Believing (Lily Dale #2)(63)

A manila envelope.

For a moment, she just looks at it, shaking her head.

Then she whispers aloud into the empty room, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

Leaving the room with the envelope in hand, she moves down the hall past the slightly open door to Calla’s room, toward the stairs.

Only when she’s passed the bedroom and reached the head of the stairs does it occur to her that Calla’s door should be closed. Puzzled, she starts to turn to look back.

In that stark, sickening, awful flash, she realizes that the door is now fully open, that someone was lurking there, that whoever it is has come up behind her and— Before she can see who it is, a pair of hands land roughly on her shoulders and push, hard.

She lets out a shrill, terrifying scream.

Then she’s falling, hurtling through space at first, then beginning to hit the hard wooden steps, and bounce, and hit again, screaming as bones shatter and flesh is bruised and torn open and ferocious pain explodes within—

With a gasp, Calla sits up in bed, her heart pounding frantically.

Oh. Oh, thank God.

Dazed, she realizes that she’s safe.

In Lily Dale.

In Mom’s girlhood bed, beneath a quilt made from dresses Mom once wore, her mother’s emerald bracelet on her arm.

She shudders, recalling every detail of a horrific nightmare that may not have been a nightmare at all.

Because it felt real.

So real it was almost like . . .

A memory?

Not her own, though.

Mom’s.

Did Calla just relive her mother’s last moments on earth?

If so, then it really was murder.

The envelope—it had to be the one Darrin gave her. What was in it?

She was holding it when she fell. Calla was the one who found her at the foot of the stairs that awful day. There was no envelope. She’d have seen it. There was nothing but her mother’s broken, bloodied corpse.

Someone wanted Stephanie Lauder Delaney dead. Someone pushed her to her death, then disappeared with the envelope.

Who?

And why?

Calla takes a deep breath, exhales shakily, her entire body trembling as she realizes what she has to do.

It’s time to use Lisa’s airline voucher and book a flight back to Tampa to do some digging around.

I’ll find out what really happened. I promise you that, Mom. I’ll find out who did this to you . . . and I’ll make sure someone pays. Just like Phil Chase.





AUTHOR’S NOTE

Growing up near Lily Dale, I was always fascinated by the mediums whose life work involved breaching the veil between the living and the dead. I perceived them as an enigmatic, magical group—closed off, of course, to us mere mortals.

When, as an author, I began my professional research into the birthplace of spiritualism—and the spiritualists in Lily Dale—I was in for a surprise. The mediums couldn’t have been more welcoming or more willing to share their insights into the many connections between their world, my world, and, of course, the Other Side. They don’t subscribe to the magical mystic vs. mere mortal theory. According to them, while some of us are inherently more perceptive to spirit energy, we all have the ability to open ourselves to it. Just as with any other skill, it requires education, dedication, and practice.

Like Calla in Believing, I was invited last March to sit in on an off-season Beginning Mediumship class in Lily Dale. My husband, Mark, insisted on driving me the ten remote, hilly miles from my hometown. I’ll confess that while I protested being chaperoned, I was secretly grateful. Lily Dale in broad daylight at the height of the summer season can be a spooky place. Imagine it off-season, on an icy, stormy night—which of course it was.

Planning to wait in the car parked in the lakeside lot, Mark first walked me through the dark streets lined with largely deserted Victorian cottages to the class at the octagonal Mediums League building. There, we found an eclectic group gathered in a circle around a flickering candle.

Let me point out that my husband is a quiet, unassuming, tremendously supportive guy who regards my novelist research adventures with amusement—preferably from the sidelines. But the fledgling mediums wouldn’t hear of Mark waiting in the car for two hours. Nor—when he attempted to sit in a corner—would they hear of him breaking the circle. Flashing me a The Things I Do for You glare, Mark took his place in the circle.

As the class progressed, led by Registered Medium Donna Riegel, we found ourselves completely engaged. When it came time for a hands-on exercise in billet-reading, we assumed we were just bystanders, but Donna invited us to give it a whirl. I was eager to try; my husband was—predictably— embarrassed and reluctant.

Everyone privately wrote something on a slip of paper and put it into a bowl. In darkness, we passed it around and everyone took one. Clasping the folded slips, we meditated under Donna’s direction, asking the spirits to show us the answers to whatever was written there. Then, one by one, we tried to channel unseen energy to “read” the papers, or billets, without looking at them.

Mark’s turn came quickly. He said nervously, “I obviously don’t know what I’m doing, so . . .” Donna encouraged him to try anyway. He confessed, “All I saw in my head was the name Jenn—spelled with two n’s. J-E-N-N. That’s it.” Donna told him to open the paper. Prominently written on it was the name Jeanne. J-E-A-N-N-E. We were all—including Mark— fairly astounded at how close he had come.