Discovering (13 page)

“Hi, Mr. Yates. I’m not sure if you remember me. . . .” Yes, she is sure he does, but it seems polite to reintroduce herself. “I’m Calla Delaney. Odelia Lauder’s granddaughter?”

And Stephanie Lauder Delaney’s daughter, but no need to voice that aloud. He knows.

“Hello.”

“And this is my . . .” “Friend” seems wrong. And this is not the best moment to call him her boyfriend for the first time. “This is Jacy Bly.”

Mr. Yates offers Jacy the same polite, yet frosty, nod.

“I need to speak to you— and your wife, too. It’s about your son.”

He raises a bushy gray eyebrow. “What about him?”

Calla falters.

“It’s probably a good idea if we come inside and sit down,” Jacy speaks up. “If you don’t mind.”

“No. Come in,” he says heavily, as if he realizes, somehow, what’s coming.

Still keeping a grip on the dog, he leads them into a sparsely decorated living room that’s shockingly uncluttered by Lily Dale standards.

“We’re getting ready to leave this weekend for Arizona,” Mr. Yates explains, sweeping an arm around the room. “Most of our things are packed away. Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

He shuts the dog into a room at the back of the house amid barking protests, then goes upstairs.

Calla and Jacy perch close together on an uncomfortable sofa with stiff, shiny green-and- brown- striped fabric.

“Are you okay?” Jacy asks in a low voice, reaching into his pocket.

She nods, afraid her voice will crack if she tries to speak.

She’s not okay. She’s a nervous wreck.

Especially when she sees Jacy remove a folded sheet of printer paper from his pocket.

What if the Yateses don’t believe it? What if they think the article is a fake?

About to ask Jacy what he thinks, she looks up, then does a double take, spotting something over his shoulder.

“Darrin is here,” she whispers to Jacy, knowing she probably shouldn’t be surprised to see him.

“Where?”

She points to the apparition sitting somewhat stiffly in a chair behind him. “Can you see him?”

“No, but I can feel him,” Jacy says simply.

Footsteps creak on the stair treads, and Mr. Yates descends with his wife, a wiry, petite woman with cropped silver hair.

“You remember Calla and Jacy,” he says, and she nods, looking about as thrilled to see them in her living room as Calla is to see Darrin.

In silence, the Yateses arrange themselves in a pair of wingback chairs facing the couch.

Then the four of them look at one another for a few awkward moments.

To Calla’s surprise, Darrin drifts across the room toward her, and gives a slight nod.

She clears her throat. “Mr. and Mrs. Yates, I don’t know how to say this, so . . . I mean, I guess I just have to say it. I know you’ve been looking for your son for years, and I know you said you both believe he’s still alive. . . .”

No, they don’t, she realizes, stunned to see the sorrowful expression in both sets of eyes that are fixated on her.

They said they sensed that Darrin was still on the earth plane, and maybe they really did, while he was.

But not anymore.

Something Ramona told Calla a while back comes back to her.

Nothing is more powerful than the bond between a parent and a
child, but there are some things a parent might not want to see, or
accept.

The Yateses know .

They probably couldn’t admit it to her and Jacy, and possibly not even to each other, but they already know their son is dead.

The realization that she’s not about to deliver shocking news—and that they probably won’t question the newspaper article’s validity— makes it a little easier for Calla to go on. Especially when she sees Darrin go stand between their two chairs, resting a hand on both his mother’s and his father’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,” Calla says gently, “but I found an article on the Internet about Darrin—he was living in Maine, under another name—and it says he . . . passed away. A few months ago.”

Mr. Yates flinches as though he’s been struck by a heavy object and squeezes his eyes closed as if to ward off the pain.

Mrs. Yates lets out a sob and buries her face in her hands.

“I’m so sorry,” Calla says again, feeling helpless.

Yes, they knew . . . but it doesn’t make hearing it aloud any easier to bear.

Who knows that better than her? She’s the one who found her mother at the foot of the stairs. She immediately realized she was dead, but when the paramedics arrived to confirm it, she fell apart all over again.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jacy tells the Yateses as they embrace each other.

For a few minutes, Mrs. Yates cries inconsolably on her husband’s shoulder as, tearful himself, he tries to comfort her. Darrin is beside them, watching sadly yet peacefully.

It’s almost as if he’s okay with where he is, Calla realizes. He doesn’t seem to mind being dead. He just doesn’t want his parents to hurt.

After a few minutes, they manage to compose themselves and again face Calla and Jacy, this time with their veiny old hands clasped in the space between the chairs.

“Tell us,” Mr. Yates says, “about our son. About what you found.”

“It might be easier to show you.” Calla looks at Jacy.

He nods and holds out the article from the Internet.

The Yateses lean their heads close together and read it silently. Mrs. Yates is crying again, but her husband seems to have steeled himself against emotion.

“So . . . he was murdered. I guess that should surprise me.”

Calla and Jacy look at each other, then back at Mr. Yates.

“It doesn’t surprise you?”Calla asks.

He shrugs. “I never had a good feeling about my son. He was such a good little boy. . . .”His voice breaks and he looks down, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Then he got involved with drugs,”Mrs. Yates tells them, shaking her head. “It happens a lot, to gifted young people who don’t want to see the things they can see. Darrin was frightened by his abilities. He tried to shut things out, numb himself. Drugs did that.”

Calla nods, sympathizing with the young man who was undoubtedly bombarded with the same things she is—ghostly images and voices, and premonitions you can’t do anything about.

For the first time, she grasps the importance of learning how to channel the energy around her, how to tune in and tune out. Not to would put her in danger in more ways than she ever really comprehended.

“I imagine he got himself into some kind of trouble with a drug dealer, or something like that,”Mr. Yates comments, gesturing with the article about Darrin’s murder.

His wife nods glumly. “I don’t want to know the details. Do you?”

Her husband shakes his head. “What does it matter?”He hands the article back to Jacy and stands. So does Mrs. Yates.

Clearly the visit is over. It’s time to leave the Yateses to grieve in private. Calla and Jacy get up, too.

“Thank you for telling us,”Mrs. Yates says, when they reach the front door.

To Calla’s surprise, she reaches out with a thin, bony, deeply veined hand and gives Calla’s fingers a squeeze. “I’m truly sorry about your mother.”

“Thank you. And I’m so sorry about your son.”She hesitates, wondering if she should mention the link between the two murders.

No.

That will come out in time, with the police investigation.

Maybe, she realizes when she gets home, even sooner than she thinks.

“Calla! There you are. Where have you been?”her grandmother hurries into the front hall the moment she steps over the threshold.

“Babysitting.”

“Paula said you left at five. I called over there looking for you.”

“Is everything all right?”she asks, suddenly frightened.

“Everything’s fine, but— where were you?”

“I ran into Jacy on the way home. Sorry. Why were you looking for me?”she asks, though she wouldn’t really blame her grandmother for trying to keep closer tabs on her after the lie she told about the homecoming dance.

“A couple of detectives were just here wanting to talk to you. From Florida. I told them to come back tomorrow after school. I’ll make sure I’m here with you, and I’ll tell your father, too.”

“No, wait, Gammy— I’d rather talk to them without him, okay?”

“I don’t think—”

“Please, Gammy. There are some things I have to tell them, and— I just don’t want him to hear them just yet.”

Odelia sighs. “Okay. But you know it’s all going to come out sooner or later.”

“I know .”

“You can’t take on the weight of the world, sweetie. You’re just a kid.”Her grandmother hugs her, hard.

Calla tries to swallow the ache in her throat.

Just a kid.

When, she wonders, was the last time she felt young and carefree?

And will she ever feel that way again?

TWELVE

Lily Dale
Wednesday, October 10
7:50 p.m.

“Too bad Odelia couldn’t have come with us,”Dad comments, pulling the rental car into his usual spot in front of the house after a casual dinner at B.J.’s Downwind Café in Fredonia.

“Yeah, that would have been good,”Calla agrees.

It had been a quiet dinner, just the two of them, trying to make conversation while eating Buffalo wings— not that the locals call them that. Around here, as she keeps reminding her father, they’re just “wings.”Kind of like Lily Dale is just “the Dale.”

The stilted meal is what it was like between Calla and her father last summer when Mom first passed away, and they had to figure out how to communicate without her to bridge the conversational gap.

Calla had thought they had that all figured out by now, but for some reason, tonight was . . . awkward.

Maybe it’s partly because she’s been feeling increasingly preoccupied about Althea York. That tragedy has almost overshadowed her confrontation with the Yateses and the disturbing discovery that she doesn’t have a long- lost sibling after all.

Dad has seemed preoccupied all night, too.

Probably thinking about Ramona. He invited her, Evange-line, and Mason to join them for dinner, but they turned down the invitation.

“We had wings last night, and anyway, you two need some father-daughter time,”Ramona said with her easy grin. “You don’t need the rest of us horning in.”

At the time, Calla was grateful.

Now, she wishes someone had tagged along to defuse the silence, even if it would have meant Dad and Ramona mooning all over each other all night.

“Looks like Odelia’s not home yet,”Dad observes, looking up at the darkened house and empty driveway beside it.

“No, she had an appointment. She probably won’t be home until later.”

Much later. Her grandmother is conducting a home message circle in Westfield tonight, and those can go till all hours.

“She sure has a lot of appointments, doesn’t she?”Dad looks thoughtful.

“Yeah, well . . . she’s busy.”

“Counseling people.”

“Right.”

It’s not a lie. That is what Odelia does for a living. She just never specified to Dad what kind of counseling it is that she does.

“You know . . .”He turns off the engine and rubs the spot where his beard used to be. “Ramona is a counselor, too.”

“I know, Dad.”Calla furtively puts her hand on the door handle, not wanting to make it obvious that she’s trying to escape the conversation.

“That’s pretty coincidental, don’t you think? Two counselors, living next door to each other?”

“I don’t know . . . not really.”She starts to open the door.

“Calla.”

Uh- oh.

“Yeah?”

“Your grandmother and Ramona . . . they’re not just regular counselors, are they.”It isn’t a question.

“Ramona told you that?”

“No. I figured it out all by myself.”He gives her a tight smile. “And I guess I’m right. They’re . . . what do they call themselves?”

“Not ‘New- Age freaks.’ ”She can’t help but be relieved— not just that he’s smiling at all, but that it’s out in the open at last.

“So what are they? Psychic counselors?”

“That pretty much sums it up. How did you figure it out?”

“For one thing, a lot of people around here seem to have signs on their houses advertising themselves as psychic counselors, and the like. I saw the empty bracket at Ramona’s, and the bracket with that potted plant here—”He gestures at Odelia’s porch, where a tired, straggly looking chrysanthemum hangs in place of the shingle that reads
ODELIA LAUDER
,
REGISTERED
MEDIUM
.

“I don’t have to be a so-called psychic myself to have figured out that something is conspicuously missing,”Dad tells her.