Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(42)

“The only thing is, the picture’s so old,” she points out as they scuff through the dry leaves on the sidewalk. “I don’t know if it’s going to do any good.”

“You recognized him from it,” Jacy points out firmly, and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. It’s worth a try.”





FOURTEEN

Geneseo, New York

Saturday, September 29

10:16 p.m.

Calla is more ready than ever to call it a night.

Even if they left now, though, they wouldn’t make the last dance.

What a waste of a potentially good—potentially great— evening.

Nobody she and Jacy have asked, mostly college students who are either hanging out or working at the businesses on Main Street, has ever seen Darrin Yates before.

“I guess old Red Beard Bob has a lot of work to do on his psychic abilities,” she tells Jacy as they shuffle down the street again.

“Not necessarily. Maybe we shouldn’t have interpreted his vision so literally. Maybe there’s another statue with a bear in it, in some other town . . . some other country, even. You just don’t know.”

“No, but I really felt like there was something here when we got here.”

“So did I. The funny thing is, I still do.”

So does Calla. That’s the hard part.

She can’t seem to ignore the gnawing idea that this place has some connection to Darrin.

Maybe he’s not here now, but that doesn’t mean he never was.

Regardless, she’s exhausted and her feet are being tortured by these shoes, and it’s really time to go, she concludes as they pass a couple of modern-day hipsters who are very much alive, and a 1960s hippie clad in a headband and bell-bottoms who obviously is not. He gives Calla a transparent peace sign before drifting into oblivion.

“Let’s go, Jacy. Really.”

“Let’s just try this last place,” Jacy suggests, pointing at a small café called Speakeasy, “and then we’ll head back.”

“Good idea.”

The place is dimly lit, with high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and battered hardwood floors. There are stacks of freebie publications and a cluttered bulletin board covered in homemade fliers asking for or volunteering apartment rentals, roommates, or ride shares to various locations over the upcoming break.

Between the door and the counter, almost all of the small, round café tables are full. Most of the patrons are very much alive: studious types sitting alone using laptops, boisterous groups of kids laughing and talking, couples who seem oblivious to everything but each other.

Yet there are a few apparitions hanging around, too, flappers with feathered headbands and dapper guys in pin-striped suits who could have stepped out of the Roaring Twenties. Hearing a faint Charleston playing in the background, Calla wonders if the place really was a speakeasy back then. Probably.

As she and Jacy wait for two alive-and-well coeds to place an order, Calla can’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation. They’re laughing and talking about what to wear to a party they’re going to later, sounding as if they don’t have another care in the world.

That’s what my life will be like next year at this time. I’ll be like them: totally on my own, with no one to tell me where I can go, or what time to be home, or to be careful.

For the first time in a long time, Calla feels a spark of excitement about next year.

Maybe tomorrow, she’ll start working on that list of colleges for Mrs. Erskine.

The girls move on with their coffees; it’s Jacy’s and Calla’s turn now.

“What can I get you folks?” The heavyset gray-haired woman behind the cash register is wearing a black Harley Davidson T-shirt and has a tattoo of a rose on her bare, fleshy lower arm.

Hovering behind her is the spirit of a beefy Hells Angel in a do-rag and a hideously bloody T-shirt. Calla tries not to look at him as Jacy shows the woman the picture and launches into the spiel they’ve been giving everyone they meet.

“We’re trying to find this guy. This is an old picture, but can you take a good look at it and tell me if you’ve ever seen him?”

“Sure, why not.”

“He’d be in his forties,” Calla tells the woman as she takes a step back and holds the photo to better light.

“He can’t be in his forties. He looks like he’s about your age—eighteen, nineteen.”

Calla and Jacy look at each other. They’ve been through this repeatedly tonight.

“That’s not me, in the picture,” Calla tells the woman.

“It’s my mother.”

“But . . .” She looks at the picture, then up at Calla, obviously confused. “You’re wearing the same dress?”

She nods.

“Man oh man, do you look just like your mother or what?”

Calla wishes, again, that she weren’t wearing the same outfit tonight that her mother has on in the photo—same outfit, same makeup, same hairdo.

It was eerie, the way people will glance at the picture, and then at her . . . as if she’s somehow stepped right out of the photograph, and out of the past.

“So this picture was taken, what? Twenty, thirty years ago?”

“About.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.” Rose Tattoo shakes her head.