Nine Lives

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Yes, I am. But what about you? Bella wants to ask as the stranger brushes past her, into the entry hall.

  Spotting the mug in Bella’s hand, she shakes her head in dismay.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “For one thing, I’ll have to teach you how to brew a proper cup of leaf tea. For another, Leona never locked that door during the day.”

  Maybe she should have.

  Bella doesn’t say that aloud, only, “The guests”—which you are not, lady—“get deadbolt keys when they arrive.”

  “Yes, and I’m quite certain I must have one somewhere. It’s a good thing Leona never bothered to change the locks, isn’t it?” Pandora strolls across the room to glance at the open guest register on the table with an almost proprietary air.

  Apparently, Leona wasn’t diligent about getting the keys back from prior visitors. Does that mean there are other strangers out there who can get past the deadbolt?

  It’s bad enough that a hotel in this day and age relies on metal keys in the first place. But Valley View Manor is, like the town itself, a throwback to an old-fashioned time when people couldn’t pop into the nearest Home Depot and get a key copied.

  Or when you trusted people enough that they wouldn’t come in uninvited even if they had the means.

  The thought is unsettling enough that Bella forgets, momentarily, to be irritated by Pandora Feeney as she helps herself to a handful of M&M’s from the bowl beside the guest book.

  She notices that it needs to be refilled—one more thing to add to the shopping list, as soon as this woman leaves, which . . .

  When are you leaving? What are you doing here? Who are you, anyway?

  “So you’ve stayed here before?” she asks Pandora, and the question is met with a buoyant chuckle.

  “I ‘stayed here’ for years, luv. After all, it was my house.”

  “You owned it?”

  “My ex-husband did—as much as one can ‘own’ anything here, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten—you’ve scarcely been in town twenty-four hours. I presume no one bothered to tell you how things work here?” Her smile isn’t entirely condescending, but it’s close.

  “I’m pretty much in the dark”—and probably better off that way—“but I’m sure you wouldn’t mind enlightening me.”

  As luck would have it—go figure—Pandora wouldn’t mind at all.

  She informs Bella that all the land in the Dale is owned by the Spiritualist Assembly, which, she painstakingly explains with the air of a benevolent guru addressing a dullard, is a religious organization made up of mediums and healers. Only their members can obtain property leaseholds.

  “So you’re saying that I couldn’t buy a house in Lily Dale if I wanted to?” And if I wasn’t flat broke?

  “Do you want to?” Pandora’s expression betrays a potent blend of surprise and dismay.

  “No. It’s a rhetorical question.”

  “Right, then . . . are you a Spiritualist, Isabella?”

  She shakes her head, though Pandora already seems to know that—along with a lot of other details about her.

  “Then you, my darling, cannot buy a house in the Dale,” Pandora informs her tidily. “Just as I couldn’t have bought this house back when I met my ex-husband. He bought it and left it to me to strip the ghastly old paint and wallpaper and tear out acres of frightful carpet. I was the one who sanded the bloody floors and restored the woodwork. Do you see that bay window in the parlor?”

  Bella follows the direction where she’s pointing.

  “I made the cushions with my own two hands. The other ones as well. And the custom draperies in every room.”

  “That’s a lot of work,” Bella murmurs.

  “It was a labor of love. I do love to sew—I made these,” she adds, gesturing at her dress and hair accessories.

  Bella politely compliments the ensemble but can’t help wondering if she used leftover curtain fabric.

  “The point is, I was the one who made this decrepit rooming house into a home. And for most of the marriage, I was the one who lived here. Quite alone, I might add.” She pauses—for effect? For comment?

  “I’m sorry.” Bella watches her run her fingertips along the dark wooden molding framing the archway between the hall and the parlor.

  “It was a long time ago, luv. Naturally, the wanker got the house in the divorce proceedings, then sold it off to someone who wanted to turn it back into a boarding house.”

  “Guesthouse.” It’s an important distinction, as far as she’s concerned.

  Pandora ignores her, obviously not sharing her regard for semantics. “He did it just to spite me. But I got the last laugh, didn’t I? He’s long gone.”

  “Did he . . .” Bella reaches for the proper Lily Dale lingo, settling on, “cross over?”

  Pandora responds with a delighted laugh. “He ‘crossed over’ the continent to Hollywood. That’s where he lives now, with his third wife. He’s Orville Holmes,” she adds.

  Clearly, the name should mean something to Bella, who’s growing weary of these significant pauses that make her feel as though she’s missing something—weary of Pandora herself, really, who chatters on:

  “It was a beastly divorce, but it doesn’t matter in the end. I’ve a house of my very own right here in the Dale.”

  “Wait—so you are a Spiritualist?”

  “I have been for years. But don’t you go getting ideas about it, because it’s not something just anyone can do.”

  Bella—who isn’t by any means getting ideas—feels compelled to mention, “Odelia Lauder told me that anyone can learn to communicate with the dead.”

  “She did, did she?” Pandora’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “Then you are considering—”

  “No! We were just talking about how it works.”

  “Right. Just be aware that if you’re going to become a medium registered here in Lily Dale—”

  “I’m not.”

  “—you must be prepared to study for years and pass a series of tests. Which I did, with flying colors.”

  “That’s great. Good for you.”

  Now that we’ve established that you’re quite the sensation . . . why the heck are you in this house, and when are you going to leave?

  As Pandora prattles on, telling her the entire history of the house, Bella makes a point of looking at her watch. Her visitor refuses to take the hint, telling her about the people who had died here a hundred years ago in the Spanish influenza epidemic and about a bootleg-running scandal a decade later.

  “This is all fascinating,” Bella finally manages to break in. “Thanks for sharing. It was so nice to meet you . . .”

  “And you as well, love.”

  Making no move to go, Pandora wishes Bella luck getting the part for her car and mentions how lovely it is that her son has been playing with Jiffy Arden.

  Disconcerted by how much this stranger knows about her, Bella merely smiles politely. Pandora Feeney may be clairvoyant, but Bella wouldn’t rule out that her knowledge comes courtesy of good old-fashioned small-town gossip.

  Finally, as a car pulls up out front, Pandora checks her own watch. “I must go, or I’ll be late for my meeting.”

  “The Mediums’ League?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I must be psychic,” Bella tells her with a shrug, and Pandora graces the quip with a delighted smile.

  The car stops in the unloading zone, and Bella realizes it’s a taxi.

  So much for Troy Valeri and his flying carpet comment. There are cabs around here after all. Why didn’t he tell her that? He could have spared himself the drive here to drop her off. Then again, he’s a nice guy, and he was probably trying to spare her the expense of a cab.

  A man and woman climb out of the back seat. Both are pudgy, and both are wearing windbreakers, khaki shorts, and white sneakers with white crew socks.

  “Ah, the Adabners have arrived,” Pandora comm
ents as the driver helps them retrieve luggage from the trunk.

  “You know them?”

  “They fly in every summer from Des Moines.” She adds in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do be wary of the frisky old coot. I’m sure he’ll find you rather fetching.”

  Terrific.

  Pandora starts down the steps and then turns back. “I live in the little pink cottage over by the café, across Melrose Park. The one with the window boxes filled with red geraniums. Orville always said pink and red clash, but I find the combination quite smashing, don’t you?”

  Bella assures her that she does, and Pandora tells her that she must “come ’round for proper tea” while she’s here over the weekend.

  “Thank you. I’ll try,” she promises, with no intention whatsoever.

  “Cheerio, then.”

  The woman pauses to briefly greet the newly arrived couple before making her way down the leafy lane, carrying on an animated conversation with an invisible companion.

  Where Bella comes from, people tend to give a wide berth—and unflattering nicknames like Crazy Jane or Ned the Nutcase—to the neighborhood regulars who wander around talking to themselves. But here, she notices, pedestrians don’t even give Pandora a second glance as they pass.

  Karl and Helen Adabner pull their wheeled luggage toward the house. Bella descends the steps to offer a hand getting the bags up to the porch, but the man—a few inches shorter than his sturdy wife and a whole head shorter than Bella—insists on doing it himself.

  “Heavy lifting isn’t for beautiful young women like you,” he tells her with a gleam in his eye. Thanks to Pandora’s comment about him, she fights the urge to take a giant step backward as he brushes past her to follow his wife into the front hall.

  Helen—remarkably spry for a woman of her heft—is already ringing the little silver bell on the registration desk.

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that. I can help you, Mrs. Adabner.”

  “You? But aren’t you . . . staying here?”

  “Where’s Leona?” Karl asks.

  Bella takes a deep breath and introduces herself before delivering the carefully worded and well-rehearsed news of Leona’s demise. To her relief, the couple’s shocked sorrow quickly gives way to acceptance. Like the others here, they seem comforted by the belief that death is merely a transitional phase.

  “I was so looking forward to telling her that I finally figured out that the man with the glass eye—the one who kept talking about how much he loved me—was my grandfather,” Helen says, shaking her hand. “She kept insisting I knew him, and I kept insisting I didn’t. He passed when I was a little girl, and that eye was so realistic, I never knew it wasn’t real.”

  “I thought it was a fine how-do-you-do that some other man was horning in on the reading I gave Helen as a Valentine’s Day gift,” her husband tells Bella.

  “You were here for Valentine’s Day?” she asks, remembering that she’d seen Helen’s name followed by an asterisk in Leona’s appointment book on that day.

  “Oh, goodness, no. Lily Dale is buried in snow at that time of year. So is Iowa. We go to Florida for the winter. But Leona does phone readings. I was so looking forward to telling her that, as usual, she was dead on,” she adds, without a hint of irony in her folksy midwestern accent.

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunities to tell her anyway,” Karl assures her. “Besides, it’s not as though she doesn’t already know.”

  As she shows them up to their room, Bella decides there’s something to be said for treating a loved one’s sudden passing almost as you would an unexpected road trip: with regret that you didn’t get to say good-bye but confidence that they’ll be in touch when they get to wherever they’re going.

  On the heels of Pandora’s quirky self-importance, she finds the Adabners refreshingly unassuming and ordinary.

  But she revises her opinion when they emerge ten minutes later wearing visors and fanny packs and inform her that they’re heading out to hike the Fairy Trail.

  “There’s a ferry here?”

  “There are many fairies here, my dear,” Karl tells her.

  “Where do they go?” she asks with a bittersweet pang, remembering that long-ago Saturday in Port Jefferson. “My son loves boats, and—”

  The couple bursts out laughing.

  “Not ferries,” Helen says. “Fairies!”

  She blinks. “As in . . . tooth?”

  They laugh again. Then Helen earnestly tells her about the fairy population and the tiny homes the locals build for them along a woodland nature trail, and Bella wonders why she’s the one who’s feeling absurd in this topsy-turvy conversation.

  As the Adabners head out in search of tiny winged creatures, Karl calls back, “Welcome to Lily Dale, Bella.”

  Yes. Wow.

  Welcome to Lily Dale.

  And this is only the first day.

  Chapter Eight

  The rest of the day passes in a pleasant and relatively uneventful whirlwind, with nary a fairy to flit by and convince Bella that there might be some truth behind the little town’s supernatural lore.

  She borrows Odelia’s car—which is, indeed, a jalopy, not unlike many other vehicles in the Dale. She and Max make the fifteen-minute journey to a supermarket in neighboring Dunkirk, where she’s relieved to find that the Dale isn’t as removed from modern civilization as it seems. There are plenty of familiar chain stores and fast food restaurants along this commercial strip adjacent to the Thruway.

  She buys a cartload of groceries, including a few things Odelia said she needed—“zucchini, jalapeños, and limes so that I can bake cookies tomorrow.”

  “Using those ingredients? Together?”

  “Oh, absolutely. They’re delicious. You’ll see.”

  Bella and Max make a stop at a busy Walmart to get a few other odds and ends and then wait nearly half an hour to be seated for dinner at Applebee’s. Dinner out in a restaurant is a rare treat for both of them, but she’s glad to return to the quaint serenity of Lily Dale.

  They join the line of cars waiting to roll through the gate—the only way in or out of the Dale during the busy summer season.

  “I hope Chance the Cat was okay without us,” Max comments. The cat had gone into hiding before they left, and he was worried about leaving her behind.

  “I’m sure she’s fine. Cats know how to take care of themselves, and we left food out for her.”

  “I know, but she’s getting ready to have her babies. I can’t wait to see them. I already have eight names picked out.”

  “She may not have that many kittens,” Bella reminds him, “and they may not get here before we have to leave for Chicago.”

  “There are seven or maybe eight. And they’re coming tomorrow.”

  She sighs inwardly. Sometimes, when Max gets an idea into his head, it’s best to let it go and deal with the inevitable disappointment later.

  Inching the car toward the tiny gatehouse, she sees that a pretty brunette teenager has replaced the older woman who had been collecting the modest admission fee when they left. Odelia had promised to arrange a season pass for her. “In the meantime, when you’re coming and going, just explain that you’re working at the guesthouse.”

  “I don’t need a season pass,” Bella had protested. “Just one I can use for a few days.”

  “Oh, I know.” Odelia smiled that mysterious smile as if she knew something Bella didn’t.

  Now rolling up to the gate, she leans out the car window and opens her mouth to introduce herself.

  “You’re Bella! And you must be Max.” The girl’s broad smile reveals a mouthful of braces.

  Bella is again startled to hear her nickname on a stranger’s lips.

  The girl goes on, “I’m Roxi. It’s great to meet you guys in person. Everyone thinks it’s great that you’ve stepped up over at Valley View. We’ve been so upset about Leona, and I know her regulars would have been devastated if we’d had to turn them away today. You�
�re doing a great thing.”

  “Yes, well . . . it’s nice to be here.” Bella smiles, feeling slightly guilty that if she didn’t need some quick cash and a place to stay, she’d be halfway to Chicago right now. “Do I need some sort of ticket to get in?”

  “We’ll have your season pass ready tomorrow, so for now just drive on through. Oh, and if you ever need a babysitter for Max, just holler. I love kids.”

  “What about cats?” Max asks Roxi from the back seat. “Do you like cats, too? And kittens?”

  “I do! I love them. How’s Chance the Cat doing? She didn’t have her litter yet, did she?”

  “No, that’s tomorrow,” Max tells her, going on to explain that if there are seven kittens, they’ll be named after the days of the week, and if there’s an eighth, its name will be Spider.

  “Why Spider?”

  “Because Spiders have eight legs,” he says, as though she should have known.

  “Oh, of course.” Roxi grins at Max, then at Bella. “He’s adorable. Make sure you call me. I’ve got references if you need them.”

  “Thanks, but we’re actually only here for a few days, so—”

  “I heard. But you never know, right?”

  Bella just waves and drives on, though pretty sure that she does know.

  The streets are dappled in blue twilight shadows. The house is quiet, the cat still in hiding and the guests most likely down the street at the open-air auditorium. There’s a speaker tonight, followed by the nightly message service.

  Having forestalled the inevitable all day, she reaches for her cell phone and dials her mother-in-law.

  “Jordan residence, Millicent speaking.”

  She always answers the phone that way regardless of the fact that she lives alone and that she has caller ID and knows very well who’s on the other end of the line.

  “Hi . . . it’s Isabella,” she says needlessly, inserting the awkward little pause, as always, instead of her mother-in-law’s name.

  When she and Sam were married, Millicent announced that she’d like her new daughter-in-law to call her “Mother.”

  Bella couldn’t bring herself to do that. It isn’t just that there’s nothing maternal about the woman, but it would feel wrong, somehow. She already had a mother. Had beautiful, big-hearted Rosemary Angelo lived past Bella’s toddler years, she’d undoubtedly have been “Mommy” or “Mama” rather than “Mother.” But still.