Discovering

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  LILY DALE

  DISCOVERING

  Wendy Corsi Staub

  For the sweetest June rose: my new niece,

  Gianna Marie Corsi

  And for my guys: Morgan, Brody, and Mark

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE

  New York City

  Monday, October 8

  1:46 p.m.

  If you look hard enough, you can always find it.

  The wise man who once said that to Laura wasn’t talking about the Internet, but the phrase has become her mantra for all things.

  He was right, of course.

  There it is.

  She’s been looking, and she’s found it.

  Her hand trembling on the mouse, she leans closer to the monitor and clicks to enlarge the window.

  LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED IN FLORIDA

  Local woman.

  Sharon Logan.

  Whenever Laura has a chance to get to a computer, she enters the name in a search engine and prays nothing will come up.

  Today, her prayers went unanswered.

  According to the online news account from her hometown paper, Sharon Logan is being held without bail in Tampa for attacking a girl named Calla Delaney and trying to drown her in her family’s swimming pool. She’s also being questioned about the murder last summer of the girl’s mother, Stephanie Delaney, originally ruled an accidental fall down the stairs.

  Those poor people.

  Jaw set grimly, hand unsteady on the mouse button, Laura closes out the screen. That’s all she needs to know .

  It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

  That’s why she had to get away. She just couldn’t take it anymore—the constant tension, the growing paranoia, the constant, smothering attention; being treated as if she were still a child, even now that she’s in her twenties.

  Laura knew that if she stayed, eventually something would have to give. She didn’t want to be there to witness it.

  But . . . murder.

  She never really imagined it would be that extreme.

  And . . . Florida?

  What was she doing in Florida?

  Who are the Delaneys?

  Does it matter?

  Maybe it should.

  But after all those years of being the girl who lived in the purple house with the crazy lady, all Laura cares about is that she’s finally free.

  Free, and not looking back.

  “Excuse me, miss . . . are you done with that computer? Because we have people waiting to use it.”

  She looks up to see a librarian. Not one of the friendly ones she’s gotten to know since she started coming here a few months ago; rather, the one who shushes people and scowls a lot when they hog the computers.

  “Oh . . . sorry. I’m finished.”

  She grabs her backpack, makes her way through the hushed library, and emerges on a crowded Manhattan street.

  People rush past without giving her a second glance. No one knows who she is. Or who Sharon Logan is. No one cares.

  That’s why she’s here. That’s just the way she wants it.

  Especially now that Laura knows it finally happened. The crazy lady finally snapped.

  Murder.

  Laura knew, when she woke up this morning, that today would be the day the search engine would yield something.

  If you look hard enough, you can find it.

  Years ago, when he said those words, he was talking about hope.

  About finding hope, in the midst of despair.

  “If you look hard enough, Laura,”he said, handing her tissue after tissue to dry her tears, “you can find it.”

  She clung to those words, somehow managed to find a glimmer of light on the darkest days; just a shred of hope to keep her going.

  Yet now that it’s all over—now that she’s here, and Sharon Logan is a thousand miles away, in jail for murder . . .

  Now, ironically, Laura’s mantra has been altered.

  Every morning, she wakes up thinking it, praying it:

  If you really, really, really want to get lost—really need to get lost—then no one can ever find you.

  ONE

  Lily Dale, New York

  Monday, October 8

  1:46 p.m.

  “All right. Tell me everything. And I mean everything!”

  Calla Delaney and her father look at each other, then back at Odelia Lauder, standing in the front hall waiting impatiently for one of them to start talking.

  “Gammy, it’s really complicated.”Calla sets down her heavy duffel bag and shifts the laptop computer bag to her other shoulder, wishing her grandmother hadn’t pounced on her and Dad the second they walked in the door from the airport.

  It’s been a long day already, saying good-bye to the Wilsons down in Florida, driving to the airport in Tampa, flying from there to New York City, then from New York to Buffalo, waiting for the luggage, renting a car, then driving almost an hour south to reach Lily Dale.

  Odelia’s little two- story cottage with its peeling pinkish orange paint was a welcome sight. They arrived just as a cold rain began falling from an overcast sky, typical weather here in southwestern New York State.

  Calla, in jeans and a fleece sweatshirt, was prepared for it.

  Dad, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt, was not.

  “I’ll get some warmer clothes when we get there,”he told Calla earlier when she warned him that his outfit, which is fine for Florida— or Southern California, where he’s been on a teaching sabbatical since August—just won’t cut it up here.

  Poor Dad. It’s not like he even had a chance to pack a bag for what’s turning out to be an extended, unexpected trip east. He hopped on a plane from LA on Saturday when the Tampa police informed him that his daughter had just been attacked by a lunatic killer.

  Again.

  Only Dad doesn’t know about the first time, well over a month ago.

  That, of course, was a different lunatic killer.

  Right.

  Incredible, really, the things that have happened to Calla since she came to live with her grandmother in this tiny, gated lakeside village filled with century-old gingerbread cottages . . . and psychic mediums.

  “Odelia,”Dad says, “there’s a lot to discuss.”

  “I’m listening.”Gammy looks from him to Calla to him to Calla. “Hello?”

  Not knowing where to begin, Calla avoids her grandmother’s expectant gaze. She stoops to pick up Gert, who’s rubbing against her ankles, purring, welcoming her back.

  “Why don’t we let Calla go up to her room and relax,”Dad suggests, “and I’ll fill you in.”

  “That’s a great idea. Calla, why don’t you—”

  “No!”She protests so loudly that
poor Gert leaps from her arms and flees up the steps past Miriam, who’s materialized about halfway up, keeping a ghostly eye on things.

  Both Dad and Odelia gape at Calla, who scowls back at them. “Please don’t shuttle me off to my room like a little girl. I’m not. I’m almost eighteen.”Well, she will be, in another six months. “I can deal with what happened. I mean, it happened to me, remember? Maybe I want to talk about it. Maybe I need to.”

  She does?

  You do?

  Hmm. The protest sort of popped out of her.

  Who knows? Her head has been spinning since the plane touched down. Maybe she does need to get everything out into the open.

  Then again, just a few moments ago, the last thing she wanted to do was rehash the events of the past few days.

  Face it.You really don’t know what you want.

  “Oh, sweetie, you’ve been through so much. It just breaks my heart.”Her grandmother throws a pair of strong maternal arms around her.

  Suddenly, for all her longing to be seen as an adult, Calla feels as though she’s about to crumple and cry like a baby.

  “I’m okay,”she manages to squeak out unconvincingly.

  No, she isn’t. She used to be okay. Before everything— before she lost her mother. Before her life fell apart.

  She used to be sweet and accommodating and happy and normal.

  “You can’t possibly be okay. And you don’t have to be. Not yet. But you will be,”Odelia promises, reaching out to brush strands of Calla’s long brown hair back from her face.

  Then, for the first time, she seems to notice the laptop bag. “What is that?”

  “Mom’s computer. Now I’ll be able to check my e-mail and do research for homework right from here, Gammy.”

  Among other things.

  “But this house isn’t wired for the Internet, sweetie.”

  “That’s okay. All I need is a phone jack. I can do a dial-up connection.”

  “Well, then, you’re in luck. We have a few of those. In fact, there’s one right in your bedroom.”

  “Really?”She’d never noticed it before.

  Odelia nods. “Your mother begged me for her own phone when she hit twelve or thirteen. Back then, we didn’t have cordless, and she wanted privacy to talk to her friends. She used to be on it forever.”

  Calla finds it hard to imagine her hyperefficient mother lounging around chatting on the phone for hours. Mom wasn’t big on leisurely conversation— telephone or otherwise. She liked to get right to the point and then move on. In both business situations and in personal ones.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,”Odelia suggests. “I made lunch. You haven’t eaten yet, have you, Jeff?”

  “We grabbed a couple of bran muffins at the airport earlier this morning, but Calla barely touched hers.”

  “Well, they probably didn’t put the Raisinets in, like I do when I make them.”

  “What?”Dad’s eyes are wide.

  “Didn’t you ever hear of raisins in bran muffins?”

  “Raisins, yes. Raisinets, no.”

  “Well, chocolate is good in anything,”Odelia tells Dad with a shrug, eyes gleaming behind the pink plastic cat’s-eye frames of her glasses— which, of course, clash violently with her frizzy dyed red hair and her purple sweater.

  If Calla were in a chatty mood, she might bring up the “snicker-noodles”her grandmother served for dinner one night—with cut- up Snickers bars as a featured ingredient.

  Was that only a few weeks ago? It seems like a year, at least, has passed since that night.

  And it seems even longer since Calla’s had any kind of appetite.

  “Who am I to question your recipes, Odelia? You’ve always been a great cook.”Dad sniffs the air. “Something smells good. Tuna melts?”

  Calla doubts that. Tuna melts would be far too ordinary for a creative chef like Odelia.

  “No, but you’re close,”she tells Dad. “Come see.”

  Calla smells tuna, too. Tuna . . . and a faint hint of lilies of the valley.

  That can mean only one thing.

  Aiyana is here.

  She takes a quick look around the room for her Native American spirit guide, whose presence is always accompanied by the scent of Mom’s favorite flower.

  No sign of Aiyana, but . . .

  Calla sniffs again. Yes, the floral smell is real, and of course there’s not a blossom in sight. Fragrant lilies of the valley only bloom in springtime.

  Aiyana . . . where are you?

  Calla wonders if she’s just too worn out today to connect with the spirit. She’s still new to this—she needs more practice when it comes to tuning in to the energy.

  Tuning out, as well. Sometimes she finds herself bombarded with images and voices. It can be frightening.

  Her grandmother promised she’d get the hang of it, though. That’s why she enrolled Calla in a Beginning Mediumship course with classes every Saturday morning.

  Aiyana, are you trying to tell me something?

  “Calla? Are you okay?”

  She turns to see Odelia watching her with concern.

  “I’m . . . fine. Just a little spacey, I guess. Maybe I need to go upstairs and lie down.”And see if Aiyana comes to me there.

  “You need to eat first. Come on.”Keeping one fleshy arm draped around Calla’s shoulders, her fingers resting on the strap of the bag that contains Mom’s computer, Odelia leads the way through small rooms cluttered with mismatched furniture, books and knickknacks, threadbare carpets, and outdated kitchen appliances.

  Funny . . . the ramshackle Victorian cottage is a far cry from the upscale, three-thousand-square- foot house where Calla grew up, but this feels much more like home to her now.

  Maybe because the Tampa house is where Mom died.

  This is where Mom lived— until she was about Calla’s age, anyway.

  Then Stephanie Lauder left, and she never came back. Never, it seems, even looked back.

  She didn’t like to talk about her childhood. Calla always assumed that was because she was a child of divorce—her father left when she was young. Or maybe it was because Mom didn’t get along very well with Odelia. Or because she just wasn’t big on nostalgia.

  Whatever. You’d think Mom might have mentioned to Calla or Dad that her hometown happened to be populated by psychic mediums—and that her own mother, Odelia, was one of them.

  Calla didn’t find out about any of that until she came to visit her grandmother after Mom’s death.

  No, not death.

  Now they all know her fatal fall down the stairs wasn’t an accident.

  It was murder. She was murdered.

  That’s not all.

  Mom had a deep, dark secret— one Calla stumbled upon a few days ago, when she was snooping through her mother’s e-mail files looking for clues to her death. The secret remains locked in Mom’s laptop, protected by a password Calla managed to figure out—perhaps with a little help from her sixth sense.

  She didn’t tell a soul about what she’d discovered. Not Dad, not the police. It was too shocking, too personal, too . . . painful.

  Even now, whenever Calla allows herself to think about what she learned, she’s swept by an overwhelming sense of betrayal by the mother she thought she had known—the mother who now feels like a stranger to her.

  How could Mom have kept such an important secret for all these years? Why?

  The whole truth, Calla is sure, lies in her mother’s e-mail files. But she couldn’t bring herself to go on reading them that day in Florida.

  No, she only got as far as to learn the shocking truth: that Mom and her high school boyfriend, Darrin Yates— both of whom were murdered in the last few months— had, over twenty years ago, had a child together.

  Which means somewhere out there, Calla must have a half sibling.

  TWO

  Odelia bustles over to take a casserole dish out of the oven. “You’re going to love this, Jeff. It’ll warm your soul.”

&
nbsp; “I take it you’re thinking my soul needs warming?”

  “I’m thinking, whose doesn’t? And it’s one of my specialties.”

  “Soul warming?”

  “Rice ring!”

  “Rice ring,”Dad echoes, nodding. “What is it, though?”

  “It’s just what it sounds like . . . see?”Odelia drops a crocheted pot holder onto the table and plops the oval dish on top of it.

  Calla peers at the contents. Yup. That’s a ring of rice, all right. Mounds of steaming white rice, mixed with peas, line the perimeter of the dish. Pooled in the center basin is something creamy and lumpy with greenish gray flecks.

  It doesn’t look particularly appetizing, but it does smell pretty good. Which is the case with many of her grandmother’s specialties.

  “What else is in there?”Dad eyes it somewhat suspiciously. “Besides a ring of rice, I mean.”

  “Peas.”

  “Yup, see the peas. A whole lot of peas.”

  Dad hates peas.

  He’s not all that crazy about rice, either, Calla remembers. Not the brown rice Mom used to make, anyway. She was really into healthy food. Unlike Gammy.

  Funny how Mom and Gammy really were opposites.

  Kind of like Mom and me.

  “It’s just tuna fish and cream of celery soup, and stop making faces at my rice ring, Jeff.”Gammy swats Dad’s arm with the other pot holder.

  Mom made that, Calla realizes.

  Yes, her mother made that pot holder and the matching one beneath the casserole dish. She was a little girl, and she used one of those plastic loom kits; she got it for Christmas.

  Calla closes her eyes.

  There’s Mom, about ten years old, curled up in a chair beside a tinsel-covered tree, weaving loops of colored fabric as snow swirls beyond the window.

  It’s not her imagination. No, this scene— like so many other images that have flashed into her head over the years— really happened.

  It’s a psychic vision.

  She’s been having them all her life. She just never knew exactly what they were until she moved in with Odelia, in a strange little town populated almost entirely by spiritualists.

  This is where Calla first started seeing dead people, too. Well, not just here.

  Lately, they’re everywhere. Or maybe they always have been, but Calla never realized it, or knew how—or where— to look for them.