Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(16)

Twenty minutes and sixty-seven dollars later, Calla has a new pair of jeans, two long-sleeved tops, and a soft pumpkin-colored yarn sweater that has a small rip in the neckline.

Ramona said Odelia will be able to sew it for her, no problem.

Evangeline got a sweater, too—same exact style, but no rip and in a different color, saying the pumpkin was too close to the shade of her hair and freckles.

“You know what? We should wear them to school on the same day, like twins!” she tells Calla as they settle at a table with an Orange Julius, two straws. “Hey, let’s buy some other matching stuff!”

Calla raises an eyebrow and fumbles for something polite to say.

Evangeline bursts out laughing. “I’m just kidding! You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”

Relieved, Calla grins. “Only for a second.”

“Come on. I might be a loser, but I’m not that much of a loser.”

“You’re not a loser at all.”

“Sure I am,” Evangeline says cheerfully, then takes a sip from her straw before adding, “Good thing I have one cool friend.”

“Who?”

“Duh. You!”

“Me! I’m cool?”

“Yeah, and the cool thing is”—Evangeline grins broadly— “you don’t even know it.”

“No way. I am so not cool.”

“Think about it, Calla. You’re gorgeous, too—come on, don’t shake your head like that, you know you are—and you waltz into Lily Dale out of nowhere and fit right in, and now you’re going to homecoming with this hot guy every girl in school wants to go out with, and you’re having lunch with Willow York and Sarita Abernathie every day.”

“So?”

“So, they’re gorgeous.” True. Willow, with her porcelain skin and delicate features, and Sarita, with her dark skin and exotic beauty, are two of the prettiest girls in school.

“Plus, they’re cool,” Evangeline adds.

“So that . . . what? Makes me cool by association?”

“Ha. If it worked that way, I’d be cool by association with you,” Evangeline points out wryly. “Listen, all I mean is, people like you, and they admire you. Things are going great for you here. You should enjoy it.”

While it lasts.

She doesn’t say that last part, but Calla hears it in her own head, accompanied by an inexplicable twinge of foreboding.




“Dad, you remember my friends Evangeline and Ramona.”

Calla leads him over to where they’re standing at the top of the airport escalator.

They held back when she spotted her father coming through the gate just now, obviously wanting to give her time for a private reunion.

“I remember. Nice to see you again.” Dad shakes their hands.

Calla can’t be certain, but his eyes might linger a little longer on Ramona than is absolutely necessary . . . and vice versa.

The airport is jammed with people on this Friday night.

Calla realizes, as they head for the escalator, that not all of them are alive.

It’s just a flash, but she just had a pretty clear vision of a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, wearing Depression-era knee breeches, argyle socks, a vest, and a flat newsboy-type cap.

He’s there, and then he’s gone, haunting her without so much as a “Boo.”

“Your dad is hot!” Evangeline whispers to her as the four of them take the escalator down to the short-term parking lot. “How come I didn’t notice that before?”

“Um. . . because he wasn’t?”

Calla herself is caught off-guard by the change in her father’s appearance. His hair is longer than usual, shaggy, as if it needs to be cut, but it actually looks better like that. He looks younger. He’s shaved off his beard, which had a lot of gray in it. And he’s not wearing his glasses, but he is wearing a casual short-sleeved cotton button-up shirt and loafers—no socks—with his jeans.

Wait till Mom sees him, Calla finds herself thinking, before she remembers, with a sharp pang of grief, that her mother is gone.

Will this ever stop happening to her?

“I was just telling Jeff we haven’t eaten yet, and he hasn’t either,” Ramona tells Calla and Evangeline as the four of them step off the escalator and head toward the car. “So we’re all going to go get some wings, if you two aren’t too tired.”

“Too tired? Are you kidding?” Evangeline grins. “That sounds great! You haven’t had real wings yet, have you, Mr.

Delaney?”

“No, only the synthetic ones.”

Calla is used to her father’s dry sense of humor, but it takes Evangeline and her aunt a while to figure out that he’s joking. When they do, they laugh. Hard. Especially Ramona.

“You can sit in the front with me, Jeff,” she says when they reach her car.

Evangeline nudges Calla. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she whispers as her aunt and Calla’s father climb into the front seat together.

“That depends . . . are you thinking you’re starved and you have to pee?”

“Calla!” Evangeline swats her arm.

“What? That’s what I’m thinking.”

Evangeline rolls her eyes and gets into the backseat.