Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(59)
TWENTY-NINE
Ithaca
Saturday, October 13
3:07 p.m.
“Why don’t you two sit here and finish eating,”Dad suggests to Calla and Kevin, standing and picking up his tray containing an empty soda can and white paper plate stained orange with pizza grease, “and I’ll take the car down the road and gas up for the trip.”
“I’m actually just about finished,”Calla tells him quickly, not wanting to be left alone in the cozy little pizzeria with Kevin.
He reaches out and touches her hand. “Stay, Calla. I really want to talk to you.”
Feeling helpless, she shrugs.
“I’ll be back for you in about ten minutes,”her father says, and heads out the door.
It was his idea to take Kevin with them for lunch. The two of them carried on a stilted conversation, small talk about college life at Cornell, as Calla halfheartedly nibbled at her pizza.
The strange thing is, as much as she didn’t want to run into Kevin . . .
It’s kind of comforting to see him.
Scary-comforting.
“Look, I figured you didn’t want to see me today,”Kevin tells her, pushing away his half-eaten second slice of pizza.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Pretty much.”He gives an uncomfortable laugh. “I mean, here you are, right here on campus, and you didn’t call me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have waited around the information center, checking out all the tour groups coming through today, but I really wanted to talk to you.”
“It’s okay. I know I should have told you I was going to be here today, but . . .”
But I really couldn’t deal with seeing you again.
“You’ve had a lot going on,”he fills in for her. “I know . Lisa called and told me. I didn’t want to bring it up in front of your dad.”
“About my half sister? My dad knows.”
“I wasn’t sure. How do you feel about it?”
“Glad. Upset. Scared to death.”Kind of how she feels about seeing Kevin again.
“Your grandmother said that they haven’t found her yet.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do when they do?”
“I’m not sure. Meet her, I guess.”
“It’ll be weird for you to suddenly have a sister after all these years, you know?”
“I know .”
“But maybe it’ll be nice. You know . . . like a link to your mom.”
“Yeah.”Calla smiles faintly, folding and unfolding her cold pizza on the plate. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“You know, it’s strange to see you and your dad without your mom around. I really miss her.”
Touched, Calla looks up and is surprised to see tears in Kevin’s blue eyes.
“She always made me feel so good about coming to school here,”he tells Calla. “You know— like she was really proud that I got in.”
“She was proud of you,”she tells him, wiping at tears in her own eyes with the corner of an unused napkin. “You know her. Ivy League was her thing.”
Like Lisa, Kevin might not have as much in common with her daily life now as her new friends do—but he grew up with her. He knew the old, carefree Calla, before her world fell apart. He knew her mother. Jacy and Evangeline and the others didn’t. Kevin feels her loss in a way they never will.
You can’t just write him out of your life, Calla tells herself. As hard as it is to accept the way he hurt you, you can’t erase all those years— or the feelings you still have for him.
Maybe it’s not love anymore, not the kind a girlfriend has for a boyfriend, anyway. Maybe it’s the kind of love you feel for a good, true friend. Maybe that’s all she and Kevin were ever meant to be.
“You know, Calla, your mom would have loved to know that you’re thinking of coming here, too.”
Calla nods. “Except . . . I’m really not.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I don’t want to be this far from home.”
He’s obviously disappointed. “So you’re going back to Florida, then, for school? I mean, my sister will be thrilled, but—”
“No, I mean home, in Lily Dale.”
“Really?”
She nods. “I can’t go back to Tampa, Kevin. Too much has happened there— and here. I think I want to stay put for a while.”
“I know . Seeing you there, when I visited . . . it was like you already belonged, even though . . .”
“Even though what?”
“Even though they all . . . I mean, they go around talking to ghosts, right? That’s what Lisa told me.”
She’s getting tired of defending Lily Dale. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”And she doesn’t feel like explaining.
“Try me.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”
“I really want to know .”
So she tells him. The whole story. Including the part about her own newfound abilities.
When she’s finished, Kevin isn’t sitting there looking skeptical or spooked, and he doesn’t call her—or her grandmother and her new friends— a bunch of freaks. He’s just . . . intrigued.