Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  There was no way she was going to ask her father for the money, either. He probably spent his last dime just getting here for the weekend and treating Ramona and Evangeline to dinner Friday night.

  Poor Dad.

  Poor me.

  Maybe she should have told Owen Henry she’d take his thousand dollars after all.

  Odelia’s gaze is sharp behind her purple cat’s-eye glasses.

  “I know you need something to wear to the homecoming dance, Calla. And I’ll be happy to buy you—”

  “No, Gammy,” the recently reclaimed childhood nickname spills so easily from her lips, “you don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to. You need a dress. And I know you need other things, too. Like warm clothes—winter’s coming.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can’t parade around here in flip-flops and T-shirts. The snow will be up to your waist before the year is out. Trust me.”

  Calla laughs. “I’ll get boots and gloves and stuff. I promise.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t notice any of this before now. It’s not like I’ve never had a teenage girl in the house.” Her smile is bittersweet. “I guess I’ve been wrapped up in other things, as usual.”

  Other things . . . meaning the Other Side. Even off season, Odelia is one of the most sought-after mediums in the Dale, constantly busy with readings for regular clients, conducting home message circles, participating in healing services, going to various meetings . . .

  Even so, it’s not as though she’s much better off, financially, than Ramona.

  In fact, only one local medium seems to be raking in a hefty income: David Slayton, Blue’s father.

  “The homecoming dance is a pretty big deal, Calla . . . and I know you really like Blue, don’t you?”

  “Um, sure.” But it’s suddenly Kevin’s face that’s flitting through her mind.

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Gammy! Of course I like him. I’m going to the dance with him, aren’t I?”

  The way her grandmother is peering at her through those glasses, Calla could swear she’s trying to read her thoughts.

  Can she tell Calla is thinking about her lost love?

  She hurriedly tries to push Kevin from her mind and winds up picturing Jacy instead.

  He hasn’t necessarily been avoiding her at school, but he’s definitely kept a polite distance. There were a few times when she thought she could feel him watching her. But whenever she turned her head, he quickly looked away.

  Whatever.

  No—not whatever! You need him.

  She really wanted to tell Jacy about the map indicating that spot in Leolyn Woods. So far, she’s been too busy—and all right, too chicken—to check it out.

  Jacy’s the only one who could possibly understand and maybe have some insight. Calla was planning to corner him in the cafeteria at lunch, but he spent the whole time playing chess with Donald Reamer—whose father, Calla had noticed, was looking on, pleased.

  “Listen, Calla, about the dance . . .”

  She looks at her grandmother. “What about it?”

  “Ramona had a suggestion. And it’s a good one. If you’ll go for it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s . . .” Odelia hesitates. “Come on. I’ll just show you.”

  Curious, Calla follows her across the small second-floor hallway to her own room, which, like the rest of the house, is cluttered with belongings. Odelia’s packrat habits probably didn’t thrill Mom, either.

  Watching Odelia open her closet door—and immediately duck as something topples off a shelf—Calla suppresses a smile and wishes, not for the first time, that she’d had the chance to discuss her grandmother with her mother. But Mom didn’t like to talk about Odelia, and she certainly never mentioned that she was a medium, much less that her hometown was filled with them.

  Odelia’s closet is, not surprisingly, crammed from floor to ceiling. She’s wedged herself halfway inside and appears to be hunting for something.

  “Here they are!” a muffled voice announces, and a moment later, she emerges with several plastic-shrouded hangers.

  Calla eyes them dubiously. “What are they?”

  “Your mother’s fancy dresses. Ramona told me all that vintage stuff is popular again, and she thought you might be interested.”

  “In wearing one of Mom’s . . . ?” The room swims beyond Calla’s tears and her throat is once again clogged by that hard, painful lump that makes it almost impossible to push the words out. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Oh, honey.” Odelia hugs her, hard. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, it’s not—I mean, I’m just . . . I miss her.”

  “I know. Let it out.”

  She sobs on her grandmother’s shoulder, and Odelia strokes her hair and murmurs all the comforting things Mom used to say to her: It’ll be all right, go ahead and cry, and, most importantly, I love you.

  Finally spent, she blows her nose, mops her eyes, and sighs.

  “I didn’t mean to fall apart.”

  “Everyone needs a good cry now and then.” Odelia picks up the hangers and carries them back toward the closet.

  “Wait—what are you doing?”

  “Putting them away. I’m sorry I—”

  “No, wait, Gammy. Let me see them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Calla nods. The dresses are another little piece of her mother. She’ll take what she can get.

  Together, they lay the dresses out on the bed and look them over: a sleeveless ice-blue gown, a black velvet sheath, and a copper-colored iridescent taffeta dress with a full skirt that would be perfect, Calla realizes, for a fall dance.

  “This one.” She holds it up. “Can I try it on?”

  Odelia nods, clearly moved—and caught up in a memory.

  Calla carries it across the hall to her bedroom, passing Miriam in the hallway. This time, she isn’t even all that startled to see her.

  In her room, she strips off her jeans and T-shirt and pulls the dress over her head. It smells a little musty but not bad.

  She checks the mirror and isn’t surprised to find that it fits perfectly. Mom was a size 6, just as she is, and they have the same slim, long-waisted, long-legged build.

  “You look gorgeous. Just like her. She wore that to a dance when she was about your age. Or maybe it was a prom, now that I think about it.”

  Calla turns to see Odelia standing in the doorway, looking misty.

  “I think there’s a picture of her in it around here somewhere,” she goes on, gazing around the room.

  There is.

  Calla knows it well: it’s the framed photograph of Mom—all dressed up, with big eighties hair—and her boyfriend, Darrin Yates.

  She goes over to the dresser, picks up the frame, and hands it to Odelia.

  “Oh, yes.” She studies it for a minute, then hands it back wordlessly.

  “Was he her boyfriend?” Calla asks, as if she didn’t know.

  “Yup. Darrin Yates.”

  “Didn’t you like him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Calla shrugs. “It doesn’t sound like it. The way you said his name.”

  “You’re right.” Odelia shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. But it is. Calla can tell. “I didn’t like him. He was trouble from day one.”

  “Why? What did he do?” Drugs, Calla knows, were a part of it. Ramona told her about that.

  Odelia looks at her for a long moment, then shakes her head. “Some people just have negative energy. He was one of them.”

  “But why? What did he do that was so bad?”

  “He did some things I didn’t like.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Some things are better left in the past, Calla.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I have no idea, and I don’t care.”

  Frustrated by her unwillingness to talk about him, Calla blurts,“Well, I think he w
as at Mom’s funeral.”

  Odelia’s red eyebrows disappear beneath her hairline. “He what?”

  She shouldn’t have said anything. She never intended to get into this with her grandmother.

  Well, it’s too late now.You put it out there.You can’t take it back.

  “He was at Mom’s funeral,” she admits reluctantly. “You must not have seen him. Or maybe you did, and you forgot.

  You were really upset.”

  “We all were. But believe you me, I wouldn’t have forgotten running into Darrin Yates again after all these years.” Odelia shakes her head darkly. “I guess I just didn’t see him. I cried so much that day I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face, and anyway . . . I didn’t know any of the people who were there, so I wasn’t really looking. People who were in Stephanie’s life now . . . they were all strangers. I wasn’t a part of it.”

  Her grandmother looks, and sounds, like she’s going to cry.

  “But she always loved you, Gammy. No matter what happened between you.”

  “I know. And I always loved her, no matter what she had done. I never meant to—” She breaks off, looking as though she just realized she’s said too much.

  No matter what she had done.

  “Did Mom do something you didn’t like, too? Is that why you two didn’t get along?”

  “She did a lot of things I didn’t like, and vice versa, I’m sure. Mothers and daughters . . . you know how it is.”

  But it’s more than that. The way Odelia said it—no matter what she had done—obviously, Mom did something specific that drove her and Odelia apart.

  “Are you sure Darrin Yates was there? At the funeral?” Odelia asks again, almost sharply.

  “Pretty sure.” Realizing there’s only one way she’s going to draw more information out of her grandmother, Calla admits reluctantly, “He was at our house, too, a few months before Mom died. On Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  “What?!”

  “Only, he told me his name was Tom. But this is him. I’m positive.” She waves the framed snapshot at Odelia. “And he was whistling a song . . . the same song that plays on that music box.” She points to the carved wooden jewelry box on Mom’s dresser. “Maybe he gave it to her. Did he?”

  “I don’t remember where she got it. You say he was at your house in Florida?” Odelia is obviously not thrilled to hear it. “Was it just a friendly visit? Did he just pop in out of the blue? What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. Mom didn’t seem all that surprised to see him there—I mean, it wasn’t like she opened the door and there he was, after twenty years or whatever.”

  “So you don’t think that was the first time your mother had seen him lately?”

  “I don’t think so.” Although it’s troubling to think of her mom being in contact with another man when she was so busy with her job that she barely had time for Dad and Calla.

  “Oh, and he gave her an envelope, I think.”

  “An envelope! What was in it?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. I didn’t think anything of it—I figured he was just someone from work. But Mom was pretty upset that day when he came over. She burned the soda bread, and you know my mom—she never burned anything.

  ” Her grandmother seems to be digesting this news.

  “Was your father there?”

  “When Darrin came over? No.” Calla carefully sets the picture back in its spot on the dresser. “Why?”

  “I wondered if Stephanie told Jeff about him. That’s all.”

  “You mean that he was her boyfriend when she was growing up? I don’t think so, Gammy. She never talked about the past.”

  “Maybe she did with your father.”

  “Nope. He used to tease her about that. He said she must want to pretend her life started the day she met him.”

  “So you’re saying your father didn’t know Darrin existed? And I guess that means he doesn’t know he was at the funeral? And at your house before that?”

  “No. Do you think . . . should I tell him?”

  Odelia pauses. “There’s nothing to tell, really. Is there?”

  “No,” Calla murmurs, staring at her mother in the picture, and then at herself in the mirror, wearing the same dress. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  TEN

  Cassadaga, New York

  Thursday, September 27

  3:28 p.m.

  Sitting at a booth in the window of the diner, Calla sips a watery fountain soda through a straw and keeps an eye on the rain-soaked parking lot for Owen Henry.

  He’s due any second now, and she hopes he won’t be late. She told her grandmother she had to stay after school for extra help in math, which would get her home shortly after four at the latest.

  She felt bad lying to Odelia, but there was no way around it. Her grandmother wouldn’t understand that Calla needs to do this for Mr. Henry. That maybe, in a way, it’s part of her own healing process to maybe help someone else pierce the smothering black veil of unbearable grief.

  And anyway, what good is being able to do what she can do if she doesn’t use the gift to help people? Isn’t that what Lily Dale’s philosophy is all about, in the first place?

  Oh, good. A battered, oversized black sedan is splashing into the lone parking spot reserved for disabled customers, a telltale blue handicapped parking sign dangling from the rearview mirror. That has to be Owen Henry.

  Instead, an elderly woman emerges from the driver’s seat and helps an even more elderly lookalike out of the passenger’s seat with a walker. As they make their way to the diner, step by fragile step, huddled beneath a big black umbrella, Calla sees that they’re being followed by a filmy-looking woman with a Prohibition-era pin-curled bob and long-waisted dress.

  Watching the scene, Calla decides the women are sisters. And that’s their mother, watching over them from the Other Side. And there’s a kind of faint aura of light around the older sister, the one with the walker, and something about the way the mother is hovering close to her . . .

  It means it won’t be long before the older sister passes on, Calla realizes without understanding quite how she knows any of this but absolutely certain it’s the truth. The older sister is close to crossing over to the Other Side, and that’s what the light means, and her mother is waiting for her.

  She plucks a paper napkin from the holder on the table and hastily wipes tears from her eyes as the sisters settle themselves into the next booth. They order hot tea and whole-wheat toast from the waitress, who calls them Dora and Edna and asks what they’re doing out on a day like this.

  “Oh, a little rain never hurt anyone,” says Dora, the older of the two.

  “And you know how my sister looks forward to her tea and toast after bingo every week,” Edna declares with an affectionate smile.

  So Calla was right. At least about them being sisters.

  She turns her head slightly and sees that their mother is still there, still watching, still waiting.

  “Calla?”

  Startled, she looks up to see Owen Henry at her table. He’s wearing his usual hat, along with a rain-spattered trenchcoat, and leaning on his cane.

  Glancing toward the window, she sees that the newest addition to the parking lot is a large, relatively new SUV. Not what she’d expect him to be driving. Funny how sometimes her instincts are dead-on, like with the sisters, and other times, she’s dead wrong.

  “Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Owen asks, draping his coat on the hook above the booth and sitting across from her. He’s wearing a suit with a bow tie.

  “Okay,” Calla agrees, not sure how to even begin. She doesn’t see Betty hanging around him today.

  “Hello there. What can I do you for?” the waitress, a plump, friendly woman with blond hair and black roots, pops up to ask Owen.

  “Just a cup of black coffee.”

  “How about some pie to go with that?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Or a c
innamon roll?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Are you sure? They’re delicious. I’ve had two of them myself today,” she adds with a conspiratorial wink.

  Calla wishes Owen Henry would at least crack a smile, but he’s obviously impatient for the waitress to leave them alone. She guesses she can’t blame him. He’s focused on Betty, and he wants to get on with it.

  “I have a few questions for Betty, if you don’t mind,” he says as soon as the waitress has taken the hint and silently deposited his coffee on the table in front of him.

  “I don’t mind, but . . . I mean, I don’t see her spirit here, so I’m not sure I can reach her.”

  “You can try, though . . . can’t you?” he asks, and there’s such an air of tense desperation around him that she realizes she’s going to feel terrible if she can’t come up with something.

  “Of course I can try.”

  “Okay. First, tell her I love her.”

  Calla smiles and nods. Then she closes her eyes and tries to meditate, the way Patsy taught them in class. She does see Betty’s face in her mind’s eye, but she can’t tell if it’s just the memory of seeing her the other day.

  Whatever. Owen loves you, she silently tells the mental image of Betty, feeling a bit silly.

  Opening her eyes, she expects Owen to ask if she got a response.

  “I have a question,” he says instead. “Can you see if you can answer it—if not through Betty, then with your psychic abilities?”

  She nods. “What is it?”

  “I inherited some stock certificates a few years ago from my cousin Elmer, and it turned out they were a lot more valuable than I ever imagined. Betty always kept them under the mattress in the guest bedroom, but after she died, I looked for them, and they weren’t there.”

  Okay, this isn’t at all what Calla was expecting. “So you want me to ask her where they are?” she asks slowly.

  “Can you? Poor thing was suffering from dementia in her last days and got so paranoid, she thought people were trying to steal things from her.”