Discovering

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  So does Dad. “Like a lot of things.”

  “Well, I’m really going to like having you around for a while, Jeff. We haven’t spent much time together since . . . Florida.”

  Florida. Gammy means the funeral. She flew down, of course, and stayed with them. Before that, Calla hadn’t seen her in years.

  That’s the other thing. . . .

  The argument that’s been haunting Calla since she arrived here, in a recurring dream. The scene is always the same: her mother and grandmother are emotional, angry, screaming at each other.

  Calla has no doubt that the argument actually took place years ago, though she’s not sure whether she witnessed it herself or is psychically channeling it.

  “. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . .”Mom sobs.

  “. . . for your own good . . .”Odelia says, and then, “. . . how you can live with yourself . . .”

  Then one of them—Calla isn’t sure which—declares, with chilling certainty: “The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake.”

  Now that she knows what she knows about Mom and Darrin’s past . . .

  Calla thoughtfully watches Odelia pour coffee, chatting easily with Dad.

  Does she know about the baby?

  And what does dredging the lake have to do with anything? Calla no longer smells lilies of the valley, but maybe Aiyana will come to her with some kind of message, like she has in the past.

  Abruptly, she pushes back her chair.

  Gammy asks, “Where are you going?”

  To find Aiyana.

  “Can I call Jacy?”

  Seeing the dubious expression on both their faces, Calla realizes she probably should have said she was calling Evange-line instead.

  But she and Evangeline aren’t exactly on friendly terms these days—all the more reason Dad’s stay next door will be awkward.

  Well, if not Evangeline, then Calla should have said she was calling someone else. Someone who wasn’t an accomplice in her mission to Geneseo and her lie to her grandmother.

  Now, whenever she’s with Jacy, the two of them, Gammy and Dad, are going to think she’s sneaking around behind their backs. Great.

  It’s her father who speaks up first. “Go ahead. Go call Jacy.”

  “Thanks.”

  As she leaves the kitchen, she realizes she was really asking her grandmother’s permission—not his. She’s been answering to Gammy ever since she moved here. Dad, living thousands of miles away, hasn’t had much say over what she does on a daily basis.

  That, of course, is no longer the case.

  Now she’ll have to report to both Dad and Gammy— and they’ll be total watchdogs after all she’s been through. She’ll be lucky if they let her go away to college next fall.

  Which reminds her . . .

  She’s supposed to be narrowing down her choices and meeting with her guidance counselor about it in a few days.

  Not to mention, she’s got a pile of weekend homework to get to before tomorrow morning.

  The last thing she feels like doing right now is worrying about any of that.

  Jacy . . . I really do need to talk to Jacy.

  She swings through the living room to grab the cordless phone receiver, then heads up the stairs with it, her duffel, and her mother’s laptop. She’ll hide that away until she feels like dealing with whatever additional information might be buried in its files.

  Gert is waiting at the top of the stairs.

  “Hi, kitty. Did you miss me? Hmm?”

  The cat rubs against Calla’s legs, purring.

  “I know . . . . I missed you, too.”Calla reaches down to stroke her soft fur. “Do you want to sleep on my bed tonight?”

  Abruptly, Gert arches her back and thrusts her paws forward on the floor.

  Calla laughs. “Is that a yes?”

  Then she realizes Gert has fastened her feline gaze on something over Calla’s shoulder. She turns just in time to see a filmy apparition drift into the wall.

  They really are everywhere.

  This morning the airport—and the plane, too—were loaded with spirits along for the ride, drawn by the passengers’ nervous energy, no doubt.

  If there’s anything Calla has learned lately about the dearly departed, it’s that in order to manifest, their spirits feed off human—and sometimes electrical, or technological— energy.

  And that animals are particularly aware of their presence.

  Gert is still keeping a wary eye on the wall where the apparition disappeared. There was originally a doorway there, Gammy told Calla.

  “It’s okay, Gert.”She leans over to pet the kitten. “It’s just, you know, a . . . visitor. You’ll get used to them, like me. Well, I mean, I’m trying to.”

  Gert looks at the wall, and then at Calla for another long moment, before turning and strolling down the stairs.

  Feeling depleted, Calla steps over the threshold into Mom’s girlhood bedroom, with its old-fashioned white beadboard and striped wallpaper and sage-and-rose color scheme.

  As she sets her belongings on the floor and inhales the familiar smell of old wood and clean linens, an unexpected wave of relief washes over her.

  There’s Mom’s white iron twin bed covered in a patchwork quilt pieced together from Mom’s little-girl dresses. There’s Mom’s carved wooden music box filled with her jewelry. There are Mom’s childhood books on the shelves, progressing from the Little House series to The Outsiders to Flowers in the Attic.

  And there, Calla realizes with a jolt, is Mom herself.

  Mom, not as Calla knew her, but as she appeared at Calla’s age, when she lived here. When she looked so much like Calla does now—same slim, long- waisted build; same wide- set hazel eyes; same thick, milk-chocolate- colored hair streaked with lighter shades of brown—that if they were facing each other, it would be like gazing into a mirror.

  She’s lying on her stomach on the bed, reading a book— one of the Little House books, Calla sees. Her legs are bent at the knees, feet waving lazily in the air, as though she hasn’t a care in the world.

  Then, as abruptly as the apparition appeared, she’s gone.

  “Mom! Mom, wait!”Calla rushes toward the bed, arms outstretched.

  But the room is empty. The bed is empty. She’s all alone.

  Trembling, she sinks onto the mattress and touches the spot where she saw her mother.

  Jacy once mentioned a theory that events can leave psychic imprints on the places where they occurred.

  That’s what must have happened; it’s as if a door opened just long enough for Calla to glimpse the past before it was slammed shut again.

  Calla didn’t feel Mom’s presence, though.

  Not the way she’s felt other spirits. Kaitlyn Riggs, for instance— the girl who was kidnapped and murdered. Or her schoolmate Donald Reamer’s dead father. Or Aiyana . . .

  Those were all visitations.

  She’s been waiting for one from her mother.

  But this was more like . . . looking at an old snapshot.

  An odd snapshot, really, because the book in Mom’s hands was meant for a much younger reader. Not that it matters.

  “Mom, can you hear me? I need to see you. Really see you. The way I knew you. I need to feel you here. I need you to come to me, please. I need to know what happened.”

  I need . . . I need . . . I need . . .

  Calla sinks onto the bed and buries her face in her hands, frustrated.

  She needs answers.

  Why is it that finding out who killed her mother only opened the door to more questions?

  Like . . . what happened to her mother’s other child?

  There are only three options, really. Either Mom and Darrin gave the baby up for adoption, or Darrin raised it himself, or . . .

  It died.

  She glances at the laptop.

  There’s a chance she could log in right now and find out that she has a brother or sister living in Boston or something.

&
nbsp; Are you ready for that, though?

  Calla hesitates.

  Not yet.

  Not right this minute, anyway.

  First things first.

  With a trembling hand, she dials Jacy’s phone number.

  FOUR

  Lily Dale

  Monday, October 8

  3:33 p.m.

  “I really can’t stick around for very long,”Calla informs her grandmother and father as the three of them walk out the door and down the front steps beneath an ominous sky. “I’ve got to study, and then I’m meeting Jacy for a little while.”

  When she called him earlier, he was headed out the door with his foster dads and couldn’t talk.

  “Are they right there with you?”she asked. “Because I can talk, and you can listen. There’s some stuff I want to tell you.”

  “Tell me in person. I’ll come over when I get back.”

  “How about if we just meet down by the lake at five o’clock or so?”she suggested instead.

  She isn’t exactly eager for Jacy to come face- to-face with Gammy and Dad now that they know about his part in her lie.

  “Make it five fifteen,”Jacy told her, and she reluctantly agreed, wondering how she’s going to last that long without telling someone the whole shocking story and asking for advice.

  “Listen, I know you’ve got a life here, and you’re busy with your friends and schoolwork—hopefully not in that order,”Dad says, patting her shoulder as they cross the yard toward the Taggarts’ porch. “I just wanted you to come over and see where I’ll be staying, that’s all.”

  Calla bites her tongue to keep from saying that she’s seen the Taggarts’ guest room plenty of times, and even spent the night in it a few weeks ago when she and Evangeline had a sleepover.

  Brat, she scolds herself. What you really want to tell him is that you belong here . . . he doesn’t.

  Yeah, but only because you know he’s going to freak and want to leave when he finds out what really goes on in this town.

  Which is bound to happen any second now, when Dad notices . . .

  Wait a minute.

  The shingle that ordinarily hangs beside Ramona’s door— the one that reads RAMONA TAGGART, REGISTERED MEDIUM— seems to be missing.

  Calla raises an eyebrow at her grandmother and gestures with her head at the empty bracket overhead.

  “I asked her to take it down for a few days.”Gammy’s whisper is muffled by a rumble of thunder in the west. “Just until your father gets settled in.”

  Calla—who was grateful when her grandmother did the same thing with ODELIA LAUDER, REGISTERED MEDIUM whenever Dad came to visit— now wonders uneasily whether it’s a good idea to deliberately keep him in the dark.

  If he’s going to freak out and leave, it’s better to just get it over with, isn’t it?

  Maybe we should all just come out and tell him. About Gammy, and Ramona, and . . . me.

  “Hello, hello! Come on in before it rains!”Ramona calls out, and Calla looks up to see that she’s waiting in the open doorway, beckoning them.

  Well, she is psychic. She was probably aware they were on their way the very second they finished washing the lunch dishes and headed for the door.

  Or maybe she’s been eagerly watching for them since Gammy called her a good half hour ago to say that Dad had accepted her invitation to stay here.

  That’s more what it seems like, really.

  Ramona, wearing one of her gypsy- style dresses, is all but bouncing with excitement as she holds the door open for them, chattering a mile a minute.

  “Welcome back, Calla! And I’m so glad to see you again, Jeff. What happened in Florida? Odelia said something about a problem down there, but—you’ll have to fill me in. Come in, ignore the mess, come right up the stairs,”she says, leading the way up the narrow flight with the three of them trooping behind her. “Watch your head at the landing, there, Jeff. Like I told Odelia, it’s not the Ritz, but it’s a place to sleep and, hey, it’s free.”

  “No, please, you have to let me pay you. If I were staying at a hotel, I’d be paying.”

  “True, but at a hotel, you’d have maid service. Have you looked around? There’s no maid here,”Ramona says wryly. “No ice machine, no room ser vice, no pool . . .”

  “Darn,”Dad says. “How about nightly turndown ser vice with a towel swan and chocolate on the pillow?”

  “Hmm . . . maybe that could be arranged.”

  They’re flirting. It’s so weird. Calla turns to glance at her grandmother to see if she’s noticed. Yup. There’s a thoughtful expression on Odelia’s face and a gleam in her eye.

  They pass the open doorway to Evangeline’s room, then her brother’s. “Company, Mason,”Ramona calls to her nephew, who’s sprawled on his bed with a handheld computer game.

  Looking at Mason is like looking at Evangeline—rather, looking at her if she wore owlish glasses, had frizzy, close-cropped red hair, and was perpetually fixated on a book or a screen of some sort.

  “Say hello, Mason.”

  “Hello.”His hazel eyes never leave the game.

  “Remember Calla’s dad, Jeff? He’s going to be staying in the guest room for a while.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ramona sighs. “He’s normally much more communicative.”

  He is? Calla’s never witnessed it, but who knows? Maybe Mason turns into a real live wire when she’s not around.

  “I’ll see you later, huh, Mason?”Dad says.

  Mason—who lost both his parents before he was old enough to remember them— actually looks up. “Sure. See you later.”

  Watching the two exchange a brief smile before Ramona leads the group down the hall again, Calla can’t help but feel a tiny flicker of jealousy.

  It suddenly occurs to her that Mason—and Evangeline, too— will be sharing a house with her father now. And that she herself won’t be.

  She had thought it would be a good thing to keep him at arm’s length, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’s missed him too much for that.

  “This is it,”Ramona announces, and opens the door to the guest room with a jangle of bracelets.

  There’s a bed, dresser, and small bedside table that holds a fan of magazines and a vase of purple asters obviously cut from the clump growing beside the Taggarts’ front porch.

  “This is charming,”Dad declares, and turns to Calla. “What do you think?”

  “Charming,”she agrees.

  “And the best part of all is that your dad will be right next door,”Ramona drapes an arm around Calla’s shoulders and squeezes her. “I know how much you two have missed each other.”

  “We have. Thanks, Ra—”Calla breaks off, stunned to see one of the magazines flying off the bedside table. It seems to hover in midair before landing on the floor at her feet.

  Her father, with his back to the table, didn’t see what happened, but Odelia and Ramona did. They exchange a nervous glance.

  “I must have bumped into this. I’m such a klutz. Oh well, my secret is out,”Ramona says lightly, reaching for the magazine.

  Her secret is out?

  Calla braces herself, thinking she’s about to reveal her supernatural abilities.

  Her grandmother obviously thinks the same thing because she shoots Ramona a look of dismay.

  “What secret is that?”Dad asks with interest.

  “That I’m the ultimate pack rat. I never throw anything away. See?”

  Calla all but sighs in relief as Ramona holds up the magazine’s cover. On it is a photograph of a smiling, familiar woman and the headline AN INTERVIEW WITH NEW FIRST LADY LAURA BUSH.

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with outdated reading material,”comments Odelia, whose cluttered coffee table brings to mind a dentist’s waiting room. “Right, Calla?”

  “Right,”she murmurs, and looks around the room for a wanton spirit who might be responsible for the mishap.

  She can’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean there’s no o
ne around.

  “I’m a pack rat, too,”Dad comments. “It used to drive my wife crazy.”

  There’s a moment of awkward silence.

  “It didn’t bother Mom all that much, Dad,”Calla feels obligated to say. “As long as you kept your mess out of her way.”

  “Stephanie liked things to be or ga nized,”Gammy explains to Ramona.

  “I wish I could be like that. Me, I’m just the opposite.”

  “Same here.”

  Ramona and Dad smile at each other.

  Calla and her grandmother look at each other.

  She’s thinking what I’m thinking. She knows something’s going to happen between them, too.

  Somewhere downstairs, a door slams.

  “I’m home, Aunt Ramona!”Evangeline’s voice calls. “And Russell’s with me, so if you’re coming downstairs, make sure you’re decent!”

  Odelia snorts. “You have a habit of being indecent?”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I’m about to get into the shower and realize I left the oven on or I forgot something, and I run downstairs in a towel,”Ramona admits with her usual free-and-easy candor. “But I’ll make sure I change that habit now that Jeff is here.”

  “Oh, don’t change your habits on my account,”Dad says with a wave of his hand. Then he turns a bright, burning red. “I mean . . . it’s not that I want you to be indecent or anything . . . just . . . you know . . . I, uh, I don’t want you to, uh . . .”

  Under different circumstances, Calla might find it sweet, the way he’s stammering and fumbling like a kid with a crush. But he’s her father, for Pete’s sake, and Ramona is . . . well, not her mother. Plus, she’s a kooky medium.

  Not that all mediums are kooky.

  But Ramona sure is. She’s a total free spirit.

  A total free spirit who’s definitely looking for love. Ramona has shared plenty of amusing hard- luck dating stories with Calla since they met a few months ago.

  Which is part of the reason Calla has always liked her so much . . . until right about now.

  “Aunt Ramona?”Evangeline calls again from downstairs. “Anybody home?”

  “I’ll be right down! And I’m not alone so I hope you’re decent!”Grinning, Ramona leads the way back to the first floor.