Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  LILY DALE

  CONNECTING

  WENDY CORSI STAUB

  Walker & Company

  New York

  Dedicated in loving memory of my friend Stephanie Murphy and to her husband, Tim, and their children, Ryan, Caitlyn, and Maureen, in whom her joyful legacy will live on

  And to Brody, Morgan, and Mark

  The author is grateful to agents Laura Blake Peterson and Holly Frederick, as well as to Tracy Marchini, all at Curtis Brown, Ltd.; to Nancy Berland, Elizabeth Middaugh, and staff at Nancy Berland Public Relations; to Peter Meluso and Ed Dintrone at Aquaint Interactive; to Morgan Doremus and Miss Media Productions; to Rick and Patty Donovan and Phil Pelleter at the Book Nook in Dunkirk, New York; to Emily Easton, Deb Shapiro, Beth Eller, Mary Kate Castellani, and everyone at Walker & Company; to Susan Glasier of the Lily Dale Assembly offices; to Dr. Lauren Thibodeau, PhD, author, and Registered Medium; to the Reverend Donna Riegel and members of her beginning mediumship class in Lily Dale; to Mark and Morgan Staub for their literary expertise and creative feedback; and most importantly, to Brody Staub, who came up with the title.

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ONE

  Lily Dale, New York

  Wednesday, September 19

  4:19 p.m.

  “So, wait, let me get this straight—you’ve been dreaming about your mother, and now you’re convinced she was murdered? Is this what you’re trying to tell me?” On the other end of the phone line, Lisa Wilson’s heavy southern accent is laced with disbelief.

  “Not exactly.” Calla Delaney paces across the creaky floorboards of her grandmother’s northern living room, stepping around the sleeping pile of gray fur that is Gert, her new pet kitten. “I’ve been dreaming that I am my mother, and now I’m convinced she was murdered.”

  “Huh? You are her?”

  Hearing a rumble of thunder in the distance, Calla notices that the room has grown dim. Another autumn storm, rolling in from the west.

  Fine with her. The gloomy weather suits her mood.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” she tells Lisa, “but in my dreams the past few nights, I’ve been reliving my mother’s last moments—getting dressed for work, taking this manila envelope out from under the mattress, walking down the hall with it . . . then someone sneaks up and pushes me—her— down the—”

  A hard lump of grief clogging her throat, Calla can’t go on. She tries not to picture it all over again—from her mother’s viewpoint in the dream, or from her own, in the real-life aftermath.

  She, after all, was the one who found Stephanie Lauder Delaney on that nightmarish July afternoon, her broken corpse lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs.

  There was no manila envelope near her body. Calla would have seen it.

  “So, uh, what was in this envelope?”

  “I have no idea,” she says, well aware that Lisa’s just trying to humor her, and wondering why she bothered to bring this up in the first place.

  But when Lisa happened to call just now and asked how she’s been, Calla found herself blurting it out.

  “So the only place you ever saw this envelope was in your dream last night?” Lisa asks, and Calla hesitates.

  Should she tell Lisa the rest of it—about the mysterious man who popped up on their Tampa doorstep back in March, carrying the envelope and asking for Mom? About how he was whistling the same unfamiliar tune Calla would later hear 2 again here in Lily Dale—coming from Mom’s girlhood music box, which, oh yeah, plays without being wound, has been known to open all by itself, and somehow contained Mom’s emerald bracelet, which, the last time Calla saw it, was dropping off her own wrist and falling into Mom’s grave?

  No, she can’t tell Lisa any of that. Not yet. And not over the phone. The whole thing is just too bizarre and complicated. “The thing is, I know my mother had the envelope when she fell,” she tells Lisa simply. “I saw it.”

  “In your dreams. And you saw someone push her down the stairs. Also in your dreams.”

  “I felt someone push her down the stairs.”

  “Because you were her.”

  “Right.” Calla tries not to resent Lisa’s skepticism. After all, if she were in her friend’s shoes—which she was just a few months ago, before her own life back home in Florida was shattered—she’d probably react the same way.

  But now, here in Lily Dale—a legendary open portal between the living and the dead—anything seems possible.

  Lisa sighs. “I know the last few months have been really hard for you, and what happened to your mom was so totally unfair, no wonder you’ve been looking for some kind of—”

  “No, Lisa—it’s not that. I haven’t been looking for anything. I wasn’t even awake!” Agitated, she paces across the floor again, brushing against a towering stack of Odelia the packrat’s books on the coffee table. “I mean . . . come on, haven’t you ever dreamed that you were someone else?”

  “Maybe Britney Spears back when I was, like, eight, and she was, like, famous for her singing instead of—”

  “Come on, I’m serious.”

  “Sorry.” Lisa sighs. “I mean . . . I don’t know, Calla. It’s not like I remember my dreams in all this major detail.”

  That, Calla figures, is because Lisa’s dreams are only dreams.

  Her own dreams—at least, the ones she’s had since she arrived in Lily Dale—are actual visions.

  She supposes she could try to explain to Lisa that when you’re completely relaxed and asleep, you’re much more open to spirit energy than during waking hours. So the dearly departed might take advantage of that state to pop in for a visit or send a message—like, you might witness something that happened in the past or will happen in the future.

  When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. To Calla, anyway.

  It probably wouldn’t to Lisa, a thousand miles away in Florida, where the veil to the Other Side is thicker than the southern sky before an afternoon thunderstorm.

  “Lisa? You still there?”

  “I’m here . . . just trying to figure out what else to say. I mean . . . oh my God, Calla. You’re talking about murder. ”

  “I know, but . . .” Calla trails off, her breath catching in her throat as she spots a flicker of movement in the next room and realizes she’s not alone in the house. A shadowy figure is—

  Oh! Thank goodness.

  It’s just Miriam, the nineteenth-century household ghost, drifting past the doorway. Miriam’s husband built this house in 1883 and she spent the rest of her life here . . . and then some. She likes to keep an eye on things, though she’s been known to tamper with lights and electrical appliances, apparently just as a gentle reminder that she hasn’t moved out—or on.

  Wait . . . did you just reassure yourself that it was just the household ghost?

  Okay, Lily Dale’s definitely rubbing off on her. Next thing she knows, she’ll be exchanging cake recipes with Marie Antoinette.

  Around here, you really just never know.

  It took her a while to figure out that she herself might be . . . gifted.

  Might be? Um, hello, you definitely have a sixth sense and you really need to get used to it.

  Yeah. Used to dreams that are more than just dreams. Used to knowing thin
gs she couldn’t possibly know and seeing things no one else can see.

  Like dead people.

  Because lately, she’s been . . . seeing things. People. Out of the corner of her eye, mostly. She’ll think someone is there and turn her head just in time to catch a human figure before it disappears.

  Occasionally, she can actually make out whether it’s a man, a woman, a child. Most of the time, the figure is indistinct, although there have been a few who have come through so vividly that she thought at first they were alive.

  Apparently, now that Calla’s settled into Lily Dale, the ghosts who populate the earthly plane have decided to start showing themselves to her. Or maybe it’s more that she’s decided, subconsciously, to let herself see them. Either way, the situation is unnerving, compelling . . . and frustrating.

  Take Miriam. She’s often flitting around the house, but Calla has yet to get a good look at her. Odelia, Calla’s eccentric grandmother, says she’s shy. She also says that Calla will eventually fine tune her sixth sense and consistently be able to see Miriam—and the others—as clearly as if they were real live people.

  At least Miriam sent Calla a message, through Odelia, on her first day here, reassuring Calla that she’s harmless.

  And I guess I bought it. After all, now she’s just the household ghost.

  But Lisa would never understand that . . . or anything else about Lily Dale.

  “Listen, Calla . . . what you’re seeing, with your mother . . . it’s just regular dreams. Right? I mean, it’s not like you’re . . . one of them. Right?” Lisa sounds really, really hopeful.

  One of them.

  Them, as in Odelia and the rest of the spiritualists here in Lily Dale. When Lisa visited for Labor Day weekend, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to find herself in a town filled with “kooky”—her word—mediums. Which is why Calla didn’t dare mention that she herself had been seeing ghosts.

  She definitely doesn’t have to admit to that now, but she does need to tell someone she’s been having these psychic visions about her mother’s death all week. And Lisa is, after all, her best friend—a thousand miles away or not.

  “It was a dream,” she tells Lisa, “but it was real, too. It’s kind of hard to exp—”

  Startled by a noise behind her, Calla turns, wondering if Miriam is back.

  But it’s just Gert.

  The kitten is up on all four legs, fixated on something just behind Calla. Her back is arched like that of a Halloween cutout cat, front paws poised as if ready to pounce.

  No . . . you just never know.

  Afraid to turn to see what, or who, might have come up behind her, Calla is certain that she and Gert are no longer alone in the room. The temperature seems to have dropped by about twenty degrees. Goose bumps ache on her arms beneath the thick sleeves of her hooded sweatshirt.

  “Calla?” Lisa prods in her ear. “Are you there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Gert’s unblinking eyes remain focused on the spirit whose energy Calla fully senses now, directly behind her.

  She swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and slowly spins around, hoping she’s wrong and that the spot will be empty.

  But it isn’t.

  TWO

  The apparition has popped up a few times here in Lily Dale since Calla first spotted her at Mom’s funeral in Tampa last summer.

  As always, she’s dressed in flowing white, with black hair pulled back from her exotic face and dark eyes that aren’t unkind. Just . . . intense. Wafting in the air is the distinct floral scent that usually accompanies her—lilies of the valley.

  Jacy Bly, who lives across Melrose Park from Odelia’s house and knows all about these things, said she’s probably Calla’s spirit guide. He, like the locals, believes that everyone has guides, which as far as Calla can tell, are spiritualism’s version of guardian angels.

  “Calla?” Lisa is asking in her ear. “Hello-o?”

  Aiyana.

  The unfamiliar Native American word, which Jacy later told her means “forever flowering,” popped into Calla’s head out of nowhere one day. It’s the spirit guide’s name. Calla’s not sure how she knows that; she just does. She’s as positive about it as she is that Aiyana has been trying to tell her something.

  Something about Mom’s death.

  That, Calla figured out—with Jacy’s help—is why Aiyana’s presence brings the scent of lilies of the valley, Stephanie’s favorite flower.

  If only she’d bring Mom with her.

  A sorrowful tide of longing sweeps through Calla as she imagines what it would be like to come face-to-face with her mother again right here, right now . . .

  Or anywhere, ever again.

  She hears another distant boom of thunder and from the corner of her eye, sees a flicker of movement across the room.

  Calla turns her head just in time to see a book fly off the stack on the coffee table and land on the floor, pages fluttering open as it lands.

  Taken aback, she looks at Aiyana. “Did you do that?”

  Aiyana just gazes at her, beginning to look a lot less solid than she did a few moments ago.

  Calla read somewhere that it takes a lot of energy for a spirit to move an object around a room. Why would Aiyana even bother with a stupid parlor trick now?

  Calla is long past needing proof of otherworldly powers.

  She gets it. Aiyana’s from the Other Side. She doesn’t need to throw books on the floor to prove herself.

  “Wait . . . before you go . . . I just need to know what happened to her,” she tells Aiyana fervently, realizing she’s fading fast. “You have to help me. Please.”

  “Oh, Calla . . .” That’s Lisa, on the other end of the phone line, suddenly sounding somber and emotional. “I will—I’ll help you. Whatever you need. I’m here for you, I promise.”

  Calla wasn’t talking to Lisa.

  But all at once, Aiyana is gone, and Lisa is offering to help, and God knows she needs it.

  “Remember how I told you I’d come to Florida to visit?”

  “Yeah . . . please don’t tell me your father changed his mind about letting you come.” Calla’s father, Jeff, is a physics professor on sabbatical at Shellborne College in California, and Lisa knows how overprotective he can be. Especially lately.

  “No, it’s just . . . if you really will help me do this . . . I need you.”

  “To do what?”

  “When I get there, we can go over to my house and see if we can find any evidence that someone was out to get my mother.”

  “Evidence?” Lisa laughs nervously. “Who are we, CSI?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Lis’!”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I know it isn’t. And I want you to come down so I can help you. Just . . . um, well, what about school?”

  She’s freaked out, Calla realizes. She doesn’t want to get involved.

  And I can’t blame her, really.

  “Listen,” Calla says, “you don’t have to do this with me. I know it’s—”

  “No, I want to help you,” Lisa cuts in firmly. “Whatever you need. So, when are you coming?”

  Calla smiles. Good old Lisa won’t let her down. “I don’t know . . . it’ll have to be on a weekend. Maybe Friday?”

  “This coming Friday? That would be—oh, wait, my parents said we might go up to Tallahassee to visit the campus again.”

  Florida State, Calla knows, is Lisa’s self-proclaimed “safety” school—though her brother, Kevin, once privately told Calla that with Lisa’s grades, even Florida State might be a “reach” school.

  “But—ooh, I know! You can come with us and maybe we can both check out the sororities and—”

  “No, I really just need to be in Tampa, to see what I can find out,” Calla says impatiently. Lisa apparently doesn’t grasp that this is a return to the scene of a crime and not a carefree vacation.

  “What are you going to do there, exactly?”

  “Well, my father said I can get my mother�
�s laptop to use here, remember? I’m thinking there might be something in her files if I can get into them. She used her laptop for everything—work, paying bills, shopping, making travel arrangements. I feel like I might find out more about what was going on with her toward the end. My father told me she wasn’t herself the last few months—she was really detached from him, but he wasn’t sure why.”

  “Yeah, and the other thing is, once you have the laptop, we’ll be able to stay in touch better, and you can get back onto MySpace,” Lisa says excitedly, and Calla fights back a sigh.

  Lisa truly doesn’t realize that there’s something far more significant at stake here than the Internet access that was so hard to live without when Calla first came to Lily Dale.

  More evidence that Calla really is part of a world far different than Lisa’s—and the one she herself left behind not so very long ago. But it seems like a lifetime has passed since Calla was living in the big, upscale Tampa home with both her parents, going to private school, dating Kevin Wilson . . .

  “Well, how about if you come down next weekend?” Lisa suggests.

  “Yeah, I guess I—” She breaks off, remembering.

  “What?”

  “That’s the homecoming dance, and someone asked me to go.” Funny how something that seemed so important just days ago now seems trivial.

  Not to Lisa, though. She squeals in Calla’s ear. “Who was it? Blue or Jacy?”

  Lisa, of course, knows all about the two local guys who are, sort of, involved in Calla’s love life at the moment. What she doesn’t know is that Calla still hasn’t quite gotten over Lisa’s brother, Kevin, now a sophomore at Cornell. He dumped her back in April, after he found a new girlfriend in college. Last week, though, he popped up in Calla’s e-mail, sounding like he wants to be friends. Or maybe more.

  “Blue asked me to homecoming,” she tells Lisa, firmly shoving Kevin from her thoughts.

  “Blue—is he the hot one?”

  “Actually, they both are.” She smiles wistfully, thinking about quiet, enigmatic Jacy, who almost kissed her once.