Believing (Lily Dale #2)(38)

“Yeah, it is a great school,” Evangeline promptly speaks up. “The teachers are really challenging, but in a good way. And most of the kids are really cool.”

“But not all of them?” Ramona asks wryly.

“Well, Mason goes there, remember?” Evangeline cracks, and even Dad laughs at that.

They talk a little longer about the school, and everything Ramona says is positively glowing. It’s almost as though she senses Dad needs some convincing, and is ready to step up to bat on Calla’s behalf.

Almost as though?

She does know, Calla realizes. And not because Odelia told her, either. Calla never even mentioned this morning’s conversation about her going back to California.

Ramona knows because she’s, well, psychic. Thank goodness for that. She’s doing a hard sell on Lily Dale and Dad is eating it right up.

Later, standing beside the rental car with her father, Calla realizes she isn’t ready yet to say good-bye. But he’s leaving for the airport early in the morning, so this is it.

“Well,” he says, and gestures at the Taggarts’ empty porch, where the candle is now extinguished. “That was fun.”

“Yeah. You sound surprised.”

He shrugs a little, like he’s thinking about all that just happened.

Then he says, “Cal, if you really want to stick around here a while longer, maybe even until the end of the year . . . it’s okay with me.”

Whoa. Maybe Ramona isn’t just a psychic, but a witch as well. It sure feels as though Dad has fallen under some kind of magical spell to have done such a quick about-face.

“The end of the year, year? Or the end of the school year?” she asks, trying not to sound too excited. After all, it also means they’ll have to be apart for a while longer.

“Maybe both. I just don’t know anymore. I’m not crazy about this California situation.”

“The job? Or trying to find a place to live?”

“Everything.” He shrugs. “I don’t know why I didn’t realize until just now, tonight, sitting here with your friends, that as much as I miss you and worry about you, you’ve adjusted incredibly well here in a short time. And it’s probably not a good idea to get you involved in another new place when I’m still trying to figure things out myself.”

“Figure what out? You mean, if you’re going to stay there?” she asks, feeling as though she’s suddenly reading his mind.

He doesn’t want to be there, she realizes. He’s not sure where he wants to be right now, but it isn’t there, and it isn’t back home in Tampa.

Poor Dad.

“Where would you go?” she asks. “If you don’t finish out the sabbatical, I mean. Back to Florida?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’ll figure things out,” he adds with a reassuring nod that doesn’t ring true. “Listen, all that matters to me, really, is that you’re in a good place right now, and that you’re surrounded by good people who care about you. Maybe Mom would want you to be here, even . . . I don’t know.”

“I don’t, either.” Calla sighs. “There are so many things I wonder about her, and now I’ll never have the answers.”

“I feel the same way,” Dad says, wearing such a cryptic expression that Calla realizes he, too, is searching. Maybe not for the same thing she’s trying to find, but Mom’s death left him with questions, too.

“You knew her better than anyone, though, Dad.”

He shakes his head. “I used to think that. But . . . I wonder.”

“I guess that’s what happens when people die. We look back and—”

“No, not just after she died. I wondered while she was alive, too.” It’s not like him to speak so freely to Calla.

Maybe it’s the dark, or the wine, or the laid-back mood that lingers from the Taggarts’ porch.

In any case, Dad goes on. “Last spring wasn’t the greatest time.”

Yeah, tell me about it, Calla thinks, remembering her breakup with Kevin.

But of course, that’s not what Dad’s talking about.

“I was getting ready for this sabbatical,” he says, almost like he’s thinking out loud, to himself, “and Mom was wrapped up in her work, as usual, and . . . things were tense.”

“You mean, between you and Mom?”

“I shouldn’t even be telling you this. I don’t even know why I am. Except . . . it’s been on my mind, and who else am I going to tell?”

“So, were you guys, like, fighting a lot?” Calla asks, thinking back. She was so caught up in her own problems back then. “I remember Mom not wanting to take time off from work to go to California.”

“No, not fighting so much. I mean,we argued—everyone argues. But your mother was starting to become . . . detached. That’s the only way I can explain it. It was like she’d taken a big step back—from me, anyway. And now I wonder if . . .”

“If what?”

“Never mind,” Dad says quietly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”

I wish there were a way to know what was going on with Mom before she died, Calla thinks, frustrated. But her secrets died with her. It’s not like she kept a diary or wrote letters or— Wait a minute. Of course!