Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(13)

Later, she’ll ask Odelia who they all are, and hear the stories behind the pictures. Maybe she’ll even ask her grandmother about that awful fight she had with Mom, and the reason they were estranged all these years.

Something about the lake.

But what?

Right now, Calla is simply too overwhelmed to even think about it.

There are a couple of magazines on the nightstand. Calla checks the date on the top one—Mademoiselle—and finds that it’s more than twenty years old.

Not surprising. Odelia said she hasn’t touched anything in this room. And judging by the stacks downstairs, Calla wouldn’t be surprised if there are decades-old magazines there, too.

“I’ll set the clock for you.” Odelia gestures at the reddish orange digital numbers on the bedside clock, which are flashing 12:00. “Do you have a watch on?”

Calla shakes her head. She forgot the little bag containing her jewelry, including her cherished Movado watch, a gift from Kevin, back at home, along with a few other things she could have used. Like books from her summer reading list and tampons and her favorite coral-colored nail polish. It’s not like she saw a super drug mart right around the corner, either.

“We lose power a lot out here at this time of year, whenever we get a bad bout of wind and rain,” Odelia is saying. “I used to keep that clock set, but I stopped bothering years ago.”

Calla looks past the clock to a little wooden chest. Its carved top is intricately scrolled in a floral pattern. Calla wonders if the bell-shaped blooms are lilies of the valley, her mother’s so-called favorite flower.

“That’s her jewelry box,” Odelia informs her, and Calla is struck by a painful memory of the emerald bracelet—the one she lost in her mother’s grave.

“It’s nice.” It would be nicer if it were etched with calla lilies. “Where did she get it?”

“I have no idea. She probably bought it somewhere when she was in high school—or maybe younger. I don’t remember, exactly. There’s nothing valuable in it, I’m sure . . . just trinkets and costume jewelry, that sort of thing. But whatever there is, you can have.”

“Really? You don’t want it yourself?”

Odelia smiles wryly and shakes her head, her gold chandelier earrings jangling with the movement. “Not my style.”

“Well, thank you . . .” Calla trails off, uncomfortably aware that she can’t bring herself to call her grandmother “Grandma.” Or even just “Odelia.” Certainly not “Nana,” which is what she called her other grandmother.

No, she doesn’t know how to address this woman with whom she’ll be spending the next few weeks, so she keeps settling on nothing at all.

“You’re welcome.”

Calla lifts the lid and is surprised when tinkling music spills out. She hears the sharp intake of Odelia’s breath and her muttered, “That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“That the music is playing. I never wind that thing. I haven’t done it since . . . in years,” she finishes softly. Sadly.

For a moment, they listen to the delicate notes as the melody winds down.

“What is it?” Calla asks. “That song, I mean?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“It just sounds kind of familiar. But I don’t know where I heard it before.” She looks down at the neatly organized contents of the jewelry box. Each satin-lined compartment is filled with earrings, bracelets, necklaces.

Mom always did love jewelry. But the real thing. The contents of her jewelry box back home in Tampa have been placed in a safe-deposit box while they’re away. Someday, her father said, it will belong to Calla. Just like this.

But all she really wants is the lost emerald bracelet her mother gave her before she died.

The music has faded to silence; she starts to close the lid of the music box. As she does, she catches sight of her reflection in the mirrored panel in its top.

Somebody is standing just behind her.

She gasps and spins around, only to see that no one is there, and Odelia is already halfway out the door into the hall.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Odelia calls, “because I’m making my specialty for dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs.”

Calla doesn’t reply, just stares at the empty spot where she could have sworn somebody—not her grandmother—was just standing.

She didn’t just see the human face, its features like those of an out-of-focus photograph; she also felt it. An unmistakable presence.

And now she feels a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the window Odelia just cracked open.

Is Odelia’s house haunted? Or is it Odelia herself who’s haunted—if there is such a thing?

Calla remembers the woman she saw at her mother’s funeral—the woman in white, who was there one minute, gone the next. Her grandmother was with her when that happened, too. And what about the unexplained, overpowering flower smell outside?

Terrific. Odelia might not just be a harmless, eccentric old freak. She might be harboring ghosts, as well—spirits who hover around her like flies on a pig.

But people can’t be haunted. Can they?

Who knows? Calla is pretty sure that she saw someone just now in the mirror. If Odelia isn’t haunted, her house might be. Inside and out. But . . . what about the lady at the funeral?