Discovering
Page 4
Calla really wishes she hadn’t allowed Dad and Gammy to drag her over here. Evangeline hasn’t exactly forgiven her for going out with Jacy, her longtime crush. Still, when they saw each other at school on Thursday, Calla did her best to make amends, and Evangeline seemed to melt just a little.
There she is, waiting at the foot of the stairs with Russell Lancione, the “blah”(according to Evangeline) guy who’s hopelessly infatuated with her. Evangeline said she doesn’t want him to like her that way, but Calla’s not so sure. They look pretty happy, laughing together.
Evangeline’s round freckled face and hazel eyes seem to be accented with makeup, and her kinky reddish orange hair is becomingly pulled back.
“Calla! I didn’t know you were here.”
“Yup . . . here I am! Hi, guys!”she says brightly with a sweeping windshield-wiper wave. “You, uh, remember my dad, right, Evangeline?”
Duh. It’s not like she hasn’t met him a bunch of times.
“Hi, Mr. Delaney. I mean, Professor Delaney.”
“ ‘Jeff’ is just fine,”Dad says with a smile.
Evangeline flashes her usual cheerful smile back, and Calla feels a pang, remembering just how many times her friend has been there for her since she arrived in Lily Dale.
“This is my friend, Russell, Mr.— Jeff.”
As Dad and Russell shake hands, Calla longs to just grab on to Evangeline and tell her how much she’s missed her. But she’s afraid to.
What if Evangeline pushes her away?
Would you really blame her, after what you did?
No. Don’t do that to yourself.
You didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s not as if Jacy had feelings for Evangeline, too, and Calla stole him away. Evangeline would be the first to admit that he was just a friend, no matter how much she wished there could be more between them.
“Jeff’s going to be staying here in the guest room for a while, so I was just showing him around,”Ramona informs her niece.
“Cool. Hey, Calla, how was Florida?”
Calla looks up in surprise at Evangeline’s question. “It was . . .”She glances around at the others. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Sounds like a long story,”Ramona says.
“Definitely.”Calla finds herself wishing that Russell weren’t here so that she could whisk Evangeline away from the adults and spill the whole sorry mess.
But judging by the way Russell is hovering at her friend’s side, he’s not going anywhere soon.
Thunder rumbles again outside, and Ramona claps her hands together. “Who wants to go sit on the porch and watch the storm come in over the lake?”
“Um, Russell and I have to go look up some stuff on the computer.”
In the old days—like, before Calla admitted she’d kissed Jacy—Evangeline would have asked Calla to join them.
Now, she only drags Russell to the next room with a “See you guys later.”
“I hate to ruin the party, but I have an appointment in about twenty minutes,”Gammy says, reaching into the breast pocket of her blouse and checking a pocket watch on a gold chain.
Why, Calla wonders— not for the first time— doesn’t she wear a Timex on her wrist like the rest of the world? It’s not that Calla doesn’t appreciate her grandmother for who she is, eccentricities and all, but some of her habits are pretty . . .
Kooky.
Another kooky medium. Go figure.
“Calla? What do you say?”Ramona asks. “Do you have an appointment, too, or do you want to come hang out on the porch?”
“Actually . . .”She glances at her father, sees the way he’s looking at Ramona, and promptly feels like a third wheel. “I’ve got to go study. If you guys don’t mind.”
No one minds.
Imagine that.
Crossing the yard again with her grandmother as Dad and Ramona settle into wicker rockers, Calla can’t help but feel wistful.
More change.
Constant change.
Maybe that’s what life is about, but change in small doses is a lot easier to swallow.
“It was pretty interesting,”Odelia says, “what happened upstairs with that magazine, don’t you think?”
“Oh . . . you mean Ramona knocking it off the table?”
“Ramona didn’t knock it off the table.”
“She didn’t?”
“Are you playing dumb with me, Calla, my dear?”
“Yes,”she admits. “I saw it. What do you think it meant?”
Odelia shrugs. “Spirit playing around, most likely. Or maybe trying to tell one of us something.”
“What? That it’s time for Ramona to update her magazine collection?”
Her grandmother grins. “Could be.”She pauses to deadhead a couple of fall blooms along the front path to her door.
Then she straightens and asks, “So, Evangeline has a boyfriend, huh?”
“Not really. He’s just her friend.”
“That’s what you think.”
“That’s what she thinks, too.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Calla glances sharply at Odelia. “You think she likes him?”
“I know she does.”Her grandmother gives a firm nod as they climb the steps. “That’s not all I know .”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just . . . Evangeline isn’t the only one around here who likes someone.”
“You mean me and Jacy? Gammy, I don’t want you to—”
“That’s not what I meant. But, about last weekend, now that you bring it up . . .”
“Forget I did.”
“I don’t think so. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I know . But not now. You have an appointment.”
And I don’t feel like defending myself right now.
“We’re going to talk,”Gammy says, “because you lied to me, and I can’t—”
“I know, Gammy, and I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything. I promise. I just needed to know . About my mother, and . . .”
Darrin.
Gammy didn’t like him.
Ramona told Calla that.
Why not?
It was something about Darrin having negative energy, but maybe there was more to it. Maybe . . .
Surely she doesn’t know about the baby . . . does she?
Go ahead. Ask her.
But if Calla asks her . . . and she doesn’t already know . . .
You’ll be opening a whole new can of worms. Is that really what you want to do right now?
Thunder claps so near that it makes Calla jump.
Odelia glances up at the sky. “Come on. Let’s get inside. This is going to be nasty.”
I’m not ready, Calla decides, following her into the house. I’m not ready to tell her yet. Not until I know more.
FIVE
Lily Dale
Monday, October 8
5:13 p.m.
Calla steps around puddles that fill the potholes on Cottage Row, making her way down to the lakefront park beneath a canopy of fall foliage. Leaves and eaves drip pleasantly around her. The storm ended a little while ago, ushering in a tide of warmer, humid air, and she left her fleece jacket at home.
A week or so ago, she was expecting to see her first snow. But striding along in short sleeves with a gentle breeze off the water, as opposed to the usual stiff wind, she realizes that it almost feels like late summer again. Dad might even be able to last another day or two without having to buy a cold-weather wardrobe.
He had returned from Ramona’s porch just as she was walking out the door a few minutes ago.
“Hey, Cal’, where are you going?”he asked, bounding up the steps like a much younger man.
“I have to meet my friend. I won’t be long.”
“Jacy?”
“Right.”
He nodded. “Ramona said he’s a good kid.”
She did? Calla raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. He is.”
“She said he’s had a roug
h life.”
“Yeah. He has.”She shifted her weight uncomfortably, wondering why he was discussing her with Ramona—and what else Ramona said about Jacy.
“Be careful out there,”was all he said, then went on into Odelia’s house to gather his things to move next door.
She probably shouldn’t let it bother her—that Ramona was talking about Jacy. Especially since Ramona’s stamp of approval has obviously won over her father.
No, she shouldn’t mind.
It’s just that . . .
Well, she’s used to being her father’s only connection to Lily Dale. She’s the one who has— so far—been able to filter what he does and doesn’t know .
About Jacy or anything else.
This was just another reminder that Dad is once again part of her day-to- day business. It won’t be long before he knows everything about her life here. What then?
You’ll have to worry about that when it comes up, she tells herself. You’ve got enough on your plate right now.
The lake water has become a choppy blue-black in the wake of the storm. Calla can see Jacy waiting for her, leaning against the wooden railing in the pavilion where they usually meet.
A baseball cap rides backward over his short black hair. His running shorts reveal muscular legs and a weathered gray T-shirt exposes tanned biceps.
Wow. He looks good.
Um, no. He looks great.
Calla’s heart picks up its pace, and so do her feet.
Just before she reaches him, though, she stops short, suddenly feeling shy.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
They look at each other for a long moment. Then Jacy shocks her by grabbing her in a fierce embrace.
“Thank God you’re okay,”he says into her hair. “Thank God.”
Surprised, she asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just didn’t realize that I . . . until . . . I mean . . . I guess . . .”
Say it, Jacy, she begs silently. Say what you’re thinking. Tell me what you’re feeling.
He doesn’t.
That’s not his style.
She knows he’s learned the hard way not to reveal his emotions. Having grown up on the reservation with abusive parents, Jacy Bly doesn’t trust many people— if anyone at all. Maybe not even Peter and Walt, his foster dads.
Maybe not even me, she acknowledges as he pulls back, lets her go. But when she looks up at him, what she sees in his dark eyes startles her almost as much as the emotional greeting.
He cares about her.
A lot.
Not just as a fellow medium, or even just as a friend concerned for her well-being.
He cares the way she’s dreamed of him caring.
He doesn’t have to say it. She can see it and feel it. Words are unimportant.
“The thing that gets me is that I knew it.”Jacy shakes his head. “I knew it was going to be the water.”
“I know you did.”
He tried to warn her before she left— that he’d been having visions of her struggling in water. Dylan, her five- year- old babysitting charge, had a similar premonition.
But what was she supposed to do with that information?
She’s been thinking about that for the last few days.
About the warnings from Jacy, and from Dylan, and for all she knows from Odelia, who might also have seen something foretelling Calla’s near-drowning, considering her cryptic demands that Calla stay out of Cassadaga Lake.
As if she could have kept a promise to never go swimming there— ever. Or as if she could have . . . whatever. Moved to the desert? Gone around wearing a life jacket on dry land for the rest of her life, just in case?
What could she do?
That’s the problem with this premonition stuff.
You might know what’s going to happen . . . but it’s going to happen. That’s the whole point. You can’t change it, no matter what— at least, not that Calla has seen. You can’t stop it from happening.
You can only dread it.
And wonder when it’s going to happen.
“I swear,”Jacy says, “if this had ended any other way . . .”
“But it didn’t. It all worked out.”
“Yeah, I know, but Calla . . .”He puts an arm around her shoulder, his feet straddling hers as he leans against the railing, pulling her back against his chest. “What would I do without you?”
She looks up at him.
“I don’t want to be without you, okay? Not anymore.”
“Well, I’m not going back to Florida for a while, so . . .”
“That’s not what I mean.”He puts a gentle hand beneath her chin and tilts her face up toward his.
His kiss is soft and sweet and oh, so fleeting. It’s over before she can absorb what’s happened, and it’s all she can do to keep from touching her hands to her lips, dazed.
He nods, as if they’ve just settled something.
Maybe, she realizes, they just have.
He strokes her hair, and she rests her head against his shoulder. Until this moment, she didn’t know how much she’s longed for a physical connection to someone, didn’t remember how good it feels to have someone to lean on, literally.
“You said you had stuff to tell me,”Jacy says after a few minutes.
“Yeah.”She tries to remember what it was. Not easy, with him so close she can feel his breath stirring her hair.
Reluctantly, she pulls back so that she can think straight.
“I really need your advice, and there’s no one else I can tell.”
“Is it about what happened with that woman?”
“Sort of.”
When she called him from Florida Saturday, she’d filled him in about what Sharon Logan did to her. And, presumably, to her mother.
But Jacy doesn’t know about the e-mails.
Or about the baby.
She tells him now, eventually going from leaning against Jacy to facing him, laying it all out in a detached, matter-of-fact tone.
As if she’s talking about total strangers, and not her very own mother.
And her very own sister or brother.
He’s quiet for a long time.
“Say something,”she begs at last.
He reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing it. “I don’t know what to say. Are you okay with all this?”
“Not really. Would you be?”
He answers her question with another question. “What happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know . I haven’t read the rest of the e-mail yet.”
“Are you serious?”At her nod, he asks, “But why not?”
“For one thing, because I don’t want my father to know about it, and he’s been watching me like a prison guard twenty-four-seven.”
“He’s not here now.”
“Neither is the laptop.”
“You can check it when you go back to Odelia’s, though. Unless you don’t want to.”
“I do, it’s just . . . I guess I’m afraid of what I’m going to find out. And I’m definitely dreading what will happen when my father finds out.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“But I have to. I mean, I can’t go the rest of my life keeping this deep dark secret from him.”
“Your mother did.”
She blinks. “That’s different.”
“Not really.”Jacy lets go of her hand and raises his to hold off her protest. “Let’s say you tell your father. . . . And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What will happen? If he finds out, I mean?”
“You know . . . . He’ll be upset.”
“How much more upset can he be than he already is? Hasn’t the worst already happened? She’s dead.”
“Yeah, but . . . she was in love with another man.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“She had a child with him.”
“Years ago. It was over. She was married to your father.”
He doesn’t answer that.
She does. “I know they weren’t. They were still in love.”
“Yeah, well . . . nobody’s perfect.”
“Nobody’s perfect?”Calla’s eyebrows shoot up. “What kind of thing is that to say?”
“It’s true.”
She hates his reasonable tone of voice, hates that he isn’t outraged with her. How can he sit here discussing it like they’re talking about her mother switching brands of laundry soap?
“You can’t possibly think it was okay, what my mother did?”
“There are a lot of worse things,”he says flatly, “a mother can do. Much worse.”
Oh.
Right.
“I’m sorry,”she tells Jacy, whose mother, she heard, neglected and abused him. Calla doesn’t know the details, and she hasn’t felt comfortable asking. She lost custody. Signed adoption papers to give him away to someone else.
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because . . .”She shrugs. She can’t say it. He doesn’t need to hear it.
Here comes that defensive expression of his again, rolling in like storm clouds. She’s seen it before.
She touches his arm.
Ordinarily, he might have shaken her off, or at least, have failed to respond.
But they’ve turned a corner. He looks up at her and nods, as though he knows exactly what she’s thinking.
“You can’t change what happened to me, Calla. You can make a lot of things better for me. But not the past.”
“I know . And the same goes for me. You can’t really blame me for wanting to protect my dad from what she did.”
“I don’t blame you. Maybe you’re protecting yourself, too.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I mean . . . maybe you’re the one who doesn’t want to know the truth.”
“Me? I want to know . Of course I want to know .”
“Okay.”
“I went all the way to Florida,”she informs him, “and I almost got myself killed, because I want to know .”
“Okay.”
“You don’t think I’m the least bit curious about the fact that I might have a sister or brother?”