Connecting (29 page)

Wave after wave of nostalgia sweeps through Calla. This is—no, this
was
—home, all her life.

Suddenly, Lily Dale seems farther away than the faint yellow crescent moon rising against the tropical sky, and just as remote.

“There.” Lisa points, and Calla spots the Wilsons’ white Lexus pulling up. “Let’s go.”

The trunk pops remotely, and she tosses Calla’s bag inside. “Get in the front, I’ll sit in the back.”

Seeing only a tall, broad-shouldered driver silhouetted beyond the tinted glass, Calla realizes she’ll have to wait to see Mrs. Wilson until they get back to Lisa’s house.

She climbs into the front seat, prepared to greet Lisa’s father—but he’s not the one sitting behind the wheel.

It’s Kevin.

He’s not as tanned as usual and his shaggy blond hair is a shade darker than the last time she saw him. Instead of one of his surfer T-shirts he’s wearing a preppy looking navy polo, but in the open vee of his collar she can see the hemp and puka shell necklace she gave him back when they were dating.

“Hi,” he says simply, and smiles at her.

Like everything else here, he looks really good to her, and achingly familiar.

Lisa leans in from the backseat. “Kevin flew home this morning. He offered to come back to the airport with me to pick you up because my parents are at this charity thing tonight, and you know how I hate to drive on the highway.”

Lisa does not hate to drive on the highway. In fact, she likes to drive on the highway every chance she gets, and at breakneck speed.

But Calla doesn’t call her on it. She just stares out the windshield as Kevin navigates the airport service roads, then the highway.

“Did you eat dinner on the plane?” he asks as they drive past a strip mall with a bunch of chain restaurants.

“Yeah,” she lies. Actually, she slept on the plane, and it was a relief to get a break from all that’s been on her mind in her waking hours.

Not only that, but the plane was teeming with spirits who apparently enjoy hitching rides or stowing away or whatever it is one would call a planeload of unticketed passengers. Calla has never seen so many ghosts concentrated in one place before, and it occurred to her that they might be fueled by all that excess nervous energy among the fearful fliers. She’ll have to ask her grandmother about that someday.

Kevin doesn’t say much else, just drives, but Lisa is full of questions and comments about Calla’s life and her own, as always. Calla does her best to participate in the conversation, just glad Lisa’s not asking about Mom’s death, or what Calla hopes to accomplish by being here this weekend. Either she’s being tactful because Kevin’s in the car, or it’s totally off her radar. Calla would bet on the latter.

They wind their way through the Wilsons’ private gated community just off of Westshore, in Calla’s old neighborhood. The oversized modern homes surrounded by elegant royal palms and manicured lawns look foreign to her now, and she notices that there are very few people outside in their yards or on the street or chatting with the neighbors. Not like in Lily Dale.

“Hey, how’s your dad doing?” Lisa wants to know.

“Oh, he’s actually thinking of leaving California.”

“Are you serious? Does that mean you’re coming back here?”

Lisa sounds so excited at the prospect that Calla feels a twinge of guilt telling her no, and another twinge of guilt when she blames it on her father. “Dad isn’t ready to come back to Tampa yet. He’ll probably rent a place near Lily Dale until the school year is over.”

“I thought you said he’s broke.”

“He is, pretty much.” Not that she thought to ask him about their money situation when he told her about the change of plans. “But everything is a lot cheaper there than it is in California—or here.”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t have to rent at all if he just came home,” Lisa points out.

“I don’t think he wants to stay in that house just yet. Not after what happened to Mom there. I mean, neither of us could wait to leave after that, remember?”

“I thought you were dreading leaving.”

“Was I?” Suddenly, it’s so hard to recall her pre–Lily Dale life.

“Well, if you come back here you can always stay with us—both of you, even—I kept telling you that before you left for New York.”

Yes, and Calla kept telling Lisa the primary reason why she couldn’t stay with the Wilsons: Kevin.

“Here we are, home, sweet home,” he announces as the Wilsons’ two-story home—stucco, Spanish-style, with a red tiled roof—comes into view.

At the sight of it, a ferocious lump threatens to strangle Calla. They all shared so many good times here. Her life was so normal then, so filled with promise . . .

But it’s as if it all happened to somebody else—and really, it did. Calla is no longer the carefree girl whose biggest concern is whether to wear the white or black bikini to the beach.

Kevin insists on carrying her bag into the air-conditioned house, professionally decorated with warm tropical splashes of color against a pristine white backdrop.

“I’ll put this in the guest room for you, Calla.”

“Thanks.” She waits till he’s disappeared upstairs, then hisses at Lisa, “Jeez, why didn’t you warn me he was coming to the airport?”

“I didn’t know until you were already on your way. Anyway, what’s the big deal?”

She’s right. What’s the big deal?

Sure, Calla once believed Kevin was the love of her life, but he doesn’t mean anything to her anymore. He’s just her friend’s older brother. Period.

Yeah, right.

“Why don’t you go up and get changed?” Lisa offers, eyeing Calla’s jeans and sweater. “You look like you’re all bundled up in that.”

The clothing, which felt too lightweight against the October chill when she got out of her grandmother’s car back at the Buffalo airport a mere few hours ago, does feel much too heavy down here.

“Go ahead. . . . I’ll go get us some Cokes and find those pictures I was telling you about, from Billy Pijuan’s party a few weeks ago.”

“Great!” Calla tries to look as though she can’t wait to check out photos of her old friends, when in reality, she hasn’t missed them all that much.

Only Lisa still feels like a part of her life now. She suspects that the others, though she’s known them since kindergarten, will probably fade into the past now that her era at the elite Shoreside Day School is firmly behind her.

Meanwhile, she’s only known her Lily Dale friends for a month or two, and already they’re among her closest confidantes.

Funny how things change. Funny, and kind of sad.

Alone upstairs, Calla sheds her layers for shorts and a T-shirt, finding that her arms, legs, and feet seem too pale and awkwardly bare. It wasn’t so long ago that she was back in Lily Dale, first growing accustomed to the weight of jeans and fleece after a Florida summer interrupted.

I guess that proves you can get used to anything,
Calla thinks as she opens the guest room door, the emerald bracelet reassuringly visible on her wrist.

“Oh, sorry.” Kevin, just coming down the hall and about to crash right into her, stops short.

Why does he have to be right here again, right in front of her, making her remember all the chemistry they had between them once upon a time?

Never mind that, why is the chemistry threatening to pop up again despite all that’s happened?

And why is she suddenly finding it impossible to hate Kevin for the unhappily-ever-after ending to their once-upon-a-time?

“Now you look more like you,” he says, looking her up and down, and her heart skips a beat.

Cut it out.You can’t do this.

No, she can’t go around wistfully longing for the old days with Kevin. He’s changed. She’s changed. They’re over. He has college and Annie; she has Lily Dale and Jacy.

“You mean I look more like the old me.”

“Yeah.”

“The one you broke up with.”

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “About that . . .”

Trailing off, he looks at her as though waiting for her to interrupt, to tell him not to go there. No way. Let him fumble awkwardly. Let her be in control for once.

The least he can do—after breaking up with her in a text message, for Pete’s sake—is make himself accountable to her.

“What about it?” she asks, all but tapping her foot and wearing an
I’m waiting
expression.

“Okay, I’ll admit it. I was an idiot, and a coward. . . .”

“A jerk. Don’t forget jerk.”

He gives an awkward laugh. “Hey, don’t mince any words, here.”

She doesn’t laugh. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

“I just hate that this has been hanging between us for all these months, unresolved.”

“Who says it’s unresolved?” She shakes her head. “You resolved it for both of us, back in April. And now you have a girlfriend, so I’d say that’s pretty resolved.”

“Not anymore.”

“What?”

“I broke up with her.”

“In person? Or did you text her, too?” she forces herself to ask with a flip toss of her head, as though the news has nothing whatsoever to do with her. Which, she reminds herself, it doesn’t.

“You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?”

“Probably not. I thought Annie was a great girl.”

“You know her name?”

Oops. She shrugs, as though she could care less about her replacement—her temporary replacement, actually.

“She is a great girl,” Kevin says.

“Then why did you break up with her?”

“A lot of reasons. Does it matter?”

“No,” she says, “it definitely doesn’t.” Not considering that she herself is a great girl, and he broke up with her, too.

“Don’t you think it’s a huge coincidence,” Kevin asks, his ocean-blue eyes fastened on her face, “that we both ended up in New York, just a few miles apart?”

“Ithaca and Lily Dale aren’t a few miles apart,” she points out, her pulse pounding. She wants to take a step back from him, but her bare feet remain stubbornly rooted to the cool tile floor. She needs to see this through.

“Well, in the grand scheme of things, Ithaca and Lily Dale aren’t all that far apart, don’t you think?”

Calla shrugs. This isn’t the first time she’s thought about that.

Yes, it’s a coincidence that they both ended up in the same part of New York State—if you believe in coincidences.

Most people in Lily Dale do not.

But what can it possibly mean—Calla and Kevin finding themselves living in relatively close proximity again?

It doesn’t mean that they’re destined to be together after all.

No, because . . .

Wait, why can’t we be together again?

Annie is no longer in the picture, and . . .

Jacy.

You have Jacy now. Remember?

Jacy would never hurt you the way Kevin did.

Okay, six months ago, she’d have told herself that Kevin was incapable of hurting her, too.

But he did.

And she won’t let herself forget it.

“I have to go find Lisa,” she tells Kevin, stepping away from him at last, moving around him, past him.

“Fair enough,” he calls after her, “but don’t write me off just yet, Calla. Promise me you won’t.”

She doesn’t bother to reply.

And as happy as she is to see Lisa again, all she really wants to do is get this Florida visit over and get back to Lily Dale, and Gammy, and Jacy.

Back where she belongs now.

TWENTY-ONE

Tampa, Florida
Saturday, October 6
10:41 a.m.

If seeing the Wilsons’ house again last night after all this time was difficult for Calla, seeing her own house this morning is . . .

Well, heart-wrenching agony doesn’t begin to describe the fierce emotion that grips her as she climbs off Lisa’s bike and walks it slowly up the driveway.

Maybe she should have waited until Lisa could come with her after all.

But her friend had to work the senior class car wash this morning, and Calla had no desire to accompany her and see the old gang again. Lisa was surprised and disappointed— maybe even a little peeved. When Calla asked what time Lisa would be home, she said she had no idea and that Calla should just take the bike and ride over here herself.

“I just don’t get why you want to go snooping around in your mother’s stuff,” Lisa said.

“Because I have to find out if there’s more to it.”

“Her death?” Lisa shook her head. “You can’t obsess about that for the rest of your life.”

“Sure I can,” Calla shot back, resenting Lisa, whose mother was at that very moment downstairs ironing Lisa’s T-shirt and shorts after whipping up homemade blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

Lisa didn’t say a whole lot after that. Just got dressed, rolled her bike out of the garage for Calla, and wished her luck.