Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(37)

The pet cemetery—okay, she can understand that. People in the Dale love their pets enough to designate a special burial ground for their remains. But the Stump . . .

According to the book, it’s all that remains of a legendary tree that once stood there, and it surges with some sort of mystical vortex. On that hallowed ground, mediums and visitors commune with nature, each other, and, of course, with Spirit.

So if Bella were to believe in any of that—which she doesn’t—what might happen if she went to the Stump? Would Sam—

She tosses aside the map and glares at the carefree fireflies glinting in the dark like ethereal beacons.

This—this false hope isn’t fair. Sam is gone.

Okay, he isn’t gone, gone. But he sure as hell isn’t hanging around a magical tree stump or chitchatting with Odelia Lauder or—God forbid—Pandora Feeney.

No, Sam is in heaven. Bella firmly believes in that. When she was a little girl and her father tucked her in at night, she always ended her prayers the way he taught her: “. . . and God bless Mommy in heaven.”

She has no memory of her beautiful mother, but Rosemary Angelo lived vividly in Bella’s imagination as a white-robed angel with gossamer wings and a divine glow, floating in a paradise filled with harp music and wisps of mist.

Maybe she can’t quite picture her rugged father and Sam with robes and wings, but she knows in her heart that they’re there in heaven with her mother and Aunt Sophie, too—all of them watching over Bella and Max.

Someday we’ll all be together again. Together forever.

That’s what her father promised her when she was little, and it’s what Sam promised her in the hospital last winter.

If she’s so willing to embrace that, then why not any of this? This Lily Dale stuff? If it makes sense that her lost loved ones are out there somewhere, wouldn’t they want to communicate with her somehow? Wouldn’t they let her know they hadn’t disappeared forever?

If I were there and Sam were here, I’d be desperate to reach him.

And if Sam could find a way to reach me, he would, and . . .

And now, somehow, Bella finds herself here?

Not just here as in Earth. Here as in Lily Dale.

The town that talks to dead people.

She can’t help but consider the billboard for the campground that doesn’t exist, the cat on the doorstep back in Bedford, and the identical one in the road yesterday—the cat whose decidedly unusual full name Max had mysteriously known.

Pandora Feeney’s cryptic words echo in her head: “You’re supposed to be here.”

She appeared to be talking to someone, Bella recalls. A ghost? Make that Spirit. Whose?

And what about Odelia? She claimed that anyone can learn to communicate with lost loved ones. What if Bella concentrates with all her might?

She closes her eyes and listens intently.

The night is alive with humming cicadas. Somewhere, a dog is barking. Faraway voices call to each other. In the distance, car doors slam and tires roll on gravel.

Then another sound reaches her ears: a creaking floorboard somewhere inside the house.

Max must be stirring. There’s no one else around.

She turns to look expectantly at the screen door, waiting for her son to poke out his tousled head and ask for a glass of water. Yes, or tell her the cat just had kittens in her bed.

Another creak from inside the house. A long shadow falls across the porch floor. Someone is in the front hall.

“Max?” she calls, and the shadow moves away. “Max!”

No reply.

She gets up and looks into the house just in time to see someone disappearing through the archway that leads to the parlor. She only catches a fleeting glimpse, but she can see that it’s not Max. It’s an adult wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.

“Hello?” she calls.

There’s no reply, though whoever it is had to hear her. Footsteps retreat to the back of the house and there’s a faint, creaking click as the back door opens and closes.

Frightened, she isn’t sure whether to chase after the person or run upstairs and check on Max.

Her child’s safety takes priority. She hurries up the stairs and is relieved to find that he’s sound asleep.

After closing the door and locking him in, she searches the first floor, looking for some clue as to who might have been there. Nothing is out of place.

She tries to convince herself that it might have been one of the guests. When the message service ends an hour later, she’s sitting on the porch waiting for them as they trickle back to the house one by one or in pairs. First Jim and Kelly Tookler and Fritz Dunkle, the younger couple and middle-aged bachelor who had checked in with Odelia while Bella was gone. They’re followed by Bonnie Barrington, the elderly St. Clair sisters, Karl and Helen Adabner, and Eleanor Pierson, though not accompanied by Steve, who arrives not long after, clutching a program from Our Town and raving about the performance.

Bella can’t help noticing, with a tingling of apprehension, that not one of them is wearing—or even carrying—a dark hoodie.





Chapter Nine


Waking to a rumble of thunder through the bedroom screens the next morning, Bella finds Max still snoring beside her. Snoring loudly. Much too loudly for such a small boy.

She stretches, allowing her sandpapery eyelids to close again just for a moment before forcing them open again. She’s far from rested and refreshed, thanks to Max and Chance, whose furry heft was solidly wedged on her pillow for the first half of the night and on her feet for the second.