Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Want to come over for a little while?” Blue asks as they drive back to Lily Dale after a bad movie at the small cineplex in nearby Dunkirk.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  It’s not like Calla was paying all that much attention. Sitting there in the darkened movie theater, with Blue’s arm around her shoulders, her thoughts were a million miles away.

  She can’t stop thinking about Darrin.

  “Calla? Do you want to?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Want to come over to my house?” Blue repeats. “It’s still early.”

  She glances at the dashboard clock. He’s right. It’s not even nine yet.

  She’s exhausted, though. Emotionally and physically. “I don’t know . . . it’s a school night. I think I’d better just go home.”

  “Come on. You said you’d take a look at that English essay I wrote—it’s due Friday.”

  True, she did tell him, earlier, that she’d try to help him with it, when he confessed he’d gotten a D on his last essay. His grades, Blue said, aren’t terrific, and he’s worried about getting into a decent college.

  “Isn’t everyone?” Calla replied, and he looked surprised.

  “I figured you were straight As all the way.”

  “I was, back home in Florida. Here, I’ll be lucky if I don’t fail math.” She mentioned casually that Willow York is her study partner. No reaction from Blue.

  “So do you want to come over?” he asks now.

  She hesitates. She is exhausted and she’s still so stressed . . .

  And she hasn’t told him yet that she just wants to be friends.

  You really should, she reminds herself.

  “Maybe you can meet my dad,” Blue adds. “He should be home by now—he’s been away since Monday morning, but he was supposed to fly in tonight.”

  So David Slayton left town the day after his son got out of the hospital, leaving him in the care of Mrs. Remington, their longtime housekeeper, as usual.

  Wow. That’s cold. If she were injured and on crutches, Dad would never leave her side.

  “Okay, sure,” she says reluctantly, feeling sorry for him.

  “I’ll come in, just for a little while.”

  Blue laughs and shakes his head. “Works every time.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, just . . . everyone always wants to meet my dad.”

  “That’s not why!”

  “Just do me a favor and don’t ask him for an autograph, okay?”

  “But I wouldn’t do that!”

  “He loves it, actually.”

  “Huh?”

  “My father,” Blue clarifies. “He loves it when people ask him for autographs.”

  “Oh. Then maybe I should.”

  “Please don’t feed the ego. It’s a monster as it is.”

  Blue turns down Dale Drive, heading toward the big house on a knoll above the lake. The Slayton House has gingerbread trim and cupolas and a wraparound porch, but it’s at least five times the size of the cottages located beyond the entrance gate, inside the Dale. Recently built, this is a neo-Victorian—not the real thing.

  “These days, David Slayton is all flash,” Odelia likes to say.

  Calla knows that her grandmother, like many of the other mediums in town, doesn’t entirely approve of Blue’s father, who used to be “one of them” before he hit the big time. But Odelia’s disapproval doesn’t stem from professional resentment.

  It bothers her that David Slayton spends so much of his time courting the cameras in New York City and Hollywood, leaving his only son alone with the housekeeper in their sprawling home.

  Blue’s mother took off years ago, Odelia told Calla.

  Kind of like Odelia’s husband—Calla’s grandfather, Jack Lauder, who left when Mom was just a kid. Nobody ever likes to discuss him, though. Mom didn’t, Odelia doesn’t, and Dad is probably clueless about the details.

  “Looks like he made it home,” Blue mutters as he parks his BMW behind a black Mercedes at the top of the winding driveway, which circles around in front of the porch.

  The oversized house is on par with those of Calla’s private school classmates back home in Florida, but it’s definitely out of the ordinary for this part of rural upstate New York. That’s why she was surprised, when she first met Blue, to find that he went to public school.

  Turns out he didn’t always. He was kicked out of at least one private boarding school. Calla doesn’t know the details, and she’s probably better off.

  Blue, always the well-bred gentleman, hobbles over on his crutches to open her car door for her, then leads the way up to the well-lit front porch. Balancing on one crutch, he opens the door and dismantles an alarm system—pretty much unheard of in the unassuming homes inside the Dale.

  “Come on in.”

  Calla looks around with interest as he leads the way through an ornate first floor full of polished hardwoods, oriental rugs, heavy draperies, old-fashioned wallpaper, plenty of dark woodwork, and elegant antique furniture. It’s as though someone was trying to re-create a grand Victorian home, and the result is a little too stagey and self-conscious for her taste.

  Photographs of David Slayton are everywhere, as are awards and plaques—relics of his high-profile career.

  “Wait here,” Blue says when they reach the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”

  She settles on a stool at the marble-topped breakfast bar as he hobbles up a back staircase.

  She really has to tell him she just wants to be friends. As she tries to figure out exactly how to phrase it in a gentle way, she notices that the house is extraordinarily still.

  At Odelia’s, the floorboards creak, the faucets drip, the pipes clang. Here, aside from the steady hum of the built-in refrigerator, which has a fancy wooden front made to look like an oversized cupboard door, it’s quiet.

  Quiet . . . but not, Calla realizes, quite as deserted as she thought.

  Sensing a presence, she looks around, and out of the corner of her eye, spots not an apparition, but a shadow on the opposite wall. A human shadow, only without a human person to go with it.

  This isn’t the first time she’s seen that phenomenon—a shadow ghost, Evangeline called it, when Calla described it to her. She didn’t elaborate, but Calla later looked it up and read various theories: that the disembodied shadows are optical hallucinations or aliens, or—most troubling—demonic.

  Apprehension creeps over her. Slowly, she turns her head toward the figure.

  She can’t tell if it’s male or female; it’s swathed in some kind of hooded cloak.

  A shiver runs down Calla’s spine and she’s relieved to hear Blue making his way back down the stairs.

  She turns toward him, then glances back to see that the shadow is gone—at least for now.

  “I can get us something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  She isn’t; shadow ghosts have a way of killing a person’s appetite, but she finds herself nodding anyway.

  “But let me get it. You should get off your foot,” she tells him.

  “No big deal. I’m fine. You sit.”

  She watches him balance on one crutch as he opens the fridge, and can’t help but wonder what he’s going to come up with. This sterile place is a far cry from her grandmother’s house, where the scent of cooking always hangs in the air and the appliances are well-worn from Odelia’s constant use. Here, there’s not a crumb in sight.

  “Where’s your dad?” she asks, keeping an eye out for the shadow.

  “I don’t know . . . he’s probably sleeping,” Blue says vaguely.

  “It’s early, though.”

  “Yeah, but he gets jet lag. What do you want to eat?”

  “Oh . . . whatever. I can’t, uh, stay long.” Not if his father’s not even around, and that freaky shadow ghost might still be lurking.

  Blue produces a wedge of fancy cheese and some grapes from the fridge, and a box of imported crackers from a cupboard, along with two small bo
ttles of Perrier.

  “Cheers.” He clinks his bottle against hers as he leans his crutches against the counter and sits on a stool beside her.

  You have to relax, she tells herself.

  She smiles at him, noticing that he really is incredibly good-looking. He’s wearing a blue shirt, as usual. She’s noticed that he does that a lot, as if he knows exactly how to bring out the intense shade of his irises. His wardrobe, like the home’s decor, seems just a little too calculating.

  She can’t help but compare him to Jacy, who probably doesn’t think twice before pulling on his usual worn jeans and soft T-shirts with faded lettering. He most likely gets his black hair cut at a barber shop, a far cry from Blue’s salon style.

  You have to tell Blue about Jacy. Just go ahead and say it. He’ll live.

  But she can’t seem to get it out.

  “So . . . ,” Blue says, as she tries yet again to come up with the kindest phrasing in her brain, “you’ve been working on math with Willow, then?”

  “Yup.”

  “Has she . . . uh, said anything to you? About how we used to go out?”

  About to pop a grape into her mouth, Calla lowers her hand. “No. She’s never brought it up, actually.”

  “That’s so not surprising.” Blue crunches into a cracker.

  “Why?”

  “She’s pretty private, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Calla has noticed, and figures she herself might be considered pretty private, so she’s not judging Willow.

  “Yeah, but . . . I mean, she was always so quiet.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Calla sees movement.

  Turning slightly, she glimpses the shadow darting across the wall.

  “I could never get inside her head,” Blue is saying.

  “Whose head?”

  “Um, Willow’s?” he says, in a questioning tone that’s more polite than a pointed duh would be.

  Calla forces herself to look back at him, to focus on the conversation again. It’s not that she isn’t interested, it’s just distracting to have some hooded being flitting around the room.

  “Is that why you broke up with her, then?” she asks Blue.

  “I didn’t.”

  Her heart drops. “You’re still going out?”

  “No! I mean, I didn’t break up with Willow. She broke up with me.”

  “Really? That’s not what I heard.”

  “Yeah, people assume stuff. She didn’t bother to set the record straight, so why would I?”

  Calla shrugs, as if none of this matters all that much to her, when really, she’s been wondering what happened between Blue and Willow . . . and where they stand now.

  So Willow dumped him? Would they still be going out if she hadn’t?

  Evangeline has said she thinks Willow is still hung up on Blue, but maybe it’s the other way around. What guy wouldn’t be captivated by Willow, with her perfect porcelain skin, delicate features, and striking dark hair and eyes?

  “Well, anyway, I just wondered if she’d said anything to you about . . . what happened with us. Since you two are friends now.” Blue adds, “Hey, by the way, how’s her mother doing lately?”

  It’s not a casual question, Calla realizes. That’s the tone you use when the person you’re asking about hasn’t been well.

  “Althea’s hanging in there,” she informs Blue, as though she knows all about it. Well, almost all about it. She can’t help but ask, “What, exactly, is wrong with her? Is it cancer?”

  “Maybe . . . something bad. I’m not sure exactly what. Willow doesn’t like to talk about it. Althea’s the one who told me. I was over there one day, and it was obvious something was wrong. I asked her about it, and she said she was sick. Really sick. She doesn’t want people feeling sorry for her, so not that many people know about it.”

  “Not that many people know about what?”

  Calla looks up, startled to see David Slayton framed in the doorway.

  He’s instantly recognizable. She’s seen him on television plenty of times, discussing his work with celebrities and politicians, or solving high-profile crimes. She always thought he was impossibly good-looking, charismatic, flashy.

  Kind of like his son.

  Now here he is in person, even better looking than he is on TV. His wavy hair is more gray than brown, but not in an unappealing way, and he shares his son’s intense blue eyes. He’s wearing expensive-looking lounging clothes; the kind actors wear in movies, unlike real-life guys, who go around the house in holey sweatpants or boxer shorts before bed. Guys like Calla’s dad, anyway.

  Something tells her that her dad and Blue’s dad don’t have a whole lot in common.

  “If people were supposed to know about the thing we’re talking about, more people would, but since I just said they don’t . . . don’t ask.” Blue’s response to his father’s question is punctuated by a look that makes it clear he isn’t happy to see him.

  “Keeping secrets from your old man again, are you?” He crosses the room and holds out his hand to Calla. “I’m David Slayton.”

  “Hi . . . I’m Calla Delaney.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. You’re not from here.”

  Caught off guard as much by the deliberate statement as she is by the intense scrutiny in his gaze, Calla stammers, “Oh . . . uh, I’m . . . no.”

  “The Southeast. Correct?”

  “Florida.”

  He nods, looking so pleased with himself that she realizes he isn’t just recapping what his son told him about her earlier.

  In fact, she gets the distinct feeling Blue didn’t tell him anything at all, because they don’t seem to have seen each other in at least a couple of days.

  “Do I have an accent?” she asks David, to break an uncomfortable silence. “Is that how you knew where I was from?”

  “No accent at all. I just knew.”

  “He’s magical,” Blue says sarcastically. “Didn’t you know?”

  Ignoring his son, David Slayton mentions that he just flew in from California that evening, and is hoping to reset his body clock back into the right time zone.

  “I swear by hot milk and honey,” he comments, pouring some milk into a mug. “You should try it the next time you’re jet-lagged.”

  Unsure whether he’s talking to her or to Blue, Calla says nothing, watching him put the mug into the microwave and press a few buttons.

  She notices that Blue is methodically plucking grapes from the stem, chewing and swallowing without the least bit of pleasure. You don’t have to be a psychic medium to notice that there’s plenty of tension between father and son. At least, there is on Blue’s end.

  David Slayton seems oblivious.

  “You’re living here now, in the Dale,” he asks, or rather tells, Calla as he leans against the counter, arms folded, waiting for his milk to heat.

  She nods. “Either you’re really good, or Blue told you about me.”

  “I’m really good,” he says simply, but not without a smug nod. “Blue hasn’t told me anything . . . about you, or anything else.”

  “There’s nothing to tell, and even if there were, you haven’t been around all week.”

  “No. But I’ve called.”

  Blue shrugs. “Not every day.”

  “You’re a big boy, Blue. Do you really want me bugging you every day?”

  Calla watches Blue moodily rip the last couple of grapes from the bare stem and shove them into his mouth. Maybe he does want his father bugging him—or at least calling him— every day.

  She remembers how strangely arrogant Blue acted the other day when she said she wanted to spend some time with her father instead of going out with him.

  Maybe she had struck a nerve.

  She thinks of her father. He always calls her every day when they’re apart. And when they first laid eyes on each other at the airport that night after weeks apart, they flew into each other’s arms as if it had been years since the last
time they were together.

  Maybe fathers and sons aren’t quite as demonstrative as fathers and daughters, but Blue and his dad sure didn’t have much of a reunion just now, after a week apart.

  Suddenly, Calla spots the shadow again, out of the corner of her eye, and swivels her head to catch it. There it is, lurking in the far corner of the room.

  “I guess he came in with you,” David Slayton says cryptically. “What are you talking about?” Blue asks.

  Calla turns to see his father leveling a look at her. “You see him.”

  “Excuse me?” she says.

  He tilts his head in the direction of the phantom being in the corner.

  Blue turns in that direction with a searching frown but says nothing.

  He doesn’t see it, Calla realizes.

  She asks David, “Who is he?”

  He shrugs. “I have no idea. With shadow people . . . you never know.”

  She digests that and nods.

  “So you’re the real deal, then,” David Slayton says to Calla.

  “No, she isn’t, Dad. Calla’s not into that. She’s just visiting her grandmother.” Blue is obviously thrilled to contradict his father, and something tells Calla it’s better for her not to contradict Blue.

  “Who’s your grandmother?”

  “Odelia Lauder. Do you know her?” Calla asks, though she knows the answer.

  “Odelia Lauder.” David smiles faintly and rubs his chin. “I’ve known her for years.”

  “How many years?” Calla wonders, suddenly, whether he knew her mother as well.

  “Oh, fifteen . . . maybe twenty.”

  “Did you know my mother? Stephanie?”

  His answer is straightforward. “No.”

  The microwave beeps and he turns to open it.

  “She passed away over the summer,” Calla tells him, not sure why she’s offering the information. It’s not like she needs his sympathy—or Blue’s, for that matter.

  His back to her as he stirs honey into his mug, David says only, “That’s hard. I’m sorry.”

  She never knows what to say in response to that, other than, “Thanks.”

  Blue’s father turns back to her, holding his mug.

  “You’re an unusual girl.”

  Disconcerted by his stare as much as the comment, she tries to make light of it, forcing a laugh. “Gee, thanks. I’ve been called worse.”