Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  As they pass a sign for the Ron Jon Surf Shop at the Galleria, she can’t help but smile. Though she’s well aware of the main reason she’s back in Tampa, to unearth the truth about what happened to her mother, for the moment, all she can do is revel in familiarity.

  Warm humidity envelops Calla the moment they step outside, and her ears tune in to the southern accents drawling all around her. She spots a lizard scampering along the rim of a large terra cotta planter filled with lush green fronds.

  They pause at the curb, and Lisa searches among the headlights lining the roadway. Most of the cars are clean late models, the kind you rarely see around Lily Dale.

  Wave after wave of nostalgia sweeps through Calla. This is—no, this was—home, all her life.

  Suddenly, Lily Dale seems farther away than the faint yellow crescent moon rising against the tropical sky, and just as remote.

  “There.” Lisa points, and Calla spots the Wilsons’ white Lexus pulling up. “Let’s go.”

  The trunk pops remotely, and she tosses Calla’s bag inside. “Get in the front, I’ll sit in the back.”

  Seeing only a tall, broad-shouldered driver silhouetted beyond the tinted glass, Calla realizes she’ll have to wait to see Mrs. Wilson until they get back to Lisa’s house.

  She climbs into the front seat, prepared to greet Lisa’s father—but he’s not the one sitting behind the wheel.

  It’s Kevin.

  He’s not as tanned as usual and his shaggy blond hair is a shade darker than the last time she saw him. Instead of one of his surfer T-shirts he’s wearing a preppy looking navy polo, but in the open vee of his collar she can see the hemp and puka shell necklace she gave him back when they were dating.

  “Hi,” he says simply, and smiles at her.

  Like everything else here, he looks really good to her, and achingly familiar.

  Lisa leans in from the backseat. “Kevin flew home this morning. He offered to come back to the airport with me to pick you up because my parents are at this charity thing tonight, and you know how I hate to drive on the highway.”

  Lisa does not hate to drive on the highway. In fact, she likes to drive on the highway every chance she gets, and at breakneck speed.

  But Calla doesn’t call her on it. She just stares out the windshield as Kevin navigates the airport service roads, then the highway.

  “Did you eat dinner on the plane?” he asks as they drive past a strip mall with a bunch of chain restaurants.

  “Yeah,” she lies. Actually, she slept on the plane, and it was a relief to get a break from all that’s been on her mind in her waking hours.

  Not only that, but the plane was teeming with spirits who apparently enjoy hitching rides or stowing away or whatever it is one would call a planeload of unticketed passengers. Calla has never seen so many ghosts concentrated in one place before, and it occurred to her that they might be fueled by all that excess nervous energy among the fearful fliers. She’ll have to ask her grandmother about that someday.

  Kevin doesn’t say much else, just drives, but Lisa is full of questions and comments about Calla’s life and her own, as always. Calla does her best to participate in the conversation, just glad Lisa’s not asking about Mom’s death, or what Calla hopes to accomplish by being here this weekend. Either she’s being tactful because Kevin’s in the car, or it’s totally off her radar. Calla would bet on the latter.

  They wind their way through the Wilsons’ private gated community just off of Westshore, in Calla’s old neighborhood. The oversized modern homes surrounded by elegant royal palms and manicured lawns look foreign to her now, and she notices that there are very few people outside in their yards or on the street or chatting with the neighbors. Not like in Lily Dale.

  “Hey, how’s your dad doing?” Lisa wants to know.

  “Oh, he’s actually thinking of leaving California.”

  “Are you serious? Does that mean you’re coming back here?”

  Lisa sounds so excited at the prospect that Calla feels a twinge of guilt telling her no, and another twinge of guilt when she blames it on her father. “Dad isn’t ready to come back to Tampa yet. He’ll probably rent a place near Lily Dale until the school year is over.”

  “I thought you said he’s broke.”

  “He is, pretty much.” Not that she thought to ask him about their money situation when he told her about the change of plans. “But everything is a lot cheaper there than it is in California—or here.”

  “Yeah, but he wouldn’t have to rent at all if he just came home,” Lisa points out.

  “I don’t think he wants to stay in that house just yet. Not after what happened to Mom there. I mean, neither of us could wait to leave after that, remember?”

  “I thought you were dreading leaving.”

  “Was I?” Suddenly, it’s so hard to recall her pre–Lily Dale life.

  “Well, if you come back here you can always stay with us—both of you, even—I kept telling you that before you left for New York.”

  Yes, and Calla kept telling Lisa the primary reason why she couldn’t stay with the Wilsons: Kevin.

  “Here we are, home, sweet home,” he announces as the Wilsons’ two-story home—stucco, Spanish-style, with a red tiled roof—comes into view.

  At the sight of it, a ferocious lump threatens to strangle Calla. They all shared so many good times here. Her life was so normal then, so filled with promise . . .

  But it’s as if it all happened to somebody else—and really, it did. Calla is no longer the carefree girl whose biggest concern is whether to wear the white or black bikini to the beach.

  Kevin insists on carrying her bag into the air-conditioned house, professionally decorated with warm tropical splashes of color against a pristine white backdrop.

  “I’ll put this in the guest room for you, Calla.”

  “Thanks.” She waits till he’s disappeared upstairs, then hisses at Lisa, “Jeez, why didn’t you warn me he was coming to the airport?”

  “I didn’t know until you were already on your way. Anyway, what’s the big deal?”

  She’s right. What’s the big deal?

  Sure, Calla once believed Kevin was the love of her life, but he doesn’t mean anything to her anymore. He’s just her friend’s older brother. Period.

  Yeah, right.

  “Why don’t you go up and get changed?” Lisa offers, eyeing Calla’s jeans and sweater. “You look like you’re all bundled up in that.”

  The clothing, which felt too lightweight against the October chill when she got out of her grandmother’s car back at the Buffalo airport a mere few hours ago, does feel much too heavy down here.

  “Go ahead. . . . I’ll go get us some Cokes and find those pictures I was telling you about, from Billy Pijuan’s party a few weeks ago.”

  “Great!” Calla tries to look as though she can’t wait to check out photos of her old friends, when in reality, she hasn’t missed them all that much.

  Only Lisa still feels like a part of her life now. She suspects that the others, though she’s known them since kindergarten, will probably fade into the past now that her era at the elite Shoreside Day School is firmly behind her.

  Meanwhile, she’s only known her Lily Dale friends for a month or two, and already they’re among her closest confidantes.

  Funny how things change. Funny, and kind of sad.

  Alone upstairs, Calla sheds her layers for shorts and a T-shirt, finding that her arms, legs, and feet seem too pale and awkwardly bare. It wasn’t so long ago that she was back in Lily Dale, first growing accustomed to the weight of jeans and fleece after a Florida summer interrupted.

  I guess that proves you can get used to anything, Calla thinks as she opens the guest room door, the emerald bracelet reassuringly visible on her wrist.

  “Oh, sorry.” Kevin, just coming down the hall and about to crash right into her, stops short.

  Why does he have to be right here again, right in front of her, making her remember all th
e chemistry they had between them once upon a time?

  Never mind that, why is the chemistry threatening to pop up again despite all that’s happened?

  And why is she suddenly finding it impossible to hate Kevin for the unhappily-ever-after ending to their once-upon-a-time?

  “Now you look more like you,” he says, looking her up and down, and her heart skips a beat.

  Cut it out.You can’t do this.

  No, she can’t go around wistfully longing for the old days with Kevin. He’s changed. She’s changed. They’re over. He has college and Annie; she has Lily Dale and Jacy.

  “You mean I look more like the old me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The one you broke up with.”

  He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “About that . . .”

  Trailing off, he looks at her as though waiting for her to interrupt, to tell him not to go there. No way. Let him fumble awkwardly. Let her be in control for once.

  The least he can do—after breaking up with her in a text message, for Pete’s sake—is make himself accountable to her.

  “What about it?” she asks, all but tapping her foot and wearing an I’m waiting expression.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it. I was an idiot, and a coward. . . .”

  “A jerk. Don’t forget jerk.”

  He gives an awkward laugh. “Hey, don’t mince any words, here.”

  She doesn’t laugh. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  “I just hate that this has been hanging between us for all these months, unresolved.”

  “Who says it’s unresolved?” She shakes her head. “You resolved it for both of us, back in April. And now you have a girlfriend, so I’d say that’s pretty resolved.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What?”

  “I broke up with her.”

  “In person? Or did you text her, too?” she forces herself to ask with a flip toss of her head, as though the news has nothing whatsoever to do with her. Which, she reminds herself, it doesn’t.

  “You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?”

  “Probably not. I thought Annie was a great girl.”

  “You know her name?”

  Oops. She shrugs, as though she could care less about her replacement—her temporary replacement, actually.

  “She is a great girl,” Kevin says.

  “Then why did you break up with her?”

  “A lot of reasons. Does it matter?”

  “No,” she says, “it definitely doesn’t.” Not considering that she herself is a great girl, and he broke up with her, too.

  “Don’t you think it’s a huge coincidence,” Kevin asks, his ocean-blue eyes fastened on her face, “that we both ended up in New York, just a few miles apart?”

  “Ithaca and Lily Dale aren’t a few miles apart,” she points out, her pulse pounding. She wants to take a step back from him, but her bare feet remain stubbornly rooted to the cool tile floor. She needs to see this through.

  “Well, in the grand scheme of things, Ithaca and Lily Dale aren’t all that far apart, don’t you think?”

  Calla shrugs. This isn’t the first time she’s thought about that.

  Yes, it’s a coincidence that they both ended up in the same part of New York State—if you believe in coincidences.

  Most people in Lily Dale do not.

  But what can it possibly mean—Calla and Kevin finding themselves living in relatively close proximity again?

  It doesn’t mean that they’re destined to be together after all.

  No, because . . .

  Wait, why can’t we be together again?

  Annie is no longer in the picture, and . . .

  Jacy.

  You have Jacy now. Remember?

  Jacy would never hurt you the way Kevin did.

  Okay, six months ago, she’d have told herself that Kevin was incapable of hurting her, too.

  But he did.

  And she won’t let herself forget it.

  “I have to go find Lisa,” she tells Kevin, stepping away from him at last, moving around him, past him.

  “Fair enough,” he calls after her, “but don’t write me off just yet, Calla. Promise me you won’t.”

  She doesn’t bother to reply.

  And as happy as she is to see Lisa again, all she really wants to do is get this Florida visit over and get back to Lily Dale, and Gammy, and Jacy.

  Back where she belongs now.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday, October 6

  10:41 a.m.

  If seeing the Wilsons’ house again last night after all this time was difficult for Calla, seeing her own house this morning is . . .

  Well, heart-wrenching agony doesn’t begin to describe the fierce emotion that grips her as she climbs off Lisa’s bike and walks it slowly up the driveway.

  Maybe she should have waited until Lisa could come with her after all.

  But her friend had to work the senior class car wash this morning, and Calla had no desire to accompany her and see the old gang again. Lisa was surprised and disappointed— maybe even a little peeved. When Calla asked what time Lisa would be home, she said she had no idea and that Calla should just take the bike and ride over here herself.

  “I just don’t get why you want to go snooping around in your mother’s stuff,” Lisa said.

  “Because I have to find out if there’s more to it.”

  “Her death?” Lisa shook her head. “You can’t obsess about that for the rest of your life.”

  “Sure I can,” Calla shot back, resenting Lisa, whose mother was at that very moment downstairs ironing Lisa’s T-shirt and shorts after whipping up homemade blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

  Lisa didn’t say a whole lot after that. Just got dressed, rolled her bike out of the garage for Calla, and wished her luck.

  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.