Discovering

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Just be glad we weren’t playing strip poker,”Andy tells him, “because then you wouldn’t even have that.”

  Raucous laughter floats up to Calla’s ears.

  Please go. Just go, she silently begs Dad, Ramona, and Andy.

  But she’s been willing the three of them to leave for a couple of hours now, to no avail. They all had a grand old time down there playing cards while Calla paced her room, quietly freaking out about what she discovered in her mother’s e-mail.

  She has a sister.

  In Geneseo.

  Illegally adopted at birth.

  Her name is Laura Logan.

  Psychic skills are hardly required to figure out that there’s some connection between Laura and Sharon Logan and the purple house.

  From the rest of the e-mails exchanged after Tom came to Florida to show Mom the photos, Calla learned that he had gone to Geneseo himself a few weeks later. There, he had spoken to the adoptive mother, Sharon, who had seemed receptive to putting him and Mom in touch with their daughter, now grown.

  I didn’t get to see her, but I’m sure I will, eventually. We both will. I told her adoptive mother where to find me.

  Those words ring ominously in Calla’s head.

  Sharon Logan had found him, all right.

  Found him— and killed him.

  At last, Calla hears the front door close and lock in the hallway below. She leans over and peeks around the newel post at the top of the stairs.

  Her grandmother is standing at the door, parting the window curtain to watch the others leave. After a few moments, she reaches for the wall switch and flicks off the porch light, then the hall light.

  “Gammy?”Calla calls, as she turns toward the stairs to start up.

  Odelia gasps. “Calla! You scared the life out of me!”She rests a hand against her rib cage.

  “Sorry.”

  “What are you doing up? It’s a school night, and you have a big trip coming up tomorrow with your dad.”

  “Gammy, I need to talk to you.”

  Her grandmother peers up at her. “Are you crying? Is something wrong?”

  The answer to both questions is yes, but Calla can’t seem to find her voice.

  “Calla?”Odelia hurries up the stairs toward her. “What happened?”

  “Tell me the truth about something, Gammy. Please.”

  “What is it?”

  “My mother had a baby, and you knew about it. You knew Darrin told her the baby had died, and that he’d thrown the body into the lake.”

  Odelia goes absolutely still, and paler than Calla has ever seen her.

  “Say something, Gammy. Say that I’m right. Say that you knew.”

  Odelia sinks onto the top step, shaken. “I did know .”

  “She told you?”

  “No! No, she never told me, and I was fool enough never to realize. I knew Stephanie had put on weight, but that happens to a lot of kids, and she hid it so well I convinced myself it was just a few pounds. And I knew she’d been much quieter than usual, but I blamed that on her boyfriend. He was a bad influence from the start. So much negative energy.”

  “Because he was on drugs?”

  “Probably.”Odelia shrugs. “All I knew was that I didn’t want my daughter around him. And the more I told her to stay away, the more she wanted to be with him.”

  “How did you find out about the baby?”Calla sits beside her.

  “The way I find out a lot of things. Visions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I kept seeing Stephanie cradling a baby in her arms. At first I thought it was a premonition. But then I started to realize it had already happened.”

  “How?”

  “I just knew,”Odelia says simply. “I confronted her. I asked if she had been pregnant. She told me that she had, months earlier, and that the baby had been stillborn. She said Darrin had put the remains in the lake.”

  Choked by a sob, she can’t go on.

  “He lied, Gammy.”Calla, too, is crying. “He lied about that. The baby didn’t die.”

  “What?”Odelia widens her teary eyes. “How do you know?”

  “I found an e-mail he sent to Mom. He said—”

  “I knew it! I knew that baby was alive! I tried to convince Stephanie. I told her to go to the police. She refused. She said Darrin would never have done something like that to her, but I think she knew, deep down inside, that she was wrong. A mother knows in her gut whether her child is alive or dead. Sometimes, she just might not want to see it or believe it, but she knows.”

  Calla remembers Mrs. Yates’s grief- ravaged face and nods mutely.

  “I told Stephanie to look into it, anyway, for her own peace of mind. But she had promised Darrin she’d never tell a soul about the baby. So I told her to confront him, at least. Ask him if the baby really had died. She didn’t want to do that, either.”

  “She did do it, though, Gammy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She wrote about it. She asked him, but he lied again. And he left Lily Dale not long after that. Do you remember?”

  Odelia nods sadly. “He broke Stephanie’s heart. I tried to convince her that she was better off, but I couldn’t get through to her. Eventually she left, too. Went away to graduate school, met your father, got married, moved to Florida, had you . . .”

  “You used to visit us when I was little.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you had an argument with Mom. About the baby. After all those years.”

  “I can’t believe you remember that, Calla. You were so young.”

  “I do. I remember and I . . . I dream about it sometimes.”

  “About the argument?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a bad one. I should never have brought up the baby to Stephanie after all that time had gone by. But every now and then, I would still have a dream. I just always had the feeling that I had another grandchild out there somewhere. I told your mother to look into it again, but she refused. I don’t know if she was still trying to protect Darrin, or if she was trying to protect herself, or you and your father.”

  Odelia wipes tears away with the bell- shaped sleeve of her pumpkin- colored top.

  “You told Mom that you thought the lake should be dredged, didn’t you, Gammy? To find the baby’s body.”

  “Yes. She got so angry with me. Mind you, I really didn’t think they’d find anything. I had spent all those years living on the shore of the lake. I think I’d have sensed whether my own flesh and blood was buried in it.”

  “But you told me never to set foot in that water.”

  “Because . . .”Odelia shudders. “There was always a chance I could be wrong. Even now, every time I look at that lake, I wonder.”

  “But you don’t have to wonder anymore. The baby lived and she was illegally adopted, Gammy— by Sharon Logan.”

  It takes a moment for the name to register. When it does, Odelia gasps.

  “She killed Darrin,”Calla goes on, “after he showed up on her doorstep asking about the adoption. Then she killed my mother, too. And then she came after me.”

  “We have to tell the police.”

  “I know . But Gammy, I’m afraid to tell them— or anyone. Then Dad will find out about everything.”

  “He deserves to know the truth, Calla.”

  “It’s going to hurt him.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe he’ll be glad to know that Stephanie lives on in another daughter—and that you have a half sister.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Don’t underestimate him.”Gammy touches Calla’s cheek. “How about you? How do you feel about all of this?”

  “About having a sister?”Just saying the words out loud sends a little jolt through her.

  A sister.

  She actually has a sister.

  “I don’t know how I feel,”she tells her grandmother. “I mean, I guess I won’t, until I find her and meet her.”

  “Do you kno
w anything about her?”

  “Her name is Laura.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  It is. Laura.

  “Like the former first lady.”

  Laura Bush.

  Suddenly, she realizes something.

  “Gammy, that day at Ramona’s—”

  “I know . I just remembered.”Her grandmother nods. “That magazine that flew off the table in the guest room—”

  “Laura Bush was on the cover.”

  “Yes. That was no accident.”Her grandmother shakes her head. “Spirit could have been a little more specific.”

  An image flashes into Calla’s head as she speaks.

  She sees a young girl wearing a calico dress and sunbonnet: Laura, from the Little House books Calla read and loved as a child.

  Pieces begin to fall into place.

  The same books are on the shelf in Mom’s room upstairs.

  That image of Mom lying on her bed reading one of them.

  Even the dream Calla had about being on an airplane and seeing a pioneer girl standing on top of a tall building.

  “We need to call Detective Lutz,”her grandmother decides.

  “When? Now?”

  “It’s the middle of the night. I think it can wait until morning.”

  “But . . . what about school? And my trip with Dad?”

  Her grandmother looks at her for a long time. “Your life is going to change again, you know . When all of this comes out. You’re going to want to find your sister, or she’s going to want to find you—or maybe not. I don’t know .”

  “I don’t, either.”Suddenly, Calla is nervous about what lies ahead. “I was kind of just looking forward to a normal school day tomorrow, and going away with Dad.”

  “Then that’s what you should do,”Odelia says firmly. “I’ll speak to the detectives after you leave. We’ll let them do their thing. Then when you come back, you’ll have had more time to get used to all of this, and you’ll know what you want to do about it.”

  “You mean, about finding my sister.”At her grandmother’s nod, Calla asks, “Why wouldn’t I want to find her? She’s my own flesh and blood.”

  “Mine, too. But we have to remember— she had a very different life. She might not even be aware that she was adopted. There’s a chance she’ll want nothing to do with us.”

  “You’re right.”Calla sighs. “What about Dad?”

  “We have to tell him,”Odelia decides, “before we go to the detectives. He deserves to know .”

  “Can you tell him, Gammy? Tomorrow, when I’m at school? Please?”

  Her grandmother seems to be weighing the decision. Then she nods. “All right. I’ll tell him.”

  “Thank you.”

  Calla leans her head on her grandmother’s shoulder and closes her eyes as Odelia strokes her hair.

  Laura.

  I have a sister.

  TWENTY-TWO

  New York City

  Friday, October 12

  7:20 a.m.

  “I don’t understand, though,”Geraldine says on the other end of the telephone. “What was so wrong with the place that you don’t want to go back there even for a day, to finish out the week?”

  Laura clutches the receiver hard against her ear, pacing. “There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn’t . . . right. For me.”

  Because “she’s looking for me,”according to my midnight dream visitor. And after that hang-up phone call yesterday, she might have found me.

  But of course, she can’t say that to Geraldine.

  Or to anyone.

  “Will you call me if another assignment comes in this morning?”she asks Geraldine.

  “Sure.”

  No, she won’t, Laura realizes as she hangs up. She thinks I’m too picky. Or worse yet, just plain old lazy. She doesn’t know me at all.

  Then again . . . who does?

  She desperately misses having a confidante— someone with whom she can share the whole truth, and be herself.

  Father Donald is the only person in her life who ever fit that role, and now he’s hundreds of miles away.

  Maybe you can make a friend here in New York, she tells herself, feeling homesick.

  The trouble with temp work, though, is that it’s hard to create a social life around the people you meet. Just as you get to know them, it’s on to a new assignment.

  How else is she supposed to meet anyone?

  There’s Liz Jessee. She’s certainly friendly, interesting— and, in return, interested. She asks far too many questions for Laura’s comfort. Anyway, Liz is an older married woman, with a family and a busy life of her own.

  I just don’t fit in here, Laura tells herself wearily.

  I don’t fit in anywhere.

  All her life, she wanted to be like the other girls, the ones she saw through the windows of the purple house: skipping rope, riding bikes, walking to school in groups of two and three.

  Mother home-schooled Laura, of course, and never let her out to play with the other kids when they were brave enough to knock on the door and ask. Which happened maybe two or three times in Laura’s entire childhood.

  The buzzer on the wall sounds loudly, jarring her from this dismal trip down memory lane.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she scolds as she goes over to the intercom. A lot of people are lonely. You’ll get over it. Someday, things will be different.

  But there are tears in her eyes, and a lump in her throat refuses to subside as she presses the Talk button. “Who’s there?”

  “I have a delivery,”a female voice responds.

  At this hour of the morning?

  “Sorry, you must have the wrong apartment.”

  “No . . . it’s for Five B.”

  Laura has been in the city long enough to have developed some street smarts. She isn’t expecting anything, and for all she knows, it’s a scam for her to let a would-be thief into the building.

  “I don’t think so,”she says into the intercom, and steps away from the door.

  A few seconds later, it buzzes again.

  She tries to ignore it, but uneasiness settles over her. If it is a would- be thief, it’s one who’s determined to target Laura. Otherwise, she’d have moved on to someone else’s buzzer.

  But maybe she has, Laura decides, when a full moment of silence has gone by. That, or maybe she’s gone on to try a different building.

  Then she hears some kind of movement in the hallway outside her door.

  Heart pounding, Laura steals over to the peephole and peers through just in time to see the back of a woman’s head disappearing toward the stairway.

  She waits a few seconds, then opens the door a crack, leaving the chain on, just in case.

  There, on the mat, is a vase filled with gorgeous white flowers.

  Calla lilies, she realizes, unchaining the door and reaching down to pick up the vase.

  There’s an envelope stuck to a pronged plastic fork in the bouquet, and she opens it with trepidation.

  Who on earth would be sending her flowers?

  Inside the envelope, instead of a florist’s card, there’s a folded piece of 8½ by 11 white paper.

  Opening it, she’s startled to see that it’s a paid voucher for an airplane ticket from New York City to Rochester, just north of Geneseo. It’s for a flight tomorrow morning—and the passenger name is Laura Logan.

  What on earth?

  Puzzled, she hurries back over to the window and peers down at the street.

  After a few moments, a figure emerges from the front door of the building. It’s the same woman Laura just glimpsed in the hallway. She’s dressed in some kind of long white dress and wears her jet black hair in a bun.

  After descending from the stoop to the sidewalk she pauses and looks directly up at Laura’s window.

  Her face is exotically beautiful and completely unfamiliar. But there’s something so warm and reassuring in the smile she beams at Laura that Laura can’t help but return
it.

  She quickly opens the window and sticks her head out, calling, “Excuse me!”

  But somehow, the woman is gone.

  She couldn’t have stepped into a cab—there aren’t any in sight. Laura cranes her neck to look up and down the street, but she’s nowhere to be seen. How on earth could she have walked away so quickly?

  “Hi, Laura!”Liz Jessee, holding her broom, steps into view on the stoop.

  “Liz! Did you see where she went?”

  “Who?”

  “The delivery woman.”

  “What delivery woman?”

  “From the florist. She just left me flowers.”And a plane ticket.

  Which isn’t the only odd thing that’s happened lately.

  “When did she leave them?”

  “Just now.”

  “Now?”Liz echoes. “But . . . it’s so early.”

  “I know . Did you see which way she went when she came out of the building?”she asks again, trying not to sound impatient.

  “I didn’t see anyone come out of the building,”Liz tells her. “I’ve been here for the last ten minutes, sweeping the front vestibule.”

  “But . . .”

  “Laura, are you okay? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m just . . . feeling under the weather,”she says slowly. “I think I’ll go lie down.”

  “Oh . . . the exterminator is coming at nine o’clock sharp. I hope that’s not a problem.”

  “Exterminator?”

  “For the roaches. Last night. Remember?”

  Oh. Right. The roaches.

  Which don’t exist.

  Just like the man at the foot of her bed, who didn’t exist.

  And now the floral delivery woman, who also doesn’t exist.

  Laura tells Liz that’ll be fine, closes the window, and turns around, wondering what she’ll find.

  Who knows? Maybe she imagined the flowers and the ticket home, too.

  Of course she did.

  Everyone knows florists don’t deliver airline vouchers.

  Except . . . this one does.

  Because the voucher— and the vase filled with beautiful white lilies— calla lilies—is definitely real.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lily Dale

  Friday, October 12

  7:25 a.m.