Nine Lives

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Whenever Bella called Millicent by her first name after she and Sam were married, Millicent admonished her. “It’s improper. All my friends’ daughters-in-law call them Mother. It’s what you do.”

  “It’s not what I do,” Bella said privately to Sam. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  He shrugged. “No, you can call her whatever you like.”

  Maleficent. A few times, Bella almost slipped and said it to her face. Better not to address the woman at all.

  “Isabella. I’ve been expecting to hear from you.” Her tone makes it clear that Bella has, yet again, disappointed her. “What time will you be arriving tomorrow?”

  “Unfortunately, we won’t be there until early next week. We’re stranded in western New York.”

  “What do you mean, ‘stranded’?”

  She explains about the car repair and having to wait for the part.

  “You should have had it fixed before you left home.”

  Her jaw clenches. “I would have if I’d known, but I didn’t.”

  “Your regular service person should have caught it.”

  Yes, he might have. If she had one.

  Reading into her pause, Millicent asks, “You do take the car in for regular service?”

  She does not.

  “So you set out on a thousand-mile drive without having had the car serviced in God knows how long?”

  “Millicent, Sam always took care of that, and I’ve had my hands full just trying to get through the last six months. I’ve tried my best, but . . .” She pauses to swallow a lump in her throat.

  Don’t you dare cry.

  Hearing Millicent’s heavy sigh, she anticipates an apology. Instead, she says, “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to please call me Mother, Isabella.”

  Mother. If only she had a mother right now—someone warm and nurturing who would assure her that she’s done a fine job picking up the pieces so far, someone who’d promise that everything is going to be all right—someone to make everything all right.

  After her mother died, her mother’s best friend—Bella’s godmother, Aunt Sophie—did her best to fill that role. But she, too, is gone now. And so is Daddy. And Sam.

  Everyone who ever took care of me. Everyone I could have turned to at a time like this.

  She swallows hard. Clears her throat. Swallows again.

  Don’t you dare cry . . .

  “I’m sorry, I—I have to hang up now. I’ll let you know which day we’re arriving.”

  “But I don’t even know where you are or—”

  “Good-bye, Millicent.” She disconnects the call and immediately turns off the phone.

  Her throat is still clogged with emotion, and her blood simmers with anger. She’s going to have to swallow it, along with her pride, between now and next week. Like it or not, she needs Millicent.

  She should probably call and apologize for . . .

  For what?

  Her mother-in-law is the one who should be apologizing, for . . .

  For being who she is? She can’t help that any more than I can help who I am.

  Bella and Millicent are oil and water. But they’re stuck with each other, so . . .

  Stuck and outa luck.

  She picks up her phone to call back but thinks better of it. The call can wait until she’s cooled off—literally. The kitchen feels hot and close. She leaves the phone on the counter and steps out onto the backyard to get some fresh air.

  It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

  She watches the rim of sun slide into the lake against what Sam would have called a “sushi sky.”

  “What do you mean?” she’d asked the first time he referred to the sunset that way.

  “All those streaks of red and pink and orange—it reminds me of the omakase platter at Oishii. You wait and wait for it, and it’s absolutely beautiful when it gets there. But it lasts only a few seconds before it disappears.”

  “Are you talking about the sushi or the sunset?”

  “With our appetites? Both.”

  “Very poetic. I think you really did miss your calling, there, Keats.” Sam had passionately studied—and written—poetry in college.

  “Nah. Poets are always broke,” he said with the hubris of someone who had chosen a financial career and expected to always afford lavish dinners at their favorite Japanese restaurant.

  Life was good back then. Good for a long time.

  I have to figure out a way to make it good again, for Max’s sake.

  “Chance the Cat?” her son is calling, somewhere in the house. “Where are you, Chance the Cat?”

  Staring at the sushi sky, Bella can feel her pulse slowing down and blessed tranquility seeping into her. She inhales deeply. The warm night air is scented with freshly mowed grass and mock orange blossoms. A firefly ballet begins to light the lawn. The lake is calm, barely lapping the tall grasses at the water’s edge, where a chorus of croaks and chirps grows louder by the second.

  Then, suddenly, something splashes up from the still water just beyond the dock.

  It hovers, flailing in the air for a long moment before disappearing into the lake again, and it looked like . . .

  A hand?

  She could have sworn it was a hand, reaching, grasping.

  Heart pounding, she stares at the spot, certain she must have imagined it.

  But no—she can see radiating ripples in the water.

  Something was there.

  “Mommy! I found Chance the Cat upstairs!” Max’s voice reaches her ears from a screened window above.

  It couldn’t have been a hand, because she’d have seen someone out there, or it would have surfaced again by now, unless . . .

  It’s Leona.

  Is it her? Her ghost? Is she trying to tell me something?

  Of course not. That’s crazy.

  It must have been a fish jumping out of the water.

  They do that, don’t they?

  But do they hover in midair?

  Enough. She’s had enough.

  It’s been a long day, a crazy day, and . . .

  And now I’m crazy?

  No. She strides toward the lake, infuriated—with this place, mostly, but with herself, as well. She’s lost many things over the past year, but her sanity is not among them. She may not always be in control of her emotions, but she prides herself on her strength, and she’s certainly had a firm grip on reality . . .

  Until now.

  Did leaving Bedford trigger some kind of mental breakdown? Is she delusional?

  Standing at the edge of the water with the reeds tickling her bare legs, she searches for some logical explanation for what she saw.

  There is none. The water ripples and rolls the way lakes do, but there are no zombie hands out there.

  Terrific. Does that mean that she isn’t crazy? Or that she is?

  “Mommy? Where are you?”

  “Coming, Max,” she calls, turning away from the darkening lake to hurry back inside.

  She finds Max and his furry friend already snuggled into her bed in the Rose Room and kisses them both good-night at her son’s insistence.

  “Chance the Cat misses her mom. Hugs and kisses make her feel better,” he announces with the authority of one who knows only too well what it’s like to miss a parent.

  “Pretty soon she’ll be a mom, kiddo.” Any second now, judging by the cat’s bulging stomach. “Then she’ll have a family again.”

  “She wants us to be her family, too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me.”

  Bella smiles, giving him—and the cat—one last kiss before grabbing the books she’d left on her nightstand.

  Yes, she’s tired. But she wants—needs—to know more about Lily Dale.

  Maybe there’s a chapter on . . .

  On jumping fish that resemble floundering hands?

  She shakes her head. What she saw—or rather, thought she saw—was merely a trick of the dying ligh
t reflected on the water.

  Unless it wasn’t.

  Like the other bedroom doors along the hallway, this one locks—and unlocks—from both sides. She inserts the key into the interior knob so that Max can turn it and open the door if he needs to. Then she closes it and locks it from the outside using the duplicate from the master set Odelia gave her.

  The large key ring weighs heavily in the back pocket of her shorts as she heads downstairs, but she’s been carrying it around ever since the last guests checked in. The last thing she needs is to misplace it, as Odelia mentioned something about how the bedrooms’ antique bit keys can no longer be copied.

  For that matter, neither can the modern deadbolt keys, according to the Do Not Duplicate notice stamped on each of them.

  Downstairs, she steps out onto the porch. Aglow with streetlights, the narrow, rutted road is deserted. The parking lot across the way is filled with cars, most with plates from New York or the neighboring Pennsylvania; Ohio; or Ontario, Canada. Noticing a few that are surprisingly far-flung, she wonders whether Lily Dale is a mere pit stop in a cross-country road trip or the final destination.

  The auditorium service is still under way, and she should have the place to herself a while longer.

  She finds a lighter conveniently sitting alongside a couple of jar candles on the porch rail and lights them. Then, kicking off her sandals, she settles on the swing to read.

  According to the first book, the very ground here was charged with spiritual energy long before it was used as a picnic grove for mediums back in the mid-1800s. By the turn of the century, the Dale had evolved into a full-blown cottage colony whose illustrious visitors would later include Mae West, Harry Houdini, and even Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Susan B. Anthony was a regular here, as were other prominent suffragettes, whose American movement had been born in the 1840s in a western New York lakeside community: Seneca Falls, 150 miles east of here. The ongoing campaign for women’s equality found a fierce stronghold in Lily Dale.

  A passage in the book jumps out at Bella: As a female-centric society of freethinkers, the community remains a magnet for encumbered women seeking a safe haven in which to nurture budding independence. Surrounded by healing energy and support, many learn to draw upon the inner strength necessary to achieve emancipation.

  Bella looks out at the dusky landscape, pondering the words.

  Odelia had told her that Leona found her way here after losing her husband. What she’d intended as a short visit became the rest of her life.

  “You’d be surprised how often that happens, Bella,” she said, so emphatically that Bella wanted to remind her—yet again—that it won’t be happening to her.

  Frowning, she snaps the book closed.

  Then, after another long look at the view from the porch, she opens a map brochure to get her bearings. The lake runs behind the house and curves around the shadowy dead end to her left, where Friendship Park boasts a fishing pier, bandstand, and the beach where she saw people swimming this afternoon.

  Again, she thinks of the hand she glimpsed out in the water.

  Again, she tells herself it was a fish, a bird, anything.

  But not a ghost.

  Not a pirate, either.

  She consults the map and then the view directly in front of the porch. Beyond the parking lot, stands of tall trees rise above low, gabled rooftops. Somewhere among them are the fire hall, a café or two, a few shops, and even a hotel. Judging by the skyline—or lack thereof—Bella assumes it’s not a Marriott. Or even a Motel Six.

  To the right, she can see the light spilling from the large auditorium. The post office and the Assembly offices are down around the bend, near the gated entrance.

  The Fairy Trail lies on the opposite edge of town, as does Leolyn Wood, the most sacred spot in the Dale. The small, ancient forest is home to nature trails as well as a couple more local oddities: a pet cemetery and Inspiration Stump.

  The pet cemetery—okay, she can understand that. People in the Dale love their pets enough to designate a special burial ground for their remains. But the Stump . . .

  According to the book, it’s all that remains of a legendary tree that once stood there, and it surges with some sort of mystical vortex. On that hallowed ground, mediums and visitors commune with nature, each other, and, of course, with Spirit.

  So if Bella were to believe in any of that—which she doesn’t—what might happen if she went to the Stump? Would Sam—

  She tosses aside the map and glares at the carefree fireflies glinting in the dark like ethereal beacons.

  This—this false hope isn’t fair. Sam is gone.

  Okay, he isn’t gone, gone. But he sure as hell isn’t hanging around a magical tree stump or chitchatting with Odelia Lauder or—God forbid—Pandora Feeney.

  No, Sam is in heaven. Bella firmly believes in that. When she was a little girl and her father tucked her in at night, she always ended her prayers the way he taught her: “. . . and God bless Mommy in heaven.”

  She has no memory of her beautiful mother, but Rosemary Angelo lived vividly in Bella’s imagination as a white-robed angel with gossamer wings and a divine glow, floating in a paradise filled with harp music and wisps of mist.

  Maybe she can’t quite picture her rugged father and Sam with robes and wings, but she knows in her heart that they’re there in heaven with her mother and Aunt Sophie, too—all of them watching over Bella and Max.

  Someday we’ll all be together again. Together forever.

  That’s what her father promised her when she was little, and it’s what Sam promised her in the hospital last winter.

  If she’s so willing to embrace that, then why not any of this? This Lily Dale stuff? If it makes sense that her lost loved ones are out there somewhere, wouldn’t they want to communicate with her somehow? Wouldn’t they let her know they hadn’t disappeared forever?

  If I were there and Sam were here, I’d be desperate to reach him.

  And if Sam could find a way to reach me, he would, and . . .

  And now, somehow, Bella finds herself here?

  Not just here as in Earth. Here as in Lily Dale.

  The town that talks to dead people.

  She can’t help but consider the billboard for the campground that doesn’t exist, the cat on the doorstep back in Bedford, and the identical one in the road yesterday—the cat whose decidedly unusual full name Max had mysteriously known.

  Pandora Feeney’s cryptic words echo in her head: “You’re supposed to be here.”

  She appeared to be talking to someone, Bella recalls. A ghost? Make that Spirit. Whose?

  And what about Odelia? She claimed that anyone can learn to communicate with lost loved ones. What if Bella concentrates with all her might?

  She closes her eyes and listens intently.

  The night is alive with humming cicadas. Somewhere, a dog is barking. Faraway voices call to each other. In the distance, car doors slam and tires roll on gravel.

  Then another sound reaches her ears: a creaking floorboard somewhere inside the house.

  Max must be stirring. There’s no one else around.

  She turns to look expectantly at the screen door, waiting for her son to poke out his tousled head and ask for a glass of water. Yes, or tell her the cat just had kittens in her bed.

  Another creak from inside the house. A long shadow falls across the porch floor. Someone is in the front hall.

  “Max?” she calls, and the shadow moves away. “Max!”

  No reply.

  She gets up and looks into the house just in time to see someone disappearing through the archway that leads to the parlor. She only catches a fleeting glimpse, but she can see that it’s not Max. It’s an adult wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.

  “Hello?” she calls.

  There’s no reply, though whoever it is had to hear her. Footsteps retreat to the back of the house and there’s a faint, creaking click as the back door opens and closes.
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  Frightened, she isn’t sure whether to chase after the person or run upstairs and check on Max.

  Her child’s safety takes priority. She hurries up the stairs and is relieved to find that he’s sound asleep.

  After closing the door and locking him in, she searches the first floor, looking for some clue as to who might have been there. Nothing is out of place.

  She tries to convince herself that it might have been one of the guests. When the message service ends an hour later, she’s sitting on the porch waiting for them as they trickle back to the house one by one or in pairs. First Jim and Kelly Tookler and Fritz Dunkle, the younger couple and middle-aged bachelor who had checked in with Odelia while Bella was gone. They’re followed by Bonnie Barrington, the elderly St. Clair sisters, Karl and Helen Adabner, and Eleanor Pierson, though not accompanied by Steve, who arrives not long after, clutching a program from Our Town and raving about the performance.

  Bella can’t help noticing, with a tingling of apprehension, that not one of them is wearing—or even carrying—a dark hoodie.

  Chapter Nine

  Waking to a rumble of thunder through the bedroom screens the next morning, Bella finds Max still snoring beside her. Snoring loudly. Much too loudly for such a small boy.

  She stretches, allowing her sandpapery eyelids to close again just for a moment before forcing them open again. She’s far from rested and refreshed, thanks to Max and Chance, whose furry heft was solidly wedged on her pillow for the first half of the night and on her feet for the second.

  To be fair, it would have been a restless night regardless of her disruptive bedmates. After her guests had retired to their own rooms, she’d locked herself into this one with Pandora Feeney’s comment ringing in her ears: It’s a good thing Leona never bothered to change the locks . . .

  Virtually anyone could have the key to the first-floor deadbolts. Not to this bedroom, though. Odelia said the old-fashioned room keys couldn’t be duplicated. All the hardware in the century-old house is supposedly original.