Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(64)

Sharon Logan robbed her of that, too.

If you look hard enough, you can always find it.

No.

No, you can’t.

Now what? she wonders, seeing the detectives look at each other, then back at her again across the dusty coffee table in the living room of the purple house.

“Laura, your mother— Stephanie, your birth mother— had another child. Later in life, when she was married and living in Florida.”

Another child . . .

“She’s living now with her grandmother and her father in a town called Lily Dale, about a two-hour drive from here.”

“Who is?”she asks, unable to register the meaning.

“Your half sister.”

Her half sister.

She has a half sister?

“Her name is Calla. She looks a lot like you. She’s seventeen years old. She wants to meet you.”

Laura has a half sister.

She looks a lot like Laura.

Her name is Calla.

She’s seventeen years old.

And, Laura realizes, she’s the girl Sharon Logan attacked in Florida.

“She . . . wants to meet me?”she echoes as the pieces fall into place at last. “Why?”

Again, the detectives exchange a glance.

“I guess it’s only natural,”Detective Lutz begins, “for her to want to—”

“Blame someone for what happened to her, and to her mom?”

“I don’t think that’s why,”Detective Kearney tells her. “You’re her sister.”

Laura swallows hard. My sister. I have a sister.

I’m not alone in this world after all.

But what if . . .

What if Laura agrees to meet her, thinking she’ll finally have a family after all— only to find out that Calla does blame her for what Sharon Logan did?

Who needs that?

There’s an uncomfortable silence.

“I’m sorry. I just . . . I can’t.”

“Why not?”

If you look hard enough, you can always find it.

No, you can’t.

You can’t find hope, or faith . . .

You can’t even find the man who made that promise, because he doesn’t exist.

Laura gets shakily to her feet. “Tell her that I can’t. Please.”

Detective Kearney hands her an envelope.

“What is this?”

“Her contact information. In case you change your mind. You never know .”

For a moment, Laura considers handing it back.

But Kearney is right. You never know .

Standing here in the quiet, empty house, facing an uncertain future without a friend in the world—this world, anyway— Laura tucks the envelope into her pocket.

“We’ll be in touch again to follow up,”Lutz tells her as she ushers the detectives to the door.

She shrugs. “I’ll be here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome.”

Both detectives shake her hand, and then they’re on their way, leaving Laura alone on the porch of the empty purple house.





THIRTY-FOUR

Lily Dale

Monday, October 15

12:48 p.m.

On a blustery day like today, Calla is certain she’ll find Jacy in the cafeteria, and she’s right.

There he is, sitting in a corner with a book and a brown bag sandwich.

Yesterday, they spent the whole afternoon together. He took her to a movie, and then out to Rocco’s in Fredonia for chicken wings. The date was a welcome reprieve from sitting around at home waiting for the phone to ring.

They still haven’t heard back from the detectives, and Calla has been trying to accept the fact that her sister might never be found.

“I have a feeling you’re going to meet her, though,”Evange-line insisted on the way to school this morning.

“I wish I had that feeling,”Calla replied wistfully. “How is it that I can get premonitions about some things— things that don’t matter at all— and have no clue about what’s going to happen in my own life?”

“You know why, don’t you?”

Calla nodded. She did know, only too well, that intense emotion can act as a barricade to block a medium from seeing things about her own life.

Now, as she heads for her usual table, her heart sinks when she sees Sarita there alone, eating a pear, her dark, close-cropped head bent over an open textbook.

“Hi, Sarita. . . . Where’s Willow?”Calla had seen her in school earlier today, in first-period health class, red-eyed and withdrawn.

When Calla asked her about her mother, she said simply that Althea is still in the hospital, and she hurried away to her next class.

Sarita looks up, and her dark eyes are troubled. “She was called out last period. I’m not sure what happened, but someone saw her leaving school with her jacket and backpack.”

“Oh, no.”

Calla has a flash of Willow in a hospital room— frightened, crying over a sheet-draped corpse in the bed.

“I’m sure it was about her mom,”Sarita says.

Calla nods, but doesn’t mention what she just saw.

There’s always a chance it was her imagination, and not an actual vision.