Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(7)

And if Calla tells what she knows, Mom’s secret baby and affair would be dragged out into the open.

Calla looks at her father.

He’s wearing a faraway expression, eyes glistening with tears.

He’s thinking about Mom.

I can’t let him find out that she was in love with another man, sneaking around to be with him. That would kill him.

Now that he’s here in Lily Dale, can she bring herself to find out what really happened between her mother and Darrin? What if the truth comes out, anyway? Then Dad will have to live forever with the knowledge that his wife had a baby with another man, hid it from him, and then cheated on him.

How could you, Mom? How could you do this to him? To us?





THREE

“How about that coffee now, Jeff?”Gammy asks, pushing her chair back from the table.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“And you need something sweet to go with it.”

“You know me, Odelia.”

She does know him. Somehow Calla is surprised to hear her grandmother acknowledge Dad’s little quirk: that he always likes to have a cookie or sweet roll with his coffee.

But then, Dad was Odelia’s son-in-law long before he was Calla’s father. She probably knew him well, way back when. She used to visit them a lot in the old days, before the rift.

“You know, Jeff,”Gammy bustles over to the counter, “you look light years younger without that gray beard. I’m glad you finally shaved it off.”

“It wasn’t all gray.”

“Mostly gray.”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“What made you decide to get rid of it? You’ve had it forever.”“Not forever. Only since the third grade.”Dad winks at Calla across the table as Odelia chuckles.

He does look light years younger, Calla notices. His black hair is still slightly shaggy, but it actually has some shape to it now, thanks to some fancy LA barber.

He’s also exchanged his wire-rimmed glasses for contact lenses, bringing out his dark brown eyes. His T-shirts haven’t been as ratty as usual, either.

It’s so ironic. Mom would have been pleased to see him spruced up. She was always nagging him about the way he looked.

Now that she’s gone, he’s grooming himself and dressing the way she wished he would have.

Calla can’t help but wonder whether it’s just a sad coincidence . . . or whether the way he looks now has something to do with Mom being gone.

Maybe he’s dating again already.

Or maybe he just wants to.

She can’t help but think again of Ramona.

“You know, I never really spent much time worrying about stuff like that,”he says, mostly to her grandmother. “You know . . . the gray beard. It was just there. Like everything else. But lately, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, the way they’ve been, and decided to try to change whatever needs changing.”

“Like shaving.”Gammy shoots a glance in Calla’s direction.

So does Dad. “Like a lot of things.”

“Well, I’m really going to like having you around for a while, Jeff. We haven’t spent much time together since . . . Florida.”

Florida. Gammy means the funeral. She flew down, of course, and stayed with them. Before that, Calla hadn’t seen her in years.

That’s the other thing. . . .

The argument that’s been haunting Calla since she arrived here, in a recurring dream. The scene is always the same: her mother and grandmother are emotional, angry, screaming at each other.

Calla has no doubt that the argument actually took place years ago, though she’s not sure whether she witnessed it herself or is psychically channeling it.

“. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . .”Mom sobs.

“. . . for your own good . . .”Odelia says, and then, “. . . how you can live with yourself . . .”

Then one of them—Calla isn’t sure which—declares, with chilling certainty: “The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake.”

Now that she knows what she knows about Mom and Darrin’s past . . .

Calla thoughtfully watches Odelia pour coffee, chatting easily with Dad.

Does she know about the baby?

And what does dredging the lake have to do with anything? Calla no longer smells lilies of the valley, but maybe Aiyana will come to her with some kind of message, like she has in the past.

Abruptly, she pushes back her chair.

Gammy asks, “Where are you going?”

To find Aiyana.

“Can I call Jacy?”

Seeing the dubious expression on both their faces, Calla realizes she probably should have said she was calling Evangeline instead.

But she and Evangeline aren’t exactly on friendly terms these days—all the more reason Dad’s stay next door will be awkward.

Well, if not Evangeline, then Calla should have said she was calling someone else. Someone who wasn’t an accomplice in her mission to Geneseo and her lie to her grandmother.

Now, whenever she’s with Jacy, the two of them, Gammy and Dad, are going to think she’s sneaking around behind their backs. Great.

It’s her father who speaks up first. “Go ahead. Go call Jacy.”

“Thanks.”

As she leaves the kitchen, she realizes she was really asking her grandmother’s permission—not his. She’s been answering to Gammy ever since she moved here. Dad, living thousands of miles away, hasn’t had much say over what she does on a daily basis.