Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(46)

“He thought you were her.”

“So?”

“I told you. It wasn’t safe.”

He’s probably right.

Looking back on what just happened, Calla knows it probably wasn’t smart to let Darrin believe she’s her mother.

But she came here looking for answers. Darrin was giving them to her.

“What more do you need to know?” Jacy asks. “He said he was responsible.”

“But he didn’t say why.”

“Does it matter?”

Yes. It does.

And she has the feeling she’ll be haunted by Darrin Yates’s ravaged face for a long, long time.

But . . .

Not Darrin Yates. Tom Leolyn. That was the name he gave. Apparently, it’s the name he’s been going by for all these years.

Leolyn, as in . . .

Leolyn Woods.




Odelia was dozing in her chair when Calla came in the door, but she stirred enough to ask about her night.

“It was great!” Calla told her, around an enormous yawn.

She didn’t have to feign exhaustion—she was utterly depleted by that time—but when Odelia started asking questions, she did have to work up a convincingly enthusiastic, and pathetically generic, description of the evening she and Jacy had supposedly just shared.

She talked about a punch bowl and crepe paper streamers and how a DJ would have been better than a live band. She said she and Jacy danced to a few slow dances, and she danced to the fast ones with her friends.

Every single school dance she’s ever been to is the same old story. For all she knows, this one was drastically different, but she wouldn’t bet on it.

Finally, carrying Gert up to her room with her as usual, she dropped into bed, exhausted, wanting only to sleep.

But sleep refused to come.

She’s been lying here for hours now, staring at the shadows on the ceiling as the kitten purrs peacefully at the foot of the bed. She can’t seem to stop her mind from working; she keeps going over and over what happened in Geneseo: the confrontation with the sinister Sharon Logan, and finding out that Darrin really did kill her mother, and wondering what she’s going to find out in Florida next weekend.

At last, she feels sleep beginning to overtake her. Her eyelids close.

One thing is certain: first thing tomorrow, she’s going to go next door to use the Taggarts’ computer and check the name “Tom Leolyn.”

She burrows into her quilt, absently wishing she had on warmer pajamas. It’ll be good to get to Florida on Friday and feel warm again for a change.

For the first time, she allows herself to think past her obsessive mission there and considers the fact that she’s about to step back into her old life. What will it be like, weather aside, to be back in Tampa?

Again, she thinks of Kevin, missing him, remembering the good times . . .

Hearing Gert’s startled meow and abrupt scrambling at the foot of the bed, Calla opens her eyes.

What the—?

Gert has fled the room.

And Darrin—Tom—is standing across the room, looking directly at Calla.

With a terrified scream, she bolts from the bed.

“Stephanie!” he calls after her. “Wait!”

“Gammy! Gammy!” Calla shrieks, and bursts into her grandmother’s room to find Odelia sound asleep.

“Gammy!”

“Wh-what?”

“Wake up! Someone’s in my room!”

“What?!”

“Someone’s in my room!” Frantic, Calla looks around for a phone. “Call the police! Hurry!”

“There’s no phone up here.” Odelia grabs the table lamp from the nightstand, casts the paper shade aside, and yanks the plug from the wall, then barrels fearlessly toward the hall with it, Calla dogging her heels.

She pictures her grandmother hitting Darrin over the head with the lamp and can only hope he won’t retaliate. Remembering the scene with the intruder—who meant to kill her— she has to force herself not to turn and run right down the stairs and out of the house.

Instead, she follows Odelia into her room . . . and stops short.

“There’s no one here,” her grandmother says, and bends to peek under the bed.

“Careful, Gammy!”

“No one.” Odelia opens the closet. “No one here, either.”

“But he was! He was here! I saw him!” He must have escaped from the room while she was across the hall. Either he ran off into the night, or he’s still lurking somewhere in the house.

“Who was here?” Odelia asks.

“Darrin Yates.”

Her grandmother’s mouth tightens into a straight line.

“I’m sure it was just a dream. A nightmare.”

“No, Gammy, he was here. He must have . . .”

Followed me home from Geneseo, is what she was going to say. But she can’t.

Her grandmother doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s only natural that you’d be having nightmares, after what you went through a few weeks ago with that maniac who tried to kill you.”

“But it wasn’t a nightmare. He was here.”

Her grandmother hugs her. “I know how real it seems when you wake up from something like that—you think it really happened.”