Discovering (5 page)

“Hmm . . . maybe that could be arranged.”

They’re flirting. It’s so weird. Calla turns to glance at her grandmother to see if she’s noticed. Yup. There’s a thoughtful expression on Odelia’s face and a gleam in her eye.

They pass the open doorway to Evangeline’s room, then her brother’s. “Company, Mason,”Ramona calls to her nephew, who’s sprawled on his bed with a handheld computer game.

Looking at Mason is like looking at Evangeline—rather, looking at her if she wore owlish glasses, had frizzy, close-cropped red hair, and was perpetually fixated on a book or a screen of some sort.

“Say hello, Mason.”

“Hello.”His hazel eyes never leave the game.

“Remember Calla’s dad, Jeff? He’s going to be staying in the guest room for a while.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ramona sighs. “He’s normally much more communicative.”

He is? Calla’s never witnessed it, but who knows? Maybe Mason turns into a real live wire when she’s not around.

“I’ll see you later, huh, Mason?”Dad says.

Mason—who lost both his parents before he was old enough to remember them— actually looks up. “Sure. See you later.”

Watching the two exchange a brief smile before Ramona leads the group down the hall again, Calla can’t help but feel a tiny flicker of jealousy.

It suddenly occurs to her that Mason—and Evangeline, too— will be sharing a house with her father now. And that she herself won’t be.

She had thought it would be a good thing to keep him at arm’s length, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’s missed him too much for that.

“This is it,”Ramona announces, and opens the door to the guest room with a jangle of bracelets.

There’s a bed, dresser, and small bedside table that holds a fan of magazines and a vase of purple asters obviously cut from the clump growing beside the Taggarts’ front porch.

“This is charming,”Dad declares, and turns to Calla. “What do you think?”

“Charming,”she agrees.

“And the best part of all is that your dad will be right next door,”Ramona drapes an arm around Calla’s shoulders and squeezes her. “I know how much you two have missed each other.”

“We have. Thanks, Ra—”Calla breaks off, stunned to see one of the magazines flying off the bedside table. It seems to hover in midair before landing on the floor at her feet.

Her father, with his back to the table, didn’t see what happened, but Odelia and Ramona did. They exchange a nervous glance.

“I must have bumped into this. I’m such a klutz. Oh well, my secret is out,”Ramona says lightly, reaching for the magazine.

Her secret is out?

Calla braces herself, thinking she’s about to reveal her supernatural abilities.

Her grandmother obviously thinks the same thing because she shoots Ramona a look of dismay.

“What secret is that?”Dad asks with interest.

“That I’m the ultimate pack rat. I never throw anything away. See?”

Calla all but sighs in relief as Ramona holds up the magazine’s cover. On it is a photograph of a smiling, familiar woman and the headline
AN INTERVIEW WITH NEW FIRST LADY LAURA
BUSH
.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with outdated reading material,”comments Odelia, whose cluttered coffee table brings to mind a dentist’s waiting room. “Right, Calla?”

“Right,”she murmurs, and looks around the room for a wanton spirit who might be responsible for the mishap.

She can’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean there’s no one around.

“I’m a pack rat, too,”Dad comments. “It used to drive my wife crazy.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence.

“It didn’t bother Mom all that much, Dad,”Calla feels obligated to say. “As long as you kept your mess out of her way.”

“Stephanie liked things to be or ga nized,”Gammy explains to Ramona.

“I wish I could be like that. Me, I’m just the opposite.”

“Same here.”

Ramona and Dad smile at each other.

Calla and her grandmother look at each other.

She’s thinking what I’m thinking
.
She knows something’s going
to happen between them, too.

Somewhere downstairs, a door slams.

“I’m home, Aunt Ramona!”Evangeline’s voice calls. “And Russell’s with me, so if you’re coming downstairs, make sure you’re decent!”

Odelia snorts. “You have a habit of being indecent?”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I’m about to get into the shower and realize I left the oven on or I forgot something, and I run downstairs in a towel,”Ramona admits with her usual free-and-easy candor. “But I’ll make sure I change that habit now that Jeff is here.”

“Oh, don’t change your habits on my account,”Dad says with a wave of his hand. Then he turns a bright, burning red. “I mean . . . it’s not that I want you to be indecent or anything . . . just . . . you know . . . I, uh, I don’t want you to, uh . . .”

Under different circumstances, Calla might find it sweet, the way he’s stammering and fumbling like a kid with a crush. But he’s her father, for Pete’s sake, and Ramona is . . . well,
not
her mother. Plus, she’s a kooky medium.

Not that
all
mediums are kooky.

But Ramona sure is. She’s a total free spirit.

A total free spirit who’s definitely looking for love. Ramona has shared plenty of amusing hard- luck dating stories with Calla since they met a few months ago.

Which is part of the reason Calla has always liked her so much . . . until right about now.

“Aunt Ramona?”Evangeline calls again from downstairs. “Anybody home?”

“I’ll be right down! And I’m not alone so I hope you’re decent!”Grinning, Ramona leads the way back to the first floor.

Calla really wishes she hadn’t allowed Dad and Gammy to drag her over here. Evangeline hasn’t exactly forgiven her for going out with Jacy, her longtime crush. Still, when they saw each other at school on Thursday, Calla did her best to make amends, and Evangeline seemed to melt just a little.

There she is, waiting at the foot of the stairs with Russell Lancione, the “blah”(according to Evangeline) guy who’s hopelessly infatuated with her. Evangeline said she doesn’t want him to like her that way, but Calla’s not so sure. They look pretty happy, laughing together.

Evangeline’s round freckled face and hazel eyes seem to be accented with makeup, and her kinky reddish orange hair is becomingly pulled back.

“Calla! I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yup . . . here I am! Hi, guys!”she says brightly with a sweeping windshield-wiper wave. “You, uh, remember my dad, right, Evangeline?”

Duh. It’s not like she hasn’t met him a bunch of times.

“Hi, Mr. Delaney. I mean, Professor Delaney.”

“ ‘Jeff’ is just fine,”Dad says with a smile.

Evangeline flashes her usual cheerful smile back, and Calla feels a pang, remembering just how many times her friend has been there for her since she arrived in Lily Dale.

“This is my friend, Russell, Mr.— Jeff.”

As Dad and Russell shake hands, Calla longs to just grab on to Evangeline and tell her how much she’s missed her. But she’s afraid to.

What if Evangeline pushes her away?

Would you really blame her, after what you did?

No. Don’t do that to yourself.

You didn’t do anything wrong.

It’s not as if Jacy had feelings for Evangeline, too, and Calla stole him away. Evangeline would be the first to admit that he was just a friend, no matter how much she wished there could be more between them.

“Jeff’s going to be staying here in the guest room for a while, so I was just showing him around,”Ramona informs her niece.

“Cool. Hey, Calla, how was Florida?”

Calla looks up in surprise at Evangeline’s question. “It was . . .”She glances around at the others. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Sounds like a long story,”Ramona says.

“Definitely.”Calla finds herself wishing that Russell weren’t here so that she could whisk Evangeline away from the adults and spill the whole sorry mess.

But judging by the way Russell is hovering at her friend’s side, he’s not going anywhere soon.

Thunder rumbles again outside, and Ramona claps her hands together. “Who wants to go sit on the porch and watch the storm come in over the lake?”

“Um, Russell and I have to go look up some stuff on the computer.”

In the old days—like, before Calla admitted she’d kissed Jacy—Evangeline would have asked Calla to join them.

Now, she only drags Russell to the next room with a “See you guys later.”

“I hate to ruin the party, but I have an appointment in about twenty minutes,”Gammy says, reaching into the breast pocket of her blouse and checking a pocket watch on a gold chain.

Why, Calla wonders— not for the first time— doesn’t she wear a Timex on her wrist like the rest of the world? It’s not that Calla doesn’t appreciate her grandmother for who she is, eccentricities and all, but some of her habits are pretty . . .

Kooky.

Another kooky medium. Go figure.

“Calla? What do you say?”Ramona asks. “Do you have an appointment, too, or do you want to come hang out on the porch?”

“Actually . . .”She glances at her father, sees the way he’s looking at Ramona, and promptly feels like a third wheel. “I’ve got to go study. If you guys don’t mind.”

No one minds.

Imagine that.

Crossing the yard again with her grandmother as Dad and Ramona settle into wicker rockers, Calla can’t help but feel wistful.

More change.

Constant change.

Maybe that’s what life is about, but change in small doses is a lot easier to swallow.

“It was pretty interesting,”Odelia says, “what happened upstairs with that magazine, don’t you think?”

“Oh . . . you mean Ramona knocking it off the table?”

“Ramona didn’t knock it off the table.”

“She didn’t?”

“Are you playing dumb with me, Calla, my dear?”

“Yes,”she admits. “I saw it. What do you think it meant?”

Odelia shrugs. “Spirit playing around, most likely. Or maybe trying to tell one of us something.”

“What? That it’s time for Ramona to update her magazine collection?”

Her grandmother grins. “Could be.”She pauses to deadhead a couple of fall blooms along the front path to her door.

Then she straightens and asks, “So, Evangeline has a boyfriend, huh?”

“Not really. He’s just her friend.”

“That’s what you think.”

“That’s what she thinks, too.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Calla glances sharply at Odelia. “You think she likes him?”

“I know she does.”Her grandmother gives a firm nod as they climb the steps. “That’s not all I know .”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just . . . Evangeline isn’t the only one around here who likes someone.”

“You mean me and Jacy? Gammy, I don’t want you to—”

“That’s not what I meant. But, about last weekend, now that you bring it up . . .”

“Forget I did.”

“I don’t think so. We have a lot to talk about.”

“I know . But not now. You have an appointment.”

And I don’t feel like defending myself right now.

“We’re going to talk,”Gammy says, “because you lied to me, and I can’t—”

“I know, Gammy, and I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything. I promise. I just needed to know . About my mother, and . . .”

Darrin
.

Gammy didn’t like him.

Ramona told Calla that.

Why not?

It was something about Darrin having negative energy, but maybe there was more to it. Maybe . . .

Surely she doesn’t know about the baby . . . does she?

Go ahead. Ask her.

But if Calla asks her . . . and she
doesn’t
already know . . .

You’ll be opening a whole new can of worms. Is that really what
you want to do right now?

Thunder claps so near that it makes Calla jump.

Odelia glances up at the sky. “Come on. Let’s get inside. This is going to be nasty.”

I’m not ready,
Calla decides, following her into the house.
I’m not ready to tell her yet. Not until I know more.

FIVE

Lily Dale
Monday, October 8
5:13 p.m.

Calla steps around puddles that fill the potholes on Cottage Row, making her way down to the lakefront park beneath a canopy of fall foliage. Leaves and eaves drip pleasantly around her. The storm ended a little while ago, ushering in a tide of warmer, humid air, and she left her fleece jacket at home.