Discovering (Lily Dale #4)
Wendy Corsi Staub
PROLOGUE
New York City
Monday, October 8
1:46 p.m.
If you look hard enough, you can always find it.
The wise man who once said that to Laura wasn’t talking about the Internet, but the phrase has become her mantra for all things.
He was right, of course.
There it is.
She’s been looking, and she’s found it.
Her hand trembling on the mouse, she leans closer to the monitor and clicks to enlarge the window.
LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED IN FLORIDA
Local woman.
Sharon Logan.
Whenever Laura has a chance to get to a computer, she enters the name in a search engine and prays nothing will come up.
Today, her prayers went unanswered.
According to the online news account from her hometown paper, Sharon Logan is being held without bail in Tampa for attacking a girl named Calla Delaney and trying to drown her in her family’s swimming pool. She’s also being questioned about the murder last summer of the girl’s mother, Stephanie Delaney, originally ruled an accidental fall down the stairs.
Those poor people.
Jaw set grimly, hand unsteady on the mouse button, Laura closes out the screen. That’s all she needs to know .
It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.
That’s why she had to get away. She just couldn’t take it anymore—the constant tension, the growing paranoia, the constant, smothering attention; being treated as if she were still a child, even now that she’s in her twenties.
Laura knew that if she stayed, eventually something would have to give. She didn’t want to be there to witness it.
But . . . murder.
She never really imagined it would be that extreme.
And . . . Florida?
What was she doing in Florida?
Who are the Delaneys?
Does it matter?
Maybe it should.
But after all those years of being the girl who lived in the purple house with the crazy lady, all Laura cares about is that she’s finally free.
Free, and not looking back.
“Excuse me, miss . . . are you done with that computer? Because we have people waiting to use it.”
She looks up to see a librarian. Not one of the friendly ones she’s gotten to know since she started coming here a few months ago; rather, the one who shushes people and scowls a lot when they hog the computers.
“Oh . . . sorry. I’m finished.”
She grabs her backpack, makes her way through the hushed library, and emerges on a crowded Manhattan street.
People rush past without giving her a second glance. No one knows who she is. Or who Sharon Logan is. No one cares.
That’s why she’s here. That’s just the way she wants it.
Especially now that Laura knows it finally happened. The crazy lady finally snapped.
Murder.
Laura knew, when she woke up this morning, that today would be the day the search engine would yield something.
If you look hard enough, you can find it.
Years ago, when he said those words, he was talking about hope.
About finding hope, in the midst of despair.
“If you look hard enough, Laura,”he said, handing her tissue after tissue to dry her tears, “you can find it.”
She clung to those words, somehow managed to find a glimmer of light on the darkest days; just a shred of hope to keep her going.
Yet now that it’s all over—now that she’s here, and Sharon Logan is a thousand miles away, in jail for murder . . .
Now, ironically, Laura’s mantra has been altered.
Every morning, she wakes up thinking it, praying it:
If you really, really, really want to get lost—really need to get lost—then no one can ever find you.
ONE
Lily Dale, New York
Monday, October 8
1:46 p.m.
“All right. Tell me everything. And I mean everything!”
Calla Delaney and her father look at each other, then back at Odelia Lauder, standing in the front hall waiting impatiently for one of them to start talking.
“Gammy, it’s really complicated.”Calla sets down her heavy duffel bag and shifts the laptop computer bag to her other shoulder, wishing her grandmother hadn’t pounced on her and Dad the second they walked in the door from the airport.
It’s been a long day already, saying good-bye to the Wilsons down in Florida, driving to the airport in Tampa, flying from there to New York City, then from New York to Buffalo, waiting for the luggage, renting a car, then driving almost an hour south to reach Lily Dale.
Odelia’s little two-story cottage with its peeling pinkish orange paint was a welcome sight. They arrived just as a cold rain began falling from an overcast sky, typical weather here in southwestern New York State.
Calla, in jeans and a fleece sweatshirt, was prepared for it.
Dad, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt, was not.
“I’ll get some warmer clothes when we get there,”he told Calla earlier when she warned him that his outfit, which is fine for Florida— or Southern California, where he’s been on a teaching sabbatical since August—just won’t cut it up here.
Poor Dad. It’s not like he even had a chance to pack a bag for what’s turning out to be an extended, unexpected trip east. He hopped on a plane from LA on Saturday when the Tampa police informed him that his daughter had just been attacked by a lunatic killer.