Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(53)

“I wish I was there.”

“I wish you were, too,”she says miserably, trying hard not to start crying again. It’s bad enough for her to be going to school today with circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. Red and swollen eyes from fresh tears will make people ask questions.

“Do you want me to call Kevin and ask him to drive over from Ithaca?”

“What? No!”That’s the last thing she wants.

“He’d want to be there for you, Calla. He’s really worried. And he said you never answered any of his e-mails.”

“I just did, last night.”

And he should have been there for me months ago. Now it’s too late.

“Really? You haven’t answered any of mine.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”Suddenly, she feels so weary she can barely speak.

It was probably a mistake to call Lisa. She can be so . . . needy. And right now, Calla is too needy herself to be there for anyone else . . . let alone deal with an ex-boyfriend.

Yes, Kevin and Lisa—and their parents— were there for her and Dad last weekend, in Florida.

Yes, Calla welcomed their support. Even Kevin’s.

But now that she’s back in Lily Dale . . .

There are just some things they will never understand.

“Lisa, you know what? I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for school.”

“Okay. . . . I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“Okay. Wait! Don’t. I’ll be gone.”

“Where are you going?”

“To look at colleges with my dad.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “You mean, around there?”

“In Pennsylvania, and . . . around New York.”She doesn’t want to mention Cornell. In fact, she doesn’t even want to go to Cornell.

“What about down here?”

“We were just there, and . . . we can’t drive there in a weekend!”She tries to make light of it.

“So you’re not going to apply to schools with me, like we said?”

This is not a conversation Calla wants to be having now, in the midst of everything else that’s gone on.

“Lis’, I don’t know for sure where I’m going to apply. But . . . I mean, Florida has some bad memories for me, and it’s so far away.”

“New York is so far away,”Lisa returns, “from me. We always had plans to go to college together.”

I had a lot of plans that aren’t going to work out, Calla wants to tell her. You can never really count on anything, because your whole world can shatter in an instant.

But Lisa doesn’t get it. She doesn’t yet realize that nothing in life is guaranteed.

“You know I love you, Lisa, and I miss you every single day. And no matter where we end up next year, we’ll always be friends. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know that.”But her voice sounds hollow. “I have to get to school now, too. I’ll talk to you after the weekend.”

“Definitely. Bye, Lis’.”

“Wait, Calla? About the other thing? I’m happy for you— that you have a sister. You always wished you weren’t an only child. Remember? We used to pretend we were sisters.”

She smiles sadly. “I remember.”

“I wish—”

“Lis’, you’re still like a sister to me. Like I said, we’ll always be friends.”

Friends living separate lives, a thousand miles apart.

Unless I really do decide to go back down south.

She hangs up the phone, pulls on her jacket, and picks up her backpack. As she steps out into the crisp morning, with a hint of sun filtering through red and gold autumn leaves, she knows in her heart that Florida is behind her for good.





TWENTY-FOUR

Lily Dale

Friday, October 12

3:20 p.m.

Stepping through the big double doors at the school’s main entrance with Jacy at her side, Calla immediately spots her father, parked in his rental car at the curb.

She can’t see his expression from here.

But he knows.

She can feel it. Her grandmother told him everything while Calla was in school, just as Calla asked her to.

Jacy reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “Are you going to be okay?”

Is she?

“I don’t know . This is hard.”

“Yeah. I know .”

Earlier, between classes, she pulled him aside and told him everything. Evangeline, too.

In a way, it felt good to let out the last of her deep, dark secrets. But then, Jacy and Evangeline aren’t directly impacted by the news that Mom had a baby— and perhaps, a secret lover— and that Calla has a long-lost sister.

Dad is definitely impacted.

“I kind of wish we weren’t going away together for three whole days,”she tells Jacy. “It’s like there’s no escaping any of it.”

“There probably wouldn’t be if you stayed here, either.”

“True.”

“But I wish you weren’t going away for three days, too.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re having another vision of me in danger.”

“No. I’ll just miss you.”