Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(11)
“Calla, this is Jacy Bly. He lives across the way.” Odelia points vaguely at the grassy green. “Jacy, this is my granddaughter, Calla—the one I was telling you about.”
Uh-oh. What could Odelia have possibly told this guy about her?
“Nice to meet you,” Calla says politely, and sticks out her right hand, the way her mother taught her to do whenever she’s introduced to someone new.
“You, too.” Soft-spoken Jacy grasps her hand, and Calla nearly gasps. A current of—what, electricity?—seems to have shot up her right arm.
Okay, that’s ridiculous. But she didn’t imagine it. Her arm is still tingling as he releases her hand. Maybe it was static electricity or something?
She looks at Jacy to see if he seems jolted, but it’s impossible to read anything on his beautiful, enigmatic face.
“Want to come in and have some lemonade with us, Jacy?”
“No, thanks,” he tells Odelia. “I have to go.”
Calla does her best not to turn her head and stare after him as he walks away. “He seems nice,” she says casually to her grandmother, watching her open the door—which, Calla can’t help but notice, wasn’t even locked.
“He is nice. Come on in.” Odelia holds the door for her.
Stepping over the threshold, Calla immediately sees a steep flight of stairs. Uh-oh. Instant flashback to what happened back home . . . to what she found there at the foot of the stairs when she walked in the front door that day after her social studies final.
Mom. Long brown hair tousled around her head, matted with clotting blood. Neck twisted. Eyes open. Vacant. Gone.
No, don’t think about that. Just focus on where you are right now. The past is in the past.
She follows Odelia from the foyer into the next dim, cluttered room and looks around. Painted woodwork, chintz furniture, worn plank floors, rag rugs. A collection of odds and ends: a plastic white box fan, a metal TV tray, some kind of driftwood sculpture, a lamp whose glass base is filled with shells. Stacks of magazines are everywhere. Books line built-in shelves as well as the mantel and the small entertainment center that holds the modest television and stereo. There are a few sore-thumb heirlooms here, too—a gilt-framed oil landscape, an ornate coatrack, a stately grandfather clock. The windows are open, but the place still smells musty—kind of like the old books Calla buys at the library’s annual sale back in Tampa.
It’s as impossible to imagine her sophisticated mother in this setting as it is to imagine a sleek calla lily growing in that jumbled garden alongside the porch.
She can’t help but think wistfully of their sun-splashed Florida home, with its contemporary furniture, central air, cool tile floors . . .
No. Don’t think of the floor.
She closes her eyes to block out the vision of bright red blood pooling on the light-colored tile in the foyer.
A freak accident, the police said. Mom slipped or tripped at the top of the stairs, smashed her head open on the hard wrought-iron railing, and was probably knocked unconscious, meaning she never realized what was happening. What happened was that she broke her neck when she landed on the ceramic-tile floor in the foyer below.
The idea of Mom slipping—or tripping—is so bizarre that Calla still has trouble accepting what happened. Mom was the most coordinated, graceful, sedate person on earth. How could it have happened?
“So, obviously, this is the living room,” Odelia is saying. “Through here is the kitchen.”
Calla forces her eyes open and follows her huffing and puffing grandmother through an archway. Dark-green-and-white linoleum, white metal cabinets with silver handle pulls. What’s visible of the countertop is pale green; most of it is obscured by canisters, appliances, a row of cookbooks and one of cereal boxes, a mug tree, a couple of empty vases, pens, paper, more magazines. The outdated fridge and stove are green as well, but they’re more of an olive color. And yet another shade of green twines its way across the ivy-patterned wallpaper.
“Half bath here”—Odelia jerks open a door just long enough for Calla to spot a powder-blue toilet and matching sink in a tiny room with blue-and-silver foil wallpaper—“and this is my room.” Odelia leads Calla through an open door into a bright room whose walls are mostly glass windows on three sides.
There are no curtains or shades, and the walls, trim, and ceiling are painted beige. On the floor is nubby neutral wall-to-wall carpeting, and the room is surprisingly—for this house, anyway—devoid of clutter. The only furniture is a trio of wingback chairs that seem oddly placed, all facing each other in the center of the room. On the lone table, at arm’s reach, are a box of tissues, a couple of candles, and a tape recorder.
“This is your room?” Calla asks. “But where do you sleep?”
“Oh, it isn’t my bedroom. That’s upstairs. Come on—I’ll show you yours, too. You’re going to be in your mom’s old room.”
Mom’s old room?
Calla immediately forgets about the one they’re in and dogs her grandmother’s footsteps back through the kitchen to the stairs. Predictably, the treads are worn and they creak as Calla and her grandmother ascend. Odelia is panting with exertion by the time they reach the second floor, where the ceiling is so low that Calla would be able to touch it from her tiptoes. The bare floor planks are wider, darker, scarred with age. The layout is simple: there are three doors off the upstairs hall. One, straight ahead, leads to a bathroom—Calla can see the edge of a clawfoot tub through the open door. But she isn’t interested in that.