Believing (11 page)

“Good!” Evangeline hisses. “Hang up!”

“Who is this?” the voice asks in Calla’s ear.

For a split second, she’s absolutely frozen. Then she abruptly clamps the phone down, trembling, on the verge of tears.

Evangeline hugs her. “That was so good. You did great.”

“You swear you won’t tell anyone, right?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll carry this to my grave, like we said.”

Calla swallows hard, not wanting to think about graves.

All she wants is to put this behind her.

As she and Evangeline walk back across Cottage Row, she says a quick, silent prayer that Erin will be found in time.

Hearing car tires crunch on the gravel in the street, Calla jumps up and hurries to look out the living room window. She knows even before she lifts the lace curtain that it’s not going to be her father, but she checks anyway. Just in case her intuition, or whatever she’s calling it these days, is off.

Nope. A neighbor’s car pulling a rented U-haul is trundling along Cottage Row, heading toward the gate.

“Is it him?” her grandmother asks from her chair across the room. She’s dressed for the occasion in a pink-and-purple floral-print dress in fairly muted—for her, anyway— colors, with a lacy brown crocheted shawl draped over her shoulders.

Calla drops the curtain. “No, it’s not him.”

Just more summer residents leaving Lily Dale for the off-season.

The place is fast becoming a ghost town in more ways than one—definitely a good thing, with her father coming to visit. The streets are quieter every day, no longer clogged with ailing strangers seeking physical healing, or the recently bereaved longing to make contact with their dearly beloved, or troubled visitors in need of psychic counseling.

Pacing back to the couch, Calla plops down and resumes the impatient wait for her father’s arrival from the airport, all the while wondering about Erin.

Did the tip-line person take her call seriously?

Even if he did, what if she was dead wrong, and Erin is . . . well, dead?

Calla pushes the thought from her mind.

“I wish your father had let me pick him up at the airport instead of renting a car,” Odelia comments.

“I know, but he said that will make things easier, since he’ll have to drive back and forth to the White Inn down in Fredonia.”

“He could have stayed here.”

“I know.” But Calla was secretly relieved when he turned down her grandmother’s offer to take her bedroom for the weekend.

“It’s really no trouble,” she said late last night on the phone to Calla’s dad, with Calla eavesdropping, of course. “I can stay right next door at the Taggarts’. They have a pull-out couch.”

Of course, Jeff wouldn’t hear of that. Nor would he consider sleeping on the Taggarts’ pull-out couch himself, even though Ramona made the offer via Odelia.

“I’ll be more comfortable in a hotel,” he insisted, and it was all settled.

Calla figures that should make his visit a little easier. There’s no telling what Jeff might witness if he hangs around Odelia’s house 24/7. Rarely does much time go by here without some kind of spooky activity or, at the very least, someone popping up at the front door looking for a reading.

Then again, walk-ins aren’t likely in the next couple of days. When Calla got home from her mission with Evangeline earlier, she immediately noticed that the shingle above her grandmother’s door—the one that reads O
DELIA
L
AUDER
,R
EG-ISTERED
M
EDIUM
—was conspicuously missing. Hanging from its bracket was a basket filled with yellow fall chrysanthemums.

“I always take it down to be repainted at the end of the summer season,” was Odelia’s explanation when Calla asked her about it.

But something in her eyes told Calla that wasn’t the whole truth.

She doesn’t want Dad to know,
Calla realized.
She knows that if he figures out what she does for a living, he won’t let me stay, and I guess she wants me to.

Calla and her grandmother seem to have silently agreed that there will be no discussion of her grandmother’s—or Lily Dale’s—unique spiritualist connection while Dad is here.

Sure, he’s bound to figure it out when he drives through the gate, with its sign announcing that Lily Dale is the world’s largest spiritualism center.

Then again, Dad can be kind of absentminded. And it’s dark out. And Calla herself didn’t see the gate sign when she first arrived.

Besides, the official season is over, which means there’s no one manning the gatehouse and anyone can come and go. Now that the busy daily schedule is over, many cottages are boarded up, and the summer throngs have vanished, Lily Dale looks almost like any other resort community past its prime. A resort that just happens to be the birthplace of modern spiritualism.

Maybe that’s how Dad will see it. Period.

All she can do is hope.

“Do you think he decided to stop off at the hotel in Fredonia first and check in?” Odelia asks.

“No. He said he was coming straight here.” Calla answered the phone when he called from the Buffalo airport an hour ago, saying he had landed and was on his way to Lily Dale.

Unable to sit and wait patiently on the couch for his arrival, she gets up again and paces across the room, wondering whether they’ve found Erin—or her body—yet.

“You know, time always drags when you want it to race along,” Odelia comments, flipping through a magazine. “And it rushes to the finish line when you want it to drag.”

“Who said that?”

Odelia looks up sharply. “
I
did. Why? Have you been hearing other . . . voices?”

Calla can’t help but grin. “No, I meant who said it as a quote. Like, from someone famous.”

Odelia laughs—and looks a bit relieved, Calla notices as she goes back to her pacing and keeping a restless eye on the window, trying not to think about Erin.

“This Friday-night waiting game is getting to be a habit for you, isn’t it?” her grandmother asks.

“Hmm?”

“Last week at this time, you were in the same boat, waiting for your friends to show up from Florida. Remember?”

Her friends. Lisa—and Kevin.

Again, Calla’s thoughts flit to the e-mail he sent. It’s been in the back of her mind all day, even with everything else she’s had to think about.

She impulsively tried calling Lisa a little while ago, but got only her voice mail and decided not to leave a message.

How can she even begin to explain about Erin?

And even when it comes to Kevin—well, maybe she shouldn’t mention the e-mail to Lisa at all. Maybe it means only that Kevin’s still sympathetic about her loss and just wanted to check in. Maybe he thinks enough time has passed since their breakup that they can just be casual friends.

Yeah, right.

Sun-streaked; tanned; wearing flip-flops, puka shells, and board shorts, he was a welcome, familiar sight. But seeing him even just for a few minutes reminded Calla that she’s not quite over him yet.

Come on . . . Not quite?

Okay, not by a long shot.

Not even after spending more time with Jacy, and all the attention from Blue Slayton, and the fact that he might be asking her to the homecoming— That thought is interrupted by the distant sound of a car approaching.

“That’s my dad!” she announces to Odelia, who nods, courtesy of her own “intuition.”

By the time her grandmother gets to her feet, Calla has reached the front door and is about to open it. She looks back at the last minute, worried. “Gammy,” she says, “you’re not going to say anything to my dad about . . . anything. Are you?”

“Are you kidding?” Odelia settles her shawl around her shoulders demurely and pulls her glasses down from her forehead to rest on the tip of her nose. She looks almost like a regular grandmother. Kind of. If you ignore her red hair and pink clogs.

Calla smiles faintly. “I didn’t think you’d tell him,” she says, “but I wanted to make sure. I mean, I don’t want you to lie. Just . . .”

“Omit.”

“Right.”

“Got it.”

Calla opens the door, and her breath promptly catches in her throat. There he is, climbing out of a compact rental car parked at the curb.

“Dad!” She races outside, bounds down the steps, and hurtles herself into his arms like a little girl.

Her father holds her in a fierce bear hug and it feels so good, so incredibly good, that she almost cries.

Okay, maybe she is crying a little. Embarrassed, she ducks her head when he releases her and wipes her eyes before looking up at him.

“How was your trip?” she asks, noticing that there are a few light strands in his black hair just above his ears and for a split second she thinks they must be blond, bleached from the California sun. Then she realizes they’re gray. Gray hair. Dad’s face looks different, too. He’s not wearing his glasses—maybe that’s why. He wore them a lot after Mom died. All those tears kept interfering with his contact lenses. But he’s got them on again today, so maybe that’s a sign that he’s not crying as much.

His familiar black eyes might not be bloodshot and red rimmed anymore, but they’re not twinkling at Calla the way they used to, either.

“My trip was a breeze,” Dad says, and she can tell he’s trying to sound upbeat. “Everything went right on time, no problem making the connection in New York . . . it makes me feel like you’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from me, instead of a whole continent.”

She sees him turn his head, looking at something over her shoulder, and follows his gaze to see her grandmother standing on the porch. It’s not like her to hold back, but she seems to be keeping her distance, giving them some space.

She gives a little wave.

Jeff waves back.

Then Odelia comes slowly down the steps, and they share a slightly awkward-looking hug.

“It’s good to see you, Jeff,” Odelia says with affection. “How have you been?”

“Hanging in there,” he replies as a door slams next door.

Calla spots Ramona stepping out onto the Taggarts’ porch, bathed in a yellow glow from the overhead light fixture.

“Hi, everyone,” she calls cheerfully, breezing down the front steps with her car keys in hand.

“Ramona, hi . . . come meet Calla’s dad,” Odelia invites.

Uh-oh. Not such a good idea. But Calla does a quick scan and is glad to see that the shingle above Ramona’s door is cast in shadows from low-hanging boughs. Dad can’t possibly read it from way over here.

“That’s my friend Evangeline’s aunt,” Calla tells her father as Ramona comes toward them, jangling not just from the keys she’s carrying but from the jewelry she’s wearing. Calla decides she looks like a pretty gypsy, with her hoop earrings, stacked bracelets, long gauzy skirt, and brown ringlets that fall past her shoulders.

“Hi—Jeff, right?” Ramona says easily, arriving in front of them and holding out her hand. “I’m Ramona Taggart.”

“Nice to meet you.”

As Calla watches her father shake Ramona’s hand, a crazy vision flashes through her brain. So crazy she decides she must be losing it. Seriously.

There is absolutely no way on earth her father and Ramona Taggart could ever possibly have any kind of . . .

Connection.

Romantic, or anything else.

Ramona is a total free spirit, as much a gypsy on the inside as she appears to be on the outside. She’s the exact opposite of Mom, a level-headed, conservative, ultraorganized businesswoman.

Anyway, Dad was crazy about Mom. Now that she’s gone, Calla can’t imagine him with anyone else.

Especially Ramona, of all people.

So much for my “intuition.”

“I hope Odelia told you that you’re welcome to stay at our place,” Ramona is saying.

“Thanks, I mean, she did mention it—and that’s really nice of you—but I couldn’t do that.” Dad looks flustered.

I don’t even know you.
That, Calla realizes, is what he’s thinking. He doesn’t yet understand that the people here in western New York are pretty much the friendliest, most welcoming people Calla has ever met anywhere, including down South.

“Are you sure?” Ramona asks. “I’ve got plenty of room.”

“I’ve already got a hotel room booked. But . . . thanks again.”

“Well, if you change your mind . . . I’ll be home late, but the front door’s open. Literally.”

“Hot date?” Odelia calls after her, and Ramona just laughs and heads toward her car.

Again, Calla wonders if there might be a glimmer of something between Dad and—

No. No way. Impossible.

“Brrr . . . it’s chilly out here,” Odelia comments. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

“Okay,” Dad agrees, “but I just want to grab my contact lens solution and my glasses out of my bag in the trunk. My eyes are burning from all that dry air on the plane.”

“Go ahead. I’ll get dinner on the table. I made fried chicken.”

“That’s my favorite,” Dad says. “I haven’t had it in years.”

Calla meets her grandmother’s gaze and knows that she, too, is thinking of her mother.

Suddenly, she longs to tell her father that fried chicken was once Mom’s favorite, too. That, and all the other things she’s learned about her mother since arriving in Lily Dale. But she can’t just start blurting information. She has to wait until the time is right.

Odelia disappears into the house, leaving the two of them alone together on the shadowy street. Calla tries to think of something to say. Something casual and conversational.

Funny, she still isn’t used to having a one-on-one relationship with her father. They were always a family of three. Dad was there, but Calla talked more to her mother—even if she’s more like her father in temperament and attitude.

Standing beside her father as he rummages through his small duffel, she thinks of her mother’s frequent business trips and the fancy rolling luggage she always packed full of her sophisticated clothing. Mom and Dad really were different in so many ways.

Ramona toots the horn as she drives past on her way toward the gate.

“She seems nice.” Dad tucks a small leather pouch under his arm and closes the trunk.

“Yeah. She’s great. She knew Mom,” Calla tells him, and seeing the troubled look on her father’s face, is instantly sorry.