Believing (Lily Dale #2)(49)

“Oh, honey.” Althea lowers herself into a chair with a faint groan of effort and takes both Calla’s hands in her own. They’re sturdy, warm, and reassuring. “Most people aren’t aware of Spirit touching in. It’s not—”

“No,” Calla cuts in, distraught, “that’s just it—I am aware. I’m . . . like you. And everyone else here.”

Althea’s eyebrows shoot toward her salt-and-pepper bangs.

“I can see ghosts—I mean, spirits—and hear them and smell them,” Calla rushes on, “just like you can. Ever since I got here . . . or maybe before,” she adds hurriedly, remembering that first glimpse of Aiyana at the funeral. “It’s been happening ever since my mom died. But not her. I can’t see her. And she’s the only one who really matters.”

Willow’s mom is silent for a moment.

Then she says, “I can tell you that this doesn’t necessarily work the way—”

Calla bites back a bitter Here we go again.

But she’s so sick of it.

She’s going to tell me it’s not like a telephone.That you can’t just place a call to someone on the Other Side and expect it to be answered.

“—but,” Althea continues, seeing the look on her face, “I have a feeling you’ve heard that already. Right?”

Calla nods.

“And it doesn’t help, does it? When your heart is hurting and you’ve lost someone you loved, and needed, so desperately, and you’d give anything to have that physical connection one last time . . .”

Has she lost someone, too? Calla wonders, watching her, hearing the note of pain in her voice. Lost them, and maybe even tried to find them again on the Other Side?

Or does she just know what it must be like for me?

“So, my mother’s here?” she asks, looking around the empty room, and Althea nods.

“Can you see her?”

“She looks like you.”

Althea’s looking at something to Calla’s right side and she jerks her head toward the spot, only to find it empty.

“Mom,” she whispers, and slips her hand from Althea’s to reach into the emptiness, as if she might suddenly be able to touch her mother.

But she doesn’t feel her . . . not physically with her hand, not spiritually in the room. She doesn’t feel anything at all.





Calla Delaney.

That’s her name.

The friendly woman in the café told him, so casually. “Oh, you mean Calla Delaney,” she said in response to his question. “Sure, she’s Odelia Lauder’s granddaughter. Pretty girl, tall, slim, with long, light brown hair—the spitting image of her mother, Stephanie, when she was that age.”

“Do you know where Odelia Lauder lives?” was his next question, but by then, the woman’s less-cooperative friend had shot her a warning frown, and she promptly claimed that she didn’t.

Which was ludicrous, of course, in a town that size. Everyone in Lily Dale knows everyone else—and their business. That’s apparent.

All he had to do was stroll down the street and ask the next passerby where Odelia Lauder lived, and he was pointed in the right direction with a cheerful smile.

“There’s a sign with her name on it hanging right over her door . . . you can’t miss it,” he was told.

But when he got here—just a short time ago, under cover of darkness, after killing a few hours in a truck stop off the highway—there was no sign. Just a bracket with a pot of yellow flowers.

So he’s been watching the house. Waiting.

He keeps reminding himself that all he wants tonight, before he gets back behind the wheel for the long drive back to Ohio, is a glimpse of her.

But, thoughts racing and body tense from too much truck-stop coffee, he wonders if that can possibly be enough.





“Is it some kind of . . . of block?” Calla asks Althea desperately. “Is that why can’t I find my mother? Why can’t she come through to me?”

“Oh, honey, you just lost the person who was closest to you in the entire world, and your pain is so overwhelming— so damned huge, pardon my French, and all-encompassing— that it may be acting as a barrier, and you just aren’t open to—”

“No, I am! I am open! I swear! My mother is all I think about sometimes. Reaching her . . . I think about it all the time. I look for her everywhere, and—”

“But you’re grieving, Calla. You’re so young, and you have so much grief to process, such a tremendous amount of healing to do—that burden is more than enough for you to bear. When the time is right, and when you’ve had some time to heal and fully accept her passing—”

“I do accept it,” she protests stubbornly.

But it’s obvious from Althea’s expression that she doesn’t agree. Still, she doesn’t argue, saying only, “Your loss is so fresh, Calla. When you’ve had time to process it and get some perspective, I believe your mother will be able to come through to you.”

“She will?”

“I believe she will,” Althea says carefully.

“Can you ask her for me?”

“Her energy is gone and—”

“You’re just saying that to get me off your back,” Calla accuses, and is immediately surprised at herself. It isn’t like her to talk to anyone this way, let alone an adult—and a virtual stranger.