Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(19)

Patsy smiles. “Don’t think I have, either. Read the question, Bob.”

Red Beard—Bob, apparently—unfolds the paper and reads, “Where can I find the man who calls himself ‘Tom’?”

Calla’s eyes widen.

“Whose was it?” Patsy looks around the room.

“Uh . . . it was mine,” Calla manages to say.

Evangeline kicks her gently and whispers, “Who’s Tom?”

Calla ignores her, thoughts reeling.

“Sounds like Geneseo might be a good place to start looking for this guy,” Red Beard tells her. “That, or start looking for purple houses.”

“Maybe so,” Patsy agrees, “or maybe not. Remember, we aren’t always meant to interpret messages so literally. The color purple, the bear, even just a fountain—those could be symbols for something else. Calla, do they mean anything to you?”

She shakes her head. “Where’s Geneseo? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a college town, about an hour and a half, two hours away from here.”

Calla isn’t sure how she’s going to get there, or when. It seems impossible, considering that she’s flat broke and without a car.

But if there’s the slightest possibility Darrin Yates is there, then that’s where she’s going to go. She’ll just have to find a way.




“Odelia, that dinner was great.” Dad pushes back his chair and pats his stomach. “Normally I don’t like cereal on my chicken, but it was absolutely delicious.”

“It’s an old family recipe. You just dunk it in egg and roll it in crushed cornflakes, then fry it.”

“Really? Steph never made chicken this way.”

“Calla tells me she was something of a health nut. Right, Calla?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She pokes her fork halfheartedly at the barely touched chicken on her plate.

All she can think about is what happened in her class this morning.

Not just all those spirits she saw hanging around, or Red Beard’s clue about Darrin Yates—although that’s been the main reason for her preoccupation.

But she’s still feeling just as unsettled about what happened next, when it was her turn to read.

She described her vision of the train speeding into the dark tunnel and confessed that she had no idea how to interpret it.

Patsy assured her that was okay.

Calla was momentarily stumped when she read the question written on the paper in her hand: Am I going to make it?

“Whose is it?” Patsy asked, and Anne, sitting right next to Calla—the obvious chemo patient—raised her hand. It was trembling.

Calla’s heart sank.

This time, Patsy assured them all that the vision might not be symbolic at all—that it quite possibly was meant to be interpreted literally: Anne might be going on a train journey sometime in the near future.

“I’ve always wanted to take the Orient Express,” she replied, but her laugh was hollow.

She knew, and Calla instinctively knew, that the answer to her question was no. She wasn’t going to make it.

“Calla,” her father says now, “are you okay?”

She looks up to find both him and Odelia watching her.

“Sure . . . I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” her father decides. “What’s up?”

“I’m just . . . you know, worried about school.” That’s always a good catchall source of angst.

“What about school?”

“You two sit, I’ll clear,” Odelia murmurs, and stands to begin taking plates away from the table.

“You know, college,” Calla improvises. “I have no idea where I want to go, and the guidance counselor said we should be in the final stages of narrowing things down.”

Mrs. Erskine, her guidance counselor, really did tell her to put together a list of schools to discuss with her father this weekend—reach schools, target schools, and safety schools, about ten in all.

Calla can’t think of even one . . . other than Cornell.

“I thought you were thinking Cornell.” Apparently, her father is a mind reader.

“I was, but . . .” But that was mostly because of Kevin. “I doubt I can get in there.”

“It can be one of your reach schools. You never know.”

Great. So, one down, nine more to go. And if by some miracle she does manage to get into Cornell, she can see Kevin and Annie every day. Yippee.

“There must be some other schools you’re interested in.”

Calla shrugs.

“Why don’t I fly back here in a few weeks, and we can go look at some campuses?”

“Around here?”

“Here, in New England . . . that’s what your mother was planning to do with you. I’m just sorry we’re getting such a late start.”

“Won’t it be too late, though, in a few weeks? I thought I had to have my applications in then.”

Her father puts a reassuring hand on her arm. “It’ll work out. Figure out where you want to go, and get started on the applications, and we’ll narrow it down when we see the campuses.”

“What if I want to go to . . . I don’t know, the Midwest? Or California?”