Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(22)

“All the time, all of us . . . everywhere.”

Whoa.

“Those of us who are sensitive to it learn how to tune in and out, though. If we didn’t, we’d go nuts.”

I should be sitting here thinking you are nuts, Calla tells her grandmother silently, only for some reason, you’re almost making sense.

“Want some more sorbet?” Odelia offers the carton to her. “There’s a little more left. Finish it up.”

“Oh . . . no thanks.”

“Try it with chocolate sauce. It’s better that way.”

Calla makes a face. Now that’s nuts. “That’s okay.” She pushes back her chair. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“That’s a good idea. It’s been a long day.”

And it’s going to be a long three weeks, Calla thinks as she makes her way through the strange little house and up to her mother’s old room.





SIX

“. . . The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake!”

With a gasp, Calla bolts upright in bed, clutching the covers against her pounding ribcage.

The room is dark. And filled with unfamiliar shapes—Oh. She’s not home. She’s in her grandmother’s house, in her mother’s old room. Mom is gone.

And Calla was dreaming about her. About her grandmother, too.

They were arguing shrilly. Calla was a little girl, eavesdropping, pretending to play with her dolls under the table.

The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake!

What did that mean? Which of them said it, Mom or Odelia? Did it really happen, or did Calla make it up in her dream? And why does it matter?

I don’t know, but it just does. There must be a reason it keeps coming back to me.

Breathing hard, she lowers herself to the pillow again and tries to relax.

Snippets of the dream conversation come back to her.

“. . . because I promised I’d never tell. . . .” That was Mom, distraught, tearful.

“. . . for your own good. . . .” That was Odelia.

“. . . how you can live with yourself. . . .” Odelia again.

None of it makes any sense. Not in fragments, anyway. If Calla can slip back into the dream, she might be able to piece it all together.

But that doesn’t work. Sleep eludes her; she’s wide awake now. It’s cold in here, but that’s not because of any ghost. It’s early August, yet she can feel the chill coming through the open window with the night breeze.

She glances around the room just in case, though, making sure none of the shadows look human. She’s relieved to see nothing but the bulky geometrical outlines of furniture.

At least the resident ghost—Miriam, Odelia called her— doesn’t seem to be lurking here at this hour of the night. Or morning. What time is it, anyway?

Calla glances at the clock. The glowing numerals, no longer flashing, show that it’s 3:17.

Her grandmother must have come in to set the time. It was still stuck on 12:00 when Calla came up to bed, and she hadn’t bothered to fix it, too preoccupied with all that had happened.

She did, however, shut the door behind her.

If you want privacy, close the door and I’ll leave you alone.

Yeah, right. Calla can’t help but feel annoyed that Odelia went back on her word so quickly. She doesn’t like the thought of anyone opening the closed door and creeping in here while she was asleep, even if it was just to set the clock.

Then again, maybe she should be glad it was only Odelia. When she first came up to bed earlier, she was so uneasy about the face in the mirror—among other things—that she expected to toss and turn all night. She must have fallen right to sleep, though, because the last thing she remembers is turning off the light and sinking into the pillow.

Now, all those anxious thoughts come at her full force once again, each more difficult to believe than the last.

There’s a ghost in the house? Lily Dale is filled with mediums? Odelia is one of them?

Finally . . .

What about me? Why can I see and hear and sense the same things she does—like Miriam? Do I have supernatural powers, too? Am I psychic?

That thought wants to make a whole lot of sense to her— if only she would accept it. But she does her best not to.

That’s crazy. I can’t be psychic. I’m a regular person.

Then again . . .

All right, the thing is, Calla has always had a way of anticipating things she shouldn’t—couldn’t—know about in advance. Usually, it’s just everyday surprises that catch other people off guard. Like a pop quiz in biology or an underdog team winning a game. Sometimes, though, she wakes up just knowing something isn’t quite right. Something in her own life. Something major.

That happened to her back in April, just before Kevin sent her that breakup text message out of the blue. It struck again in May—not another electronic breakup, but the inexplicable sensation that something bad was going to happen. She was powerless to figure out what it might be, let alone stop it. She just knew it was out there, lurking, waiting to happen to her.

And then Mom died.

What if she had told Mom about the bad feeling she had that morning? Would that have changed anything?

She still remembers feeling uneasy as she ate her cereal, watching her mother gulp down a cup of coffee and pack up her briefcase for an early meeting. But she didn’t realize the bad feeling had anything to do with Mom. It was mostly just a vague sense of dread, which she didn’t mention because Mom didn’t want to know about those kinds of things. She had made that clear years ago.