”

“What? Who? Where?”

She points . . . then realizes he’s gone.

“He was here! He must have seen me see him, and he took off!”

Without another word, Jacy starts running. He tears into the woods at high speed, expertly weaving around obstacles.

There’s no way Darrin is going to be able to outrun him.

What’s going to happen when Jacy reaches him?

Calla starts to chase after him, panicked. “Be careful, Jacy!”

She trips on a vine, nearly falls.

The sound of Jacy’s running footsteps grows fainter. She’ll never catch up.

Nothing to do but wait, her nerves on edge, for him to come back.

Please don’t let anything happen to him. Please don’t let Darrin
hurt him.

At last, to her relief, Jacy appears in the distance . . . alone.

“Did you see which way he went?” he calls.

She throws up her hands helplessly, and he darts away.

Calla sinks onto the fallen log again and looks back at the spot where she saw him.

Or did she?

She wasn’t dreaming this time.

Maybe you’re just losing it.

Maybe everything—all the stress, and the emotion, and the lack of sleep—has taken a toll on her. Maybe something has just snapped inside her brain.

When Jacy shows up again—alone, of course—she apologizes. “I really did see something.”
Darrin.

“I looked everywhere,” Jacy tells her, “and there was no sign of him.”

“I saw him.”

No response.

What else can she say? “Maybe it was just a trick of the light.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Must have been.”

He doesn’t believe me. And I don’t blame him. I don’t believe
me, either.

“Come on,” he says, and hand in hand again, they make their way back to the school building.

Inside, Jacy asks, “Want me to walk you to your next class?”

Calla thinks of Evangeline and shakes her head, reluctantly pulling her fingers from his protective grasp.

“No, thanks. See you later, in math.”

“Okay. Hey, what about after school? No track practice today. Maybe we could do something?”

“I can’t,” she says wistfully. “I’m babysitting. Maybe tomorrow?”

“I have practice. And Wednesday, too.”

Right. And Wednesday she has her date with Blue.

I’m definitely going to tell him I’m seeing Jacy now,
she decides.

It’s the right thing to do.

Even though the Lily Dale grapevine will wind the news right back to Evangeline.

Calla was dreading having her hands full with the Drumm kids after a long, exhausting day at school, but being around them seems to have worked some kind of magic on her mood. Despite everything that’s going on, she actually finds herself smiling again.

“Again, again, again!” Ethan claps his chubby toddler hands and bounces his little butt on the couch, legs outstretched and blond curls flopping.

Calla reaches for his bare big toe. “This little piggy went to market . . . this little piggy stayed home . . .”

Ethan squirms with delight as she finishes the rhyme and tickles him.

“Again, again, again, again!”

She glances at his big brother, Dylan, kneeling on the floor in front of the coffee table, busily coloring.

“Why don’t we do something together?” she suggests.

“Dylan, do you want to play a game?”

“Okay. Candyland.”

She should have known. She’s played more rounds of Candyland in the past few weeks than she did in her entire childhood. Dylan loves it because, as he points out every time, his name is in the title. Ethan loves it because he loves life in general. He’s the most exuberant kid Calla has ever known— and quite the opposite of his big brother.

Not that Dylan is a downer. He’s just . . . intense. Especially for a five-year-old. And he’s an incredibly gifted psychic whose imaginary friend, Kelly, Calla suspects, might actually be a spirit guide.

He actually warned Calla that a bad man with a raccoon eye was going to hurt her just before Phil Chase—sporting a black eye—attacked her.

She hasn’t told Paula about her son’s prediction being legitimate—she doesn’t dare tell anyone what happened to her—but she’s been paying close attention to Dylan’s mentions of Kelly ever since. Mostly, they just seem to play together, which is reassuring.

“Toes!” Little Ethan shouts, thrusting his feet at Calla.

“Toes again!”

“No, Ethan, we’re going to play Candyland with your brother now, okay?”

“Candyland! Candyland!” Ethan starts to dive off the couch with glee, and Calla collars him in the knick of time.

“Come on, Dylan, let’s go upstairs and get the game.”

Calla struggles to hang on to a wriggling, giggling Ethan.

“Okay. This is for you.” Dylan finishes his picture with a flourish and holds it up.

“Wow, for me? Thanks!” She sets Ethan on his feet and bends to look at the crayon drawing.

It shows a brown-haired stick figure girl, completely scribbled over in blue.

“What beautiful artwork, Dylan! Who is she? Is that Kelly?” she guesses.

“No, she’s you!”

“Oh, of course! Now I see. And I love how you made the sky so pretty.”

And I must not be here in Lily Dale, because it’s not gray,
she thinks wryly.

“Hey, Ethan, not that way, get back here!” She scurries across the room and catches him before he can toddle toward the kitchen, where his mother is trying to throw together dinner for Calla and the kids so that she can go get ready for her night out with her husband.

“That’s not the sky!” Dylan informs her. “That’s the water!”

“You mean the blue?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh . . . so I’m in the water?” she asks, man-handling Ethan into her arms and trying not to crumple Dylan’s picture in the process. “Am I swimming?”

“No. You’re trying to get out, but you can’t,” Dylan says matter-of-factly.

Calla frowns. That was an odd thing for him to say.

Coming from any other child, it wouldn’t necessarily bother her.

But coming from Dylan . . . and on the heels of Jacy’s vision . . .

“Why can’t I get out?”

“I don’t know. Can we go upstairs and get Candyland now?”

“Candyland!” Ethan shouts, close to Calla’s ear, and she winces and sets him back on his feet. He makes a beeline for the stairs with Dylan at his heels.

Calla follows, shooting another troubled glance at the picture before she folds it and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans.

After dinner that night, as Calla sits at her mother’s old desk in her mother’s old room trying to study for a science test—and trying
not
to think about her mother—Odelia knocks on the door, then sticks her head in.

“Telephone, Calla.”

“For me? Is it my dad?” she asks hopefully. Better him than Willow or Sarita, both of whom must still be wondering where she and Jacy were on Saturday night. She has yet to come up with a good story.

“Nope, it’s not your dad.” Wearing a mysterious smile, Odelia crosses the room and hands over the receiver.

“Who is it, Gammy?”

Her grandmother is already on her way back out of the room, saying, “Don’t forget to bring the phone back downstairs,” before closing the door behind her.

“Hello?”

“Hey, stranger.”

“Kevin?”
She almost drops the phone.

“How are you?”

“I’m good. I . . .”

. . . don’t know why you’re calling me. Didn’t you break my heart
into a million little pieces? Aren’t you in love with some other girl?

Of course she doesn’t say any of that.

“My sister gave me your grandmother’s number. I sent you a card . . . did you get it?”

She fleetingly considers telling him that she didn’t, just so she won’t have to deal with his offer to come visit her.

But there’s no point in lying, and anyway, he’ll probably just repeat the offer on the phone.

“I got it,” she tells him. “Thanks.”

“I thought maybe I’d ride over and see you this past weekend, but I didn’t hear from you.”

Ride over? He makes it sound like he’s just around the corner . . . which he literally
was,
back in the old days, in Florida.

“It was homecoming here. I went to the dance.”

“Oh, right. I think Lisa mentioned something about that.”

She
did
?

Hmm.

Maybe that explains why Kevin’s suddenly sending her cards and wanting to visit. He’s just jealous—as if he has any right or reason to be jealous when he has a serious new girlfriend himself.

Then again . . . Lisa didn’t know about Calla’s homecoming date with Blue until Wednesday, and Kevin’s card was postmarked in Ithaca on Tuesday. Calla checked it. In fact, she analyzed everything about the card and envelope, as if she were a forensic scientist.

“Maybe this coming weekend, then,” he says. “We have a semester—”

“I’m going to Florida this weekend.”

Pause. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really. Friday.”

Apparently Lisa doesn’t tell him everything.

Just the stuff that will keep him on his toes.

Calla can’t help but smile a little smugly as she says, “You know what? I’m kind of busy right now, so . . .”

“Yeah. I’ll let you go. I just wanted to see how you are, and, you know, see if you need anything.”

“No,” she replies almost airily, “I don’t need anything.”

Not from you, anyway.

When I needed you, you weren’t there.

“Okay. Take care, Calla.”

“You, too.”

She hangs up.

And finds herself on the verge of tears.

How is it possible to miss him so much—and care about him so much—when he callously broke up with her, and in a text message, no less?

At least you didn’t let him know he was getting to you,
she congratulates herself.
Good job of playing it cool.

She let him know she has a new life now, and he’s not a part of it.

She should feel good. Great, even.

And she probably will . . . just as soon as she lets herself have a good, long cry.

SEVENTEEN

Tuesday, October 2
5:32 p.m.

“No, listen, I know we’re going to get this college thing straightened out,” Calla’s father reassures her over the phone.

“You just have to get organized and figure out what you want in a school, and where you can go to get it.”

He makes it sound like they’re choosing a fast-food restaurant for lunch.

“It’s not that easy, Dad.” She spent a few hours this afternoon trying to read up on various universities. When she wasn’t keeping an anxious eye out for Darrin Yates, or spotting spirits lurking around her. “I’m not sure what I want in a school.”