Connecting (6 page)

“I think around eight.” She looks around for the scrap of paper where she wrote down her father’s flight information when he called earlier.

“We can all go to the mall, then pick up your dad at the airport! My aunt won’t mind. Let me go ask her.
Aunt Ramona!
”

The phone drops with a clatter in Calla’s ear before she has a chance to protest—not that she necessarily was going to.

After what she’s been through lately, a trip to the mall would be a nice, welcome dose of
normal
.

She carries some dirty dishes over to the sink.

“What’s going on?” Odelia asks, rinsing a sudsy glass.

“Evangeline said her aunt could take us shopping at the mall on Friday, then pick up Dad at the airport.”

“That would be nice.”

“I know. I just don’t want Ramona to have to go out of her way.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’ll mind,” Odelia comments with a small, cryptic smile.

Seeing it, Calla remembers the strange sensation she had about Dad and Ramona when her father visited a few weeks ago and they met for the first time. The two of them couldn’t be more different, but it was almost as if there was some kind of fleeting connection between them. At the time, Calla didn’t know what to make of it, or even if it was just her imagination.

But now, looking at her grandmother, she gets the distinct impression that Odelia might somehow have the same crazy inkling.

Evangeline is back on the phone, sounding a little breathless. “Aunt Ramona said she’d
love
to pick up your dad at the airport Friday night!”

“She’d
love
it?” Calla echoes dubiously.

“That’s what she said. Just get the flight information and tell him we’ll be there! Aren’t you psyched? I love how everything just falls into place, don’t you?”

“Sure . . . I guess. Listen, I’ll see you in the morning for school.”

“See you then!”

Calla hangs up the phone to see that her grandmother is still watching her, looking as though she wants to say something. “What?”

Odelia shrugs. “Nothing, just . . . Ramona is a great person, don’t you think?”

“Sure. I love her.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Calla echoes. “Why good?”

“No reason,” Odelia replies as the doorbell rings. “That’s Mr. Henry. Would you mind finishing the dishes for me?”

“Sure. You mean Mr. Henry from yesterday? The one who’s trying to reach his dead wife?”

“That’s the one.” Odelia dries her hands and heads for the door.

A few moments later, she’s escorting Owen Henry— looking just as dapper as before, and just as feeble as he leans on his cane—through the kitchen on the way to the back room where she sees her clients.

“This is my granddaughter, Calla.”

He smiles and pauses to lean on the cane with his left hand while tipping his hat with his right. “Lovely as the lily. We met.”

“Good luck,” she says, and goes back to the dishes as he and Odelia disappear into the back room.

She’s upstairs doing her homework when they emerge an hour later. After hearing her grandmother show him out the front door, she goes to the top of the stairs.

“Did you get through to Betty, Gammy?” she calls down.

“Nope.”

Surprised by her grandmother’s flat response, she descends the stairs halfway to find Odelia frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“I wasn’t getting anything at all from him. It happens sometimes.” “Was he disappointed?”

“Yup. He kept insisting that I try harder to reach her. I explained that it doesn’t work that way—that it’s not like a telephone where you just dial up the spirit of your choice.”

She’s said that countless times to Calla. It doesn’t help to ease the frustration.

I know how you feel, Owen Henry,
Calla thinks as she climbs slowly back up the stairs.
I’ve lost someone I love, too. And I’d do
anything to connect with her again.

In the shadowy second-floor hall, she rounds the corner— and cries out when she comes face-to-face with a stranger.

Oh, okay . . . she’s not real.
At least, she’s not alive—or of this century, or even the last. She’s wearing a long dress with a snug bodice and high collar, and her hair is pinned back severely, Victorian-style.

“Miriam?” Calla asks instinctively, and the woman smiles delightedly before drifting through the wall—in the very spot where there was once a doorway to an upstairs sitting room, Odelia told her.

“What happened?” Odelia calls, hurrying up the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Gammy. Actually, I think I just met Miriam.”

“You mean you
saw
her?”

“Yup.” And her heart is still pounding from the scare.

“That means your psychic awareness really is growing stronger every day,” her grandmother informs her.

Maybe so.

And maybe she’s getting closer to being able to glimpse the one person she longs to see again.

Because what good is it for her to be able to see dead people if the one person she’s lost and needs most of all isn’t among them?

One of the Lily Dale mediums—Althea York, Willow’s mother—did actually see Mom standing beside Calla. It should have been comforting, and it was, in a way, but it was also incredibly frustrating to know Mom was right there and yet not be able to make the connection on her own.

She tried to convince herself that it was enough just to know her mother’s still with her.

But it isn’t.

She longs to see her, the way she’s seen other spirits, like the woman, Miriam, in the hall just now. She longs to speak to her mother.

“Your pain is so overwhelming . . . it may be acting as a barrier,” Althea told her. She went on to explain that in time, when Calla learns to accept her loss—and to become more expert at opening herself to spirit energy—her mother might be able to come through to her.

Not exactly promising.

Calla can’t imagine ever accepting that her mother’s been ripped from her life so unfairly—and deliberately.

In Mom’s girlhood bedroom, she closes the door behind her and kicks off her shoes.

It’s taken a while, but Calla finally feels at home in this room, with its vintage furniture, whitewashed beadboard, wallpaper, and carpet in soft shades of sage and rose.

The bureau and shelves are filled with Mom’s books, framed photos, and other mementos of the girl she once was. On the bed is a quilt Odelia made of fabric squares from Mom’s old clothing. Whenever Calla climbs into bed and wraps herself in it, she likes to imagine being wrapped in her mom’s arms again.

When her homework is done, Calla changes into pajamas and does just that, hoping she’ll get through a night without nightmares for a change. The one about Mom being pushed down the stairs, or the other one . . .

The one that keeps popping up to remind Calla that something tore Odelia and Mom apart for good, years ago. She’s been hearing snatches of their terrible argument in her dreams since she got to Lily Dale.

At first, before she knew about her “gift,” she assumed she must have witnessed it, as a toddler.

But now she wonders if she was really there at all. Maybe she’s been channeling the emotion-charged past.

“. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . . ,”
Mom sobbed.

“. . . for your own good . . . ,”
Odelia said, and then,
“. . . how you can live with yourself . . .”

Then one of them, Calla isn’t sure which, declared, with chilling certainty,
“The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge
the lake.”

Calla has grown pretty sure they must have been talking about Cassadaga Lake, just yards from Odelia’s doorstep. Her grandmother inexplicably forbade her to set foot in its waters when she first got to Lily Dale in August.

Calla can’t help but wonder if whatever secrets might lie in its black depths could possibly have something to do with her mother’s death.

With her murder.

When at last she falls asleep tonight, she does dream, but not about Mom and Odelia.

She dreams about a gothic-looking house perched high on a cliff, with an octagonal stained-glass window in its square center turret and a widow’s walk above.

And she dreams about a woman with a puff of white hair and gold-rimmed glasses on a chain.

Odelia may not have been able to get through to Owen Henry’s lost love . . . but somehow, Calla has.

There was no specific message, though. Just the house and Betty.

With the school day ahead and her father on the way, there’s nothing to do but file it away with all the other spirits she’s met in passing.

For now, Owen Henry will have to keep on longing, keep on waiting, keep on hoping for a connection.

Just like me.

FIVE

Buffalo, New York
Friday, September 21
4:33 p.m.

For the first time since she left Florida back in August, Calla finds herself in utterly familiar surroundings.

Okay, so she’s never actually set foot inside Buffalo’s Walden Galleria before today.

But the sprawling suburban shopping mall could be back in Tampa, with its chain stores and food court restaurants, echoing high-ceilinged corridors teeming with trendy teenagers, stroller-pushing moms, slow-moving senior citizens.

Looking around, Calla can’t help but feel relieved to be back among the living . . . so to speak.

It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate the ambiance in quaint, rural Lily Dale, with its ramshackle gingerbread cottages and picturesque lakeside location. But strange things happen to her there.

After another restless night, she was planning to tell Jacy about the map and ask him to go to the woods with her. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to go alone.

She also wanted to know more about those visions of his.

But Jacy wasn’t in school today.

Probably just as well.

Maybe she doesn’t need to know any of the gory details— hopefully, a figurative expression.

Anyway, they wouldn’t have had much chance to talk about it during classes, and Ramona was parked out front at dismissal to drive Calla and Evangeline straight to the mall.

Best to put it all behind her, at least for now.

Not until this minute did Calla realize just how homesick she’s been for the real world, all the modern conveniences she used to take for granted—not just a computer and the Internet, but cell phone service, TiVo, takeout delivery, swimming pools, a car at her disposal . . .

And gorgeous shopping malls filled with clothes.

This was the first year she didn’t get to go back-to-school shopping with Mom and her Platinum American Express card.

But you don’t want to get all upset thinking about that now, do
you?

You just want to have fun for a change, right?

Definitely. Today, if she can help it, she’s not going to dwell on Mom’s death, or Jacy’s troubling warning, or anything to do with Lily Dale. She’s going to shop, and then she’s going to get to see her dad.

“Okay, where do you two want to start?” Ramona asks as they pause beside the directory map.

“How about if you decide where to go first, Calla,” Evangeline suggests, adding a little wistfully, “You’re the one who needs to get a dress for homecoming.”

Evangeline was hoping someone would ask her to the dance, too. Well, someone other than Russell Lancione, her one prospect, whom she plans to say no to if he does ask.

It’s not just because Russell is “blah,” as Evangeline claims. No, Calla suspects she’s been holding out, hoping the elusive Jacy Bly will suddenly decide to sweep her off her feet.

Yeah . . . aren’t we all.

Of course, Evangeline has no idea that Calla’s also got a secret crush on
her
secret crush—much less that Jacy and Calla have . . .

Well, really, nothing has actually
happened
. It’s not like Jacy’s kissed her, or asked her out. And it’s not like he ever will, now.

Calla feels her face grow hot just thinking about her misunderstanding yesterday afternoon—and what she inadvertently admitted to him.

Fishing in her oversized fringed suede purse, Ramona announces, “I have a coupon for twenty percent off something at Lord and Taylor. And I bet they have some great dressy dresses if you want to go look, Calla.”

“Oh, that’s okay . . . I don’t think I’m going to get something to wear to the dance today,” Calla replies, with a guilt-ridden glance at Evangeline.

“Why not? I’m sure you could find something that would look gorgeous on you.” The well-padded Evangeline, still wistful, shakes her head at Calla’s slender build.

“I doubt I’ll be able to afford much of anything. Anyway, you should use your coupon for yourself, Ramona.”

“Do I
look
like I shop at Lord and Taylor?” Ramona wrinkles her nose, and Calla can’t help but laugh.