Believing (8 page)

She says hastily, “I mean, she looks like she might be Native American. Like you.”

“Where have you seen her? Other than Wal-Mart, I mean.”

“At my mother’s funeral back in Florida was the first time. Only then, I thought she was real. I mean . . . alive. You know—not in Spirit. And I saw her a few times around my grandmother’s house, and by the lake. I think she’s been trying to give me messages. About my mom.”

He’s quiet for a minute, just walking along beside her, like he’s lost in thought.

Then he asks, “Did you ever hear of a spirit guide?”

Calla nods. “Yeah. They’re kind of like guardian angels. Right?”

“Kind of,” Jacy agrees.

“Do you think Aiyana is my spirit guide?”

“She may be.”

“That’s it.”
I know it.

He knows it, too,
she thinks, watching Jacy bend to pick up a pebble and then resume walking.

“Do you think I’m the only one who sees her?” she asks him.

“Depends. Sometimes guides come through clairvoyant vision, sometimes they actually materialize in human form, or sometimes we can only hear or feel them. Sometimes they can even be an animal, or a symbol.”

“Do you have a spirit guide?”

“I have a lot of them. We all do. Everyone has them, but not everyone can perceive them. Some are permanently with us from the moment we enter the earth plane until we leave it, and others come and go when we need them.”

From the moment we enter the earth plane.

His phrasing strikes Calla as typical of the way people speak here in Lily Dale. Most places, people would just say
from the moment we’re born.

“Are your guides . . . men?” she asks him. “Women? Boys? Animals? Symbols?”

“All of the above, depending on what kind of guidance I need. They show themselves to me as they want to be seen, based on where I’m at.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitates, as if he isn’t quite willing to open up with personal information.

Sure enough, when he does speak, he turns the reference back to her.

“Like, with you, you just lost your mom, so maybe—and I don’t know for sure—Aiyana represents maternal energy and that’s why she appears to you in the form of a woman.”

She considers that. It makes sense. And seems comforting, in some bizarre way.

“Spirit guides are here to protect us, right?” she asks Jacy.

“To guide us.” Jacy is choosing his words carefully. “It’s up to us to decide what to do, though. They aren’t responsible for our choices. We are.”

“Right. I read that somewhere. And it said—in this book I got from the library here—that if you need their help but aren’t even aware that you do—or that they exist in the first place—they’ll try to get your attention somehow. What I don’t get is, how can they warn someone who doesn’t even know they exist?”

“They’ll try to make you aware, maybe try to warn you somehow if they think you’re in danger, but it’s up to you to be receptive and heed the warning.”

“Do you think Aiyana is trying to warn me about something? Or maybe give me some kind of message?”

“What do you think?” Jacy bends his arm to toss the stone toward the lake.

Calla hesitates, watching it skip several times across the gray surface of the water.

If she lets Jacy in on her secret suspicion about her mother’s death, there will be no going back.

Out on the lapping water, the stone disappears from sight and sinks into the murky depths.

“I think she wants me to know about something that has to do with my mother,” Calla tells Jacy. “With how she died, or . . . was killed.”

Jacy stops walking and looks at her.

Then he nods slowly.

He gets it,
Calla thinks, and on the heels of that,
so maybe I’m right about Mom being murdered
—
and Darrin having something to do with it.

Just inside the wrought-iron gate to Lily Dale, Jacy points at a two-story cottage similar to most of the others here, with an architectural style typical of the eighteenth century.

“That’s where Paula lives,” he tells Calla.

“Do you know her?”

“This is a small town. You get to know everyone, really fast.”

“Oh. Well . . . thanks for walking with me, and for . . . listening.”

He nods.

“Jacy,” she says, as he turns to head toward home.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think? About all the stuff I told you.” He was so quiet while she spoke, but she got the impression he was listening intently, and processing all of it.

“I’m not sure,” he says slowly, tilting his head.

“But do you think there might be something to it?” Calla presses him. “Do you think Darrin had something to do with my mom’s death?”

“I’m not sure. But we’ll have to talk about it some other time. I’ve got to go get ready for track practice, and you’re babysitting right now anyway.”

What is there to say to that except, “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”

Resisting the urge to watch him walk on down the road, Calla turns back toward Paula’s house.

“Hey, Calla?” she hears him call, and spins around. She finds him walking backward, gesturing at the sky, which is solidly blue again. “Told you the storm was going to pass.”

She smiles. “Yeah, you’re right, it did . . . this time.”

But she has a feeling, as she turns back to Paula’s house, that there will be plenty of other storms to come around here.

The front yard is overflowing with a riot of blooming flowers, and there are statues of garden gnomes, a little wishing well, a bird bath, a weather vane, and a wrought-iron stand holding a nylon banner dotted with brightly colored falling leaves and the words
Welcome Autumn.

Back in Calla’s Florida neighborhood, sprawling, modern homes were fronted by plain old grass, ornamental shrub borders, and maybe a tastefully placed palm tree or two. There was a definite less-is-more attitude where landscaping is concerned.

Here, it’s obvious that more is more.

Paula’s busy yard mirrors many others in the Dale, and Calla finds the overall effect strangely conflicting. Almost as if all that over-the-top outdoor cheerfulness is supposed to offset the genuinely haunted houses beyond—which, with their Victorian architecture and sometimes ramshackle state, actually tend to
look
like haunted houses.

This one is painted gray, with trim in various faded shades of green. Like many houses in the Dale, its roof slopes upward, then flattens off at the top—a mansard roof, Odelia calls it. It has old-fashioned scalloped shingles and a gingerbread porch with several spindles missing. There’s a little red tricycle parked beside the door, and a shingle above it that reads M
ARTIN
D
RUMM
,C
LAIRVOYANT
.

Calla climbs the steps and rings the bell.

Almost immediately, the door is thrown open by a little boy with white-blond hair and solemn eyes. “I’m Dylan,” he announces. “You’re Calla.”

She smiles. “Right. Nice to meet you, Dylan.”

He glances over his shoulder and murmurs something.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He looks back at Calla. “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Kelly.”

“Kelly?”

“That’s his imaginary friend,” a woman informs Calla as she hobbles into the hall on crutches behind the boy. “You know how kids are, right? Anyway . . . hi, I’m Paula.”

She’s heavyset but attractive, with short blond hair and a friendly smile.

Calla wonders about Dylan’s imaginary friend. She does know how kids are. And anywhere else in the world, she’d assume an imaginary friend was just that.

Here in Lily Dale, however, she’s not so sure.

“Can you believe I did this to myself?” Paula asks, gesturing at her bandaged right ankle. “I tripped over my younger son’s toy fire truck and went flying. What a klutz. Come on in.”

Stepping into the house, Calla can immediately see how that could have happened. There’s stuff everywhere—toys underfoot and on every surface, along with the usual household clutter. A red-cheeked toddler with a headful of blond curls rolls into the living room on a scooter, calling, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”

“That’s Ethan,” Paula says. “He loves people.”

She’s not kidding. Ethan rolls right over to Calla’s feet and throws his arms around her legs. “Hi!”

She laughs. “Hi, Ethan.”

“So,” Paula says, “what I basically need you to do is keep the kids busy so that I can try and start dinner and my husband can concentrate on his work upstairs. He’s writing a book.”

“Really? That’s great.” Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Dylan whisper something to an invisible companion.

“Yeah. It will be if he ever gets his research done. That’s not easy with two little guys in the house, but he’s plugging away. I figured you can take them out back to the picnic table since it’s so nice out. Maybe play a game or something.”

“Do you like to play games?” Dylan asks Calla, tugging on her arm.

“I love to play games.”

“Did you ever play Candyland? It has my name in it on the box. D-Y-L-A-N. That’s why I love it so much.”

She grins. “Sure. I love Candyland, too, even though it doesn’t have my name in it.”

“Candyland!” Ethan echoes, clapping his chubby little hands.

And off Calla goes with them, relieved to have found a reprieve—at least a temporary one—from all that’s been troubling her here in Lily Dale.

The sun-splashed afternoon with Paula’s kids was so pleasant that Calla finds herself feeling almost lighthearted when she’s back home at her grandmother’s house.

Odelia has made a delicious eggplant lasagna. As they eat, Calla tells her about school and her afternoon babysitting, careful to leave out her walk home with Jacy. They’re both polishing off their second helpings of lasagna when the phone rings.

“It’s for you. Willow York,” Odelia tells Calla, passing the receiver to her.

“Oh . . . hello? Willow?”

“Hi, Calla. Mr. Bombeck wants me to help you with the math. Are you available tonight?” She doesn’t sound particularly friendly, but she’s not unfriendly, either. More like . . . briskly efficient. Like someone taking a phone reservation from a stranger.

“I think so. We’re eating right now, but I’ll be finished soon.”

“Okay. Can you come to my house at seven o’clock?”

“That’s fine.”

“Good. See you then.”

She hangs up to find Odelia watching her, wearing a pleased expression. “I didn’t know you were friendly with Willow. You’re really creating quite the social circle around here, aren’t you?”

Calla thinks about telling her it’s just a study session. Then again, why burst Odelia’s bubble?

After dinner, Odelia disappears behind closed doors with a newly widowed elderly client. The phone rings as Calla’s washing the dishes.

Maybe it’s Jacy,
she thinks fleetingly, before dismissing that idea. He said they’d talk tomorrow.

It’s probably just someone looking for a reading with her grandmother. Calla plucks her hands from the hot, greasy orange dishwater; rinses them quickly; and picks up the phone.

“Yes, hello. Calla Delaney, please?” The voice in her ear is male, formal, and asking for her.

Who can it be? Definitely not Jacy or Blue.

Why would a man be calling her?

Oh no . . . Dad!

What if something happened to him in California?

Please, no . . . no . . . don’t do this to me. I can’t bear it.

SIX

“This is Calla.” Her voice trembles and she grips the counter with one hand to steady—and prepare—herself.

The lasagna roils in her stomach as she wonders if this is what the spirits were warning her about all along.

Is she an orphan?

“I’m from the AP in New York, calling about the Columbus Dispatch piece.”

The Columbus Dispatch piece . . . the Columbus Dispatch piece . . .

The words are in English, but they might as well be in some exotic foreign tongue for all Calla comprehends. But the most important meaning is crystal clear: this isn’t about her father. Not if this person is calling from New York . . . and the AP? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Unless he’s calling to take back her AP math status. Can they do that? And so soon?

“I know I’m having a hard time in math, but it’s only been two days—one, really—and I’m going to work with my study partner tonight, so I hope you’ll give me a chance to stay in the program . . .” She trails off, deciding not to tack on a
pretty please?

Maybe she should have, though, because the man is silent.

“Hello?” she says after a minute, wondering if he’s hung up on her.

“Oh!” he says suddenly, and starts to chuckle. “AP. You thought I meant Advanced Placement program!”

“Didn’t you?” she asks, confused—not to mention resenting the fact that he’s laughing at her, even as she’s relieved that whatever he’s calling about, it’s definitely not bad news about her father, because he wouldn’t find the least bit of humor in that. “What are you talking about, then?”

He gives a little sigh the way people do after a good laugh, then says in a regular voice, “I’m from the Associated Press.”

Like that makes any more sense than the Advanced Placement program.

“You must have the wrong number,” she says, before remembering that he asked for her by name and . . . oh!

It’s a newspaper:
Columbus Dispatch.

As in Columbus, Ohio?

That’s where Kaitlyn Riggs lived . . . and not far from where her murdered body was found the other day . . .

Thanks to me.

“I’d like to speak to you about your role in the Riggs case,” the man tells her. “You are the girl who helped locate the body, aren’t you?”

“How do you know about that?”

“The
Dispatch.
I didn’t have your name, just your age, where you live, the fact that you’re a new arrival, living with your grandmother . . . It wasn’t hard to track you down by asking around. Small towns are like that.”

“I don’t—are—you’re a reporter?” Calla asks, trying to keep up with what he’s saying and with her own racing, bewildered thoughts.

“Yes, and I’m working on a story about police psychics and their role in—”