Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(30)

“What?!”

“Only, he told me his name was Tom. But this is him. I’m positive.” She waves the framed snapshot at Odelia. “And he was whistling a song . . . the same song that plays on that music box.” She points to the carved wooden jewelry box on Mom’s dresser. “Maybe he gave it to her. Did he?”

“I don’t remember where she got it. You say he was at your house in Florida?” Odelia is obviously not thrilled to hear it. “Was it just a friendly visit? Did he just pop in out of the blue? What did he want?”

“I don’t know. Mom didn’t seem all that surprised to see him there—I mean, it wasn’t like she opened the door and there he was, after twenty years or whatever.”

“So you don’t think that was the first time your mother had seen him lately?”

“I don’t think so.” Although it’s troubling to think of her mom being in contact with another man when she was so busy with her job that she barely had time for Dad and Calla.

“Oh, and he gave her an envelope, I think.”

“An envelope! What was in it?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. I didn’t think anything of it—I figured he was just someone from work. But Mom was pretty upset that day when he came over. She burned the soda bread, and you know my mom—she never burned anything.

” Her grandmother seems to be digesting this news.

“Was your father there?”

“When Darrin came over? No.” Calla carefully sets the picture back in its spot on the dresser. “Why?”

“I wondered if Stephanie told Jeff about him. That’s all.”

“You mean that he was her boyfriend when she was growing up? I don’t think so, Gammy. She never talked about the past.”

“Maybe she did with your father.”

“Nope. He used to tease her about that. He said she must want to pretend her life started the day she met him.”

“So you’re saying your father didn’t know Darrin existed? And I guess that means he doesn’t know he was at the funeral? And at your house before that?”

“No. Do you think . . . should I tell him?”

Odelia pauses. “There’s nothing to tell, really. Is there?”

“No,” Calla murmurs, staring at her mother in the picture, and then at herself in the mirror, wearing the same dress. “There’s nothing to tell.”





TEN

Cassadaga, New York

Thursday, September 27

3:28 p.m.

Sitting at a booth in the window of the diner, Calla sips a watery fountain soda through a straw and keeps an eye on the rain-soaked parking lot for Owen Henry.

He’s due any second now, and she hopes he won’t be late. She told her grandmother she had to stay after school for extra help in math, which would get her home shortly after four at the latest.

She felt bad lying to Odelia, but there was no way around it. Her grandmother wouldn’t understand that Calla needs to do this for Mr. Henry. That maybe, in a way, it’s part of her own healing process to maybe help someone else pierce the smothering black veil of unbearable grief.

And anyway, what good is being able to do what she can do if she doesn’t use the gift to help people? Isn’t that what Lily Dale’s philosophy is all about, in the first place?

Oh, good. A battered, oversized black sedan is splashing into the lone parking spot reserved for disabled customers, a telltale blue handicapped parking sign dangling from the rearview mirror. That has to be Owen Henry.

Instead, an elderly woman emerges from the driver’s seat and helps an even more elderly lookalike out of the passenger’s seat with a walker. As they make their way to the diner, step by fragile step, huddled beneath a big black umbrella, Calla sees that they’re being followed by a filmy-looking woman with a Prohibition-era pin-curled bob and long-waisted dress.

Watching the scene, Calla decides the women are sisters. And that’s their mother, watching over them from the Other Side. And there’s a kind of faint aura of light around the older sister, the one with the walker, and something about the way the mother is hovering close to her . . .

It means it won’t be long before the older sister passes on, Calla realizes without understanding quite how she knows any of this but absolutely certain it’s the truth. The older sister is close to crossing over to the Other Side, and that’s what the light means, and her mother is waiting for her.

She plucks a paper napkin from the holder on the table and hastily wipes tears from her eyes as the sisters settle themselves into the next booth. They order hot tea and whole-wheat toast from the waitress, who calls them Dora and Edna and asks what they’re doing out on a day like this.

“Oh, a little rain never hurt anyone,” says Dora, the older of the two.

“And you know how my sister looks forward to her tea and toast after bingo every week,” Edna declares with an affectionate smile.

So Calla was right. At least about them being sisters.

She turns her head slightly and sees that their mother is still there, still watching, still waiting.

“Calla?”

Startled, she looks up to see Owen Henry at her table. He’s wearing his usual hat, along with a rain-spattered trenchcoat, and leaning on his cane.