Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(29)

“Oh, honey.” Odelia hugs her, hard. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s not—I mean, I’m just . . . I miss her.”

“I know. Let it out.”

She sobs on her grandmother’s shoulder, and Odelia strokes her hair and murmurs all the comforting things Mom used to say to her: It’ll be all right, go ahead and cry, and, most importantly, I love you.

Finally spent, she blows her nose, mops her eyes, and sighs.

“I didn’t mean to fall apart.”

“Everyone needs a good cry now and then.” Odelia picks up the hangers and carries them back toward the closet.

“Wait—what are you doing?”

“Putting them away. I’m sorry I—”

“No, wait, Gammy. Let me see them.”

“Are you sure?”

Calla nods. The dresses are another little piece of her mother. She’ll take what she can get.

Together, they lay the dresses out on the bed and look them over: a sleeveless ice-blue gown, a black velvet sheath, and a copper-colored iridescent taffeta dress with a full skirt that would be perfect, Calla realizes, for a fall dance.

“This one.” She holds it up. “Can I try it on?”

Odelia nods, clearly moved—and caught up in a memory.

Calla carries it across the hall to her bedroom, passing Miriam in the hallway. This time, she isn’t even all that startled to see her.

In her room, she strips off her jeans and T-shirt and pulls the dress over her head. It smells a little musty but not bad.

She checks the mirror and isn’t surprised to find that it fits perfectly. Mom was a size 6, just as she is, and they have the same slim, long-waisted, long-legged build.

“You look gorgeous. Just like her. She wore that to a dance when she was about your age. Or maybe it was a prom, now that I think about it.”

Calla turns to see Odelia standing in the doorway, looking misty.

“I think there’s a picture of her in it around here somewhere,” she goes on, gazing around the room.

There is.

Calla knows it well: it’s the framed photograph of Mom—all dressed up, with big eighties hair—and her boyfriend, Darrin Yates.

She goes over to the dresser, picks up the frame, and hands it to Odelia.

“Oh, yes.” She studies it for a minute, then hands it back wordlessly.

“Was he her boyfriend?” Calla asks, as if she didn’t know.

“Yup. Darrin Yates.”

“Didn’t you like him?”

“Why do you ask?”

Calla shrugs. “It doesn’t sound like it. The way you said his name.”

“You’re right.” Odelia shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. But it is. Calla can tell. “I didn’t like him. He was trouble from day one.”

“Why? What did he do?” Drugs, Calla knows, were a part of it. Ramona told her about that.

Odelia looks at her for a long moment, then shakes her head. “Some people just have negative energy. He was one of them.”

“But why? What did he do that was so bad?”

“He did some things I didn’t like.”

“Drugs?”

“Some things are better left in the past, Calla.”

“Where is he now?”

“I have no idea, and I don’t care.”

Frustrated by her unwillingness to talk about him, Calla blurts,“Well, I think he was at Mom’s funeral.”

Odelia’s red eyebrows disappear beneath her hairline. “He what?”

She shouldn’t have said anything. She never intended to get into this with her grandmother.

Well, it’s too late now.You put it out there.You can’t take it back.

“He was at Mom’s funeral,” she admits reluctantly. “You must not have seen him. Or maybe you did, and you forgot.

You were really upset.”

“We all were. But believe you me, I wouldn’t have forgotten running into Darrin Yates again after all these years.” Odelia shakes her head darkly. “I guess I just didn’t see him. I cried so much that day I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face, and anyway . . . I didn’t know any of the people who were there, so I wasn’t really looking. People who were in Stephanie’s life now . . . they were all strangers. I wasn’t a part of it.”

Her grandmother looks, and sounds, like she’s going to cry.

“But she always loved you, Gammy. No matter what happened between you.”

“I know. And I always loved her, no matter what she had done. I never meant to—” She breaks off, looking as though she just realized she’s said too much.

No matter what she had done.

“Did Mom do something you didn’t like, too? Is that why you two didn’t get along?”

“She did a lot of things I didn’t like, and vice versa, I’m sure. Mothers and daughters . . . you know how it is.”

But it’s more than that. The way Odelia said it—no matter what she had done—obviously, Mom did something specific that drove her and Odelia apart.

“Are you sure Darrin Yates was there? At the funeral?” Odelia asks again, almost sharply.

“Pretty sure.” Realizing there’s only one way she’s going to draw more information out of her grandmother, Calla admits reluctantly, “He was at our house, too, a few months before Mom died. On Saint Patrick’s Day.”