Connecting (13 page)

“Only, he told me his name was Tom. But this is him. I’m positive.” She waves the framed snapshot at Odelia. “And he was whistling a song . . . the same song that plays on that music box.” She points to the carved wooden jewelry box on Mom’s dresser. “Maybe he gave it to her. Did he?”

“I don’t remember where she got it. You say he was at your house in Florida?” Odelia is obviously not thrilled to hear it. “Was it just a friendly visit? Did he just pop in out of the blue? What did he want?”

“I don’t know. Mom didn’t seem all that surprised to see him there—I mean, it wasn’t like she opened the door and there he was, after twenty years or whatever.”

“So you don’t think that was the first time your mother had seen him lately?”

“I don’t think so.” Although it’s troubling to think of her mom being in contact with another man when she was so busy with her job that she barely had time for Dad and Calla.

“Oh, and he gave her an envelope, I think.”

“An envelope! What was in it?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. I didn’t think anything of it—I figured he was just someone from work. But Mom was pretty upset that day when he came over. She burned the soda bread, and you know my mom—she never burned anything.

” Her grandmother seems to be digesting this news.

“Was your father there?”

“When Darrin came over? No.” Calla carefully sets the picture back in its spot on the dresser. “Why?”

“I wondered if Stephanie told Jeff about him. That’s all.”

“You mean that he was her boyfriend when she was growing up? I don’t think so, Gammy. She never talked about the past.”

“Maybe she did with your father.”

“Nope. He used to tease her about that. He said she must want to pretend her life started the day she met him.”

“So you’re saying your father didn’t know Darrin existed? And I guess that means he doesn’t know he was at the funeral? And at your house before that?”

“No. Do you think . . . should I tell him?”

Odelia pauses. “There’s nothing to tell, really. Is there?”

“No,” Calla murmurs, staring at her mother in the picture, and then at herself in the mirror, wearing the same dress. “There’s nothing to tell.”

TEN

Cassadaga, New York
Thursday, September 27
3:28 p.m.

Sitting at a booth in the window of the diner, Calla sips a watery fountain soda through a straw and keeps an eye on the rain-soaked parking lot for Owen Henry.

He’s due any second now, and she hopes he won’t be late. She told her grandmother she had to stay after school for extra help in math, which would get her home shortly after four at the latest.

She felt bad lying to Odelia, but there was no way around it. Her grandmother wouldn’t understand that Calla
needs
to do this for Mr. Henry. That maybe, in a way, it’s part of her own healing process to maybe help someone else pierce the smothering black veil of unbearable grief.

And anyway, what good is being able to do what she can do if she doesn’t use the gift to help people? Isn’t that what Lily Dale’s philosophy is all about, in the first place?

Oh, good. A battered, oversized black sedan is splashing into the lone parking spot reserved for disabled customers, a telltale blue handicapped parking sign dangling from the rearview mirror. That has to be Owen Henry.

Instead, an elderly woman emerges from the driver’s seat and helps an even more elderly lookalike out of the passenger’s seat with a walker. As they make their way to the diner, step by fragile step, huddled beneath a big black umbrella, Calla sees that they’re being followed by a filmy-looking woman with a Prohibition-era pin-curled bob and long-waisted dress.

Watching the scene, Calla decides the women are sisters. And that’s their mother, watching over them from the Other Side. And there’s a kind of faint aura of light around the older sister, the one with the walker, and something about the way the mother is hovering close to her . . .

It means it won’t be long before the older sister passes on, Calla realizes without understanding quite how she knows any of this but absolutely certain it’s the truth. The older sister is close to crossing over to the Other Side, and that’s what the light means, and her mother is waiting for her.

She plucks a paper napkin from the holder on the table and hastily wipes tears from her eyes as the sisters settle themselves into the next booth. They order hot tea and whole-wheat toast from the waitress, who calls them Dora and Edna and asks what they’re doing out on a day like this.

“Oh, a little rain never hurt anyone,” says Dora, the older of the two.

“And you know how my sister looks forward to her tea and toast after bingo every week,” Edna declares with an affectionate smile.

So Calla was right. At least about them being sisters.

She turns her head slightly and sees that their mother is still there, still watching, still waiting.

“Calla?”

Startled, she looks up to see Owen Henry at her table. He’s wearing his usual hat, along with a rain-spattered trenchcoat, and leaning on his cane.

Glancing toward the window, she sees that the newest addition to the parking lot is a large, relatively new SUV. Not what she’d expect him to be driving. Funny how sometimes her instincts are dead-on, like with the sisters, and other times, she’s dead wrong.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Owen asks, draping his coat on the hook above the booth and sitting across from her. He’s wearing a suit with a bow tie.

“Okay,” Calla agrees, not sure how to even begin. She doesn’t see Betty hanging around him today.

“Hello there. What can I do you for?” the waitress, a plump, friendly woman with blond hair and black roots, pops up to ask Owen.

“Just a cup of black coffee.”

“How about some pie to go with that?”

“No, thanks.”

“Or a cinnamon roll?”

He shakes his head.

“Are you sure? They’re delicious. I’ve had two of them myself today,” she adds with a conspiratorial wink.

Calla wishes Owen Henry would at least crack a smile, but he’s obviously impatient for the waitress to leave them alone. She guesses she can’t blame him. He’s focused on Betty, and he wants to get on with it.

“I have a few questions for Betty, if you don’t mind,” he says as soon as the waitress has taken the hint and silently deposited his coffee on the table in front of him.

“I don’t mind, but . . . I mean, I don’t see her spirit here, so I’m not sure I can reach her.”

“You can try, though . . . can’t you?” he asks, and there’s such an air of tense desperation around him that she realizes she’s going to feel terrible if she can’t come up with something.

“Of course I can try.”

“Okay. First, tell her I love her.”

Calla smiles and nods. Then she closes her eyes and tries to meditate, the way Patsy taught them in class. She does see Betty’s face in her mind’s eye, but she can’t tell if it’s just the memory of seeing her the other day.

Whatever.
Owen loves you,
she silently tells the mental image of Betty, feeling a bit silly.

Opening her eyes, she expects Owen to ask if she got a response.

“I have a question,” he says instead. “Can you see if you can answer it—if not through Betty, then with your psychic abilities?”

She nods. “What is it?”

“I inherited some stock certificates a few years ago from my cousin Elmer, and it turned out they were a lot more valuable than I ever imagined. Betty always kept them under the mattress in the guest bedroom, but after she died, I looked for them, and they weren’t there.”

Okay, this isn’t at all what Calla was expecting. “So you want me to ask her where they are?” she asks slowly.

“Can you? Poor thing was suffering from dementia in her last days and got so paranoid, she thought people were trying to steal things from her.”

Calla nods, remembering. That’s exactly what it was like with her grandfather Poppy Ted, who had Alzheimer’s disease before he died. He was convinced that the nurses were stealing his hospital bed out from under him, piece by piece. Toward the end, when he didn’t recognize his own sons—Dad and Uncle Scott—he even accused them of robbing him. It was horrible.

“I’ll see if I can find out where the stock certificates are,” Calla tells Owen sympathetically, having some idea of what he must have been through with Betty.

“Thank you.” He leans forward in anticipation, his coffee still untouched.

Calla glances around the diner. The two elderly sisters are sipping tea in the next booth, their mother sitting silently beside Dora, who’s still glowing faintly. The waitress is wiping down the counter, oblivious to a pair of truckers who sit eating eggs . . . because they aren’t really there, Calla realizes, noticing that they’re getting a bit transparent before they vanish altogether.

Ghosts.

They’re everywhere.

With a sigh, she closes her eyes.

Just focus on the spirit you need.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . .

Come on, Betty. Show me where the stock certificates are.

That same house pops into her head. The gothic one on the cliff, overlooking the water.

Okay, maybe she’s getting somewhere.

Is the stock hidden in the house? she asks Spirit.

Nothing new.

Just the image of the house again, stubbornly filling her head. She senses a pointedness to the vision, though.

“It’s in the house somewhere,” she tells Owen, opening her eyes to find him waiting anxiously.

“Which house?”

“Um. . . your house, I’m assuming. Yours and Betty’s?”

He nods. “It’s a brick cape. So the stock is there after all?”

“Brick cape?”

“That’s the house. Brick. Cape Cod–style.”

She shakes her head. “No. The house I’m seeing is more like a mansion. Really old-fashioned. On a cliff above the water.”

He frowns. “Which water?”

“I don’t know . . . I thought it must be the sea, because there’s a widow’s walk.”

“No. Betty’s house—mine and Betty’s house—is on a cul-de-sac, right down the highway in Fredonia. No widow’s walk. Tell me more about the house you’re seeing.”

She describes it in as much detail as she can. When she mentions the big square turret and octagonal stained-glass window, it’s as if a lightbulb has suddenly gone on in Owen Henry’s brain.

“Well, how do you like that,” he says, and reaches into the pocket of his suit.

He pulls out a ten-dollar bill and hurriedly tosses it on the table in front of Calla. “There . . . that’s for my coffee, the rest is for you. Thanks. You really helped me.”

“But . . . I mean, is that all?” she asks, watching him shove his arms into the sleeves of his damp overcoat and plunk his hat back on his head. “You don’t want to ask Betty anything else? Tell her anything else?”

Maybe, one more time, that you love her?

“No, that’s it. Thanks again,” he says, and is gone.

Watching him scurry out into the rain, Calla has a sinking feeling.

She should have listened to Odelia.

Getting involved with this man wasn’t the right thing to do. Not at all.

Out the window, Owen Henry jumps into the shiny SUV and starts the engine with a roar. The tires screech a little as he pulls out onto the highway, heading north, toward Fredonia.

It isn’t until Calla stands up that her gaze falls on Owen’s cane, propped where he left it against the side of the booth.

Her heart seems to stop short in her chest as she remembers how he left the diner just now.

He was striding, without the slightest sign of a limp.

Dear God, Calla.What did you just do?

“You’re just in time!” Odelia calls from the living room when Calla arrives home.

“For what?” Calla hangs her backpack on the newel post and pokes her head in to see her grandmother sitting in her favorite chair, knitting in front of the television, with Gert at her feet.

“There’s a great movie starting on Lifetime. Want to watch? Loni Anderson is in it.”

“Who?”

Odelia sighs. “Sometimes, my dear, I forget just how young you are. Sit down and watch anyway. I could use some company.”

Right now, she just isn’t in the mood to be around anyone, not even Gammy.

“I have a ton of homework. Sorry.”

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Odelia says as Calla bends to give her a peck on the cheek.

She’s halfway up the stairs when her grandmother calls after her, “Oh, Calla? I forgot! You have mail!”

“I do? Where?”

“Somewhere. Maybe in the kitchen. Check the counter,” Odelia advises with typical scatterbrained vagueness.

With a silent sigh, Calla heads to the kitchen. The counters and table seem to hold everything
but
the mail.