Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  But she has to do this—has to lie—for her mother’s sake. Maybe this hunt for Darrin Yates in Geneseo will wind up to be a wild-goose chase, but on the off-chance that it isn’t . . .

  “Okay. You’re done.” Leslie spins the chair back toward the mirror with a ceremonious, “Ta da!”

  Calla catches a glimpse of her reflection and sees her jaw drop in the mirror.

  “Don’t you love how retro you are? I thought your look should go with the vintage dress. What do you think?” Standing over her, Leslie proudly surveys her handiwork.

  Staring into her own eyes, rimmed by a thick layer of shadow, liner, and mascara, and gazing at the carefully upswept pile of hair riding high over her forehead, Calla struggles to find the right words. Or any words.

  “I think . . . I think . . .”

  “I know!” Leslie gloats. “Quite a transformation. It’s like looking at a stranger, isn’t it?”

  No. It isn’t like that at all.

  For Calla, it’s eerily like looking at her own mother, the night she wore the copper-colored dress and went to the dance with Darrin Yates.

  THIRTEEN

  Saturday, September 29

  7:10 p.m.

  “He’s here!” Odelia calls up the stairs to Calla.

  That’s funny. She didn’t hear the doorbell ring. Dressed and ready, she’s been listening for it, but— Oh.

  There’s the doorbell now.

  Calla wonders whether Odelia glimpsed Jacy coming up the porch steps or simply “felt” him approaching.

  Does it really matter? That sort of thing happens all the time around here.

  Yes.Tonight, it matters.

  It would be nice to think that Odelia’s having an off night, as far as her psychic abilities and premonitions go.

  That way, Calla wouldn’t be wondering if there’s any significance behind her grandmother’s earlier warning to be extra-careful tonight.

  “Just make sure you keep your wits about you,” Odelia said as Calla nibbled on the sandwich her grandmother insisted on making her.

  “Not that I don’t always do that anyway . . . but why?” Calla asked.

  “Because you’re going out alone at night in a car with a boy, even though the dance is almost just around the corner.”

  Calla pushed aside a familiar nagging guilt, along with the fear that her grandmother’s warning might stem from something more ominous than pure maternal concern.

  Now, that it’s time to go, her misgivings are back full force.

  What if something terrible happens to her tonight?

  What if she backs out of the whole thing because she’s scared?

  What if she never finds out what really happened to Mom?

  I have to do this. It’s that simple.

  She slips the framed photo of her mother and Darrin into the beaded evening bag Odelia unearthed from the bottom of a cedar chest. It was the same bag, she told Calla, that Mom carried when she wore this dress to her high school prom. On Calla’s wrist is a familiar emerald bracelet. It doesn’t match the dress, but who cares? It was Mom’s . . . and a reminder that anything is possible. After all, it miraculously came back to Calla here in Lily Dale after dropping into Mom’s grave that rainy July day in Florida.

  Passing Miriam, who gives her an admiring glance, Calla heads for the stairs, her feet trying to get used to walking in a pair of high-heeled satin pumps that also turned up in the cedar chest. They’re probably a size too small, but Calla chose to wear them anyway. They match the dress perfectly, and they were Mom’s.

  The mirror, every time she’s glimpsed her reflection tonight, is like a window into the past.

  Thanks to Leslie, who couldn’t have known, Calla looks exactly like her mother does in the picture with Darrin.

  Odelia was bowled over when she first saw her earlier.

  “You could be her, Calla,” she said tearfully, and hugged her hard. “I can’t believe it.”

  Calla can’t, either.

  Because there are no coincidences.

  So, what does it all mean?

  It means I probably shouldn’t be doing this, that’s what it means.

  Increasingly unsettled about what might lie ahead, Calla reminds herself that nothing bad is going to happen to her with Jacy around.

  Something about him just makes me feel safe.

  But when she reaches the top of the stairs to see Jacy standing below in the front hall, “safe” is pretty much the last word that comes to mind.

  “Dangerous” is more like it.

  Wearing a dark suit and tie, white dress shirt, and polished dress shoes, he looks about five years older—and so handsome she stops dead in her tracks.

  Wow.

  Calla reaches for the bannister and descends the first few steps. Her feet wobble in the heels, and she remembers her mother on the steps back home, walking, falling . . .

  No. Not tonight. Don’t think of that tonight. Not now, anyway.

  She reaches the foot of the stairs and Odelia is there, too, fluttering around, obviously thrilled to think that “romance might be blossoming,” which is how she cringe-inducingly phrased it earlier, between Calla and Jacy.

  “Peter got ahold of Jacy and bought him a new suit,” she announces. “Doesn’t he look great, Calla?”

  “He does . . . you do.” At last she finds her voice. Daring to look him in the eye, she sees a gleam that makes her heart beat even faster.

  “You look good, too,” he says simply, and holds out a florist’s box. “This is for you.”

  “Thank you.” She hopes he can’t see how badly her hands are shaking as she takes it.

  This isn’t supposed to be happening.

  Tonight is . . . well, it’s kind of like a business appointment.

  Oh, who are you kidding? You’re into Jacy, no matter what else you’ve got going on, and you know he’s into you.

  Maybe when this is all over, and things are back to normal, the two of them can actually go out on a real date.

  “Aren’t you going to open the box?” Odelia prods.

  Calla lifts the lid and the distinct floral scent hits her immediately.

  Lily of the valley.

  She looks up at Jacy, surprised and touched.

  Looking over Calla’s shoulder, Odelia says, “What an exquisite corsage—white roses and lily of the valley? Those were your mother’s favorite flower, Calla.”

  Yeah, no kidding.

  “I know, Gammy.” And so does Jacy. She told him all about it.

  “Did Peter pick out the corsage, too?” Odelia asks, and Jacy shakes his head.

  “Walt, then?”

  “No. I did.”

  “Really? I’m impressed. I think that’s a sweet coincidence.”

  “What is?” Jacy asks, as Calla slides the elastic band of the corsage over her wrist.

  “That you happened to pick out a corsage with flowers— out of season, too!—that happened to be my daughter’s favorite. Every time I smell lilies, I think of Stephanie.” Odelia exhales shakily, then waves a limp hand in front of her face, as if to stave off tears.

  “Gammy, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Hearing a car door slam outside, Calla looks out the window to see Russell Lancione arriving at the Taggarts’ house. He’s wearing a dark suit like Jacy’s—though looking nowhere near as grown-up and handsome—and carrying a florist’s box.

  He hesitates at the curb beside his car, obviously nervous. Then he looks at his watch, visibly takes a deep breath, and heads up the walk.

  Calla wonders how Evangeline is doing. Ordinarily, the two of them would have had a couple of phone conversations while they were getting ready for the dance. But Calla didn’t feel right calling Evangeline under the circumstances, and the phone didn’t ring here.

  “We should really get going,” Calla tells Jacy, not wanting the two of them to walk out the door at the same time as Evangeline and Russell.

  “Let me just snap a
couple of pictures first, and you guys can be on your way.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Calla asks Jacy.

  “Of course he doesn’t mind,” Odelia answers for him as she rummages in a closet. “Homecoming is a big deal.”

  Yeah. It is.

  And they’re not really going.

  “Ah, here it is.” Odelia pulls out a tr ipod.

  “Gammy, you’re kidding, right?”

  “Kidding about what?”

  In the living room, Odelia sets up the tripod with considerable effort, then attaches a camera . . . and attaches an enormous lens to the front of it.

  Calla looks at Jacy, who grins. “It’s fine. She’s sweet.”

  “Okay, kids, all set! Candid shot. Say cheese!”

  Calla tries to smile as a flash explodes in her face.

  “Oops . . . lens cap!” Odelia giggles. “Sorry!”

  She removes the lens cap and snaps some more.

  Then she moves the tripod, poses them in front of the fireplace, moves the tripod again, tells Jacy to put his arm around Calla, and snaps.

  “Great!”

  She lugs the tripod across the room, poses them in front of the window, tells Jacy to pretend he’s helping Calla to put on her corsage, and snaps again. And again. And again.

  “Gammy . . . ,” Calla says in a warning voice.

  “You’ll thank me later, when you have photos of this night to treasure for the rest of your life.”

  Calla thinks of her mother, going to the long-ago dance with Darrin. Was it Odelia who took the picture that’s in Calla’s bag at this very moment?

  Before they can make an exit, Odelia carries her tripod to the front hall, poses them by the door, and tells them to gaze into each other’s eyes.

  That does it.

  “Gammy, we really have to go!”

  “Just this last picture . . . look at Jacy and smile!”

  Calla does, but her mouth and jaw feel as strained as his appear to be.

  “Oh, I don’t like the light there,” Odelia says, tripod in hand. “Let me try it from over here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Calla says to Jacy with bared, gritted teeth.

  “It’s okay. She’s just being a grandma.”

  Yeah. And he’s just being a sweetheart about the whole thing.

  “Now, let me just take it from a different angle,” Odelia calls, removing her camera from the tripod and climbing up a few steps.

  “Thank you for being such a good sport,” Calla tells Jacy through her clenched smile.

  “No problem.”

  “Do you two look beautiful together, or what?” Odelia glows. “Just one more, and then you can go have fun at your dance.”

  If only.

  Right about now, Calla would give anything if she and Jacy were actually going to do just that, like carefree, normal kids their age.

  Normal . . .

  God, I miss normal.

  It’s such a cliche, not to have appreciated something until it’s gone.

  At last, she and Jacy are freed into the brisk, moonlit night, with Odelia calling, “Good-bye! Have fun!” and finally, naturally, “Be careful!”

  A glance at the Taggarts’ porch shows no sign of Evangeline and Russell, and Calla has to fight not to make a dash for the car at the curb.

  Guilt, guilt, guilt.

  Four tires and a steering wheel are about all Jacy’s car has in common with Blue Slayton’s BMW. This older sedan has duct tape on the side mirror bracket and smells faintly of mildew.

  But Calla would rather be riding in this car with Jacy, even if they aren’t going to the dance, than in Blue’s car with him, on the way to homecoming.

  More guilt. When she called Blue at the hospital today to see how he was, he told her again how sorry he was that he’d miss taking her to the dance. She had to say she was going with Jacy, though of course she was sure to make it sound as though he was doing her a friendly favor.

  “That’s good,” Blue said, obviously not the least bit bothered. Maybe he doesn’t consider Jacy serious competition. Or maybe he’s just lost interest in Calla and doesn’t care either way.

  “At least you get to go,” he told her. “I wouldn’t want both of us to have to miss it. Have fun.”

  She was just glad he didn’t say to be careful.

  As Jacy turns up Route 60 toward Fredonia and the entrance to the thruway, she heaves a sigh and leans back in the seat.

  He glances at her. “Are you okay?”

  “I just feel horrible, doing this to my grandmother. And to your foster dads.”

  “I know. They were so great, making me buy the suit and everything . . . the only reason I agreed was because they said I’d need it anyway, for graduation in June.”

  “What if they find out we didn’t really go tonight?”

  “Peter and Walt?”

  “And my grandmother. And everyone else,” she adds, thinking of Evangeline and Blue and Ramona.

  “Let’s not worry about that now. You’re only doing what you have to do. I mean, it’s not like we’re out joyriding.”

  Far from it.

  The joyless drive to Geneseo takes almost two hours.

  Calla spends most of it staring out the window, trying to figure out how, in the grand scheme of things, she wound up here.

  Not just here with Jacy, tonight, but here—motherless, in upstate New York, with a newfound talent for seeing dead people.

  If it weren’t for Jacy beside her—and a whole lot of makeup caked around her eyes—she’d let herself have a good cry over the loss of her old, blessedly normal life.

  “We’re almost there.”

  She looks up and sees that the landscape, which had transitioned to more urban and suburban around Buffalo and Rochester, is back to rural, and much flatter here than around Lily Dale.

  Geneseo is yet another little town in the middle of nowhere, from the looks of things.

  Gazing out at the silos and barns outlined against the night sky, Calla tries to zero in on her mind’s voice, as Patsy taught them in class that morning.

  “Listen to your psychic senses,” she advised. “Be receptive to the energy. Look for information and answers to come to you from within.”

  Does Geneseo hold the key to what happened to Darrin Yates . . . and Mom?

  Yes. It does.

  She can feel it. Suddenly, her entire body is tense with apprehension.

  “I feel like there’s something here,” she tells Jacy. “Like we’re not wasting our time. What about you?”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “I feel the same way.”

  They pass SUNY Geneseo campus on the edge of town, and a residential neighborhood lined with century-old houses, many of them now obviously occupied by college students.

  Kids are everywhere—alive and dead, from this era and eras past—walking with backpacks, cigarettes, groups of friends.

  Main Street, in the heart of town, is dotted with towering oak trees and stretches for a few picturesque blocks, lined with bars, pizza and wing places, cafés and diners, and a couple of small stores.

  In the center of it all, smack in the middle of the street, is a large, old-fashioned fountain.

  “There’s the bear!” Calla exclaims, pointing at the patinated figure towering on a lamppost pedestal in the middle of the basin. “Jacy, you have to stop!”

  He pulls into a vacant spot and she jumps out of the car before it’s in park, barreling right over to the fountain, looking for . . .

  What?

  God only knows.

  It’s not as though she thought Darrin Yates would be standing right here on the street, waiting for her.

  Still . . .

  “It’s just a fountain,” she tells Jacy when he catches up to her, pocketing the car keys.

  “Looks that way.”

  “I can’t believe it. I really expected . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know . . . too much, I guess.”

  Why
did she have to go and drag Jacy into this?

  “Calla, we just got here,” he points out.

  Yeah, and he went to a lot of trouble to get her here. She has to at least try to see it through, hopeless as it seems.

  “I know. It’s just . . . the way that guy Bob talked about the fountain, I thought it meant something.”

  “It does. It got us to Geneseo, right?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have come.”

  In silence, Jacy reaches out and squeezes her hand.

  Shoulder to shoulder, they gaze up at the bronze bear in the moonlight.

  “What do you think we should do?” Calla asks Jacy, hoping he’ll suggest that they drive back to Lily Dale in time for the last dance at homecoming.

  “What do you want to do?”

  She hesitates. This seemed like such a good idea when they talked about it last night.

  Now . . . not so much.

  What does she want to do?

  Go home, that’s what.

  Her feet hurt in these shoes, and she’s cold, and . . .

  And longing for normal.

  Longing to be held in Jacy’s arms, swaying on a dance floor. That’s what a girl her age should be doing with a cute guy on a Saturday night, right? Not looking for her mother’s killer in the middle of nowhere.

  Killer? You’re positive Darrin killed her, then?

  It’s not something she’s allowed herself to really think about lately. It’s too painful to think of what happened to Mom on that awful day at the top of the stairs.

  Now, she beckons the vision, tries with every ounce of concentration to focus on what her mind’s voice is telling her.

  And it’s just not clear.

  Logically, she should believe Darrin did it. Who else is there?

  Every sign she’s been given points in his direction.

  Maybe you just don’t want to believe it because it’s too horrible to think she was killed by someone she once loved.

  Why would Calla even doubt, though, that he’s capable of murder?

  Both Odelia and Ramona said Darrin was trouble. He was using a fake name when Calla met him in Florida, and there was something furtive about the way he and her mother were acting that day.

  How difficult should it be for an intuitive person like Calla to put two and two together?