Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(12)
Nor is she all that interested in Odelia’s room, to the right. She barely glances at the patchwork quilt–covered double bed; another overflowing bookshelf; and formal, antique-looking furniture that could only have been inherited, as it clearly isn’t Odelia’s style.
Finally, it’s time to cross the hall to the opposite door, which, unlike the other two, is closed.
“This is where you’ll be.” Odelia reaches for the knob. “If you want privacy, close the door and I promise I won’t come barging in on you.”
“Er—thanks.”
“But if you don’t mind company, leave it open, and I’ll know I can pop in. I was thinking it’ll be nice to have someone to talk to around here for a change.”
Calla nods, eager to see the room. Odelia is taking her sweet time opening the door, and it’s all she can do not to bounce up on her toes to peer over her shoulder as it cracks open.
“I have to warn you, I haven’t changed a thing since your mother left. Mostly because—in case you haven’t noticed— I’m a sentimental, lazy old pack rat.”
Then so are Dad and I, because we don’t want to change anything of hers back home, either, Calla thinks. They made an unspoken decision before they left to keep everything of Stephanie’s intact, right down to the last newspaper left on the kitchen table, folded open to the half-penciled-in daily word puzzle she loved to do. Neither of them could bear to put—much less throw—away anything Mom had touched.
“When I found out you were really coming to visit, I came in here thinking it was time I cleaned it out—but I just can’t.” Her grandmother’s voice wavers, and Calla looks up to see tears in Odelia’s eyes.
Unnerved, she looks down at her sandals. If Odelia loses it, she will, too. And she doesn’t want her emotions to start spilling over again, isn’t ready to go back to cheeks that are raw and stinging from perpetual salt and moisture, eyes that feel as though they’ve been boiled, the constant headache that accompanies incessant crying.
To her relief, Odelia inhales deeply, exhales, and manages a little laugh. Calla dares to look at her and sees that she’s smiling as she gestures for Calla to step into her mother’s room.
“At least Stephanie wasn’t as messy as I am . . . how she ever got to be so organized and tidy, I’ll never know. Anyway, I do dust in here, so you won’t be sleeping with the dust bunnies, in case you were worried about that.”
“I wasn’t worried about that,” Calla murmurs, and looks around.
The room is bright—not as bright as the back room downstairs, but sunlight splashes through windows on two walls. It falls in moving, dappled patterns across the hardwood floor and braided rug in shades of rose and sage. From here, Calla can see the glistening blue water of Cassadaga Lake.
She turns back to the room, wanting to take in every detail, trying hard to picture her mother here. It isn’t easy. Mom’s style is much more contemporary than this.
The walls are whitewashed beadboard halfway up and striped wallpaper the rest of the way, in shades that match the rug. The furniture is strikingly similar to the bedroom set Calla picked out a few years ago when she redid her room back home, and she has a sudden memory of her mother commenting about that.
She had said something like, “I had the same kind of bed when I was a little girl.”
To which Calla, feeling prickly, had retorted, “Please, Mom, I’m not a little girl.”
No, but she feels like one now, and has ever since that horrible day when she found herself motherless.
A lump pushes its way into her throat, and she fiercely swallows it back down, focusing her attention on the details of the room. The bed is white iron, a twin, not a queen like Calla has at home. The dresser and nightstand are both painted white and rubbed off in a few places—the same distressed effect of her furniture back in Florida. But this stuff is authentically worn. Calla’s set was purchased new—cottage-shabby-chic, the saleswoman called it.
“It’s very popular right now,” she told Calla and her mother, who, come to think of it, was wearing a faraway, nostalgic smile. Was she thinking of her girlhood bedroom? Missing this house in Lily Dale, missing her mother? Calla will never know now.
“I stitched this quilt myself.” Odelia runs her fingertips over the patchwork squares that cover the bed. “I made it out of all her little-girl dresses.”
Calla’s eyes widen, and she steps closer to examine the various fabric patterns. Green-sprigged yellow rosebuds on a pale pink background, a red gingham plaid, powder blue and white pinstripes, an off-white eyelet.
“These were all my mother’s clothes?”
Odelia nods, looking dangerously misty again behind her pink cat’s-eye glasses. She turns to the window and jerks it open, muttering something about it being stuffy in here.
Calla smiles, imagining wrapping herself up in that quilt tonight. Maybe it will feel almost like a hug from her mother.
No. Of course it won’t. Nothing—certainly not a quilt, and not even a real hug from her father, or her grandmother—could ever come close to bringing the kind of comfort she’d find in her mother’s embrace.
She turns away from the bed, momentarily blinded by tears. She brushes them away quickly, and she can see again. Her gaze falls on a couple of framed photographs on the dresser. She steps closer and sees dated snapshots of her mother—younger, smiling—with various people she’s never seen before.