“And the religious thing won’t matter off-season, right?” Johneen asks Odelia as they stand to embark on a tour of the upstairs guest rooms.
“What do you mean?”
“All this Spiritualism stuff . . . it doesn’t happen in October, does it?”
“Lily Dale is a Spiritualist community,” Odelia replies somewhat stiffly. “If that’s a problem for you—”
“No, it isn’t,” Parker says hastily. “We love it.”
“We just don’t believe in it,” Johneen says. “Is that a problem for you, Odelia?”
“No. To each his own.”
“But I have to wonder why you want to get married here, of all places.”
Parker answers Bella’s question for both of them. “Because it seems as if it’s a million miles away from the rest of the world.”
“And you want to get away from the rest of the world because it’s romantic?”
Johneen hesitates long enough before her “yes” for Bella to suspect there’s more to their story than they’re letting on.
She takes them upstairs to peek into the guest rooms, glad that they’re tidy and vacant. The tour seems to leave them underwhelmed.
Back downstairs at the door, Johneen gives one last look at the makeshift doorstop, then clears her throat and turns back. “One more thing, Bella . . .”
“Yes?”
Here we go. They’re going to back out. So much for Odelia’s perfect plan and my and Max’s happily ever after in Lily Dale.
“This is a bit awkward. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’d appreciate if you’d refrain from wearing white on my wedding day.”
Bella glances down at her blueberry-stained dress. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of upstaging you.”
Johneen raises an eyebrow and looks at Parker, who chuckles as though that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
Bella and Odelia stand on the front porch, watching the couple drive away down the dusky dappled lane in their oversized luxury vehicle.
The engine fades, leaving only the sounds of Max and Jiffy calling to each other in the backyard, a distant lawn mower, and wind chimes tinkling from the eaves of this and every other house along Cottage Way.
At last, Odelia speaks. “You know, I’ve only met her a few times, when I visited Calla at college. Johnny was always spoiled, but I don’t remember her being quite this high maintenance. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ve got this.”
“You do. You sounded like a pro in there.”
“I did?”
“You had Bridezilla eating out of your hand when you were talking about all that fancy food.”
She smiles. “I did, didn’t I?” She’d been remembering the outdoor parties she and Sam attended back in New York. They’d had a nice social life for a short window of time before the economy tanked and Max came along. “You know what? I can do this. Maybe it’ll even be fun.”
“Really?”
“Who am I kidding?” Bella sinks onto the porch swing and swings her feet up onto the opposite railing. “But we can laugh about it later, right?”
“Let’s hope so.” Odelia sits beside her. “She really is self-absorbed.”
“Most brides are. Weddings are stressful.”
“Was yours?”
Bella thinks back. “Not really. It was the happiest day of my life. I was head over heels in love with Sam. All I wanted was to be his wife, and I couldn’t wait to start living happily ever after. I meant every word of my vows.”
They were tested so soon afterward.
She and Sam had been rich and poor. They’d had sickness and health, though not in that order.
As for the rest . . .
Till death do us part.
The words are bittersweet now.
How can she fault Johneen and Parker for rushing into a wedding because they’re in love? Life really is too short.
Of course, here in Lily Dale, plenty of people—Odelia included—don’t necessarily consider death a relationship obstacle.
Sometimes, Bella welcomes that philosophy. It’s nice to imagine that her late husband really is still with her, even though she usually can’t feel him, and she certainly can’t see or hear him.
“How about you?” she asks Odelia. “Was your wedding stressful?”
“Not at all. But my marriage made up for it,” she adds wryly.
Odelia doesn’t often talk about her ex-husband, who left when their only daughter was young. Bella knows he didn’t support her Spiritualist beliefs, which are, as she once mentioned, a more important part of her life than her ex-husband ever was.
“Is that why he left you?” Bella had asked. She’d learned never to expect a simple answer from Odelia, but that time, she got one.
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“In so many words.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. There are worse reasons for a man to leave a woman.”
On that day, as on this one, they sat a while longer in cozy silence, swaying the porch swing so that it made a gentle squeaking sound. Bella has spent many a contented hour in this very spot, rocking and reading, watching butterflies or fireflies, listening to the crunching footsteps and murmuring voices of passersby as they leave the Spiritualist message services.
I’m going to miss summertime, she thinks, wondering if she’ll regret the decision to stay for the winter. Will Lily Dale be so welcoming when the lake-effect snows blow in from the west, burying the village in eight-foot drifts?
Sam would have been happy here. “‘I love snow and all the forms of the radiant frost,’” he’d quote Percy Bysshe Shelley to Bella whenever she bemoaned winter weather.
Sam loved poetry as much as he loved snow.
“Easy for you to say. You can ski and ice skate. I just slip-slide around and fall down a lot.”
“Well, you might as well make a snow angel while you’re down there, Bella Angel.”
That was his other nickname for her because her maiden name was Angelo. On her birthday last year, he gave her the stained-glass angel wind chimes that now sway gently from the porch rafters.
“Angel bells for my Bella Angel,” he said, smiling a sad smile. He was already ill. “When you hear them, think of me.”
They didn’t ring much back in Bedford, where the weather was far more tranquil. But here in the Dale—
“I probably shouldn’t share this.” Odelia’s voice intrudes upon the tinkling chimes and Bella’s memories.
“Share what?”
“Spirit is warning me about something.”
Spirit, Bella knows, refers to the energy Odelia channels from the Other Side or the Great Beyond or whatever one chooses to call the place souls reside before they come to earth and after they leave. Bella has always called it heaven, ever since she was a little girl trying to cope with the fact that her mom was there instead of with Bella where she belonged. Now Sam is there too, along with Bella’s father.
Whenever Odelia starts to deliver one of her cryptic messages, Bella gets her hopes up. But they’re never from Bella’s loved ones. “My obligation is to tell you what Spirit wants you to know,” Odelia always reminds her. “Not what you want to hear.”
“What is Spirit warning you about?” Bella asks her now.
“Something to do with Johnny’s wedding gown . . .”
“What about it? Is it puffy? She doesn’t do puffy.”
Ordinarily, Odelia would crack a smile. Not this time.
“Nothing like that. Spirit just keeps showing me the bottom of a long white dress, and it’s dripping wet. Maybe . . . It sounds strange, I know, but I feel as though something bad is going to happen because of it.”
“Because of what? The hem of her dress?”
“Yes. Maybe she’s going to trip over it, or maybe she’ll slip in a puddle of water and get hurt.”
She falls silent.
Bella waits.
Odelia’s eyes are closed. She isn’t in a trance, but she’s wearing an intent expression, as if she’s seeing something Bella can’t see and hearing something Bella can’t hear.
Which is—if you buy Spiritualism—exactly the case.
Does Bella buy it?
Normally, no.
Occasionally, like right now . . .
Maybe.
“And there’s a spider.”
Bella hates spiders, and so does Max these days. A fan of Charlotte’s Web and Spider-Man who’d even named his favorite kitten Spidey, he’d never minded them much. But there are some hairy, horrible ones in the basement of this old house, and he was imprisoned down there on a harrowing day back in July. The experience could have resulted in something far worse than sudden-onset arachnophobia, Bella knows.
“Mom!” he shrieked last night in the kitchen, “A giant spider!”
In the old days, he’d have called, “Dad!”
Now it’s Bella’s job to nudge the horrible creatures out into the night with a broom whose handle isn’t nearly long enough. She tells Odelia about the latest eight-legged interloper. “Is that what you were seeing in your vision?”
Odelia doesn’t answer, deep in concentration.
After a long time, she murmurs, “There’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“A closed door. I see the key in the keyhole. That’s important.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.” Odelia opens her eyes abruptly. “It’s Spirit shorthand. I have to figure it out.”
“Refresh my memory. What is Spirit shorthand?”
“We all have unique methods of communicating with Spirit, interpreting the messages through symbols. For example, when Spirit shows me a pink helium balloon, it signifies a little girl. A blue helium balloon is a little boy. Or when I see a shiny black car, I know someone is going to cross over.”
“What does a closed door mean?”
“When I see a door closing, it means that someone is about to make some kind of transition. But in this case, I’m seeing it already closed and locked.”
“Are you sure it has something to do with Johneen?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you think it means she shouldn’t be getting married to Parker?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but . . .” Odelia frowns. “Something isn’t right about this.”
“Are you going to warn her?”
“I don’t want to alarm anyone. I’m not sure what it means. I’ll wait and see what else Spirit shows me.”
Chapter Three
October
One month later
Wearing comfortable old jeans the same shade as the sky and clutching her car keys, Bella steps out the front door of Valley View into a sunlit mosaic of red and gold, maroon and orange. Leaves float lazily from the branches, and a vibrant carpet blankets the Dale, infusing the air with a heady, earthy perfume.
The perfect weather won’t last much longer. According to the forecast she just spotted online—and contrary to this morning’s report—the balmy sunshine won’t stick around over the weekend after all. This time tomorrow will usher in a cold front with strong thunderstorms and a killing frost, just in time for the Maynard-Langley wedding.
So much for the meticulously planned outdoor ceremony and reception, she thinks as she hurries toward her car.
During the season, the small parking area across the lane would be crowded with cars. Today there are only a few. Bella recognizes all of them, including a familiar white Lexus that belongs to one of Odelia’s regular clients. Alana Rotini keeps a standing two o’clock Friday appointment with the medium the way some women do with their hairdressers.
Bella checks her watch and makes a mental note to call Odelia after three to discuss a rainy day backup plan.
So much to do, so little time.
She hadn’t intended to add an emergency spay surgery to the week’s agenda, but intense feline wanderlust seemed to blow in on the warm Indian summer wind. Yesterday, Bella opened the interior doors to enjoy the crossbreeze, and Chance beat a hasty exit through the faulty-hinged screen door when she wasn’t looking.
It wasn’t the first time the cat had pulled a vanishing act. When they first moved in, Bella and Max were baffled by the way she’d disappear from a room on one floor and reappear behind closed doors on another. Max assumed she was magical, and Bella was inclined to agree. Then they discovered a network of secret passageways that had been used by bootleggers back in the Roaring Twenties.
Last summer, Chance wasn’t the only one coming and going through the secret tunnels, but she is now, thank goodness.
Who can blame her for wanting to nap undisturbed on the cushioned bench in the parlor’s bay window or on the blue braided rug in the breakfast room, away from her litter’s adorable but exhausting antics?
She always dutifully returns to the nest after a brief respite. Last night, however, she was gone at least a few hours before Bella figured out that she was outside, a lapse she blames on both wedding tasks and her mother-in-law.
Millicent has been calling a lot lately, having gotten over her disappointment—and yes, irritation—that Bella and Max decided to stay in Lily Dale for the school year. She’ll ask Bella countless questions, then want to talk to Max. She asks him the same questions, almost as if she’s expecting different answers.
When yesterday’s hour-long call finally ended, Bella found a couple of kittens performing death-defying stunts on the stairway and realized she hadn’t seen their mama in any of her usual haunts. Nor had Chance escaped to the basement through one of the secret passageways upstairs. If she were there, she’d have come running when Bella shook the treat bag at the top of the stairs.
“She must have gotten out of the house,” Bella told a worried Max. “But I’m sure she’ll be back.”
“What if a wild animal eats her?”
“There are no wild animals in the Dale.”
“What if she gets run over?”
“There aren’t many cars in the Dale either, now that the season’s over.”
Bella wasn’t nearly as worried about traffic as she was about tomcats. The last thing anyone needs right now is a fresh batch of kittens.
Chance ultimately turned up on the doorstep, indignantly meowing to be let in, as if she’d been pushed out of the house in the first place. But as soon as she’d visited her kittens and eaten a can of food, she tried to escape again and caterwauled when she couldn’t.
Bella called Drew Bailey.
“Do you think she’s sick? Or rejecting her kittens?”
“Nope. She’s in heat.”
“Uh-oh. She was out there for a while. I hope she didn’t get . . . romantic.”
“Believe me, when the cat’s away, the cat will play,” he said dryly. “If you’re going to let her out, then you need to—”
“I’m not going to let her out. She got out. The door is broken.”
“Well, then, I guess I’d better fix them both.”
“Both?”
“The cat and the door.”
“Oh, you don’t have to fix the door. Just Chance,” she said above howls from Chance as well as from a couple of amorous tomcats parked beneath her open window.
“Let’s see . . . I have an opening next Tuesday afternoon.”
“Tuesday?” How was she supposed to pull off the Maynard-Langley wedding amid a cacophony of unsated feline lust? “Is there any way you could do it sooner? Like . . . first thing tomorrow? Please?”
He hesitated, then agreed to squeeze her in.
“Really? Thank you so much. You’re my hero!” she blurted.
As she hung up, flustered, she could have sworn she caught something about Drew coming to fix the door on Saturday morning. But she couldn’t be sure, and she didn’t know how to bring it up when she dropped off Chance after a sleepless night spent unsucces
sfully trying to drown out the incessant wails with headphones and a pillow over her head.
She was unexpectedly emotional as she gave the restless cat a last loving pat and told Drew to take good care of her.
“I always do, don’t I?”
Yes. He always does. Still, worry dogged Bella as she went about yet another day crammed with wedding errands. She was relieved when Drew called to report that Chance was safely in recovery. Now the cat, like Max, just needs to be settled at home before the bride and groom arrive.
Bella drives down the lane to the gatehouse at the entrance to the Dale. A two-lane road winds past, tracing the shoreline of Cassadaga Lake. It’s lined with scattered houses, trees, and the occasional clearing with a boat dock jutting into the water.
She exchanges a friendly wave with a mailman leaning from his truck to deposit mail into a roadside box just outside the gate.
“You drove to the bus stop today,” he calls to her. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Have a good weekend, Smitty!”
He drives on, and she parks her car alongside the now-familiar blue sign with its inscription The World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism.
Whenever she sees it, she’s grateful for her tunnel vision on the stormy June night she first drove into the Dale. She was so focused on her mission to return Chance the Cat to her rightful owner that she hadn’t noticed the sign. If she had, she never would have considered the Dale a haven.
Flanked by redbrick pillars, the low-roofed windowed hut was unmanned then, as it is now. During the season, it’s occupied by an attendant who collects a modest visitor’s fee. Most days, it was Roxi, a pretty teenage girl who babysits for Max once in a blue moon when Bella has a social life. That has consisted solely of seeing a movie with Odelia, attending a housewares party down the street, and—if you count it—getting an emergency filling at the dentist.
Odelia is always telling her she needs to get out more and even dared to encourage her to date. Yeah, sure. The Dale isn’t exactly crawling with eligible bachelors.
Although . . .
Speak of the devil.
Something Buried, Something Blue Page 4
