Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(30)

Maybe you weren’t, a little voice—a skeptical little voice— pipes up in her head. Maybe you’re just imagining stuff now that you know about Odelia and Lily Dale.

Then again, she saw the figure in the cemetery—and the one in the mirror here—before she knew there was anything supernatural about the house or town, let alone her family bloodline.

She realizes Evangeline is watching her thoughtfully.

“Listen, Calla, I know it’s not easy to be plunked down in a place like this, and I don’t blame you for doubting, really. I guess I’d feel the same way if I hadn’t grown up here.”

“You’ve never lived anywhere else?”

“Nope. My parents were mediums, like I said. And so were their parents.”

“So it runs in your family.”

Evangeline nods. “But not in yours, right? Is that what you’re thinking?”

Calla shrugs. “Nobody in my family other than my grandmother goes around saying they’re a medium, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, you never know. Maybe they just don’t want to admit it.”

“They . . . who?”

“The other people in your family.”

“There is no one else. Not on my mother’s side, anyway. My grandmother had a sister, but she died a few years ago. I never knew her, but she didn’t live here, anyway. She lived in Rochester. And I never knew my grandfather—they were divorced years ago. And then there’s my mom, but she definitely wasn’t . . . you know . . . a medium.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Calla says firmly, remembering how Mom told her to keep her “women’s intuition” to herself. “And I’m not a medium, either.” Sheesh, Calla, why don’t you just say “So there,” and stick out your tongue? But she can’t help it. She can’t let herself buy into this whole supernatural scene just because she’s here and it’s apparently a way of life for these people.

Now it makes sense that Mom never brought her and Dad to Lily Dale. The weather is lousy most of the year, but the summer months are “the season.” Mom wouldn’t have wanted Calla and her father exposed to all that.

She was the most pragmatic person Calla’s ever known. And it doesn’t take a so-called gift to know what Mom would say if she were here right now. She would tell Calla to use her common sense. And common sense tells her there’s no such thing as ghosts, and you can’t communicate with the dead no matter how desperately you want to reach your lost loved one.

Even Odelia and Evangeline seem to back up that part of the theory.

“Come on.” Evangeline glances at the sky, then picks up her pace. “We should get moving.We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before it rains again.”

“Maybe it won’t.” Calla spots a few broken patches of blue amid the clouds.

“No, it will.”

“Psychic vision?”

“No, meteorological tradition.” Evangeline smiles demurely. “I’ve lived here all my life, remember? Western New York isn’t exactly known for its balmy weather, Sunshine State Girl.”

Again, Calla is overtaken by homesickness for Florida. But she’s not even going home after the summer. No, instead, she’ll be headed to another strange place. And by the time she gets back to Tampa, she’ll be on the verge of going away to college. All her friends will be moving on, too. And Mom will still be gone. The old life she longs for no longer even exists.

“Are you okay?”

She looks up to see Evangeline watching her, concerned. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Sorry, Mom, she thinks silently. Sometimes you can’t help telling a lie. She only wishes she honestly believed her mother could hear her.

“I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“Bring what up?”

“Florida,” Evangeline says simply. “I know it’s hard. And if you ever need to talk . . . I’m a good listener.”

“Thanks,” Calla says, wondering if she’s just made her first friend in Lily Dale.





EIGHT

Ninety minutes and a drenching downpour later, Calla is soaked through, and knowledgeable enough about Lily Dale to understand what Evangeline means when she says, “See you at message circle some night, right?”

“I’ll try.” Calla waves and starts up her grandmother’s porch steps before remembering to add, “And thanks for everything. It was great getting a personal walking tour.”

“Enjoy this place while you can. Once the season ends, it’s desolate around here.” Evangeline said earlier that the local population will shrink drastically after Labor Day. Most of the registered mediums board up their cottages and hang CLOSED UNTIL JUNE signs, spending the cold-weather months in warm-weather places. “Oh, wait, you won’t be here then, anyway.”

No, she won’t. The season, Calla now knows, is July and August, when Lily Dale’s gatehouse is occupied. Nonresidents have to pay to come into the town, where they can attend a daily schedule of events: seminars, workshops, services, lectures, group readings. People who want a private reading or healing session but haven’t scheduled an advance appointment are free to wander up and down the streets, knocking on doors of spiritualists in residence here. The streets are filled with people who are grieving or sick or at some crossroads in their lives.