Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(13)

“Sure . . . I guess. Listen, I’ll see you in the morning for school.”

“See you then!”

Calla hangs up the phone to see that her grandmother is still watching her, looking as though she wants to say something. “What?”

Odelia shrugs. “Nothing, just . . . Ramona is a great person, don’t you think?”

“Sure. I love her.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Calla echoes. “Why good?”

“No reason,” Odelia replies as the doorbell rings. “That’s Mr. Henry. Would you mind finishing the dishes for me?”

“Sure. You mean Mr. Henry from yesterday? The one who’s trying to reach his dead wife?”

“That’s the one.” Odelia dries her hands and heads for the door.

A few moments later, she’s escorting Owen Henry— looking just as dapper as before, and just as feeble as he leans on his cane—through the kitchen on the way to the back room where she sees her clients.

“This is my granddaughter, Calla.”

He smiles and pauses to lean on the cane with his left hand while tipping his hat with his right. “Lovely as the lily. We met.”

“Good luck,” she says, and goes back to the dishes as he and Odelia disappear into the back room.

She’s upstairs doing her homework when they emerge an hour later. After hearing her grandmother show him out the front door, she goes to the top of the stairs.

“Did you get through to Betty, Gammy?” she calls down.

“Nope.”

Surprised by her grandmother’s flat response, she descends the stairs halfway to find Odelia frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“I wasn’t getting anything at all from him. It happens sometimes.” “Was he disappointed?”

“Yup. He kept insisting that I try harder to reach her. I explained that it doesn’t work that way—that it’s not like a telephone where you just dial up the spirit of your choice.”

She’s said that countless times to Calla. It doesn’t help to ease the frustration.

I know how you feel, Owen Henry, Calla thinks as she climbs slowly back up the stairs. I’ve lost someone I love, too. And I’d do anything to connect with her again.

In the shadowy second-floor hall, she rounds the corner— and cries out when she comes face-to-face with a stranger.

Oh, okay . . . she’s not real. At least, she’s not alive—or of this century, or even the last. She’s wearing a long dress with a snug bodice and high collar, and her hair is pinned back severely, Victorian-style.

“Miriam?” Calla asks instinctively, and the woman smiles delightedly before drifting through the wall—in the very spot where there was once a doorway to an upstairs sitting room, Odelia told her.

“What happened?” Odelia calls, hurrying up the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Gammy. Actually, I think I just met Miriam.”

“You mean you saw her?”

“Yup.” And her heart is still pounding from the scare.

“That means your psychic awareness really is growing stronger every day,” her grandmother informs her.

Maybe so.

And maybe she’s getting closer to being able to glimpse the one person she longs to see again.

Because what good is it for her to be able to see dead people if the one person she’s lost and needs most of all isn’t among them?

One of the Lily Dale mediums—Althea York, Willow’s mother—did actually see Mom standing beside Calla. It should have been comforting, and it was, in a way, but it was also incredibly frustrating to know Mom was right there and yet not be able to make the connection on her own.

She tried to convince herself that it was enough just to know her mother’s still with her.

But it isn’t.

She longs to see her, the way she’s seen other spirits, like the woman, Miriam, in the hall just now. She longs to speak to her mother.

“Your pain is so overwhelming . . . it may be acting as a barrier,” Althea told her. She went on to explain that in time, when Calla learns to accept her loss—and to become more expert at opening herself to spirit energy—her mother might be able to come through to her.

Not exactly promising.

Calla can’t imagine ever accepting that her mother’s been ripped from her life so unfairly—and deliberately.

In Mom’s girlhood bedroom, she closes the door behind her and kicks off her shoes.

It’s taken a while, but Calla finally feels at home in this room, with its vintage furniture, whitewashed beadboard, wallpaper, and carpet in soft shades of sage and rose.

The bureau and shelves are filled with Mom’s books, framed photos, and other mementos of the girl she once was. On the bed is a quilt Odelia made of fabric squares from Mom’s old clothing. Whenever Calla climbs into bed and wraps herself in it, she likes to imagine being wrapped in her mom’s arms again.

When her homework is done, Calla changes into pajamas and does just that, hoping she’ll get through a night without nightmares for a change. The one about Mom being pushed down the stairs, or the other one . . .

The one that keeps popping up to remind Calla that something tore Odelia and Mom apart for good, years ago. She’s been hearing snatches of their terrible argument in her dreams since she got to Lily Dale.