Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(57)

She let him know she has a new life now, and he’s not a part of it.

She should feel good. Great, even.

And she probably will . . . just as soon as she lets herself have a good, long cry.





SEVENTEEN

Tuesday, October 2

5:32 p.m.

“No, listen, I know we’re going to get this college thing straightened out,” Calla’s father reassures her over the phone.

“You just have to get organized and figure out what you want in a school, and where you can go to get it.”

He makes it sound like they’re choosing a fast-food restaurant for lunch.

“It’s not that easy, Dad.” She spent a few hours this afternoon trying to read up on various universities. When she wasn’t keeping an anxious eye out for Darrin Yates, or spotting spirits lurking around her. “I’m not sure what I want in a school.”

“I’ve been looking into a few places I think you’d like.”

“Where are they?” She folds the takeout pizza box from dinner and crams it into her grandmother’s kitchen garbage.

“They’re all over.”

“Near here?”

There’s a pause. “You didn’t say you wanted to stay near there.”

“The thing is, Dad, I’m just not sure where I want to be.”

“Then it sounds like you and I have something in common.” The dry comment catches her off guard. “What do you mean?”

“I’m thinking of getting out of California, Calla. This doesn’t feel right for me.”

“You mean, before the semester’s over?”

He sighs heavily. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Would you go back to Florida, then?” Her mind races.

Would he want her to go with him?

A few months ago, that would have been a godsend. Not anymore.

“That would depend,” her father says.

“On what?”

“On you. Would you want to go back to finish your senior year at your old school?”

Go back? And leave Odelia, and Jacy, and Lily Dale, and— “No,” she says firmly. “I don’t want to go back. Not until the school year’s over here, anyway.”

“I didn’t think so. I guess that means I’d better start looking for a place there.”

“Where? Back home?”

“No,” he says. “Lily Dale—or someplace nearby.”

“What?!”

“It’s not a hundred percent certain, but I’m thinking it would be best for me. And for you. It’s not good for us to be apart right now.”

“But what would you do here?”

“I don’t know. Get my head together. Read. Write. Something.” “Will the college there let you go?”

“Yeah. I’ve talked to the department about it.”

“So when would you—” She cuts off, hearing a beep on the line. Call waiting cutting in.

Calla welcomes it. Yeah, she misses her father, but she isn’t sure how she feels about him invading her turf. If he moves here, he’s bound to figure out what goes on in Lily Dale, and he’s not going to like it.

“Listen, I have to go, Dad. Odelia has another call coming in and I have to get it.”

At the moment, her grandmother is behind closed doors reading a newly bereaved widow. Calla made a point of not being around when the woman showed up earlier. After what happened with that con man Owen Henry or Henry Owens or whatever his name is, she’s steering clear of her grandmother’s clients from now on.

“I love you, Cal’. Be good.”

“I will.” And careful, too.

She disconnects the call, then answers the new one.

“Hello?”

“Calla, it’s me!”

“Lisa! How are you?”

“F-ah-n,” she drawls. “How was homecoming Saturday night?”

“It was good.”

“Just good?”

“Well, Blue ended up getting hurt playing soccer, and I ended up going with Jacy instead, but it’s a really long story. . . . I’ll tell you when I see you this weekend.” Or not.

At least her friends at school have dropped the subject . . . for now.

“Okay. So guess what?” Lisa moves on easily before Calla can spill the latest news about her father. “Nick Rodriguez broke up with Brittany Jensen and I heard he’s gonna ask me out!”

“That’s great, Lis’.”

“Yeah.” As Lisa fills her in on the saga, Calla pictures her best friend back home in Tampa, wearing big black sunglasses and a sky-blue two-piece bathing suit, her honey-blond hair falling long and loose over her shoulders as she lounges by the backyard pool beneath the warm late-afternoon rays. Country music—Trace Adkins, Lisa’s current favorite—plays faintly in the background.

Remembering her vision of her father in his California kitchen munching an apple, Calla wonders if Lisa really does happen to have on big black shades and a sky-blue bathing suit out by the pool.

Before she can ask, Lisa changes the subject to college. There’s just no escaping it, Calla decides with an inner sigh.

“I swear all I’ve done lately is fill out applications and write essays,” Lisa says. “How about you?”