Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(56)

It shows a brown-haired stick figure girl, completely scribbled over in blue.

“What beautiful artwork, Dylan! Who is she? Is that Kelly?” she guesses.

“No, she’s you!”

“Oh, of course! Now I see. And I love how you made the sky so pretty.”

And I must not be here in Lily Dale, because it’s not gray, she thinks wryly.

“Hey, Ethan, not that way, get back here!” She scurries across the room and catches him before he can toddle toward the kitchen, where his mother is trying to throw together dinner for Calla and the kids so that she can go get ready for her night out with her husband.

“That’s not the sky!” Dylan informs her. “That’s the water!”

“You mean the blue?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh . . . so I’m in the water?” she asks, man-handling Ethan into her arms and trying not to crumple Dylan’s picture in the process. “Am I swimming?”

“No. You’re trying to get out, but you can’t,” Dylan says matter-of-factly.

Calla frowns. That was an odd thing for him to say.

Coming from any other child, it wouldn’t necessarily bother her.

But coming from Dylan . . . and on the heels of Jacy’s vision . . .

“Why can’t I get out?”

“I don’t know. Can we go upstairs and get Candyland now?”

“Candyland!” Ethan shouts, close to Calla’s ear, and she winces and sets him back on his feet. He makes a beeline for the stairs with Dylan at his heels.

Calla follows, shooting another troubled glance at the picture before she folds it and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans.




After dinner that night, as Calla sits at her mother’s old desk in her mother’s old room trying to study for a science test—and trying not to think about her mother—Odelia knocks on the door, then sticks her head in.

“Telephone, Calla.”

“For me? Is it my dad?” she asks hopefully. Better him than Willow or Sarita, both of whom must still be wondering where she and Jacy were on Saturday night. She has yet to come up with a good story.

“Nope, it’s not your dad.” Wearing a mysterious smile, Odelia crosses the room and hands over the receiver.

“Who is it, Gammy?”

Her grandmother is already on her way back out of the room, saying, “Don’t forget to bring the phone back downstairs,” before closing the door behind her.

“Hello?”

“Hey, stranger.”

“Kevin?” She almost drops the phone.

“How are you?”

“I’m good. I . . .”

. . . don’t know why you’re calling me. Didn’t you break my heart into a million little pieces? Aren’t you in love with some other girl?

Of course she doesn’t say any of that.

“My sister gave me your grandmother’s number. I sent you a card . . . did you get it?”

She fleetingly considers telling him that she didn’t, just so she won’t have to deal with his offer to come visit her.

But there’s no point in lying, and anyway, he’ll probably just repeat the offer on the phone.

“I got it,” she tells him. “Thanks.”

“I thought maybe I’d ride over and see you this past weekend, but I didn’t hear from you.”

Ride over? He makes it sound like he’s just around the corner . . . which he literally was, back in the old days, in Florida.

“It was homecoming here. I went to the dance.”

“Oh, right. I think Lisa mentioned something about that.”

She did?

Hmm.

Maybe that explains why Kevin’s suddenly sending her cards and wanting to visit. He’s just jealous—as if he has any right or reason to be jealous when he has a serious new girlfriend himself.

Then again . . . Lisa didn’t know about Calla’s homecoming date with Blue until Wednesday, and Kevin’s card was postmarked in Ithaca on Tuesday. Calla checked it. In fact, she analyzed everything about the card and envelope, as if she were a forensic scientist.

“Maybe this coming weekend, then,” he says. “We have a semester—”

“I’m going to Florida this weekend.”

Pause. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really. Friday.”

Apparently Lisa doesn’t tell him everything.

Just the stuff that will keep him on his toes.

Calla can’t help but smile a little smugly as she says, “You know what? I’m kind of busy right now, so . . .”

“Yeah. I’ll let you go. I just wanted to see how you are, and, you know, see if you need anything.”

“No,” she replies almost airily, “I don’t need anything.”

Not from you, anyway.

When I needed you, you weren’t there.

“Okay. Take care, Calla.”

“You, too.”

She hangs up.

And finds herself on the verge of tears.

How is it possible to miss him so much—and care about him so much—when he callously broke up with her, and in a text message, no less?

At least you didn’t let him know he was getting to you, she congratulates herself. Good job of playing it cool.