Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(32)

“Is Jacy a medium, too?” she asked Evangeline.

“He’s definitely gifted . . . he’s in tune with nature and animals. But he hasn’t said much about it—about anything, really. Not to me, anyway. Not that he talks to anyone else, either.”

“How many kids our age are there in Lily Dale?” Calla asked, noticing she hadn’t seen many in their travels.

“Maybe a dozen.”

Calla’s jaw dropped. “That’s it?”

“Within the gates, that’s it. Remember, hardly anyone lives here year-round, and a lot of the mediums are single, or older, so . . .” She shrugged.

“Where’s your school?” Calla asked, picturing one of those one-room deals, like they had a hundred years ago. “Is it here in town?”

“No, about a mile away. It’s a centralized district. There are other kids who live on farms around here, and they go to school with us.”

Now, as Calla settles onto her bed with the books, listening to the rain pinging against the gutter above her window, she decides there are worse places to be.

In the house where your mom just died is at the top of the list. Under the same roof with your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend ranks not far beneath it.

I might as well be here in Lily Dale for now, she thinks, opening the first book. And I might as well find out as much about it— and this thing called spiritualism—as I can.

Restless, Calla sets aside yet another of the books she took out of the library. This time, she couldn’t get past the third page.

She sets it on top of the stack with the other unread titles and vows to get back to them later today—or, preferably, some other day. Not that she finds local history dull, but she isn’t in the mood to start at the beginning, with the town’s nineteenth-century origins at the dawning of the spiritualist movement, fueled by the Fox sisters’ so-called spirit rappings up in Hydesville.

Intriguing, yes . . . but at the moment, she’s much more interested in the town’s more recent history—say, when her mother lived here.

She gets off the bed and glances at the window, where a steady rain is still falling outside. Oops—it’s blowing in through the cracked window, spattering the sill and the floor with droplets.

She hurriedly yanks it shut and wipes up the moisture with her sleeve.

It already feels stuffy in here, she thinks, as she crosses the room to the dresser. But she knows water isn’t good for wood. Mom was a stickler about wiping things up.

And she wouldn’t be thrilled to see me using my sleeve to do it, Calla thinks ruefully.

With a sigh, she picks up the nearest picture frame. In this particular snapshot, Mom—with impossibly tall, gravity-defying hair—is wearing a satiny gown and a wrist corsage. She’s posing with some guy in an equally pouffy mullet. Calla smiles at the outdated styles and wonders who he is. An old boyfriend of Mom’s, obviously.

She never mentioned anyone by name, but when she was trying to comfort Calla over the breakup with Kevin, she did hint at having had her own heart broken once. Calla started to ask for details but her father came in right then, and she got the sense that her mother didn’t want to talk about it in front of him.

Or maybe Mom didn’t want to talk about it at all, she reflects now, looking back. There was definitely something awkward in her mother’s expression even before Dad popped up.

Maybe that was simply because Stephanie rarely brought up the past—her own, and in general. Nostalgia just wasn’t her style.

No remember-whens or what-ifs for Stephanie Delaney. She lived in the present.

So did Calla, until recently. Now, she finds herself clinging to the past—her own, her mother’s, the past in general. Which is probably because the present is too damned painful.

She frowns, staring at the picture of Mom in her youth, so focused on the striking resemblance between herself and her mom that it takes her some time to notice the nagging thought making its way into her brain: there’s something familiar about the boy in the picture. Definitely.

I’ve seen him before, Calla decides, and wonders how that’s possible. She’s never been here before . . . and no one from Lily Dale, other than Odelia, has ever visited Mom in Florida.

Okay, so maybe she’s mistaken about the boy’s being familiar. She looks more closely at the picture. Maybe he just reminds her of someone she knows from school or something.

With a sigh, she sets the picture back among the other frames. She isn’t in the mood to see her mother with strangers she can’t identify.

It seems almost like a betrayal that Mom lived this whole life she knows nothing about.

Come on, Calla. You know that’s not fair. Every adult has a youth their children weren’t a part of.That’s just how it is.

Yes, but some parents love to talk about their past. Like Mrs. Wilson; she’s always bringing up the old days. Lisa hangs on every word, but it used to bug Kevin when his mother went on and on about being a debutante up in Savannah or a sorority girl in Alabama.

At least if Mom were still around, Calla could ask her about her life here in the Dale and the people she knew here. She feels cheated—and puzzled.

Her mother went out of her way to keep a key part of her past hidden. Why?

Why didn’t you tell us that your mother was a psychic, or that you lived in a town filled with them? Were you that ashamed of it, Mom?