Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(13)
“The thing that gets me is that I knew it.”Jacy shakes his head. “I knew it was going to be the water.”
“I know you did.”
He tried to warn her before she left— that he’d been having visions of her struggling in water. Dylan, her five-year- old babysitting charge, had a similar premonition.
But what was she supposed to do with that information?
She’s been thinking about that for the last few days.
About the warnings from Jacy, and from Dylan, and for all she knows from Odelia, who might also have seen something foretelling Calla’s near-drowning, considering her cryptic demands that Calla stay out of Cassadaga Lake.
As if she could have kept a promise to never go swimming there— ever. Or as if she could have . . . whatever. Moved to the desert? Gone around wearing a life jacket on dry land for the rest of her life, just in case?
What could she do?
That’s the problem with this premonition stuff.
You might know what’s going to happen . . . but it’s going to happen. That’s the whole point. You can’t change it, no matter what— at least, not that Calla has seen. You can’t stop it from happening.
You can only dread it.
And wonder when it’s going to happen.
“I swear,”Jacy says, “if this had ended any other way . . .”
“But it didn’t. It all worked out.”
“Yeah, I know, but Calla . . .”He puts an arm around her shoulder, his feet straddling hers as he leans against the railing, pulling her back against his chest. “What would I do without you?”
She looks up at him.
“I don’t want to be without you, okay? Not anymore.”
“Well, I’m not going back to Florida for a while, so . . .”
“That’s not what I mean.”He puts a gentle hand beneath her chin and tilts her face up toward his.
His kiss is soft and sweet and oh, so fleeting. It’s over before she can absorb what’s happened, and it’s all she can do to keep from touching her hands to her lips, dazed.
He nods, as if they’ve just settled something.
Maybe, she realizes, they just have.
He strokes her hair, and she rests her head against his shoulder. Until this moment, she didn’t know how much she’s longed for a physical connection to someone, didn’t remember how good it feels to have someone to lean on, literally.
“You said you had stuff to tell me,”Jacy says after a few minutes.
“Yeah.”She tries to remember what it was. Not easy, with him so close she can feel his breath stirring her hair.
Reluctantly, she pulls back so that she can think straight.
“I really need your advice, and there’s no one else I can tell.”
“Is it about what happened with that woman?”
“Sort of.”
When she called him from Florida Saturday, she’d filled him in about what Sharon Logan did to her. And, presumably, to her mother.
But Jacy doesn’t know about the e-mails.
Or about the baby.
She tells him now, eventually going from leaning against Jacy to facing him, laying it all out in a detached, matter-of-fact tone.
As if she’s talking about total strangers, and not her very own mother.
And her very own sister or brother.
He’s quiet for a long time.
“Say something,”she begs at last.
He reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing it. “I don’t know what to say. Are you okay with all this?”
“Not really. Would you be?”
He answers her question with another question. “What happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know . I haven’t read the rest of the e-mail yet.”
“Are you serious?”At her nod, he asks, “But why not?”
“For one thing, because I don’t want my father to know about it, and he’s been watching me like a prison guard twenty-four-seven.”
“He’s not here now.”
“Neither is the laptop.”
“You can check it when you go back to Odelia’s, though. Unless you don’t want to.”
“I do, it’s just . . . I guess I’m afraid of what I’m going to find out. And I’m definitely dreading what will happen when my father finds out.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“But I have to. I mean, I can’t go the rest of my life keeping this deep dark secret from him.”
“Your mother did.”
She blinks. “That’s different.”
“Not really.”Jacy lets go of her hand and raises his to hold off her protest. “Let’s say you tell your father. . . . And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What will happen? If he finds out, I mean?”
“You know . . . . He’ll be upset.”
“How much more upset can he be than he already is? Hasn’t the worst already happened? She’s dead.”
“Yeah, but . . . she was in love with another man.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“She had a child with him.”
“Years ago. It was over. She was married to your father.”
“I know, but . . . I mean, you didn’t read the e-mail. She said it was incredible to see Darrin again. She was lying to me and my father about where she was, saying she was away on a business trip when she was sneaking off to meet him. Do you really think they were just friends?”