Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(22)

Feeling sick inside, Calla sinks onto the steps again. “I know people change, but . . . that much?”

“That much.”

Calla thinks about Kevin. He changed. Drastically. He went away to college and six months later, broke up with Calla.

Remembering the numbing pain, Calla can’t imagine what it would have been like if they had been together for years, were married, with a child.

Poor Dad.

“You know, Calla, your grandfather and I . . . there was a time when we were in love the same way your mother and father were.”Her grandmother dusts off her jeans— which are rolled up to reveal her purple socks and orange gardening clogs— and sits beside her. “But then, right around the time I had your mother, Aunt Katie passed away and left the house to me. So Jack and I came here.”

Calla looks up at it in surprise—just in time to see a face in the second-story window, looking out at her. Not Miriam’s. This time, it’s an old woman with pince-nez glasses and a jet black bun.

“You mean, you didn’t always live here?”

“In Lily Dale? No, I used to visit my aunt and my grandmother here in the summers. I always loved it—it felt like home. And when Aunt Katie died, Jack and I were living down near Pittsburgh, and I was pregnant and he was out of work, so we moved in. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent.”

“Kind of like with me.”

Odelia smiles. “Kind of. When I got here, I really began to discover who I was.”

“You mean . . . that you were a psychic. And could see the dead. And . . . all that.”

“That’s what I mean. Sound familiar?”

Calla nods. “Were you seeing spirits, then?”

“Yes. Especially Aunt Katie’s.”

“Did she have dark, dark hair and wear it in a bun?”

Odelia smiles fondly. “You’ve seen pictures?”

“I’ve seen her.”Only in Lily Dale would an admission like that not raise an eyebrow.

“Here?”Gammy looks surprised.

“In the window. Just now.”

“Really? She doesn’t come around all that often anymore. I miss her. I loved our little visits.”

Only in Lily Dale, Calla can’t help thinking again.

Only in Lily Dale do people speak of spirits dropping in the way they might mention a friend coming for tea.

“Anyway,”her grandmother goes on with her tale, “Jack and I settled in here with the baby, and he found work at the steel plant down in Dunkirk. It wasn’t long before I really found my calling— I discovered who I was and what I could do, and eventually, I accepted myself. Which is right about the time Jack also discovered who I was—and did the opposite.”

“Rejected you?”

“Yes. He just couldn’t take it— the spiritualism, and everything that went with it. He thought I was nuts— even when things happened, things he witnessed with his own eyes. Who knows? Maybe he thought he was nuts, too. Maybe when he left us, he checked himself into an asylum somewhere.”

“You mean he just . . . took off?”

“In the middle of the night. Yup. Left a note that said You’re better off this way. That was it. I thought the note was meant for Stephanie . . . but I guess it was for both of us. He left both of us. Your mother was too young to remember, thank God.”

“She never talked about it. Or him.”

“No. She never did. I was always worried that it damaged her somehow. And frankly, I was shocked that he left the way he did. Not just me—left her. Whatever happened between the two of us, he loved that child. Doted on her from the moment she was born. She looked just like him, and had so many of his mannerisms. He liked to say she was a chip off the old block. I guess I’m just lucky he didn’t take her with him when he disappeared.”

“You never heard from him again?”

“Nope.”She shrugs, takes off her sunglasses, wipes them— and then her eyes—on the hem of her denim shirt.

“Are you okay, Gammy?”Calla touches her shoulder.

“Sure. It’s been a long time, you know . A lifetime. And this sort of thing does happen around here. Believe me, Jack’s not the first person to ever take off and not look back.”

Thinking of Darrin—and of her friend Blue Slayton’s mother—Calla nods slowly. “Why do they leave, do you think?”

“Jack left because he was weak. Plain and simple. I can’t speak for anyone else. Actually, I probably shouldn’t even be speaking for Jack . . . but . . . well, I knew him. I knew why he left.”

“What do you think ever happened to him?”

“Oh, he’s back in Pittsburgh. Remarried, with grown kids and grandkids. Still a steelworker, after all these years.”

“How do you know that?”

Odelia raises an eyebrow at her. “Let’s put it this way. If someone like me really wants to find someone . . . they can usually be found. Capisce?”

Calla nods slowly. “Capisce.”

If someone like me really wants to find someone . . . they can usually be found.

Someone like Odelia, Calla thinks. . . .

And someone like me.

Upstairs in her room, Calla types in her mother’s e-mail password.

L-E-O-L- Y-N.