Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(21)

September.

Wow, when he puts it that way, Calla isn’t so sure she’s going to be okay at all. Homesick, she merely nods before he says, “Honey?” and she remembers he can’t see her.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m going to be fine here. I just wish . . . I mean, I can’t get online here, either. There’s no computer. So, that’s a little . . . disappointing.”

She sees Odelia lift her head abruptly. She assumes it’s because of the computer comment, but she realizes Odelia doesn’t even seem to be paying attention to her conversation. Her head is cocked expectantly, almost as though she’s listening to something. Or for something.

“Maybe there’s an Internet café there or something,” her father suggests as she watches Odelia set down her spoon, wearing a thoughtful expression.

“Here? Um, no.” Where does her father think she is, in civilization?

“Well, what about the library? Sometimes they have computers the public can use. You need to check it out.”

Suddenly, Calla sees a shadow pass through the open doorway behind Odelia’s head, where the door to the sunroom is propped open by a doorstop.

There’s someone in there. Only . . .

There shouldn’t be anyone there at all. Calla and her grandmother have been sitting here for twenty minutes, eating sorbet and talking. Odelia never once mentioned anybody else being in the house. And surely she would have.

If she knew about it.

Even as Calla looks on, her grandmother turns her head sharply toward the sunroom.

“Calla?” her father is saying in her ear. “Why don’t you check out the library?”

“Right. I will.”

“Good. Let me know what you find out. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she echoes absently, her attention on her grandmother, who has stood and walked to the doorway of the sunroom.

“I’ll call you around this time tomorrow night, okay?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Calla murmurs.

Odelia is talking, so softly Calla can’t hear what she’s saying. She suspects that’s because her grandmother doesn’t want her to hear.

“I love you, Calla.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

She hangs up the phone.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks her grandmother.

Odelia doesn’t turn around right away. When she does, Calla expects her to deny that she said anything, but she shrugs. “That’s just Miriam.”

“Miriam? So there is someone there?”

Odelia’s eyebrows shoot up. “You saw her?”

Something makes Calla shake her head promptly and say, “No. I didn’t see anybody. I just heard you talking, so I thought someone was there. So,” she adds tentatively, her heart pounding like crazy, “who’s Miriam?”

“She’s just someone who used to live here, years ago.”

“Before you moved in?”

“Long before that.” Odelia gives a staccato laugh. She crosses to the window above the sink, gives it a tug, and pulls it closed. “She lived here long before I was born, actually. Her husband built the house in eighteen eighty-three.”

Calla feels as though a giant just stepped on her lungs, squashing the air right out of them.

“So . . . Miriam’s a ghost?”

“She’s passed, yes,” Odelia tells her. “I don’t use that word.”

“Ghost?”

“Right.”

“Sorry.” Calla takes a deep breath and asks, “Is she your spirit guide?”

“No. Not a guide.” Calla watches her grandmother turn back to the other room, then say, “All right. I will.”

She’s talking to the ghost, Calla realizes, and the pale hair on her arms stands straight up.

Odelia returns to the table. “Miriam wanted me to tell you that she’s harmless.”

“Oh. That’s . . . good to hear.”

“She just likes to keep an eye on things around here.”

“Is she . . . always around?”

“Not twenty-four seven. She comes and goes. You won’t notice her. Most people don’t, although . . .”

When Odelia breaks off, Calla prods, “Although what? What happened?”

“She gave the plumber a scare last fall. She kept turning the lights on and off and flushing the toilet to get rid of him.”

“Why?”

“She just didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows?” Odelia shrugs. “I’m sure she had a good reason. When she tells me something, I’ve learned to listen. So I waited until my regular plumber got back to town and used him, and everything was fine.”

Calla nods as though all of this makes perfect sense, because she’s starting to feel exhausted, mentally and physically, and it’s just easier than posing endless questions.

But she does have one more. “Is Miriam the only ghost around your house, then?” Oh, wait—Odelia doesn’t like that word. “I mean, is Miriam the only person who’s, uh, passed, and is still hanging around here? Or are there other, uh, passed people, too?”

“Spirit energy is all around us.”

“All the time? And, uh, you mean, around all of us? Not just . . . people like you?”