Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(24)

Bella is intrigued. Troy doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would buy into talking to the spirit world.

Climbing behind the wheel, he starts the engine.

As they begin bumping along a dirt path toward the road, Bella waits for him to pick up the story where he left off, but he doesn’t. He seems lost in thought.

“So did Odelia do the reading for you?” she asks after a minute.

“She did.”

“How did it go?”

He hesitates. “You know, I never believed in that stuff. Neither did Dad. But then you lose someone you love and you miss them like crazy and you figure . . . well, you hope there’s something to it.”

“Did she get through to him, then?”

“Nah. She said she was tapping into a bunch of other dead relatives I’ve never heard of, but not my dad. She offered to try again sometime.”

“Did she?”

He shakes his head. “I said thanks, but no thanks.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to get my hopes up. Right after Dad died, all I wanted was to connect with him one more time. Now . . . well, I wouldn’t say I’m over it, exactly. But it’s been more than a year, and . . . time really does heal, you know?”

No. She still endures moments when grief stabs at her like a freshly honed blade. Will that subside in six months? A year? Ever?

What if she could connect with Sam one more time?

She never even considered that possibility until now.

Because it’s not a possibility, she reminds herself.

Like Troy, she never believed in that stuff. She’s not going to start now just because she’s stumbled across a strange little town filled with people who not only believe in ghosts but also are convinced they can communicate with them.

And now you’re stuck there for a few days. Terrific.

Troy pulls out onto the rural highway, heading south toward Lily Dale. She leans back in the seat, gazing at the bucolic countryside until he cuts into her melancholy thoughts with a question.

“Where’s your husband?”

Startled, she glances over at him. He’s looking straight ahead, at the road, one hand on the wheel, the other thoughtfully rubbing his razor stubble.

“My . . . husband?”

“You’re wearing a wedding ring, so I figured . . .”

“Oh.” She instinctively twists the gold band on her left hand. After Sam died, she’d put away his ring to give to Max someday but couldn’t bear to take off her own.

She takes a deep breath and musters the dreaded word. “I’m a widow.”

“I’m sorry.” He’s silent for a moment.

She stares out the passenger’s window at acres of lush, green grapevines trailing over perpendicular fencerows as far as she can see, broken only by the occasional weathered barn.

Then Troy asks, “Is that why you’re in Lily Dale? To try to connect to your husband?”

“No! We were just passing through to drop off a stray cat we found on the road. I never even heard of it until now.”

Maybe he doesn’t believe her. His gray eyes are pensive beneath the brim of his hat. “Well, as long as you’re here, you should see if Odelia will do a reading for you.”

“Why?”

Troy shrugs. “Why not? It can’t hurt. Maybe you’ll hear from your husband.”

Those words stay with her long after he’s left her at Valley View Manor and driven away.





Chapter Six


By midafternoon, with the guesthouse filled up and the sun beating down, Bella and Odelia settle into a pair of Adirondack chairs on the lawn behind the guesthouse. The yard is fragrant with flowers and the lake blue and inviting on this first July day.

Chance lies nearby in a shady patch of grass beneath a sprawling apple tree, watching Max and Jiffy climb it.

Rather, Max is watching Jiffy climb to a towering branch that Odelia assures Bella is perfectly safe. “He does it all the time,” she says when he effortlessly hoists himself to that height in a matter of seconds and then casually perches there, legs dangling. “Don’t worry.”

Jiffy is a scrappy kid with wiry ginger hair, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and—in addition to the front tooth Odelia mentioned he’d knocked out—an array of bruises and wounds he catalogued for a reverent Max earlier.

“I got this one falling off my scooter into a pothole on East Street—”

“You ride your scooter in the street?” Max wouldn’t have looked more astounded if Jiffy had just announced he skydives without a parachute.

“Uh-huh, and I got this one from a fish hook, and this one from a poisonous snake . . .” He pointed to a mosquito bite he’d scratched open.

“A poisonous snake? Wow!”

“Well, I think it was poisonous. And I think it was a snake. I didn’t ’xactly see it, by the way. But it bit me right here, and I was bleeding a lot, see?”

Max saw.

And now Bella’s son—who’s never climbed a tree in his life—is eager to keep up with his gutsy new friend. Well, not keep up, exactly.

He cautiously clings to the lowest-hanging bough just a few feet off the ground. His knees are dirty and his face is scratched courtesy of a thorny patch of shrubs between this yard and Odelia’s. But he’s happier than Bella has seen him since . . .