Connecting (19 page)

“But I need to know about my mother,” she says desperately. “And Darrin.”

“You’re going to Florida next weekend. Maybe you’ll find something when you go through her things at the house, and check the laptop.”

“Maybe.”

Leaves rasping beneath their footsteps, they head down the steps and along the walk toward the car.

They’re almost there when Calla feels a pair of eyes boring into her. She looks over her shoulder at the house again, expecting to see Sharon Logan in the window.

But instead, the silhouette of a man stands squarely on the front steps, facing her.

This time, it’s no shadow ghost.

“Jacy,” she whispers, heart pounding, “there’s someone—”

“I know, shh, I see him.”

Him.

Calla knows who it is even before he walks down the steps and into the moonlight, where she can recognize him.

“Darrin Yates,” she breathes.

It’s him.

It’s really him.

She presses a trembling fist to her mouth.

After everything she’s been through, trying to find him, here he is, walking toward them.

It’s too good to be true . . .

Good?

Remembering that this man may have had something to do with her mother’s death, Calla instinctively moves closer to Jacy’s side and feels him slip a protective arm around her.

She shivers, noticing for the first time that the night air is cold, and leans into his solid warmth.

Darrin comes to a halt a few feet away. His eyes are wide.

“Stephanie?”

Her mother’s name on his lips catches Calla off guard.

She opens her mouth, but she can’t seem to find her voice.

“You’re so beautiful, baby . . . look at you.” He’s staring at Calla in wonder, shaking his head.

He thinks I’m her
.
He thinks I’m Mom, just like everyone who’s
seen that snapshot tonight.

Only Darrin Yates isn’t comparing her to a picture. He’s comparing her to the real thing—his lost love, Stephanie.

And the way he’s looking at Calla, with utter reverence . . .

He’s still in love with her.

That much is clear.

That, and the fact that he thinks he’s seeing a ghost.

She glances at Jacy, who nods.

She clears her throat, manages to speak. “I’m not—”

“Stephanie, I’m so, so sorry.” Darrin Yates falls to his knees in front of her, stunning Calla into silence.

Darrin looks up, his face ravaged with remorse. “I’m so 170 sorry for what I did to you. You had everything to live for— a husband, a daughter, a house, a job . . . you had a life.”

Emotion clogs Calla’s throat; tears blind her eyes.

So he did do it. He killed her.

“If I hadn’t sent you that first e-mail, none of this would have happened. You’d still be alive. But—I don’t know . . . it was Valentine’s Day, and I was thinking of you, and . . . I just never meant to start anything. I never meant to hurt you. I never imagined where it would lead. Can you ever forgive me?”

He reaches toward her with trembling, pleading hands. She inches closer to Jacy, a shudder running down her spine.

“Darrin—”

“No! No, don’t call me that!”

“But—”

“It’s Tom, Stephanie. Tom Leolyn. Remember? You’ll get used to it. I did.”

Calla gulps, manages to say obediently, “Tom, you have to tell me what you did. You have to tell me why I should forgive you.”

She feels Jacy’s arm tensing up on her shoulder.

He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t want her to go along with it, to let Tom think she’s her mother.

But somehow, she’s certain that the man kneeling before her isn’t going to hurt her. Not now.

He already has.

All he wants is forgiveness.

“You know what I did,” he tells her, his voice laced with despair. “I should have left it all alone. All those years . . . you never would have had to know. But it was eating away at me. I couldn’t let you go on thinking she was dead, when all along she was right here.”

“What? What are you talking about? Who was right here?” Calla asks, heart pounding, trying not to strangle on the lump of dread in her throat.

But he’s too far gone to even hear her. Words are pouring out of him, a heartfelt confession Calla knows she has no business hearing, and yet . . .

He blames himself for what happened to Mom.

He pushed her down those stairs. Why?

“I couldn’t carry that secret with me for the rest of my life, Steph. I couldn’t live with myself. I had to tell you, and I told myself I was willing to take the consequences. Now . . .

look at me. I’ve paid the price. But so have you.”

“What did you do, Tom?” Calla asks raggedly. “What did you do to me?”

“I never meant for it to happen. I’ve always loved you. There was never a day that went by that I didn’t miss you, and wonder about you, and need you.”

He’s sobbing now, reaching for her.

Jacy steps between them. “No. Don’t touch her.”

It’s as if Tom is noticing him for the first time, and his eyes narrow. “Who are you?”

“She’s not who you think she is. Calla, come on. Let’s go.”

“But—”

“We have to go. I don’t like this.”

Jacy grabs her arm and pulls her to the car, all but shoving her into the passenger’s seat before he jumps behind the wheel.

As they pull away, she looks back at Darrin, standing alone.

Then she turns on Jacy. “Why did you do that? He was telling us what he did to her!”

“He thought you
were
her.”

“So?”

“I told you. It wasn’t safe.”

He’s probably right.

Looking back on what just happened, Calla knows it probably wasn’t smart to let Darrin believe she’s her mother.

But she came here looking for answers. Darrin was giving them to her.

“What more do you need to know?” Jacy asks. “He said he was responsible.”

“But he didn’t say why.”

“Does it matter?”

Yes. It does.

And she has the feeling she’ll be haunted by Darrin Yates’s ravaged face for a long, long time.

But . . .

Not Darrin Yates. Tom Leolyn. That was the name he gave. Apparently, it’s the name he’s been going by for all these years.

Leolyn, as in . . .

Leolyn Woods.

Odelia was dozing in her chair when Calla came in the door, but she stirred enough to ask about her night.

“It was great!” Calla told her, around an enormous yawn.

She didn’t have to feign exhaustion—she was utterly depleted by that time—but when Odelia started asking questions, she did have to work up a convincingly enthusiastic, and pathetically generic, description of the evening she and Jacy had supposedly just shared.

She talked about a punch bowl and crepe paper streamers and how a DJ would have been better than a live band. She said she and Jacy danced to a few slow dances, and she danced to the fast ones with her friends.

Every single school dance she’s ever been to is the same old story. For all she knows, this one was drastically different, but she wouldn’t bet on it.

Finally, carrying Gert up to her room with her as usual, she dropped into bed, exhausted, wanting only to sleep.

But sleep refused to come.

She’s been lying here for hours now, staring at the shadows on the ceiling as the kitten purrs peacefully at the foot of the bed. She can’t seem to stop her mind from working; she keeps going over and over what happened in Geneseo: the confrontation with the sinister Sharon Logan, and finding out that Darrin really did kill her mother, and wondering what she’s going to find out in Florida next weekend.

At last, she feels sleep beginning to overtake her. Her eyelids close.

One thing is certain: first thing tomorrow, she’s going to go next door to use the Taggarts’ computer and check the name “Tom Leolyn.”

She burrows into her quilt, absently wishing she had on warmer pajamas. It’ll be good to get to Florida on Friday and feel warm again for a change.

For the first time, she allows herself to think past her obsessive mission there and considers the fact that she’s about to step back into her old life. What will it be like, weather aside, to be back in Tampa?

Again, she thinks of Kevin, missing him, remembering the good times . . .

Hearing Gert’s startled meow and abrupt scrambling at the foot of the bed, Calla opens her eyes.

What the—?

Gert has fled the room.

And Darrin—Tom—is standing across the room, looking directly at Calla.

With a terrified scream, she bolts from the bed.

“Stephanie!” he calls after her. “Wait!”

“Gammy! Gammy!” Calla shrieks, and bursts into her grandmother’s room to find Odelia sound asleep.

“Gammy!”

“Wh-what?”

“Wake up! Someone’s in my room!”

“What?!”

“Someone’s in my room!” Frantic, Calla looks around for a phone. “Call the police! Hurry!”

“There’s no phone up here.” Odelia grabs the table lamp from the nightstand, casts the paper shade aside, and yanks the plug from the wall, then barrels fearlessly toward the hall with it, Calla dogging her heels.

She pictures her grandmother hitting Darrin over the head with the lamp and can only hope he won’t retaliate. Remembering the scene with the intruder—who meant to kill her— she has to force herself not to turn and run right down the stairs and out of the house.

Instead, she follows Odelia into her room . . . and stops short.

“There’s no one here,” her grandmother says, and bends to peek under the bed.

“Careful, Gammy!”

“No one.” Odelia opens the closet. “No one here, either.”

“But he was! He was here! I saw him!” He must have escaped from the room while she was across the hall. Either he ran off into the night, or he’s still lurking somewhere in the house.

“Who was here?” Odelia asks.

“Darrin Yates.”

Her grandmother’s mouth tightens into a straight line.

“I’m sure it was just a dream. A nightmare.”

“No, Gammy, he was here. He must have . . .”

Followed me home from Geneseo,
is what she was going to say. But she can’t.

Her grandmother doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s only natural that you’d be having nightmares, after what you went through a few weeks ago with that maniac who tried to kill you.”

“But it wasn’t a nightmare. He was here.”

Her grandmother hugs her. “I know how real it seems when you wake up from something like that—you think it really happened.”

It did really happen,
she thinks stubbornly.
He really was here.

Why?

Maybe he’s lost his mind—he killed someone, he must be crazy, right?—and he really does think Calla is her mother.

Maybe he’s come after her to kill her all over again.

Or maybe he honestly believes she’s her mother’s ghost. He grew up here in Lily Dale and his parents are mediums— he’s no stranger to people seeing the dead; maybe he sees them himself.

“I guess I don’t need this,” Odelia says, gesturing wryly with the table lamp.

Calla says nothing.

“Most people just use a flashlight to see their way around a dark house at night. Leave it to me to go overboard, huh?” Odelia chuckles, then looks closely at Calla. “I’m trying to make you laugh.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She sighs. “Gammy, can you please check the house and make sure there’s no one here? I’m really freaked out about this. I can’t help it.”

“Sure. Let’s do it together. Come on.”

They go through the house from top to bottom. Gert turns up downstairs, looking agitated—at least, in Calla’s opinion.

Odelia scoops her into her arms and carries her around, making a big show of checking behind doors and curtains, under the furniture, even inside the kitchen cupboards, at which point Calla realizes her grandmother is strictly humoring her.

“There’s nobody here,” Odelia says. “Just you and me and Gert . . . and maybe Miriam. You don’t think she’s the one you saw?”

Calla shakes her head. “No. I saw Darrin Yates.” Tom Leolyn. Her mother’s killer.

“In a dream.”

“I wasn’t dreaming. Gert was on my bed, and he scared her, and I opened my eyes and there he was.”

“Gert is down here, though,” Odelia reminds her.

“Now she is. She was on my bed. She ran away when he showed up.”

Odelia says nothing, just pets Gert in her arms.

I wish you could talk,
Calla silently tells the kitten, who looks back at her with unblinking green eyes.
You know he was
there.You saw him, too.