Connecting (30 page)

Oh, well. She’ll get over it, and anyway, you can’t worry about
that now,
Calla reminds herself as she jabs at the kick stand with her sneaker and leaves the bike behind.

No, she has more than enough to worry about.

She fishes in her pocket for the keys her father left with the Wilsons so they could keep an eye on things in the Delaneys’ absence.

Then, hesitating on the walk, she squints up at her former home in the bright southern sunshine.

At three thousand square feet, the house seems gigantic to her, especially after spending two months among the modest gingerbread Victorians in Lily Dale. She can’t help but compare the professionally landscaped grounds here to the chaotic, profusely blooming cottage gardens back in the Dale.

I like the flowers better,
she decides as she passes clipped shrubbery on her way around to the side door.

She doesn’t want to walk in through the front, where she would immediately confront the spot where her mother died.

Feeling distinctly uneasy, she glances at the house next door, across the fence, and spots a familiar sight: old Mrs. Evans sitting in her Florida room. Which might actually be comforting, if Mrs. Evans hadn’t passed away two years ago.

I wonder if she’s been there ever since she died, and I just couldn’t
see her until now.

Probably.

There are actually a lot of things around here that Calla couldn’t see until now—and not all of them are ghosts.

The first thing that occurs to her, as she unlocks the door, enters the house, and relocks the door behind her, is that everything feels different.

Well, of course. The house has been standing empty for a couple of months now. The counters are bare, the rugs are rolled up, the houseplants all moved over to the Wilsons, and some of the furniture is shrouded in sheets.

Everything is dim; the shades are drawn against the sun.

The rooms are blatantly empty and unnaturally quiet without the steady hum of the central air. The house is warm, humid, stuffy; an unfamiliar smell hangs in the air—a hint of old produce mingling with Windex and insecticide.

The house might as well belong to strangers. Calla can’t imagine ever feeling at home here again. Not after all that’s happened. And not without Mom.

Calla longs to turn and walk right out again.

But she’s not here for old times’ sake; she’s here to look for clues, and to get her mother’s laptop.

So she forces herself to keep going, moving through the first floor that was once filled with light, bustling with family life. She passes the gourmet stove where Mom whipped up all those healthy organic meals, the table where Calla used to sit to do her homework.

She passes the door to the changing room, with its stall shower and door that leads out to the inground pool, now tarped, the water beneath murky with chemicals.

Feet dragging, she finally makes her way to the front hall, and a chill comes over her.

“Mom?” she whispers, praying she’ll materialize here, now.

But if her mother’s spirit is hanging around, Calla can’t see her, or feel her.

She glances at the spot where she found her mother’s body at the foot of the stairs, and an image flashes into her brain.

Her mother, bloody, crumpled . . . and a figure bending over her. Before she can see who it is, the vision is gone.

“Oh, Mom.” Calla grasps the edge of a table for support and lets out a sob, fighting the overpowering urge to flee.

You can’t.You have to find out what happened to her.

She propels herself to the staircase and hesitates, poised to backtrack over the very last steps her mother took on that terrible day.

Maybe something more will pop into her head. Maybe she’ll see the face of her mother’s killer—and recognize it.

The stairs loom ominously above her. Heart pounding, she reminds herself that there’s no real reason to be afraid right now.

Still, she pats her back pocket to make sure her cell phone didn’t fall out while she was riding over.

Just in case she needs to . . .

What? Like, call for help or something?

That’s a ridiculous thought, but Calla can’t seem to rid herself of a nagging sense of dread.

Good. The phone is still in her pocket. Anyway, she promised Jacy she’d call him as soon as she finds something—or even if she doesn’t. He called earlier this morning to check in, and to tell her he was headed to the library to research family crests.

Knowing he’s out there somewhere, thinking of her, trying to help her, waiting for her, makes the task ahead a little less daunting.

Calla ascends the stairway and makes her way down the hall, past her own bedroom, where the killer hid on that awful day.

The door, like all the others, is closed. Maybe later she’ll go in and see if anything strikes her.

Right now, she has tunnel vision.

At the end of the hall, she opens the door and steps into the master bedroom she last visited in her dream.

A hint of her mother’s designer perfume lingers in the air.

But nothing else.

Not a hint of her mother’s spirit; not a vision of the killer’s identity.

Calla walks around the room, blinking away tears.

She remembers all the times she curled up on the Caribbean-blue bedspread, watching Mom get fixed up to go someplace. From the time she was a little girl, she was fascinated by the grown-up rituals: perfume and pantyhose, makeup and hairspray. She wanted to look just like her mother when she grew up.

But I didn’t want to be like her
.

No, she didn’t want to become a businesswoman—a workaholic, Dad called Mom when they argued.

Mom always had to be doing something, going somewhere. She never relaxed, never took the time to just hang around the house, hang around with Dad and Calla.

It was almost like she was running away, Calla realizes now.

And maybe she was.

Away from Dad? Or Darrin? Away from her past? Away from some nameless, faceless person who was stalking her?

Her jaw set, Calla opens the top middle drawer of Mom’s bureau and fishes among silky undergarments for a key on a silken red cord. For a moment, she worries that it’s disappeared. No. Here it is.

Was Mom aware that Calla knew where the key was hidden? Probably not, or she might have come up with a better hiding place.

Closing her fist around it, Calla turns and leaves the bedroom, with all its memories.

With a purposeful stride, she heads toward Mom’s home office on the opposite end of the hall.

There, she fits the key into the lock on the shallow top drawer.

Why didn’t it ever occur to her that normal people probably don’t keep their laptops locked away? That her mother might have something to hide? Something more than the financial documents she dealt with for work?

She had no reason to give it much thought. Not then. But now . . .

The drawer slides open and the laptop is right there, waiting for her.

Her breath shallow with anticipation, Calla lifts it out, plugs it in, and turns it on.

As it hums to life, she reaches into her pocket and removes the folded sheet of paper containing every possible password she could imagine.

The computer seems to take forever to boot up.

At last, she sits at the desk and goes right to the e-mail sign-on screen. Mom’s screen name is saved there, but the login box is empty.

Calla gets to work methodically entering passwords from her list. There are well over a hundred, starting with combinations of names and dates and becoming more and more obscure. Like “Edgar,” the name of Calla’s pet goldfish when she was little. And “cottagerow,” for Odelia’s street back in Lily Dale.

Nothing works.

Frustrated, she closes her eyes, wondering what to do.

Then a thought pops into her head.

Maybe she could meditate on it, ask Spirit for the answer, the way she did that day in Patsy’s class, reading billets.

Spirit, after all, led her to Geneseo and the purple neon house, and to Darrin/Tom.

“Leolyn!” she says aloud, abruptly.

It just popped into her head, but that’s it. It has to be. She knows it before her fingers have even typed it out and hit Enter.

There’s an endless pause as the screen flickers, goes blank.

Is it loading?

“Oh my God,” Calla breathes, finding herself staring at Mom’s e-mail homepage.

The in-box is full. A quick glance tells her it’s mostly spam, advertisements, and stuff from people who didn’t immediately realize she had passed away.

Clicking over to the archives, Calla knows right where to look. She scrolls through to last February 14 and scans the e-mails that arrived that day.

It isn’t hard to pick out the right one: the subject line reads Hello, Stranger.

Her hand trembles as she moves the mouse over it and double clicks to open it.

Dear Stephanie,
It’s been over twenty years now and I’ve never stopped missing you. I’ve been following you from afar—thanks to the Internet—and I see that you have created a nice life for yourself in Florida with a husband and a daughter and a great job. I’m really proud of you, and nobody deserves those things more than you.

I’m probably not doing you any favors by popping back into your life now, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, or everything that went wrong between us—or, mostly, lately, about everything that went right. There wasn’t much, but when it was good, it was great. Anyway, I know it’s an understatement to say that I’m sorry I left you the way I did, but at the time, I thought I had no choice. I definitely owe you an explanation. And I have one, if you’re willing to listen.
Love always,
Darrin

Whoa.

Calla hurriedly clicks into her mother’s Sent Mail archives.

There is nothing from February 14, or the next day. But on the sixteenth, Mom did send a return e-mail.

Darrin, I can’t tell you how shocked I was to hear from you after all these years. I’m willing to listen. In person. Where are you? Steph

Darrin’s response was immediate. He told her he was in New England, living under a new name, and that he would explain everything when they met. He would come to Florida, he said, the very next day if she wanted.

Mom wrote back that she happened to have a business trip planned to Boston the following week.

How’s that for fate? she wrote. Do you want to meet me there?

He did.

Of course he did.

Calla feels sick inside, reading the exchange between her mother and another man, arranging a clandestine meeting to discuss God only knows what. To do God only knows what.

There were no other e-mails for several days, over a week, and then the exchange began again. This time, Mom was the one who initiated the connection.

Darrin (like I told you, I can never call you Tom, no matter what you want me to do, sorry!)—seeing you yesterday was incredible, despite everything.You said you wanted me to think about what you told me, about what happened back then, and I’ve done nothing but that since you left me at the airport. A part of me can’t believe it really even happened, but I know you wouldn’t lie.Yes, you made some mistakes—terrible mistakes— but I understand why you did what you did.You were a kid, and afraid, and you thought you were doing what was best for me, and for you, and for

Calla looks up, startled, as a faint sound reaches her ears.

It’s coming from somewhere downstairs—just the slightest rustling.

Is someone else in the house with her?

She sits absolutely still, sensing the stealthy movement below even before she hears the unmistakable tapping of footsteps on the tile.

It isn’t a spirit. She’s had enough experience to realize that they tend not to sneak about furtively, and they don’t necessarily make human sounds, like footsteps.

It’s not Lisa or Kevin, either. They wouldn’t creep into the house; they’d holler from downstairs, just like old times. And anyway, they wouldn’t have a key because Calla herself has the spare one Dad gave the Wilsons.

And she locked the door behind her.

Meaning, no one should be able to get in.

But someone did, once before. Whoever pushed Mom down the stairs snuck into the house, crept up behind her, and . . .

Instinctively, Calla closes the laptop, pulls the plug, and gingerly gets to her feet, careful not to squeak the chair. She moves as silently as possible to the storage closet across the room. It’s jammed with office supplies, file boxes, and hangers draped with her mother’s overflow wardrobe.

Slipping inside, the laptop clutched against her stomach, Calla pulls the door quietly closed and flattens herself against the back wall, behind the clothes.

Even if someone thought to look in the closet, she wouldn’t be visible.

Someone . . . who can it possibly be?