Nine Lives

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  But if there already are two copies of each key—with the apparent exception of the door to Leona’s study—then at some point, even if it was a hundred years ago, someone made a second key for each bedroom. And if there’s a second, is it so unlikely there might have been a third?

  Last night, after locking the bedroom door from the inside, Bella removed the other key from the lock and slept with that and the master key ring under her pillow.

  When she slept. The last time she looked at the bedside clock, it was nearly five o’clock in the morning. Now it’s a quarter to seven.

  Time to get up and brew the coffee. The posted hours in the breakfast room are seven to nine thirty, though Odelia had mentioned that Leona was pretty lax about sticking to that.

  “She never minded if it was dawn or noon,” she told Bella yesterday. “Leona always said, ‘Whenever they get up, I’ll feed and water ’em’—she ran a dude ranch, you know.”

  Bella didn’t know that, or much else about her.

  But now, as she climbs out of Leona’s bed and glances around her bedroom, she can’t help but feel connected to the woman—so to speak.

  The dog-eared paperback novels stacked on the nightstand include several titles she herself read over the last year or so. The sandals sitting just inside the closet door fit her own feet perfectly—she knows because she mistook them for hers when she hurriedly got dressed yesterday morning. And Sam might have called her Bella Blue because of her eyes, but her favorite color has always been the radiant pinkish red in the Rose Room’s décor. Everything about this room feels just right.

  She gets out of bed and pads across the floor to find her toiletries bag. It’s inside her suitcase, which sits atop one of those folding hotel suitcase racks inside the large closet.

  Reaching for the doorknob, she pauses at the dresser beside the closet door. Like the one in the master bedroom she’d shared with Sam back in Bedford, its long wooden surface holds a jewelry box and a framed wedding portrait.

  She leans in to get a better look. The groom is handsome, wearing a black cowboy hat, and the bride, Leona, she presumes, is . . . is . . .

  Startled, she picks up the frame and gapes at the image.

  The woman in the photo is much younger. Her hair isn’t gray and her face isn’t wrinkled, but it’s the same one Bella glimpsed in the bathroom mirror in her disturbing dream yesterday morning. The dream where the wind chimes were ringing loudly—much too loudly, and she was brushing her hair, only it wasn’t her hair, it was gray and it was . . .

  Leona’s?

  She doesn’t remember seeing these photos before she went to bed that night, but she must have. How else would this face have worked its way into her subconscious?

  Unnerved, she turns away from the photo.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, as a pleasant rain patters into the shrub border beneath the wall of screened windows, Bella still has the breakfast room to herself. But as she sits at a café table sipping coffee and reading more about Lily Dale, she hears stirring overhead.

  Time to greet the guests. She sets aside the brochure, with its list of tips for people preparing for a spiritual reading.

  Receive information with an open mind.

  Remember that you may not hear from the Spirit you expect.

  Remember that free will impacts prophecy.

  Helpful stuff for anyone who, unlike Bella, intends to visit a medium.

  She goes to the kitchen to turn on the tea kettle. Odelia had mentioned that Leona always brewed a full pot in the mornings, but this gray, stormy morning is so muggy that Bella didn’t want to steam up the kitchen before it was necessary.

  The gas stove is as ancient as the one back in Bedford. Bella turns one knob after another, but none of the burners ignite, meaning the pilot light is out.

  Sam was the one who relit theirs when that happened once. With a pang, she remembers that she spent an entire snow day without using the stove because she wasn’t sure how to light it and she was afraid of blowing up the place. When Sam got home, she apologized for not making the pot roast she’d promised him. He laughed and showed her how to light the pilot and then suggested a snowy walk to the diner for dinner.

  It’s as if that happened to some other person, Bella marvels as she finds a book of matches in a drawer and kneels in front of the open oven door, peering inside. Some stranger who didn’t know how to do much of anything on her own and didn’t have to.

  Now you have no choice.

  She strikes a match and lifts it to the pilot hole inside the oven. It ignites instantly, singing her fingertips. She drops the match and hurries over to the sink. As she runs cold water over her hand, she hears a key in the back door. Turning, she sees Eleanor Pierson stepping over the threshold. Her face is flushed with exertion; her damp, dark brown hair is spiked with sweat and rain; and she’s wearing jogging clothes.

  “Good morning,” Bella calls as Eleanor wipes her muddy sneakers on the mat.

  Eleanor doesn’t return the greeting, and Bella realizes she has on ear buds, listening to music.

  Spotting her, Eleanor pulls them out of her ears and turns off her iPod. “Good morning,” she says cheerfully. “It’s really starting to come down. I had to stop. Steve is still out there, though. He’s a lot hardier than I am.”

  “I didn’t even realize you two were already up and out,” Bella says, drying her still-stinging hand. “I’d have had the coffee ready earlier.”

  “Oh, I’m not a coffee drinker. Steve is, and he wanted to make some himself, but I told him it’s not polite to go rummaging around someone else’s kitchen.”

  “It would have been fine, but I’m sorry about that. Tomorrow I’ll be up earlier. I’m still trying to get the hang of this.” She turns the knob and this time the burner ignites beneath the tea kettle.

  “No worries, you’re doing a wonderful job. My husband gets up much too early, even on vacation, and he doesn’t expect anyone to be at his beck and call at that hour, even though Leona always managed to be.”

  “So do you two run together every morning?”

  “Steve runs every day, and I try to. We start out together, but I can only do four miles at the most on a good day. He does twice that, sometimes three times. He’s very disciplined. He says it nurtures the heart and the soul. Are you a runner?”

  “Me? No.”

  Not that her heart and soul couldn’t stand a bit of nurturing.

  Eleanor follows her into the breakfast room and puts a blueberry muffin and some fruit onto a plate, chatting the whole time. “I know you’re just filling in here, so what do you ordinarily do?”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  “So am I. Steve and I are both in education. That’s why we always like to stay in the Apple Room,” she adds with a smile. “What do you teach?”

  “Middle school science, but . . . I just got laid off.”

  “So you’re looking for a new position?”

  I’m looking for a new everything.

  Bella nods and asks about Eleanor’s and her husband’s careers.

  “I’m a history teacher, and Steve taught English and drama for years, but now he’s in administration. He’s a superintendent, in fact, of a large district where we live in Massachusetts. I’m sure between the two of us, we can help you network, depending on where you live.”

  Not wanting to admit that she doesn’t live any place at all, Bella thanks her and guides the subject away from careers. Eleanor lights up when she asks about family. She and Steve are celebrating their silver wedding anniversary next April, and she’s convinced he’s going to surprise her with a trip to Paris. They have three children—a son studying premed in college, another about to start law school, and a daughter who’s expecting their first grandchild.

  As Eleanor pulls out her cell phone to scroll through a montage of happy family photos, Bella murmurs all the right things. But it’s difficult not to envy the other woman’s life or to think about what might have
been.

  Max was supposed to have siblings. She and Sam were supposed to grow old together.

  “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . ’til death do us part . . .”

  “Only ’til death? No, sir,” she remembers quipping at the time. “You’re not getting off that easily. I’m going to haunt you, Mister.”

  How easy it was back then to laugh about the future.

  How unthinkable that all their vows would be tested within a few short years.

  Two sets of footsteps descend the stairs, and the St. Clair sisters enter the room.

  They’re not the most attractive older women Bella has ever seen—not by a long shot. Mirror images of each other, they have sharp chins, sallow complexions, and smallish eyes set too close to their aquiline noses. They are fairly snappy dressers—she’ll give them that. But octogenarians in matching outfits—navy-and-white polka dot cardigans, khaki pedal pushers, and blue espadrilles—is a bit much.

  Bella introduces them to Eleanor as a pair, apologizing because she can’t tell them apart.

  “I’m Opal,” one says, “and she’s Ruby.”

  “We’ve met,” Eleanor reminds them. “Last summer, and the summer before.”

  “We have? These days I scarcely remember yesterday,” Ruby says, shaking her head.

  “We met yesterday, too.” Eleanor smiles gently. “We were talking about names, and I said that it was lovely that you’re both named after gemstones.”

  “Oh, yes! Well, Papa was a jeweler, you know.”

  Eleanor nods. Clearly, she knows. “I was telling you that my own father was a history professor, and my twin sister Mamie and I were named for first ladies. Fortunately, we don’t look like them,” she adds.

  “Look like whom, dear?” Ruby asks.

  “Like Mamie Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  “Where?” Opal looks around.

  Bella fights a smile. “Eleanor was just saying that she and her twin sister were named after first ladies, just like you and your twin were named after gemstones, but that she’s glad that they don’t—”

  “Oh, no, dear, we aren’t twins at all.” Ruby shakes her white bun. “People often make that mistake, though.”

  “I suspect it’s because we look exactly alike,” Opal tells her as though they’ve never before considered the prospect, “and we’ve always dressed exactly alike. Remember, no one could ever tell the three of us apart.”

  “The three of you? So . . . you’re . . . you were . . . identical triplets?”

  Bella’s question is met with another shake of Ruby’s white bun. “Oh, no. We aren’t twins or triplets at all. Just sisters.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you said there were three of you who looked alike and dressed alike . . .”

  “Yes, three. Opal, me, and Mother.” Ruby counts off on her fingers.

  “And your mother is . . . here?”

  “Where?” Opal looks around.

  “I think Miss Jordan is asking whether Mother is alive,” Ruby tells her sister.

  “Goodness, no. She’d be a hundred and twenty years old.”

  “A hundred and twenty-two,” Ruby contradicts.

  “No, a hundred and twenty.”

  Eleanor diffuses the bickering. “I think it’s sweet that you still dress alike.”

  “Well, it does get difficult at times, because Ruby is always much too warm, even in winter, and I’m always much too cold, even in summer. But Mother is always so pleased that we’ve continued the tradition.”

  “And she taught us to dress in layers regardless of the season,” Ruby says. “Opal, I have a feeling that she’ll scold you for leaving your windbreaker in the trunk of the car so that your teeth chattered all the way from Akron yesterday.”

  “Well, then, she’ll scold you for running the air conditioning on high,” Opal retorts.

  “It was eighty-three degrees out!”

  “It was eighty-one. And breezy.”

  Again, Eleanor deftly jumps in to redirect the squabbling sisters. “I’m at that age when I’m too warm one minute and too cold the next. It’s all about the layers. Your mother is a wise woman,” she adds, clearly unfazed that the sisters are still in touch with their dead mother.

  Such is life—and death—here in Lily Dale.

  I wonder if I’d ever get used to it.

  Maybe, if Bella stuck around long enough, she’d go around talking about Sam—talking to Sam—as if he were still here.

  Maybe she’d even believe that he is.

  Which is exactly why you can’t stay, she reminds herself.

  It’s hard enough to get over losing the love of your life. If she allowed herself to start imagining that Sam isn’t really gone forever—or, even worse, if Max started to believe it . . .

  Well, she doesn’t need Doctor Lex or grief counseling to grasp that such delusional thinking would be a major setback in the healing process.

  I have to get us out of here. The sooner, the better.

  She’ll make that phone call to Millicent, just as soon as it’s a decent hour in Chicago. She’ll start out by saying that she’s sorry for last night, even though she can no longer recall exactly what she said or did that demands an apology. Does it matter? If Millicent feels slighted—and Millicent always feels slighted—then Bella will make amends, because right now, she’s out of options.

  If it comes down to either Millicent or Lily Dale, Millicent wins.

  Or loses, as far as she’ll be concerned.

  But it’s just until they can get back on their feet. It’s not forever.

  Nothing is forever . . .

  Except, she reminds herself, for death.

  * * *

  It’s long past nine o’clock Chicago time, but Bella’s planned phone call to her mother-in-law still hasn’t happened.

  When she found a free moment to dial, she found two missed calls, both from western New York area codes.

  There were two voice mails. The first was from Doctor Bailey, making sure she’d gotten the cat back where she belonged and asking her to call back to let him know.

  That message was very short and straightforward.

  The second one was anything but.

  “Hi, Isabella, this is Troy. Troy Valeri. The mechanic? I’m just calling to let you know that I ordered the part, and it should be in first thing Monday morning, so I’ll get it fixed right away, and you’ll be all set, so . . . and if . . . um . . .”

  She frowned, holding the phone against her ear, wondering why, if everything is on track with her car, he suddenly sounded so hesitant.

  “If you need, uh, a ride anywhere this weekend while you’re stuck without a car, or if . . . if you, um, want someone to show you around the area . . . or you need . . . anything . . . just give me a call. In fact, why don’t you give me a call anyway, just so that I know you got this. Okay? Okay. Bye.”

  Taken aback, she listened to the message again.

  There was no way she was going to call him back. He should just assume she got the message. That’s what people do. They leave messages for people, and people listen to them. That’s how it works.

  Besides, she doesn’t need to be shown around the area, she thought, irritated with Troy for no reason whatsoever. And if she needs a ride, she can just borrow Odelia’s car again, right?

  Of course.

  Why is Troy Valeri going out of his way to be so nice? What’s wrong with him?

  Is he hoping to see her again for some reason? Is he . . . interested?

  He might be, but you’re not, she reminded herself firmly.

  Pushing Troy—and Millicent, too—from her mind, she went back to refilling coffee cups, replenishing pastries, cutting up more fruit, and chatting with her guests.

  She’s pleasantly surprised to find that she actually enjoys her hostess duties. She certainly knows her way around a household, though she’s never shared one with more than one other adult. Her greatest concern had bee
n the social aspect, but somehow, it isn’t difficult to find common ground even with this diverse bunch.

  Jim and Kelly Tookler are about her age and live in the New York City suburbs not far from Bedford. Bonnie Barrington may be as straitlaced as they come, but like Bella, she grew up in the city itself. And Fritz Dunkle is another fellow teacher, a college English professor from Pennsylvania.

  As she gets to know more about them, Bella finds herself wondering why they’re here, the ones who seem so . . .

  Normal is the word that keeps coming to mind, but conventional might be a better one.

  Most of the guests are—on the surface, anyway—people you’d expect to find anywhere else.

  There are exceptions, of course.

  Certainly the St. Clair sisters—who with little coaxing perform an off-key but well-choreographed espadrille soft-shoe rendition of “Tea for Two”—are as dotty as their sweaters. And the Adabners, who are on their way to an early morning ectoplasm workshop, are more than a little wacky.

  But the rest come across as utterly grounded and logical, which Bella finds simultaneously reassuring and disquieting.

  She didn’t have to wonder for very long how they all found their way to this strange little town.

  Their paths stem from grief to new age curiosity to literary aspirations—Fritz is working on a book about Lily Dale. The others’ stories have a common thread, though. They’re searching. Searching for a connection, for healing, for answers . . .

  Not unlike Bella herself.

  Except I didn’t realize that I was searching, and I didn’t mean to find this place. It found me.

  But Lily Dale, with its wide-eyed “the dead aren’t really dead” philosophy, is no more likely to lift her burden of sorrow than the glass of ice water she’s clasping will erase the angry red burn from her fingers. This serene little town and its residents are nothing more than a soothing, temporary balm—to her loneliness, not her grief.

  “It’s strange to be sitting here without Leona,” Kelly Tookler muses, lingering with several others over yet another cup of coffee. She’s tall, pudgy, and blonde; her husband is the exact opposite. Bella has noticed that she frequently punctuates her comments—as she does now—with, “Right, Jim?”