Discovering (22 page)
Puzzled, she hurries back over to the window and peers down at the street.
After a few moments, a figure emerges from the front door of the building. It’s the same woman Laura just glimpsed in the hallway. She’s dressed in some kind of long white dress and wears her jet black hair in a bun.
After descending from the stoop to the sidewalk she pauses and looks directly up at Laura’s window.
Her face is exotically beautiful and completely unfamiliar. But there’s something so warm and reassuring in the smile she beams at Laura that Laura can’t help but return it.
She quickly opens the window and sticks her head out, calling, “Excuse me!”
But somehow, the woman is gone.
She couldn’t have stepped into a cab—there aren’t any in sight. Laura cranes her neck to look up and down the street, but she’s nowhere to be seen. How on earth could she have walked away so quickly?
“Hi, Laura!”Liz Jessee, holding her broom, steps into view on the stoop.
“Liz! Did you see where she went?”
“Who?”
“The delivery woman.”
“What delivery woman?”
“From the florist. She just left me flowers.”And a plane ticket.
Which isn’t the only odd thing that’s happened lately.
“When did she leave them?”
“Just now.”
“Now?”Liz echoes. “But . . . it’s so early.”
“I know . Did you see which way she went when she came out of the building?”she asks again, trying not to sound impatient.
“I didn’t see anyone come out of the building,”Liz tells her. “I’ve been here for the last ten minutes, sweeping the front vestibule.”
“But . . .”
“Laura, are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“I’m just . . . feeling under the weather,”she says slowly. “I think I’ll go lie down.”
“Oh . . . the exterminator is coming at nine o’clock sharp. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Exterminator?”
“For the roaches. Last night. Remember?”
Oh. Right. The roaches.
Which don’t exist.
Just like the man at the foot of her bed, who didn’t exist.
And now the floral delivery woman, who also doesn’t exist.
Laura tells Liz that’ll be fine, closes the window, and turns around, wondering what she’ll find.
Who knows? Maybe she imagined the flowers and the ticket home, too.
Of course she did.
Everyone knows florists don’t deliver airline vouchers.
Except . . . this one does.
Because the voucher— and the vase filled with beautiful white lilies— calla lilies—is definitely real.
Lily Dale
Friday, October 12
7:25 a.m.
“Lisa! Thank goodness you didn’t leave for school yet!”
“Calla?”On the other end of the telephone line, her friend sounds bewildered. “What are you doing calling so early? Is everything okay?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, no. What happened?”
Where to begin?
She sinks into a chair at her grandmother’s kitchen table.
Maybe it was a mistake to call Lisa right now. She did it impulsively, as she was getting ready to head out the door to school. Odelia is still asleep upstairs—Calla checked several times as she was taking a shower and getting dressed and using makeup in an attempt to mask the evidence of her rough, sleepless night.
Knowing Evangeline left for school early today, she found herself feeling desperate to talk to someone.
I guess I just have to say it out loud,
Calla decides.
To make
sure it’s really true.
Which really makes no sense.
She knows it’s true.
She was up all night, reading and rereading her mother’s computer files.
“The thing is, Lis’ . . . last night, I found out that I have a sister.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. I know . Crazy, right?”She gives a shaky, humorless laugh.
“What are you talking about? How can you have a sister?”
“It’s a half sister, really. My mother had a baby with her old boyfriend.”
“You have a baby sister and she didn’t tell you? But how—”
“No! No, this was years ago. Before she even met my dad. It’s not a baby sister, it’s a grown- up sister. Half sister.”
“I can’t believe this,”Lisa drawls.
“I can’t, either.”Calla toys with the strap of her duffel bag, packed for the weekend and draped over the back of the chair, ready for her grandmother to deliver to Dad later . . . along with the bombshell discovery.
“Did you meet her?”
“No! I didn’t even know she existed until a few hours ago.”Calla draws a deep breath. “She was actually adopted by Sharon Logan.”
“Who’s that?”
“The woman who—”
“I just remembered! That horrid woman?”
“Yes.”
“This is unbelievable, Calla. I can’t . . . I just don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just needed to call you.”
“I wish I was there.”
“I wish you were, too,”she says miserably, trying hard not to start crying again. It’s bad enough for her to be going to school today with circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. Red and swollen eyes from fresh tears will make people ask questions.
“Do you want me to call Kevin and ask him to drive over from Ithaca?”
“What? No!”That’s the
last
thing she wants.
“He’d want to be there for you, Calla. He’s really worried. And he said you never answered any of his e-mails.”
“I just did, last night.”
And he should have been there for me months ago. Now it’s
too late.
“Really? You haven’t answered any of mine.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”Suddenly, she feels so weary she can barely speak.
It was probably a mistake to call Lisa. She can be so . . . needy. And right now, Calla is too needy herself to be there for anyone else . . . let alone deal with an ex-boyfriend.
Yes, Kevin and Lisa—and their parents— were there for her and Dad last weekend, in Florida.
Yes, Calla welcomed their support. Even Kevin’s.
But now that she’s back in Lily Dale . . .
There are just some things they will never understand.
“Lisa, you know what? I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for school.”
“Okay. . . . I’ll call you this afternoon.”
“Okay. Wait! Don’t. I’ll be gone.”
“Where are you going?”
“To look at colleges with my dad.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “You mean, around there?”
“In Pennsylvania, and . . . around New York.”She doesn’t want to mention Cornell. In fact, she doesn’t even want to
go
to
Cornell.
“What about down here?”
“We were just there, and . . . we can’t drive there in a weekend!”She tries to make light of it.
“So you’re not going to apply to schools with me, like we said?”
This is not a conversation Calla wants to be having now, in the midst of everything else that’s gone on.
“Lis’, I don’t know for sure where I’m going to apply. But . . . I mean, Florida has some bad memories for me, and it’s so far away.”
“New York is so far away,”Lisa returns, “from me. We always had plans to go to college together.”
I had a lot of plans that aren’t going to work out
, Calla wants to tell her.
You can never really count on anything, because your whole
world can shatter in an instant.
But Lisa doesn’t get it. She doesn’t yet realize that nothing in life is guaranteed.
“You know I love you, Lisa, and I miss you every single day. And no matter where we end up next year, we’ll always be friends. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know that.”But her voice sounds hollow. “I have to get to school now, too. I’ll talk to you after the weekend.”
“Definitely. Bye, Lis’.”
“Wait, Calla? About the other thing? I’m happy for you— that you have a sister. You always wished you weren’t an only child. Remember? We used to pretend we were sisters.”
She smiles sadly. “I remember.”
“I wish—”
“Lis’, you’re still like a sister to me. Like I said, we’ll always be friends.”
Friends living separate lives, a thousand miles apart.
Unless I really do decide to go back down south.
She hangs up the phone, pulls on her jacket, and picks up her backpack. As she steps out into the crisp morning, with a hint of sun filtering through red and gold autumn leaves, she knows in her heart that Florida is behind her for good.
Lily Dale
Friday, October 12
3:20 p.m.
Stepping through the big double doors at the school’s main entrance with Jacy at her side, Calla immediately spots her father, parked in his rental car at the curb.
She can’t see his expression from here.
But he knows.
She can feel it. Her grandmother told him everything while Calla was in school, just as Calla asked her to.
Jacy reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “Are you going to be okay?”
Is she?
“I don’t know . This is hard.”
“Yeah. I know .”
Earlier, between classes, she pulled him aside and told him everything. Evangeline, too.
In a way, it felt good to let out the last of her deep, dark secrets. But then, Jacy and Evangeline aren’t directly impacted by the news that Mom had a baby— and perhaps, a secret lover— and that Calla has a long-lost sister.
Dad is definitely impacted.
“I kind of wish we weren’t going away together for three whole days,”she tells Jacy. “It’s like there’s no escaping any of it.”
“There probably wouldn’t be if you stayed here, either.”
“True.”
“But I wish you weren’t going away for three days, too.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re having another vision of me in danger.”
“No. I’ll just miss you.”
Her heart skips a beat. “I’ll miss you, too.”
Looking up at him, Calla wishes everything and everyone— the noisy school, the people, her father and his car, the weekend ahead—could just fall away, leaving her alone with Jacy. Judging by the look in his eyes, he’s wishing the same thing.
He leans in and kisses her—not the way he wants to, she senses, and not the way she wants him to—but in a way that’s appropriate for broad daylight, at school, with her father in the vicinity.
“You better get going.”
“Yeah.”She sighs. “Good luck at your track meet later.”
“Thanks.”
He gives a wave and heads off down the hall toward the boys’ locker room.
Reluctantly, Calla walks down the steps through a cold drizzle. As she reaches for the car door handle, she lowers her head to check her father’s face through the window.
It’s not tear- stained, to her relief. He looks normal. Serious, but normal.
She climbs in. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, Cal’.”He pulls away from the curb, past the waiting line of yellow school buses. “Put on your seat belt.”
She does, wondering if they’re still going away for the weekend now that he knows. She doesn’t want to come right out and ask. What if she was wrong and he doesn’t know? What if, for some reason, Gammy decided not to tell him?
“Dad? Did you remember to pick up my overnight bag?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
How is she going to bring up what happened last night?
What if he doesn’t?
What if she has to wonder all weekend whether— “Calla, I had a long talk with your grandmother this morning. And with Detective Lutz and Detective Kearney.”
Oh.
Okay, then.
He knows.
She takes a deep breath, glad he’s driving so they don’t have to look each other in the eye. “Was it about Mom?”
“Yes, and the first thing I want you to know is that I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me. I can live with this. All right?”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Was it easy to hear that Mom kept something this big from me for all these years? I won’t lie to you. It wasn’t. But I’ll survive, and so will you. And now, maybe we’ll get some answers.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“They wrote down everything and they said they’ll look into it.”He shrugs. “They had already been trying to locate Sharon Logan’s daughter, Laura, from what I understand.”