Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Hearing the water splashing into the tub, Calla is seized by a sudden, irrational flash of apprehension.

  Huh? Where did that come from?

  “It’s, uh, a beautiful day,” she calls back to her grandmother, disconcerted, “and I want to get out and enjoy it.”

  Odelia’s cheerful reply is lost in the rushing water, and Calla wastes no time heading back downstairs.

  The fear was fleeting, but so authentic that Calla wonders if she’s channeling some frightening event that happened in that spot where she was standing, or perhaps in the bathroom.

  Probably.

  Just another perk of my “gift,” she thinks wryly as she heads out the front door, where milky sunlight and a stiff breeze greet her. The sky isn’t anywhere near blue, but at least it’s no longer sodden with bruise-colored clouds.

  Still, “a beautiful day” was stretching it.

  Calla pulls on her jacket with a shiver, then descends the porch steps with a glance at the Taggarts’ porch. No sign of Evangeline, but Calla wonders if she might be watching from somewhere inside.

  On the street, there’s not a living soul in sight at this hour on a Sunday morning—though there are a few spirits drifting about. Things wouldn’t be much different here at high noon on a weekday, though. Not at this time of year.

  Will she ever get used to the postseason ghost-town feel to the place?

  Ramona said she likes Lily Dale better this way; she finds the isolation peaceful.

  It can be peaceful, Calla supposes as she heads down the street, head bent against the chilly wind off the lake.

  But on off-season days when the sun doesn’t shine, which is just about every day except today, there’s something dreary, almost mournful, about the Dale.

  Dappled shadows fall pleasantly from overhead branches as they move in the breeze, and the relentless rhythm of Kanye West in her earphones almost makes Calla forget that this isn’t just an ordinary morning walk.

  But it takes her only a few minutes to reach the entrance to Leolyn Woods, where the strange, ominous warning sign snaps Calla back to grim reality. She unplugs herself and tucks the iPod back into her pocket.

  Wow. It’s so quiet here.

  Eerily quiet.

  Branches stir overhead, sending down a gentle shower of red and gold leaves, but she’s pretty sure the morning breeze doesn’t qualify as “high winds.”

  Okay, you’re good to go.

  So . . . go.

  Consulting the map, she wonders how far into the woods she has to go to reach the designated spot. Hard to tell. Probably not too far.

  Still, Calla hesitates on the path, gazing around at the legendary old-growth forest, home to Inspiration Stump, with its powerful energy vortex.

  Why did she have to come alone? What if Darrin is lurking, watching her? What if something happens to her in there? Something freaky, supernatural, like . . . Well, who knows what?

  This is silly. Just get it over with.

  She begins to tread slowly beneath the colorful high canopy of ancient trees, her sneakers scrunching through the dried foliage.

  She checks the map again, adjusts her direction, keeps walking. The ground grows marshy in some spots, and she has to step over the occasional fallen log covered with moss.

  If it weren’t for the vague sense of foreboding, Calla would actually be enjoying the walk. Small woodland creatures, seen and unseen, dart playfully or furtively from her path. Her shuffling footsteps mingle pleasantly with the chirping of songbirds and the occasional whisper of wind through the leaves.

  She inhales air heavy with the rich, earthy scent of autumn . . . and then it happens.

  Her nostrils catch a hint of something else. Something familiar, unmistakable.

  Lilies of the valley.

  The scent can mean only one thing:Aiyana is here.

  Calla waits for the telltale chill in the air, braced for a glimpse of the spirit who, she’s now convinced, led her to this spot.

  But the only visible movement is a jet-black squirrel that hops onto a fallen limb, eating from its paws, seemingly oblivious to Calla’s presence . . . or any other.

  She checks the map in the book, looks around, gets her bearings.

  Yes, this is it.

  She’s in the general area indicated by the X on the map.

  Nothing here but more trees, more logs, more fallen leaves layered thickly underfoot.

  No Aiyana.

  The floral perfume hangs blatantly in the air, so potent Calla can smell nothing else . . . yet she still doesn’t sense the ghostly presence that usually accompanies it.

  But as she looks around, puzzled, her gaze comes to rest on something so startling, so utterly out of place, that she’s certain she must be mistaken.

  She takes a few steps closer, blinks several times, peers again.

  She’s not mistaken.

  A small dirt patch of forest floor, maybe a couple of feet square, is curiously void of leaves, almost as if someone diligently swept the area clean.

  Which is impossible, because there’s not a soul in sight, and even if there had been, the breeze would have scattered and shifted more leaves.

  Even more impossible: blooming in the bare spot is a clump of flowers.

  Calla recognizes them not just by the distinct scent, but by the delicate clusters of bell-shaped blossoms perched atop straight, slender stems, poking out from pale green tuliplike foliage.

  Lilies of the valley.

  It wouldn’t be unusual to see them blooming in the wild . . . in the spring.

  But at this time of year, they should be dormant; the flowers would have long since shriveled, the foliage disappeared.

  Calla stoops and reaches out, the emerald bracelet glinting on her wrist, to pluck one of the stems.

  Is it a freak of nature?

  Some kind of sign from Aiyana or . . . from Mom?

  Calla presses the fragile white blossom to her nose and inhales the perfume, closing her eyes.

  “Please, Mom . . . if you can hear me . . . please tell me what I’m supposed to do. Please . . .”

  The breeze turns colder.

  Calla feels the flesh rising on her arms and knows she’s no longer alone. Her eyes snap open.

  Aiyana stands before her, so solid, so real, that Calla fleetingly wonders, though she knows better, whether she’s a spirit after all.

  She sweeps a hand to indicate the extraordinary flowers, but she doesn’t turn to look at them. Her black eyes are fastened on Calla’s.

  At last she speaks. “She isn’t there.”

  A chill slithers down Calla’s spine. “My mother?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not talking about my mother?”

  “No.”

  “Then . . . who? Who isn’t there? And where?”

  Again, Aiyana points at the lilies.

  Calla turns to look again at them, and all at once, it dawns on her. “Is this . . . is it a grave or something?”

  At that, out of nowhere, a powerful gust of wind swoops around them, bringing a maelstrom of blowing leaves. Startled, Calla raises her elbows to cover her face.

  The gust disappears as quickly as it came, and so, she realizes with dismay, has Aiyana.

  She looks again at the lilies and notices that the wind has redistributed the surrounding bed of leaves. A solid, monochromatic object juts from the heap of gold-and-red confetti—a rock, Calla realizes.

  She brushes away the leaves with a trembling hand. It’s a smooth, oblong gray rock, roughly the size of a shoe box. It’s not lying flat on the ground, but standing straight up as though human hands deliberately placed it there, jutting like . . .

  Like a tombstone.

  Her blood runs cold.

  She sinks to her knees and runs her fingers over the rock.

  She’s not there.

  Why would Aiyana say that?

  Mom’s grave is in a Florida cemetery;Aiyana must be aware of that because Calla saw her there,
hovering on the edge of the crowd at the funeral that miserable day in July.

  But I asked if she was talking about Mom, and she said no.

  Who else would she mean?

  “Who isn’t there, Aiyana?” Calla calls out. “I don’t understand!”

  No response but the sigh of a gentle wind in ancient trees.

  Calla shakes her head in despair, acutely aware that she’s alone again.

  She stands rooted to the spot for a long time.

  Long enough for Mother Nature to do her work.

  The sun climbs higher in the chalky sky and the breeze ebbs and flows. With it, leaves skitter across the earth and drift from laden boughs, coming to obscure, once more, the cold gray rock and the tender white flower blossoms that shouldn’t, couldn’t, be growing in Leolyn Woods.

  As Calla turns toward home, she glimpses a face among the moving boughs, watching her.

  Darrin.

  She freezes, uncertain whether to scream, or run, or call out to him.

  Before she can decide, the wind gusts and the branches shift again, obscuring his face and leaving her uncertain as to whether it was really there at all.

  But she’s not taking any chances.

  She turns and runs, not stopping until she’s safely back home again with the deadbolt locked behind her.

  Calla spends the afternoon secluded in her room, unable to face her grandmother and any more questions about the dance last night.

  It’s bad enough that she’s apparently lost Evangeline’s friendship over it. The last thing she wants is for her grandmother to find out that she’s a liar. For all Calla knows, Evangeline has already told Ramona, and Ramona will tell Odelia, and maybe Dad, too.

  And then he’ll make her leave. Or Odelia will.

  What does it matter, anyway?

  Lily Dale isn’t good for her, in her state of mind.

  She doesn’t need these people feeding her grief or fueling her nightmares and imagination.

  Curled up on her bed, Calla tries to read her economics text, but she can’t focus. Her eyes keep leaving the page to ensure that she’s alone in the room. No Darrin Yates lurking . . . yet she can’t seem to shake the eerie sensation that he’s here, watching her.

  Is it any wonder, though?

  You’re still upset about last night, paranoid . . . and totally wiped out.

  Eventually, she goes from propping her head on her hand above a bent elbow to leaning back against the pillows, still trying to focus on the textbook.

  Finally, the words on the page begin to swim, and exhaustion overtakes her.

  Calla is back in the professionally decorated, tropical-hued master bedroom in their house in Tampa. She’s her mother, humming as she gets dressed for work in a charcoal gray skirt suit and high-heeled black Gucci pumps, spraying on perfume that shouldn’t smell like lilies of the valley, yet somehow does, today.

  She pulls a brown manila envelope from beneath the mattress of the king-sized bed and looks at it, troubled.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I have to do this.”

  Leaving the room with the envelope in hand, she heads down the hall toward the stairs, past Calla’s bedroom door.

  It should be closed, but it’s open. Puzzled, she starts to turn to look back. Too late.

  Someone comes up behind her and pushes, hard.

  She screams, falling, hurting, dying . . .

  Drifting, floating, high above her own broken body now lying in a slowly spreading pool of blood. The crimson stream inches across the tile floor toward the fallen manila envelope.

  Blood taints the edge of the yellow-brown paper in the instant before a hand reaches out to snatch it up. A left hand, thick fingers, the pinky adorned with a gold signet ring bearing a coat of arms featuring a heart pierced by three daggers.

  “Calla?”

  She awakens with a start to the sound of knocking and her grandmother’s voice.

  Dazed, she sits up, finding herself on her bed, fully dressed and shrouded in the dim gloom of Sunday dusk.

  “Calla?” Odelia opens the door and a wedge of light spills in from the hall. “Oh! You’re sleeping?”

  “I . . . guess so.”

  Sleeping. And dreaming.

  Mom . . . the envelope . . . the stairs . . . the blood . . .

  Again.

  But this time, there was more to it.

  The hand . . . the ring . . .

  “Are you feeling okay, sweetie?” Odelia flicks on a bedside lamp and Calla blinks.

  Darrin’s hand?

  Darrin’s ring?

  “You look like you might be coming down with something.” Odelia hovers over her looking worried, presses a hand against Calla’s forehead.

  Just like Mom used to do.

  Without warning, the gentle maternal concern unleashes a tsunami of grief.

  “Oh, my goodness . . . you’re crying! What is it? What’s wrong?” Odelia sits on the bed and takes Calla into her arms.

  “I . . . just . . . miss her.” Overcome, Calla collap ses against her grandmother’s ample, sturdy body with a sob.

  “Oh, sweetie, I know . . . I know.” Odelia strokes her hair, lets her cry, cries with her.

  Finally spent, Calla accepts the crumpled tissue her grandmother produces from a pocket.

  “It’s clean,” she says, and presses another to her own nose with a weary sigh.

  Lost in their own thoughts, they wipe their eyes and blow their noses.

  Then Odelia stands again and holds out a hand. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “Downstairs. We can sit in front of the television and watch something mindless and trashy and eat dinner. I made soup.”

  “What kind of soup?” Calla asks warily. The last time Odelia made soup, it was Spicy African Peanut Gumbo— which was pretty tasty, but not exactly soothing.

  “Chicken noodle.”

  Calla raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Odelia nods. “I had a feeling you were under the weather today. You’ve been so quiet, hiding yourself away. Come on. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Calla doubts it, but she follows her grandmother downstairs, anyway.

  A half hour later, she has to admit Odelia was right. A steaming bowl of soup—and the tail end of a Ben Stiller movie she’s seen a million times—proves to be an effective remedy. She had been planning to make a beeline back to her room after eating, but instead she settles back against the couch cushions.

  “I’ll go see what I have for dessert.” Odelia picks up their empty bowls and hands Calla the television remote. “See if you can find us something else to watch.”

  Left alone in the living room, she begins to channel surf past the evening news, a paper-towel commercial, a Hispanic soap opera, more evening news . . .

  A stirring of uneasiness creeps over her again as snatches of her dream begin to filter back into her mind.

  She finds herself glancing furtively around the room.

  A sad-eyed spirit child she’s seen around before is off in the corner, but that’s not really a concern—not at the moment, anyway. She’s not worried about dead people right now. Just live ones.

  She looks at the windows to make sure Darrin Yates isn’t out there in the night, peering in at her.

  Impossible to tell in the glare of lamplight on the glass.

  But I feel like he’s around here again. Watching me.

  She shudders. Maybe he really is.

  Calla tosses aside the remote, gets up, and closes the curtains.

  There. That’s a little better.

  At least now if he’s out there he can’t—

  Turning back to the television, she gapes at the onscreen image of a white-haired woman with gold-rimmed glasses on a chain.

  Calla recognizes her instantly.

  Betty!

  She’s alive and well, obviously, and standing in front of a low redbrick house with dormered windows on the second floor.

  “Oh my
God.” Calla fumbles for the remote and turns up the volume to better hear the newscaster’s voice-over.

  “. . . and that was when Fredonia resident Elizabeth Owens discovered the theft from her home of several old stock certificates valued at close to seven figures.”

  The chicken soup is churning in Calla’s stomach.

  “They were left to me by my late husband,” the elderly woman informs the on-the-scene reporter, “and they were hidden behind a painting I’ve had on the wall for years.”

  The scene changes to an interior shot: the reporter indicating the underside of a large wooden frame. “The certificates were cleverly concealed in a secret compartment behind the backing of this framed art. Ms. Owens believes the thief must have stumbled across them by accident, as she never told a living soul where they were hidden—or, for that matter, that she was in possession of the valuable stock.”

  “Only one living soul even knew I had the stock, and he did know that it was hidden somewhere in my house, but I never told him where. I guess he somehow figured it out.”

  Back to the voice-over. “That person is her current and estranged husband, Henry Owens, who met the longtime widow on a Caribbean cruise last spring and married her after a whirlwind courtship.”

  “I thought Henry was too good to be true,” Betty’s voice warbles, and her eyes are sorrowful. “I guess he was.”

  The reporter turns over the frame to reveal the other side.

  “This painting,” he says solemnly, “is worthless. Unfortunately for Betty Owens, the certificates concealed behind it were not.”

  Calla sinks onto the couch, sickened as she stares at the closeup on the artwork.

  The painting depicts a large, gothic-looking house on a cliff overlooking the sea. It has a square center turret with an octagonal stained-glass window, and a widow’s walk above.

  The camera shifts to show a snapshot of the man Calla knows as Owen Henry, wearing a Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and standing in front of an aquamarine sea.

  “Police now seek this man, Henry Owens, for questioning in connection to the theft,” the reporter says. “Owens disappeared several days ago and is believed to have left the area. Viewers who may have information on his whereabouts are asked to call—”

  “We’re in luck.” Odelia breezes into the room, carrying cookies. “I found a whole bag of Chips Ahoy in the cupboard.”