Discovering

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She opens her eyes and glances around her grandmother’s kitchen, making it a point to tune in.

  Still no sign of Aiyana. And no longer a telltale whiff of lilies of the valley.

  But she does spot Miriam—the resident ghost, whose husband built the house well over a century ago— hovering in the corner by the fridge, watching Odelia dish up the casserole.

  She’s definitely not the only spirit hanging around this house. And Calla’s ability to see her is about as much a novelty around Lily Dale as the rain is.

  It all goes with the local territory. Psychic impressions, apparitions, premonitions, too. She’s had those all her life— has always known things she had no way of knowing.

  The first few times it happened, when she was really little, she told her mother. Mom seemed uneasy and made her promise not to tell anybody, so Calla didn’t.

  Not until she got to Lily Dale, where everyone and their brother has premonitions.

  No wonder Mom had to leave. She was always much too practical for stuff like that. Unlike the rest of the world— or so it seemed to Calla— she didn’t believe in Santa Claus, or even in God. So why would she believe in ghosts?

  It must have been hard for her to live in the Dale and not be a part of things. To be one of the few “mere mortals”here— as Calla’s new friend Evangeline jokingly calls outsiders.

  Calla—who stepped into those shoes when she arrived back in August— shed them pretty quickly.

  It wasn’t that she was eager to be like everyone else here. In fact, it was exactly opposite.

  But she had no choice. She discovered that she was one of them.

  Now there’s a new outsider in the Dale. One who isn’t nearly as likely to find that he belongs here.

  “How about a cup of coffee, Jeff?”Gammy asks as he raises a forkful of rice, then stifles a yawn.

  “That would be great. I could use some caffeine.”

  “I’ll make a pot. Calla? Do you want some? You look a little droopy, too.”

  “She doesn’t drink coffee.”

  Okay, true. But Calla wishes her father didn’t find it necessary to answer for her.

  Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Dad here, in her space, putting words into her mouth, imposing all sorts of rules . . .

  “I’d love a cup, Gammy. Thank you.”

  “You’re drinking coffee now?”Dad looks totally dismayed.

  Instant guilt.

  “Just sometimes,”Calla murmurs.

  More like once, on a date with Blue Slayton, the cute guy she was trying to impress back when she first got here.

  Still, she’s almost eighteen. She can drink coffee if she wants to . . . can’t she? Gammy offers it to her all the time. And it’s not like it’s a cigarette or a shot of whiskey or drugs.

  “Caffeine is a drug,”Dad says, as if he’s read her mind.

  Only—being a mere mortal—of course, he didn’t.

  “It’s not good for you, you know .”

  “Dad, you can’t go around treating me like a little girl.”

  “Sure I can,”he says easily, around a mouthful of rice. “You know, Odelia, this is pretty good.”

  “Of course it is.”She pours water into the coffeemaker. “I’m a great cook.”

  “Modest, too.”

  Odelia cracks a smile, presses a button, and returns to the table.

  “Okay,”she says, sitting down. “I’m ready. Tell me everything. First things first, though, Jeff— like I told you on the phone yesterday, you’re welcome to take my room until you find a place of your own around here—”

  “Odelia, like I said, I can’t put you out of your bed. The couch will be—”

  “Wait, Jeff, let me finish. You don’t have to put me out of my bed or sleep on the couch. You’ve met Ramona Taggart next door— well, she has a spare bedroom, and she says it’s all yours, for as long as you want it.”

  “Really.”Dad looks pleased.

  He’s met Odelia’s flaky—and beautiful—neighbor a few times when he visited, and Calla definitely sensed sparks flying between the two of them.

  Which shocked her. Not just because she can’t imagine her father with a woman who isn’t her mother, but because she can’t imagine her father with a woman like Ramona.

  Then again . . . he was married to Mom. A straight-shooting, pragmatic, workaholic businesswoman, she, too, was drastically different from Dad. And from Ramona.

  I guess opposites really do attract.

  Calla can’t help but think of Jacy Bly. He’s not her opposite—more like a kindred spirit— but they’re definitely attracted.

  Like her, Jacy is a relative newcomer to Lily Dale, uprooted from his home on a Native American reservation down on the southern tier. Like her, he moved into a house with a medium’s shingle out front and found himself in the care of strangers— loving strangers, but strangers, nonetheless. Like her, he eventually found himself at home here in the Dale.

  Perhaps most important, Jacy is—like Calla— a gifted medium in his own right.

  “Listen, it’s not a fancy guest suite, by any means,”Gammy is telling Dad. “It’s just big enough for a twin bed and a dresser— but it’s a bed, not a couch, and you’ll have room to store your things. In this house, there’s not even room to store my things, and Calla’s.”

  And Mom’s, Calla adds silently. Her grandmother hasn’t thrown away any of her late daughter’s childhood possessions. For Calla, this house has been a welcome shrine to her mother’s past, a soothing balm for her own grief.

  “Since I pretty much just have the clothes on my back, and some stuff I grabbed from the house down in Florida, storage space isn’t a big issue for me right now, Odelia. But the room sounds great,”Dad adds hastily—maybe too hastily, because he glances from Gammy to Calla, saying, like he’s still reluctant to accept the invitation, “I just hate to put anybody out. . . .”

  “Oh, you’re not putting Ramona out, Jeff. She kept telling me to make sure you knew that she’d really love to have you.”

  Of course she would.

  “Plus,”Odelia continues, “you’ll be right next door to Calla. What could be better? Right, Calla?”

  She’s got to be kidding.

  What could be better than to have Dad move into a house that bears the shingle RAMONA TAGGART, REGISTERED MEDIUM?

  Talk about baptism by fire.

  Dad has visited Calla in Lily Dale a couple of times, but he still has no idea what goes on around here.

  Sure, he’s driven past the sign at the wrought-iron gate: LILY DALE ASSEMBLY . . . WORLD’S LARGEST CENTER FOR THE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM. And, yes, he knows that the lakeside community was the birthplace of modern spiritualism back in the eigh teen hundreds. He’s also well aware that some of Odelia’s neighbors do psychic readings, thanks to the hand-painted shingles in front of their homes.

  Like REV. DORIS HENDERSON, CLAIRVOYANT.

  And ANDY BRIGHTON, PSYCHIC MEDIUM.

  “New Age freaks,”Dad called them, and asked if they hold seances and read crystal balls.

  Calla enlightened him just enough to take the edge off but figured that if he knew the whole truth, he’d yank her right out of Lily Dale.

  At first, she was desperate to stay and delve into her mother’s past, thinking she’d find the key to the mystery surrounding Mom’s death. But as time went on, she felt more and more connected to her grandmother, and her new friends— and to the place itself. She decided to spend her senior year at Lily Dale High, rather than in California with Dad. Yes, she’s missed him, but in a way, it’s also been a relief to have some distance between them, considering all that’s been going on here.

  So much for space. Now that Dad’s decided to move into Ramona’s house, he’s about to discover that he’s a mere mortal living among the dead— and among the living who can communicate with the dead.

  He’s not going to appreciate that any more than Calla did when she first got here.

  But
it’s not like he’s eventually likely to discover—as she did—that he, too, can see dead people.

  While the spiritualists here believe that anyone is capable of connecting with spirits, that it’s a skill that can be developed like any other, they also believe that it comes much more readily to certain people, who inherit it from their parents and grandparents like any other hereditary trait.

  Calla, as the granddaughter of one of Lily Dale’s most powerful mediums, is ge netically predisposed through her mother’s side of the family. And it’s a talent that seems to have skipped a generation, because Mom didn’t have a psychic bone in her body.

  “So now that we’ve settled where you’ll be staying, Jeff, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened in Florida?”

  Dad puts down his fork. “I really did cover most of it on the phone, Odelia.”

  “An insane woman— who, for God knows what reason, snuck into your house a few months ago and pushed Stephanie down the stairs— came back and tried to kill Calla, too. That’s what I know .”

  “That’s exactly what happened.”Dad pushes his plate away, suddenly looking ill.

  Calla sets down her fork and shudders, remembering the crazed look in Sharon Logan’s eyes.

  “But who is this person?”Gammy asks. “She’s from this area, didn’t you say?”

  “Not here—about a hundred miles away, I guess. Geneseo.”

  “I can’t imagine the connection. Stephanie never even set foot in Geneseo, as far as I know . Not when she lived here, anyway.”

  “I don’t know about that, but . . . Calla’s been there. Calla’s met the woman.”

  “What?!”

  Great. Did he have to bring that up now?

  Calla shifts her weight uncomfortably in her chair and tries not to look at her grandmother.

  She had confessed that part of the story when they were at the police station yesterday. But only because the detective asked her directly, in front of her father, whether she had ever seen the woman before.

  How could she lie?

  She admitted that she’d been to Geneseo and had briefly met Sharon there. She just didn’t tell the police—or Dad—the entire story.

  But that’s not lying. It’s just omitting. There’s a big difference.

  If Calla admitted that she’d been led to Sharon Logan while searching for Mom’s missing high school boyfriend, Darrin, she might somehow be forced to admit the rest of the truth: not just that Mom and Darrin had had a baby all those years ago . . .

  But that they were, according to Mom’s e-mail, apparently having an affair for months before they were both killed.

  The knowledge is hard enough for Calla to swallow. It would be much too painful for Dad to hear after all he’s been through.

  “When did you meet her, Calla?”Gammy demands, with an ominous look in her eye.

  “Last weekend, when I went to Geneseo.”She might as well confess as much as she can, with Dad sitting right here. “Remember when I said I was going to the homecoming dance with Jacy? I really went there.”

  “To Geneseo. So you lied to me.”

  Calla nods miserably. “I’m sorry.”

  “And Jacy—what? Covered for you? Went with you?”

  “He went with me. He drove me, actually.”

  At least Gammy doesn’t scold her for the lie. She probably will at some point, but right now, she seems interested only in getting answers.

  “Why did you go there?”

  “Because . . .”Calla flicks a glance at her father, who is listening intently, of course. “See, a couple of weeks ago, Evange-line and I had gone to this psychic reading here in the Dale . . . with Patsy. You know Patsy?”

  Gammy glances at Dad, then nods. “I know Patsy,”is all she says, obviously getting it.

  Patsy Metcalf is a friend of hers— who also happens to be the instructor of Calla’s Beginning Mediumship class.

  Which, naturally, Dad doesn’t know Calla is taking.

  He was disapproving enough when she told him— and the two police detectives, Lutz and Kearney— that she’d been led to Sharon Logan through a psychic reading in the first place.

  “Calla, why would you waste your time on that kind of thing?”Dad had asked at the time.

  “It wasn’t a waste, Dad. There was obviously something to it, right?”

  He muttered something about— what else?—New Age freaks.

  But when he saw how seriously the police were taking her, he closed his mouth and didn’t say another word about it.

  The detectives took down contact information for Patsy and wanted to know about Bob, her fellow student, who’d had the vision. Something tells Calla that Lutz and Kearney might be paying a visit to Lily Dale in the near future.

  Now, she explains to her grandmother as vaguely as possible how a psychic vision— not her own—of a purple house in Geneseo had led her to Sharon Logan’s doorstep.

  “I just don’t understand what you were looking for, though,”Dad says.

  I was looking for Darrin. The guy Mom was with when she was supposedly away on all those business trips.

  But she can’t tell her father about that.

  “I wanted answers about Mom’s death, Dad. But Jacy and I barely talked to her. She wasn’t very friendly, to say the least.”

  “Did she threaten you?”

  “No. It wasn’t like that. She just told us to go away.”

  That happened right after Calla and Jacy showed Sharon Logan a photo of Mom and Darrin.

  “And this woman killed my daughter.”Odelia swallows hard, and her hands clench into fists on the table.

  “She hadn’t confessed when we left Florida,”Dad tells her. “She’s not talking at all, as far as I know . The police said they’ll let me know what she says when she cracks.”

  Calla voices the question that’s been on her mind since the arrest. “What if she doesn’t crack and confess?”

  “Then I guess we’ll never know the truth about what happened to your mother.”

  Calla knows what happened, though. She’s seen it.

  She’s had visions, horrible visions, of Sharon Logan pushing Mom down the stairs, wearing a signet ring that bore the Logan family crest. That’s all the proof she needs.

  She knows, too, that Sharon killed Darrin. His murder, in Portland, Maine, a few weeks before Mom’s, remains officially unsolved.

  Nobody could possibly link Darrin to Mom. As far as she can tell, neither her father nor the Florida police have any idea he even existed.

  He died under an assumed name, Tom Leolyn, having been missing from Lily Dale for almost twenty years. He contacted Mom this past Valentine’s Day, wanting to see her. She snuck away to meet him in Boston, where, apparently, he dropped a bombshell on her.

  Something about their child, and something he did for which he wanted her forgiveness.

  That was as far as Calla could bring herself to read back in Florida.

  Dad and the police don’t know about the e-mails.

  Maybe they should be told. Maybe Calla should forget about protecting Dad, or figuring things out on her own. Maybe she should just spill the whole story.

  But what would she gain from that?

  Nobody knows why Sharon Logan did what she did, but maybe it really was random. Anyway, she’s in custody. She can’t hurt anyone now.

  And if Calla tells what she knows, Mom’s secret baby and affair would be dragged out into the open.

  Calla looks at her father.

  He’s wearing a faraway expression, eyes glistening with tears.

  He’s thinking about Mom.

  I can’t let him find out that she was in love with another man, sneaking around to be with him. That would kill him.

  Now that he’s here in Lily Dale, can she bring herself to find out what really happened between her mother and Darrin? What if the truth comes out, anyway? Then Dad will have to live forever with the knowledge that his wife had a baby with another man, hid it from him, and
then cheated on him.

  How could you, Mom? How could you do this to him? To us?

  THREE

  “How about that coffee now, Jeff?”Gammy asks, pushing her chair back from the table.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “And you need something sweet to go with it.”

  “You know me, Odelia.”

  She does know him. Somehow Calla is surprised to hear her grandmother acknowledge Dad’s little quirk: that he always likes to have a cookie or sweet roll with his coffee.

  But then, Dad was Odelia’s son- in-law long before he was Calla’s father. She probably knew him well, way back when. She used to visit them a lot in the old days, before the rift.

  “You know, Jeff,”Gammy bustles over to the counter, “you look light years younger without that gray beard. I’m glad you finally shaved it off.”

  “It wasn’t all gray.”

  “Mostly gray.”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “What made you decide to get rid of it? You’ve had it forever.”“Not forever. Only since the third grade.”Dad winks at Calla across the table as Odelia chuckles.

  He does look light years younger, Calla notices. His black hair is still slightly shaggy, but it actually has some shape to it now, thanks to some fancy LA barber.

  He’s also exchanged his wire- rimmed glasses for contact lenses, bringing out his dark brown eyes. His T-shirts haven’t been as ratty as usual, either.

  It’s so ironic. Mom would have been pleased to see him spruced up. She was always nagging him about the way he looked.

  Now that she’s gone, he’s grooming himself and dressing the way she wished he would have.

  Calla can’t help but wonder whether it’s just a sad coincidence . . . or whether the way he looks now has something to do with Mom being gone.

  Maybe he’s dating again already.

  Or maybe he just wants to.

  She can’t help but think again of Ramona.

  “You know, I never really spent much time worrying about stuff like that,”he says, mostly to her grandmother. “You know . . . the gray beard. It was just there. Like everything else. But lately, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, the way they’ve been, and decided to try to change whatever needs changing.”

  “Like shaving.”Gammy shoots a glance in Calla’s direction.