Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(59)

“What? You don’t like it either?”

Startled, Calla looks up to see Lisa watching her. “What?”

“This smell. It’s too strong, right?”

“You . . . can smell it too?”

“Smell what? My lotion?”

Her lotion? It’s her lotion that smells? Sniffing the tube Lisa thrusts under her nose, Calla realizes that this time, the floral scent has a perfectly ordinary source. No wonder there’s no chill.

“I just bought it the other night at Wal-Mart because they didn’t have the honeysuckle one I usually like,” Lisa goes on, closing the tube.

“What scent is this?”

“I don’t know.” Lisa turns it over, looks at the label, and reads, “Lily of the Valley.”

As Odelia steers the car up Cottage Row again that night, Calla feels numb with exhaustion. All she wants to do is fall at last into her own bed— Mom’s old bed—and sleep.

They saw Lisa off at the airport, but her plane left three hours late because of Florida thunderstorms. It’s raining here, too. Thunder rumbles and lightning bolts light the sky over the lake as Odelia parks in front of the house and turns off the headlights. Rain patters hard on the roof of the car.

“We’ll have to make a run for it when it lets up a little,” she says, fishing around under the seat. “Unless I find an umbrella in here.”

Calla doubts she will—though you never know. Odelia’s car is as cluttered as her house, and Calla’s mind right now.

But she doesn’t want to think about any of it—Aiyana, lilies of the valley, even Mom. Not tonight, anyway, even now that Lisa’s gone.

She looks longingly toward the house as another bolt of lightning zaps the sky, illuminating the world for a split second.

In that second, Calla sees that there’s a figure on Odelia’s porch. Human, but is it alive or dead? Her heart beats a little faster as she gazes at the ominous shadow, which appears to be wearing some kind of hooded cloak.

“Come on,” Odelia says, abruptly opening the door. “It’s letting up.”

Calla hesitates.

“Let’s go!” Odelia commands, and she’s off, splashing her way through the rain to the door.

Calla follows reluctantly, realizing as she bolts toward the house that Odelia can see the person on the porch as well, because she appears to be talking to him or her. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a ghost, of course.

As she mounts the steps two at a time, she can see that the person isn’t wearing a hooded cloak, it’s a raincoat. And it’s not a ghost—it’s a real live woman. A woman Calla recognizes.

“Calla,” Odelia says, “Mrs. Riggs would like to speak to you.”

Odelia isn’t happy. That much is obvious. Her unhappiness has nothing to do with the fact that she’s sitting in her recliner like a drowned rat, probably cold and uncomfortable.

No, it has everything to do with Calla, also cold and uncomfortable and drowned-rat-like.

Calla’s sitting on the couch next to Elaine Riggs, who turned down Odelia’s offer of hot tea and said she has something important to say, then is heading back to the White Inn down in Fredonia, where she’s spending the night. Apparently, she spent at least a few hours on Odelia’s wet porch, waiting for them.

Before she says whatever it is she has to say to Calla, though, she’s found it necessary to tell Odelia what led up to this impromptu visit.

So . . . now Odelia knows.

That Calla saw the ghost of Kaitlyn Riggs. And that she called the girl’s mother to tell her to search a remote park based on information she received from a spirit.

And Odelia doesn’t like this, any of it. Not one bit. Which doesn’t surprise Calla, because obviously Mrs. Riggs is here to complain to Odelia that her granddaughter has been meddling where she doesn’t belong.

“The reason I’m here,” Elaine Riggs says at last, her voice trembling a little, “is to thank you.”

“To thank me?” Calla echoes, startled. “For what?”

“For finding Kaitlyn.”

The rain has subsided into a steady drip from the drainpipe above the porch by the time Calla finds herself out there again. In silence, she and her grandmother watch Elaine Riggs climb into her car and drive away.

Calla doesn’t dare turn her head to look at Odelia. She can feel her grandmother’s anger—and is bewildered by it.

True, Mrs. Riggs’s story doesn’t have a happy ending.

But at least it has an ending. Closure. Thanks to Calla.

Kaitlyn Riggs’s strangled body was found yesterday morning in the woods not far from Rock House Cave in Hocking Hills State Park. The police still don’t know what happened to her, but they think she was abducted from the mall parking lot by a stranger. They even asked that Calla be brought in to speak with them, to see if she has any impressions of Kaitlyn’s killer.

She doesn’t. And when she looked questioningly at Odelia, her grandmother somewhat stiffly told Mrs. Riggs she wasn’t sure she was comfortable with Calla doing that. “We’ll let you know,” she said, “after we’ve discussed it.”

Which Calla isn’t particularly eager to do.

“Let’s go in,”Odelia says now. “It’s cold out here. And we have to talk.”