Discovering (20 page)

Old habits die hard.

All her life, she had been teased about living in the neon purple house. As if the paint job had anything to do with her.

“It’s my mother’s favorite color,”she would explain, as if that made it better, somehow.

But it beat the truth: that Mother had always believed for some reason that the purple would ward off evil spirits.

She had always been superstitious—not like regular people, who might not walk under a ladder or sit in the thirteenth row on a plane.

No, she was superstitious to the extreme, paranoid about everything—just plain crazy, Laura eventually realized.

That’s why she had escaped every chance she got—even if just to sit outside in the sun and pretend, for a while, that she was a normal person living a normal life.

If she hadn’t been out there on that beautiful day last spring, she never would have overheard the conversation between Mom and the man who came to the door.

She never would have discovered that she, Laura Logan, wasn’t the daughter of a crazy woman and the nameless, faceless man who had supposedly run off and left her mother before Laura was even born.

Her real father was the stranger on the porch.

He introduced himself as Tom Leolyn and said he had given up his newborn daughter to an illegal adoption ring more than twenty years ago. Her real mother had been told the baby hadn’t survived.

They were just kids at the time, he said. He hadn’t known any better. It had all been a terrible mistake.

Laura sat in stunned silence, listening—and waiting for the inevitable violent reaction from Mother.

Who really wasn’t her mother at all.

For Laura, that discovery was the answer to her most fervent prayer—that she would somehow find a way to escape her oppressive existence.

Father Donald, the kindly parish priest in town who had befriended her when she was a forlorn little girl, had always promised that her prayers would be answered one day, if she only had faith.

Faith, and hope. Those were the two things he wanted her to have. She clung to both in all those miserable years of abuse at the hands of a mentally ill woman who should never have been allowed to raise a child.

That, Laura realized as she sat there eavesdropping, must have been why Sharon Logan had resorted to illegal adoption. No one in their right mind would entrust a baby to her.

“I’ll need to think about this,”she told Laura’s real father that day at her doorstep, after a long silence. “Tell me where to reach you.”

Laura—who had witnessed a lifetime of ranting fits over the slightest mishap— was shocked by the response.

“I’ll give you my phone number,”Tom began, but Mother interrupted him.

“I’ll take that, and your address, too. So that I know where you are, when it comes time to find you.”

It was an odd thing for her to say, Laura thought.

But then, Mother was nothing if not odd.

The stranger gave her his address, somewhere in Maine, and went on his way, and Mother never said a word about it.

Laura waited until Mother left the house to run errands, then searched the house until she found—under Mother’s mattress—the papers that proved the stranger correct.

Standing there holding the proof that she had been bought, as an infant, like a piece of livestock, Laura sobbed.

Not sorrowful tears.

Tears of sheer relief.

And the blanket of guilt that had smothered her for as long as she could remember—guilt for not loving her own mother— began to lift at last.

Now it all made sense.

Now she was free to run away and never look back.

She huddles deeper into the blanket, trying to forget what she’d had to do in order to make that happen.

Stealing all that money from Mother was probably wrong.

Probably?

Of course it was.

But it was her only option. She had no money to her own name. Mother demanded that she hand over every cent she earned at the data-entry job she’d been working since high school graduation. Laura had always been well aware that all that cash was hidden around the house. Mother was much too paranoid to keep it in a bank.

When she helped herself to thousands of dollars from the stash, Laura reminded herself that she was only reclaiming what was rightfully hers.

Without it, she couldn’t have fled to New York City, found an apartment, bought a decent wardrobe so that she could find work.

Before she left, she went to see her old friend, Father Donald.

“I’m leaving,”she told him. “Please don’t tell my mother if she asks.”

He nodded with understanding. “Where are you going, child?”

“To New York City. I have to get away from her. I just found out—she’s not even my real mother.”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask for an explanation, and she didn’t offer one. The less he knew, the better.

“I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for me,”she told him, “And to say good- bye.”

He hugged her, then blessed her, praying over her with a gentle hand on her forehead.

She went into the confessional on her way out. It made her feel a little better about stealing the money.

Still, it’s bothered her ever since— and not just because of a guilty conscience.

For all she knows, Mother reported the theft to the police. They could very well be looking for her now.

She was convinced Mother herself was looking for her until the day she read about Sharon Logan being jailed for murder in Florida.

That doesn’t mean Laura won’t be found by the authorities and arrested for stealing the money. Or, at the very least, stripped of the fragile new life she’s attempting to build here, three-hundred- odd miles and a world away from Geneseo.

That can’t happen.

She can’t let that happen.

For the first time, she’s living life on her own terms.

Sleep. . . . I need to sleep.

But it’s so cold.

Shivering even beneath the weight of two blankets, Laura contemplates getting out of bed to turn up the thermostat. It was already on seventy-two when she went to bed, though. How much warmer can she set it?

The strange thing is . . .

It doesn’t feel like seventy-two in this room. More like a good thirty or forty degrees colder.

Curling onto her side in an attempt to use her own body heat for warmth, Laura spots something a few feet away from her.

Not something.

Someone
.

A male figure is standing in the shadows near the foot of the bed.

Even as Laura lets out a blood- curdling scream, she recognizes him.

It’s her father.

Her
real
father: Tom Leolyn.

Paralyzed with fear, she stares at him.

How did he get in?

What does he want?

Is he here to hurt her?

No. He can’t be.

Somehow, she senses that he doesn’t mean her any harm.

But that doesn’t make it any less disturbing to find someone standing over your bed in the middle of the night.

Summoning every shred of courage she possesses, Laura manages to speak at last. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“She’s looking for you.”

“But—she’s in jail.”

“No.”He shakes his head vehemently. “Not—”

The piercing ring of the telephone shatters the night.

Laura instinctively looks toward the receiver on her bedside table.

As she reaches for it, she glances back at her midnight visitor.

He’s gone.

How can it be?

She flips on the lamp, looks wildly around the room, leans over the edge of the bed to see if he’s dropped to the floor; looks under the bed to see if he’s hiding there.

No sign of him.

And the phone is still ringing.

You must have been dreaming. You fell asleep without realizing it,
and you dreamed he was here.

Of course.

That makes perfect sense.

Rather, it
would
make perfect sense . . . if she hadn’t felt as though she were wide awake the whole time.

Well, that’s how it is with some dreams,
she reminds herself as she picks up the phone at last.
They seem so real you could swear
they actually took place.

She looks at the Caller ID window. It’s a local 212 number.

“Laura, it’s Liz,”a voice says in her ear. “Are you okay?”

Liz . . . ?

“I heard you scream!”

Oh. Liz Jessee. The landlady.

Her apartment is right across the hall from Laura’s.

“I’m fine. I just saw . . . a roach.”

“A roach! Oh, no! Please tell me you didn’t.”

But then Laura would have to come up with some other reason she’d be screaming in the night.

“It’s New York,”she murmurs. “These things happen.”

“Not in
my
building.”

As Liz Jessee assures her that she’ll send an exterminator to take care of the problem first thing in the morning, Laura looks again at the spot where she saw the stranger who claimed to be her father.

Still empty.

Of course it is.

And, she realizes, the room is comfortably warm now.

Now
?

It was always warm.

Of course it was.

Because she dreamed about the chill, and she dreamed about the intruder.

Just as she keeps dreaming about the argument between those two women, and the little Victorian cottages by an unfamiliar lake, and the fragrant white flowers.

TWENTY-ONE

Lily Dale
Friday, October 12
12:33 a.m.

“Goodnight, Odelia. Thanks for everything!”Ramona’s voice carries from the front hall up to where Calla sits, knees bent and back against the wall, in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

“I’m the one who should be thanking
you
! If we play poker every night like this, I’ll be able to afford a fancy vacation this winter.”

“If we play poker every night like this, I’ll have to stay in your house while you’re on your fancy vacation this winter,”Ramona returns with a laugh, “because I’ll be living out on the streets.”

“I’ll be right there with you,”Dad says. “I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to play poker with a bunch of psychics. All I’ve got left are the clothes on my back.”

“Just be glad we weren’t playing strip poker,”Andy tells him, “because then you wouldn’t even have that.”

Raucous laughter floats up to Calla’s ears.

Please go. Just go,
she silently begs Dad, Ramona, and Andy.

But she’s been willing the three of them to leave for a couple of hours now, to no avail. They all had a grand old time down there playing cards while Calla paced her room, quietly freaking out about what she discovered in her mother’s e-mail.

She has a sister.

In Geneseo.

Illegally adopted at birth.

Her name is Laura Logan.

Psychic skills are hardly required to figure out that there’s some connection between Laura and Sharon Logan and the purple house.

From the rest of the e-mails exchanged after Tom came to Florida to show Mom the photos, Calla learned that he had gone to Geneseo himself a few weeks later. There, he had spoken to the adoptive mother, Sharon, who had seemed receptive to putting him and Mom in touch with their daughter, now grown.

I didn’t get to see her, but I’m sure I will, eventually. We both will. I told her adoptive mother where to find me.

Those words ring ominously in Calla’s head.

Sharon Logan had found him, all right.

Found him— and killed him.

At last, Calla hears the front door close and lock in the hallway below. She leans over and peeks around the newel post at the top of the stairs.

Her grandmother is standing at the door, parting the window curtain to watch the others leave. After a few moments, she reaches for the wall switch and flicks off the porch light, then the hall light.

“Gammy?”Calla calls, as she turns toward the stairs to start up.

Odelia gasps. “Calla! You scared the life out of me!”She rests a hand against her rib cage.

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing up? It’s a school night, and you have a big trip coming up tomorrow with your dad.”

“Gammy, I need to talk to you.”

Her grandmother peers up at her. “Are you crying? Is something wrong?”

The answer to both questions is yes, but Calla can’t seem to find her voice.

“Calla?”Odelia hurries up the stairs toward her. “What happened?”