Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(40)

“You don’t mind, do you?” Calla asks Jacy.

“Of course he doesn’t mind,” Odelia answers for him as she rummages in a closet. “Homecoming is a big deal.”

Yeah. It is.

And they’re not really going.

“Ah, here it is.” Odelia pulls out a tr ipod.

“Gammy, you’re kidding, right?”

“Kidding about what?”

In the living room, Odelia sets up the tripod with considerable effort, then attaches a camera . . . and attaches an enormous lens to the front of it.

Calla looks at Jacy, who grins. “It’s fine. She’s sweet.”

“Okay, kids, all set! Candid shot. Say cheese!”

Calla tries to smile as a flash explodes in her face.

“Oops . . . lens cap!” Odelia giggles. “Sorry!”

She removes the lens cap and snaps some more.

Then she moves the tripod, poses them in front of the fireplace, moves the tripod again, tells Jacy to put his arm around Calla, and snaps.

“Great!”

She lugs the tripod across the room, poses them in front of the window, tells Jacy to pretend he’s helping Calla to put on her corsage, and snaps again. And again. And again.

“Gammy . . . ,” Calla says in a warning voice.

“You’ll thank me later, when you have photos of this night to treasure for the rest of your life.”

Calla thinks of her mother, going to the long-ago dance with Darrin. Was it Odelia who took the picture that’s in Calla’s bag at this very moment?

Before they can make an exit, Odelia carries her tripod to the front hall, poses them by the door, and tells them to gaze into each other’s eyes.

That does it.

“Gammy, we really have to go!”

“Just this last picture . . . look at Jacy and smile!”

Calla does, but her mouth and jaw feel as strained as his appear to be.

“Oh, I don’t like the light there,” Odelia says, tripod in hand. “Let me try it from over here.”

“I’m sorry,” Calla says to Jacy with bared, gritted teeth.

“It’s okay. She’s just being a grandma.”

Yeah. And he’s just being a sweetheart about the whole thing.

“Now, let me just take it from a different angle,” Odelia calls, removing her camera from the tripod and climbing up a few steps.

“Thank you for being such a good sport,” Calla tells Jacy through her clenched smile.

“No problem.”

“Do you two look beautiful together, or what?” Odelia glows. “Just one more, and then you can go have fun at your dance.”

If only.

Right about now, Calla would give anything if she and Jacy were actually going to do just that, like carefree, normal kids their age.

Normal . . .

God, I miss normal.

It’s such a cliche, not to have appreciated something until it’s gone.

At last, she and Jacy are freed into the brisk, moonlit night, with Odelia calling, “Good-bye! Have fun!” and finally, naturally, “Be careful!”

A glance at the Taggarts’ porch shows no sign of Evangeline and Russell, and Calla has to fight not to make a dash for the car at the curb.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Four tires and a steering wheel are about all Jacy’s car has in common with Blue Slayton’s BMW. This older sedan has duct tape on the side mirror bracket and smells faintly of mildew.

But Calla would rather be riding in this car with Jacy, even if they aren’t going to the dance, than in Blue’s car with him, on the way to homecoming.

More guilt. When she called Blue at the hospital today to see how he was, he told her again how sorry he was that he’d miss taking her to the dance. She had to say she was going with Jacy, though of course she was sure to make it sound as though he was doing her a friendly favor.

“That’s good,” Blue said, obviously not the least bit bothered. Maybe he doesn’t consider Jacy serious competition. Or maybe he’s just lost interest in Calla and doesn’t care either way.

“At least you get to go,” he told her. “I wouldn’t want both of us to have to miss it. Have fun.”

She was just glad he didn’t say to be careful.

As Jacy turns up Route 60 toward Fredonia and the entrance to the thruway, she heaves a sigh and leans back in the seat.

He glances at her. “Are you okay?”

“I just feel horrible, doing this to my grandmother. And to your foster dads.”

“I know. They were so great, making me buy the suit and everything . . . the only reason I agreed was because they said I’d need it anyway, for graduation in June.”

“What if they find out we didn’t really go tonight?”

“Peter and Walt?”

“And my grandmother. And everyone else,” she adds, thinking of Evangeline and Blue and Ramona.

“Let’s not worry about that now. You’re only doing what you have to do. I mean, it’s not like we’re out joyriding.”

Far from it.

The joyless drive to Geneseo takes almost two hours.

Calla spends most of it staring out the window, trying to figure out how, in the grand scheme of things, she wound up here.

Not just here with Jacy, tonight, but here—motherless, in upstate New York, with a newfound talent for seeing dead people.