Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

It shouldn’t be difficult at all, and yet . . .

  I’m just not sure.

  If only she could find Darrin, come face-to-face with him, she’d know for sure.

  “Okay,” she tells Jacy decisively, “let’s go look for him.”

  “Did you bring that snapshot of your mother and Darrin?” “It’s in my purse—I left it in the car.”

  “Let’s go show the picture to some people. This is a small town. If he’s been here, or lives here, maybe someone will recognize him.”

  “The only thing is, the picture’s so old,” she points out as they scuff through the dry leaves on the sidewalk. “I don’t know if it’s going to do any good.”

  “You recognized him from it,” Jacy points out firmly, and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. It’s worth a try.”

  FOURTEEN

  Geneseo, New York

  Saturday, September 29

  10:16 p.m.

  Calla is more ready than ever to call it a night.

  Even if they left now, though, they wouldn’t make the last dance.

  What a waste of a potentially good—potentially great— evening.

  Nobody she and Jacy have asked, mostly college students who are either hanging out or working at the businesses on Main Street, has ever seen Darrin Yates before.

  “I guess old Red Beard Bob has a lot of work to do on his psychic abilities,” she tells Jacy as they shuffle down the street again.

  “Not necessarily. Maybe we shouldn’t have interpreted his vision so literally. Maybe there’s another statue with a bear in it, in some other town . . . some other country, even. You just don’t know.”

  “No, but I really felt like there was something here when we got here.”

  “So did I. The funny thing is, I still do.”

  So does Calla. That’s the hard part.

  She can’t seem to ignore the gnawing idea that this place has some connection to Darrin.

  Maybe he’s not here now, but that doesn’t mean he never was.

  Regardless, she’s exhausted and her feet are being tortured by these shoes, and it’s really time to go, she concludes as they pass a couple of modern-day hipsters who are very much alive, and a 1960s hippie clad in a headband and bell-bottoms who obviously is not. He gives Calla a transparent peace sign before drifting into oblivion.

  “Let’s go, Jacy. Really.”

  “Let’s just try this last place,” Jacy suggests, pointing at a small café called Speakeasy, “and then we’ll head back.”

  “Good idea.”

  The place is dimly lit, with high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and battered hardwood floors. There are stacks of freebie publications and a cluttered bulletin board covered in homemade fliers asking for or volunteering apartment rentals, roommates, or ride shares to various locations over the upcoming break.

  Between the door and the counter, almost all of the small, round café tables are full. Most of the patrons are very much alive: studious types sitting alone using laptops, boisterous groups of kids laughing and talking, couples who seem oblivious to everything but each other.

  Yet there are a few apparitions hanging around, too, flappers with feathered headbands and dapper guys in pin-striped suits who could have stepped out of the Roaring Twenties. Hearing a faint Charleston playing in the background, Calla wonders if the place really was a speakeasy back then. Probably.

  As she and Jacy wait for two alive-and-well coeds to place an order, Calla can’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation. They’re laughing and talking about what to wear to a party they’re going to later, sounding as if they don’t have another care in the world.

  That’s what my life will be like next year at this time. I’ll be like them: totally on my own, with no one to tell me where I can go, or what time to be home, or to be careful.

  For the first time in a long time, Calla feels a spark of excitement about next year.

  Maybe tomorrow, she’ll start working on that list of colleges for Mrs. Erskine.

  The girls move on with their coffees; it’s Jacy’s and Calla’s turn now.

  “What can I get you folks?” The heavyset gray-haired woman behind the cash register is wearing a black Harley Davidson T-shirt and has a tattoo of a rose on her bare, fleshy lower arm.

  Hovering behind her is the spirit of a beefy Hells Angel in a do-rag and a hideously bloody T-shirt. Calla tries not to look at him as Jacy shows the woman the picture and launches into the spiel they’ve been giving everyone they meet.

  “We’re trying to find this guy. This is an old picture, but can you take a good look at it and tell me if you’ve ever seen him?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “He’d be in his forties,” Calla tells the woman as she takes a step back and holds the photo to better light.

  “He can’t be in his forties. He looks like he’s about your age—eighteen, nineteen.”

  Calla and Jacy look at each other. They’ve been through this repeatedly tonight.

  “That’s not me, in the picture,” Calla tells the woman.

  “It’s my mother.”

  “But . . .” She looks at the picture, then up at Calla, obviously confused. “You’re wearing the same dress?”

  She nods.

  “Man oh man, do you look just like your mother or what?”

  Calla wishes, again, that she weren’t wearing the same outfit tonight that her mother has on in the photo—same outfit, same makeup, same hairdo.

  It was eerie, the way people will glance at the picture, and then at her . . . as if she’s somehow stepped right out of the photograph, and out of the past.

  “So this picture was taken, what? Twenty, thirty years ago?”

  “About.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.” Rose Tattoo shakes her head.

  “Are you sure?” Jacy asks.

  “He doesn’t look familiar. Did he go to school at Geneseo or something?”

  “I’m not sure,” Calla admits, accepting the frame and tucking it back into her purse. “I don’t know much about him.”

  “How come you’re looking for him here?”

  “Good question,” she mutters, mostly to herself, then adds politely, “Thanks anyway.”

  “No problem.”

  “We might as well get going,” Calla tells Jacy.

  “You don’t want to go around and ask the customers?”

  “Why bother? I think if Darrin lives around here, we would have found someone who recognizes him by now. We’ve asked, like, a hundred people.”

  “At least. Okay. You’re right. We can go. But first, let’s order something.” He gestures at the beverage menu written in colored chalk on a blackboard behind the counter, and she notices that the ghostly Hells Angel has disappeared.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Calla says, “I’m not—”

  “Listen, Walt gave me ten bucks and told me to take you out for hot chocolate after the dance.”

  “That’s really sweet.”

  “So . . . two hot chocolates?” asks the woman behind the counter, and they both nod. “Whipped cream, too?”

  “Why not? Want a brownie or something, too?” Jacy asks Calla, and she’s catapulted back in time to Florida and a rainy night and the scent of freshly baked brownies in the air.

  Was it really only about nine months ago? How can that be?

  The memory seems to belong to somebody else’s life story, not hers. Not the person she is now, anyway.

  But it did happen—to the person she used to be, living the life that was pulled out from under her without warning.

  Kevin was home from Cornell that night, on winter break. She baked for him, and they snuggled on the couch, watching a silly eighties movie and eating molten brownies straight from the oven.

  I really miss Kevin, she realizes with a pang. A lot. Even now.

  Well, of course. He was her first love.

  But maybe he isn’t her last, as she concluded when he dumped her and
it felt like her life was over.

  She looks at Jacy, wondering if the two of them might ever become as close as she and Kevin were.

  It’s hard to imagine . . . but not impossible. If she’s learned anything these last few tumultuous months, it’s that nothing’s impossible.

  “Sure, I’ll have a brownie,” she tells Jacy, trying to sound casual, toying with the emerald bracelet, which Mom gave her last spring to help ease the pain of Kevin’s dumping her.

  Jacy orders two brownies, then catches her watching him and smiles a little. “What?”

  “Nothing . . . just, thanks for doing this with me.”

  He grabs her hand below the bracelet and gives it a squeeze. “Don’t be disappointed. Okay?”

  Caught off guard by the pleasure of his fingers clasping hers, it takes Calla a moment to figure out what he’s talking about.

  Darrin Yates.

  Hello? That’s why you’re here, remember?

  She sighs. “I just really thought we were going to find him—or at least, find out something about him.”

  Behind the counter, Rose Tattoo squirts a generous dollop of whipped cream on the hot chocolates, then covers them with domed plastic lids.

  “It doesn’t mean we won’t find him,” Jacy points out. “Just not here, and not tonight.”

  “What do we do next, though? Drive around the country aimlessly looking for neon purple houses?”

  “Neon purple houses?” Rose Tattoo slides the cups across the counter to them. “Now that, I can help you with.”

  “What do you mean?” Calla asks.

  “There’s only one neon purple house here in town, and I happen to live on the same street.”

  Jacy and Calla exchange a glance.

  “Maybe it’s Darrin’s house,” he says.

  “Nope.” Rose Tattoo shakes her head. “I know the people who live there, and it’s not the guy you showed me in that picture. It’s a mother and daughter.”

  “Maybe he lived there before they did,” Calla suggests, trying not to get too excited, though it seems like they finally have a lead.

  “Nope,” Rose Tattoo says again. “Sharon Logan’s owned the house for twenty, maybe almost thirty years now. I remember when she moved in—her kid was just a baby. She’s all grown up now, in her twenties, and I think she must’ve moved out because I haven’t seen her lately.”

  “So, there’s not a man living there now?”

  “No men. Never. It’s not like that. The Logans keep to themselves.”

  Okay . . . but Calla refuses to give up on the lead. Maybe there’s some connection to Darrin Yates. How many neon purple houses can there be in the world? And this one is right here in Geneseo.

  “It’s worth a look,” Jacy agrees, and asks Rose Tattoo to write the directions on a napkin.

  “I wouldn’t go ringing their doorbell at night,” she advises as she hands it over. “Mrs. Logan isn’t the friendliest neighbor on my block, if you know what I mean.”

  Undeterred, Calla and Jacy thank her for her help.

  A few minutes later, they’re in the car, steaming hot chocolates sitting in the cup holders, all but forgotten.

  Center Street isn’t at all hard to find—it branches off Main, a stone’s throw from the café (which Rose Tattoo confirmed to Calla really was once a speakeasy). She also said they could actually walk to the purple house from there, but Calla’s toes are pinched in the satin pumps, and anyway, she’s anxious to get there.

  Her nerve endings sizzle with anticipation as they roll on up the dark street, past a lineup of old houses—most bigger than the ones in Lily Dale but definitely built in the same era. She can tell by the gingerbread porches, cupolas, fishscale shingles, and mansard roofs.

  The neighborhood appears to be a blend of well-kept family homes, shabbier student rentals, and even a few fraternity and sorority houses marked with large Greek letters.

  “You do know this might be another dead end.” Jacy leans toward the windshield as he drives, straining to make out the house numbers, and paint colors, in the dark.

  “I know it might. But it might not.”

  “I don’t want you to be disappointed again.”

  “I won’t be,” Calla lies.

  The truth is, she has a powerful gut feeling that they’re about to find . . . well, if not Darrin Yates himself, then something. Some new information, another piece of the puzzle.

  “It should be right around here somewhere.” Jacy consults the napkin again, then slows the car to a crawl.

  “There!” Calla points excitedly.

  In the glow of the headlights and a nearby streetlamp, it’s easy to see that the turreted two-story Victorian house is painted a bright shade of purple.

  At the sight of it, an inexplicable rush of emotion sweeps through Calla.

  She can’t put her finger on why, but she’s positive there’s a strong connection between her mother and this house.

  The instinct is so overwhelming that Calla jumps out of the car even before Jacy has come to a stop at the curb out front.

  “Calla, wait!”

  “What?” She turns back and sees that he, too, is out of the car, though his door is open and the engine is still running.

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to . . .” He trails off and looks around them at the dark, deserted street. “I just don’t know.”

  She nods, uneasily remembering all the warnings that have come her way lately. Still . . .

  “You said you saw me struggling in the water. There’s no water here.”

  He nods. “I know. But to walk up to someone’s door at night might be asking for trouble. You heard what the woman at the café said about the people who live here.”

  “I know, but we can’t just leave.”

  “No,” he agrees, “we can’t.”

  Together, they walk up the leaf-strewn steps onto the shadowy porch, century-old boards creaking beneath their feet. Calla hesitates only a moment before ringing the old-fashioned bell. She can hear the loud buzz echoing on the other side of the door.

  After what seems like a long wait, the overhead porch light flicks on and a face parts the curtains shrouding the door’s glass window.

  A woman’s face, Calla realizes. Must be Sharon Logan. And Rose Tattoo was right, she doesn’t look particularly welcoming. In fact, there’s something downright scary about the way her gaze narrows directly at Calla before she opens the door.

  “What is it?”

  At a loss for words, Calla is silent, taking in the formidable face before her. It isn’t just that the woman is unattractive, with close-set, slate-colored eyes, sagging jowls, and a faint hint of fuzz across her upper lip. But her attitude is downright hostile.

  “Mrs. Logan?” Jacy speaks up.

  “No.” The woman glares harder. “Not Mrs.”

  “Ms. Logan”—Jacy doesn’t wait for an affirmation—“my name is Jacy Bly, and this is Calla Delaney, and we’re in town looking for this man. Have you seen him?” He offers the framed photo, but the woman doesn’t take it.

  She merely flicks a glance at the picture, then back at them. “No.”

  Is she lying? Maybe.

  But Calla isn’t eager to toss out an accusation and risk the consequences.

  “Are you sure?” Jacy asks, still holding the frame.

  “Positive.” Sharon Logan’s gaze shifts from him to Calla. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s bad manners to go around ringing strangers’ doorbells at this hour of the night?”

  She closes the door in their faces without another word. A split second later, the overhead light is extinguished, leaving Calla and Jacy in the dark.

  “Come on,” he says in a low voice. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “But I need to know about my mother,” she says desperately. “And Darrin.”

  “You’re going to Florida next weekend. Maybe you’ll find something when you go through her things at the house, and check the laptop.”
/>
  “Maybe.”

  Leaves rasping beneath their footsteps, they head down the steps and along the walk toward the car.

  They’re almost there when Calla feels a pair of eyes boring into her. She looks over her shoulder at the house again, expecting to see Sharon Logan in the window.

  But instead, the silhouette of a man stands squarely on the front steps, facing her.

  This time, it’s no shadow ghost.

  “Jacy,” she whispers, heart pounding, “there’s someone—”

  “I know, shh, I see him.”

  Him.

  Calla knows who it is even before he walks down the steps and into the moonlight, where she can recognize him.

  “Darrin Yates,” she breathes.

  It’s him.

  It’s really him.

  She presses a trembling fist to her mouth.

  After everything she’s been through, trying to find him, here he is, walking toward them.

  It’s too good to be true . . .

  Good?

  Remembering that this man may have had something to do with her mother’s death, Calla instinctively moves closer to Jacy’s side and feels him slip a protective arm around her.

  She shivers, noticing for the first time that the night air is cold, and leans into his solid warmth.

  Darrin comes to a halt a few feet away. His eyes are wide.

  “Stephanie?”

  Her mother’s name on his lips catches Calla off guard.

  She opens her mouth, but she can’t seem to find her voice.

  “You’re so beautiful, baby . . . look at you.” He’s staring at Calla in wonder, shaking his head.

  He thinks I’m her. He thinks I’m Mom, just like everyone who’s seen that snapshot tonight.

  Only Darrin Yates isn’t comparing her to a picture. He’s comparing her to the real thing—his lost love, Stephanie.

  And the way he’s looking at Calla, with utter reverence . . .

  He’s still in love with her.

  That much is clear.

  That, and the fact that he thinks he’s seeing a ghost.

  She glances at Jacy, who nods.

  She clears her throat, manages to speak. “I’m not—”

  “Stephanie, I’m so, so sorry.” Darrin Yates falls to his knees in front of her, stunning Calla into silence.