Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(4)

There’s Mom, about ten years old, curled up in a chair beside a tinsel-covered tree, weaving loops of colored fabric as snow swirls beyond the window.

It’s not her imagination. No, this scene— like so many other images that have flashed into her head over the years— really happened.

It’s a psychic vision.

She’s been having them all her life. She just never knew exactly what they were until she moved in with Odelia, in a strange little town populated almost entirely by spiritualists.

This is where Calla first started seeing dead people, too. Well, not just here.

Lately, they’re everywhere. Or maybe they always have been, but Calla never realized it, or knew how—or where— to look for them.

She opens her eyes and glances around her grandmother’s kitchen, making it a point to tune in.

Still no sign of Aiyana. And no longer a telltale whiff of lilies of the valley.

But she does spot Miriam—the resident ghost, whose husband built the house well over a century ago— hovering in the corner by the fridge, watching Odelia dish up the casserole.

She’s definitely not the only spirit hanging around this house. And Calla’s ability to see her is about as much a novelty around Lily Dale as the rain is.

It all goes with the local territory. Psychic impressions, apparitions, premonitions, too. She’s had those all her life— has always known things she had no way of knowing.

The first few times it happened, when she was really little, she told her mother. Mom seemed uneasy and made her promise not to tell anybody, so Calla didn’t.

Not until she got to Lily Dale, where everyone and their brother has premonitions.

No wonder Mom had to leave. She was always much too practical for stuff like that. Unlike the rest of the world— or so it seemed to Calla— she didn’t believe in Santa Claus, or even in God. So why would she believe in ghosts?

It must have been hard for her to live in the Dale and not be a part of things. To be one of the few “mere mortals”here— as Calla’s new friend Evangeline jokingly calls outsiders.

Calla—who stepped into those shoes when she arrived back in August— shed them pretty quickly.

It wasn’t that she was eager to be like everyone else here. In fact, it was exactly opposite.

But she had no choice. She discovered that she was one of them.

Now there’s a new outsider in the Dale. One who isn’t nearly as likely to find that he belongs here.

“How about a cup of coffee, Jeff?”Gammy asks as he raises a forkful of rice, then stifles a yawn.

“That would be great. I could use some caffeine.”

“I’ll make a pot. Calla? Do you want some? You look a little droopy, too.”

“She doesn’t drink coffee.”

Okay, true. But Calla wishes her father didn’t find it necessary to answer for her.

Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Dad here, in her space, putting words into her mouth, imposing all sorts of rules . . .

“I’d love a cup, Gammy. Thank you.”

“You’re drinking coffee now?”Dad looks totally dismayed.

Instant guilt.

“Just sometimes,”Calla murmurs.

More like once, on a date with Blue Slayton, the cute guy she was trying to impress back when she first got here.

Still, she’s almost eighteen. She can drink coffee if she wants to . . . can’t she? Gammy offers it to her all the time. And it’s not like it’s a cigarette or a shot of whiskey or drugs.

“Caffeine is a drug,”Dad says, as if he’s read her mind.

Only—being a mere mortal—of course, he didn’t.

“It’s not good for you, you know .”

“Dad, you can’t go around treating me like a little girl.”

“Sure I can,”he says easily, around a mouthful of rice. “You know, Odelia, this is pretty good.”

“Of course it is.”She pours water into the coffeemaker. “I’m a great cook.”

“Modest, too.”

Odelia cracks a smile, presses a button, and returns to the table.

“Okay,”she says, sitting down. “I’m ready. Tell me everything. First things first, though, Jeff— like I told you on the phone yesterday, you’re welcome to take my room until you find a place of your own around here—”

“Odelia, like I said, I can’t put you out of your bed. The couch will be—”

“Wait, Jeff, let me finish. You don’t have to put me out of my bed or sleep on the couch. You’ve met Ramona Taggart next door— well, she has a spare bedroom, and she says it’s all yours, for as long as you want it.”

“Really.”Dad looks pleased.

He’s met Odelia’s flaky—and beautiful—neighbor a few times when he visited, and Calla definitely sensed sparks flying between the two of them.

Which shocked her. Not just because she can’t imagine her father with a woman who isn’t her mother, but because she can’t imagine her father with a woman like Ramona.

Then again . . . he was married to Mom. A straight-shooting, pragmatic, workaholic businesswoman, she, too, was drastically different from Dad. And from Ramona.

I guess opposites really do attract.

Calla can’t help but think of Jacy Bly. He’s not her opposite—more like a kindred spirit— but they’re definitely attracted.