Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(6)

How could she lie?

She admitted that she’d been to Geneseo and had briefly met Sharon there. She just didn’t tell the police—or Dad—the entire story.

But that’s not lying. It’s just omitting. There’s a big difference.

If Calla admitted that she’d been led to Sharon Logan while searching for Mom’s missing high school boyfriend, Darrin, she might somehow be forced to admit the rest of the truth: not just that Mom and Darrin had had a baby all those years ago . . .

But that they were, according to Mom’s e-mail, apparently having an affair for months before they were both killed.

The knowledge is hard enough for Calla to swallow. It would be much too painful for Dad to hear after all he’s been through.

“When did you meet her, Calla?”Gammy demands, with an ominous look in her eye.

“Last weekend, when I went to Geneseo.”She might as well confess as much as she can, with Dad sitting right here. “Remember when I said I was going to the homecoming dance with Jacy? I really went there.”

“To Geneseo. So you lied to me.”

Calla nods miserably. “I’m sorry.”

“And Jacy—what? Covered for you? Went with you?”

“He went with me. He drove me, actually.”

At least Gammy doesn’t scold her for the lie. She probably will at some point, but right now, she seems interested only in getting answers.

“Why did you go there?”

“Because . . .”Calla flicks a glance at her father, who is listening intently, of course. “See, a couple of weeks ago, Evangeline and I had gone to this psychic reading here in the Dale . . . with Patsy. You know Patsy?”

Gammy glances at Dad, then nods. “I know Patsy,”is all she says, obviously getting it.

Patsy Metcalf is a friend of hers— who also happens to be the instructor of Calla’s Beginning Mediumship class.

Which, naturally, Dad doesn’t know Calla is taking.

He was disapproving enough when she told him— and the two police detectives, Lutz and Kearney— that she’d been led to Sharon Logan through a psychic reading in the first place.

“Calla, why would you waste your time on that kind of thing?”Dad had asked at the time.

“It wasn’t a waste, Dad. There was obviously something to it, right?”

He muttered something about— what else?—New Age freaks.

But when he saw how seriously the police were taking her, he closed his mouth and didn’t say another word about it.

The detectives took down contact information for Patsy and wanted to know about Bob, her fellow student, who’d had the vision. Something tells Calla that Lutz and Kearney might be paying a visit to Lily Dale in the near future.

Now, she explains to her grandmother as vaguely as possible how a psychic vision— not her own—of a purple house in Geneseo had led her to Sharon Logan’s doorstep.

“I just don’t understand what you were looking for, though,”Dad says.

I was looking for Darrin. The guy Mom was with when she was supposedly away on all those business trips.

But she can’t tell her father about that.

“I wanted answers about Mom’s death, Dad. But Jacy and I barely talked to her. She wasn’t very friendly, to say the least.”

“Did she threaten you?”

“No. It wasn’t like that. She just told us to go away.”

That happened right after Calla and Jacy showed Sharon Logan a photo of Mom and Darrin.

“And this woman killed my daughter.”Odelia swallows hard, and her hands clench into fists on the table.

“She hadn’t confessed when we left Florida,”Dad tells her. “She’s not talking at all, as far as I know . The police said they’ll let me know what she says when she cracks.”

Calla voices the question that’s been on her mind since the arrest. “What if she doesn’t crack and confess?”

“Then I guess we’ll never know the truth about what happened to your mother.”

Calla knows what happened, though. She’s seen it.

She’s had visions, horrible visions, of Sharon Logan pushing Mom down the stairs, wearing a signet ring that bore the Logan family crest. That’s all the proof she needs.

She knows, too, that Sharon killed Darrin. His murder, in Portland, Maine, a few weeks before Mom’s, remains officially unsolved.

Nobody could possibly link Darrin to Mom. As far as she can tell, neither her father nor the Florida police have any idea he even existed.

He died under an assumed name, Tom Leolyn, having been missing from Lily Dale for almost twenty years. He contacted Mom this past Valentine’s Day, wanting to see her. She snuck away to meet him in Boston, where, apparently, he dropped a bombshell on her.

Something about their child, and something he did for which he wanted her forgiveness.

That was as far as Calla could bring herself to read back in Florida.

Dad and the police don’t know about the e-mails.

Maybe they should be told. Maybe Calla should forget about protecting Dad, or figuring things out on her own. Maybe she should just spill the whole story.

But what would she gain from that?

Nobody knows why Sharon Logan did what she did, but maybe it really was random. Anyway, she’s in custody. She can’t hurt anyone now.