Lily Dale: Awakening (22 page)

He sets the bags on the ground, then looks up. His eyes instantly collide with Calla’s, and his face lights up.

So does hers. She can feel it. And she can’t help it. She’d give anything, in this moment, to walk down there and throw herself into Kevin’s arms.

Somehow, though, she doesn’t. She just smiles at him, and he smiles back.

“Can you bring those up, Kev?” Lisa calls, and he already is.

Calla sees him glance up at the shingle above Odelia’s porch as he lugs the suitcases up the steps. He frowns but says nothing, just deposits the bags on the porch with a grunt.

“Man, those are heavy.”

“You’re staying, too?” Calla asks, then realizes he might think she doesn’t want him to. And she does. Desperately. “I mean, I’m really glad. I just . . . I thought you had to drive back to school tonight.”

“I do. These are Lisa’s bags.”

Oh. Her face grows hot. She should have known. And she shouldn’t have hoped.

“I think she packed everything she owns,” Kevin adds.

“Not everything. I forgot hair gel. I need to get some right away. I’ve gone two days without it because
he
wouldn’t go out of his way to get it, and every time we stopped we were in the middle of nowhere.”

“I hate to say it,” Calla speaks up, “but you still are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a Wal-Mart ten miles away, and that’s about it for shopping as far as I can tell.”

“Then let’s go right now.”

“Now?”

“Look at me!” Lisa lifts a hank of her silky blond hair in disgust.

“You look great,” Calla tells her. “And I’ll get my grandmother to take us tomorrow. She’s, um, busy for the rest of the day.” Right. Doing back-to-back readings with clients anxious to get in before the season ends. But Calla isn’t about to get into that yet. Not with Kevin here, especially.

Lisa wails and turns to her brother. “You’ve got to take us to Wal-Mart.”

“Me! I’ve got to drive to Ithaca.”

“Please take us to Wal-Mart first, Kev. Come on. I let you keep the AC on high for two days even though I was freezing, and I didn’t complain once about your choice of music.”

“Sure you did. Constantly.”

Calla can’t help but grin at that. Lisa likes only country.

“Please, Kev?” Lisa asks. “Come on. It won’t take long. I promise.”

He sighs. “Okay. Come on, let’s go. But you have to make it quick. I need to get on the road to school.”

And Annie,
Calla thinks grimly, thinking she shouldn’t even tag along to Wal-Mart.

But she does. Old habits die hard.

Lisa does most of the talking on the way to Wal-Mart, sitting in the back but leaning forward between the two seats. Even with her there, even in a new car, Calla can’t help but feel wrongly comfortable sitting there beside Kevin in the front. If only . . .

No. Stop.

Wal-Mart’s parking lot is crowded. As Kevin squeezes his new car into the first available space, Calla thinks, for the first time in a while, of Blue. Blue and his BMW, parked way out where no other car can touch it.

In the store’s entryway, Lisa promptly grabs a cart.

“Uh . . . how much are you planning to buy?” Kevin asks warily.

“Just a few things.”

“Oh, God. I can’t watch this.”

“Then don’t. I’ll meet you guys up front in half an hour.” Lisa sails away.

Calla looks helplessly at Kevin, who shrugs and sighs. “Looks like we’ve got some time to browse.”

We?
So, he’s going to stick with her?

Suspecting Lisa did this on purpose, Calla wishes she hadn’t. She wants to tell Lisa there’s no hope for her and Kevin; he has a new girlfriend now, and she . . .

Well, she doesn’t have a new boyfriend, though Blue said he’d call. And when she ran into Jacy yesterday at the library, they talked for over half an hour. She left feeling as though she wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Maybe Evangeline will get over him and move on to someone new. If that happened, there would be no reason not to—

“Do you need to get anything specific here?” Kevin asks Calla, breaking into her thoughts. “Should I get a cart?”

“God, no.”

There’s plenty that Calla needs, though. She picks things up here and there as she and Kevin walk along. Nail polish and remover and emery boards, a couple of books, and—after a slight hesitation—a new digital alarm clock. In the jewelry department, she buys a cheap watch.

“I forgot all my jewelry back home,” she feels compelled to explain.

“Right,” he says a little sadly, and she realizes he thinks she stopped wearing the Movado because they broke up. She wants to tell him that’s not true, but then decides to let him think it is. Let him feel bad that he fell for another girl and dumped her in a text message.

That thought is enough to make her deliberately pause to browse the clearance aisle on their way to the front register, even though she can feel him getting antsy.

“There’s some good stuff here,” she comments, picking up a packet of stationery emblazoned with a C. If she can’t e-mail anyone, she’ll have to keep sending real letters.

“So, are you all set, then? Lisa should be ready,” he adds, checking his own watch. It’s new, Calla notices. A gift from Annie?
Grrrrr . . .

She can’t resist saying, “Just give me another minute to make sure I’m not missing any bargains . . . oh, look at those cute Santa cups!”

Reaching toward the shelf that holds out-of-season holiday items, she suddenly stops short, feeling a blast of cold.

The air-conditioned store was hardly warm to begin with, but all at once, it’s absolutely arctic. Shivering, noting the uneasiness that whooshed through her along with the chill, Calla asks Kevin, “Do you feel that?”

“What, the AC? I guess someone just cranked it. Brr.”

As she looks up at him, she sees a woman standing beside him. The woman from the cemetery, and the lake. She stares into Calla’s eyes.

“What? What do you want?” she blurts out, and Kevin jerks his head around to look behind him, then back again at Calla.

“Who are you talking to?”

The woman is still standing right there, still staring, though Kevin doesn’t even see her.

She’s trying to tell me something.

Who are you?
she asks silently, not daring to speak out loud in front of Kevin again.

Aiyana.
The word—a name—pops into her head as clearly as if the woman had spoken it.

Maybe she did.

Aiyana? Is that your name?
Another silent question . . . but somehow, the woman is reading Calla’s thoughts.

She responds with a pleased nod. Aiyana.

“Calla?” Kevin touches her arm.

As he speaks, the woman begins to morph before her eyes, going from sharply focused to blurred, like a photograph taken when the object was in motion.

“No . . . wait!” But the figure has gone quickly transparent.

And finally, she isn’t there at all.

She’s gone. Yet the chill still lingers over Calla. Shivering, she raises her arms to hug herself. As she does, she hears something start to wobble on the shelf beside her.

I didn’t even brush against it,
Calla thinks incredulously, startled when a moment later whatever it is falls to the floor and shatters.

Looking down in bewilderment, she realizes that she’s surrounded by shards of green glass. Dismayed she looks back at the shelf. “How did that happen?” The broken object was one of the holiday items near the Santa cups: cute green shamrock-shaped candy dishes.

“Careful,” Kevin says, as a store employee approaches. “Don’t get cut on the glass, Calla.” He touches her arm to pull her back from the broken shards.

“I’ll pay for it,” Calla offers, jittery not just from the inexplicable accident, but from Kevin’s warm hand on her bare skin.

“Not necessary,” the employee, a manager, says with a shrug. “These are marked down to, like, a quarter each. We’ve been trying to unload them since Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“I know, but still—”

“Really, it’s fine,” he says, and calls someone to come to the clearance aisle for cleanup.

Rattled, Calla can only apologize again, profusely, before following Kevin to the register, where Lisa is waiting with a full cart. Kevin uses his parents’ credit card to pay for everything in it, and everything Calla has as well.

“It’s no big deal,” he tells her as they head out to the parking lot with their bags.

It is a big deal, to her. But not nearly as disturbing as what happened back in the store.

Aiyana
, Calla thinks, over and over again as they drive home.
Aiyana.

By Monday afternoon, Calla is more than ready to see Lisa off to the airport.

Which is interesting, because on the other hand, it was hard to watch Kevin drive away on Friday night. He gave her a quick hug before he left, similar to the one he gave his sister. But the brief contact made Calla wistful all over again.

“Remember,” he said, “if you need me, I’m not far away.”

“I know. Thanks.”

She’s had a good weekend with Lisa, overall. It’s been nice to have some company, and to think about something other than spirits for a change. And yes, she’ll miss Lisa when she’s gone. It’s just that her friend has disdain for everything and everyone in Lily Dale. That was obvious from the moment they got back from Wal-Mart and she spotted Odelia’s shingle for the first time. Of course, she was polite to Calla’s grandmother, who couldn’t be a more gracious hostess. But whenever Odelia was out of earshot, Lisa talked about her as if she’s a batty old woman.

Which is exactly what I thought she was, too, before I got to know her,
Calla reminds herself uncomfortably, as she watches Lisa give her blond hair a final pat and set her brush on the bureau.

Calla removed all Mom’s old pictures before Lisa got here. In part because she doesn’t really want to share them with anyone, and in part because she was afraid of another ghostly middle-of-the-night incident. Lisa has been sharing her room, sleeping in Mom’s old bed while Calla sleeps on a cot Odelia borrowed from Andy.

Calla hasn’t set up her new digital clock yet, worried that it, too, might trigger something supernatural. Then again, she was having the dream even after she got rid of the old clock, and she hasn’t had it since Lisa got here.

“I just have to put on some lotion,” Lisa tells her, checking her reflection again in the mirror. “My skin gets so dry when I fly.”

Calla rolls her eyes and watches Lisa rummage through her crowded toiletries bag. She pulls out a tube and squirts some lotion onto her palm.

As she rubs it into her skin, Calla sniffs, realizing the room is filling with a hauntingly familiar scent. There’s no telltale chill in the air this time, but the floral perfume is unmistakable.

“What? You don’t like it either?”

Startled, Calla looks up to see Lisa watching her. “What?”

“This smell. It’s too strong, right?”

“You . . . can smell it too?”

“Smell what? My lotion?”

Her
lotion
? It’s her lotion that smells? Sniffing the tube Lisa thrusts under her nose, Calla realizes that this time, the floral scent has a perfectly ordinary source. No wonder there’s no chill.

“I just bought it the other night at Wal-Mart because they didn’t have the honeysuckle one I usually like,” Lisa goes on, closing the tube.

“What scent is this?”

“I don’t know.” Lisa turns it over, looks at the label, and reads, “Lily of the Valley.”

As Odelia steers the car up Cottage Row again that night, Calla feels numb with exhaustion. All she wants to do is fall at last into her own bed— Mom’s old bed—and sleep.

They saw Lisa off at the airport, but her plane left three hours late because of Florida thunderstorms. It’s raining here, too. Thunder rumbles and lightning bolts light the sky over the lake as Odelia parks in front of the house and turns off the headlights. Rain patters hard on the roof of the car.

“We’ll have to make a run for it when it lets up a little,” she says, fishing around under the seat. “Unless I find an umbrella in here.”

Calla doubts she will—though you never know. Odelia’s car is as cluttered as her house, and Calla’s mind right now.

But she doesn’t want to think about any of it—Aiyana, lilies of the valley, even Mom. Not tonight, anyway, even now that Lisa’s gone.

She looks longingly toward the house as another bolt of lightning zaps the sky, illuminating the world for a split second.

In that second, Calla sees that there’s a figure on Odelia’s porch. Human, but is it alive or dead? Her heart beats a little faster as she gazes at the ominous shadow, which appears to be wearing some kind of hooded cloak.

“Come on,” Odelia says, abruptly opening the door. “It’s letting up.”

Calla hesitates.

“Let’s go!” Odelia commands, and she’s off, splashing her way through the rain to the door.

Calla follows reluctantly, realizing as she bolts toward the house that Odelia can see the person on the porch as well, because she appears to be talking to him or her. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a ghost, of course.

As she mounts the steps two at a time, she can see that the person isn’t wearing a hooded cloak, it’s a raincoat. And it’s not a ghost—it’s a real live woman. A woman Calla recognizes.

“Calla,” Odelia says, “Mrs. Riggs would like to speak to you.”

Odelia isn’t happy. That much is obvious. Her unhappiness has nothing to do with the fact that she’s sitting in her recliner like a drowned rat, probably cold and uncomfortable.

No, it has everything to do with Calla, also cold and uncomfortable and drowned-rat-like.

Calla’s sitting on the couch next to Elaine Riggs, who turned down Odelia’s offer of hot tea and said she has something important to say, then is heading back to the White Inn down in Fredonia, where she’s spending the night. Apparently, she spent at least a few hours on Odelia’s wet porch, waiting for them.

Before she says whatever it is she has to say to Calla, though, she’s found it necessary to tell Odelia what led up to this impromptu visit.

So . . . now Odelia knows.

That Calla saw the ghost of Kaitlyn Riggs. And that she called the girl’s mother to tell her to search a remote park based on information she received from a spirit.