Awakening Read online

  She does know she saw Kaitlyn Riggs or someone who looks just like her here in Lily Dale and that she’s still missing, but what is she supposed to do about that?

  And she’s going to California Labor Day weekend because that’s the plan, unless she asks permission to stay. Odelia will agree, she’s certain. Her father might, too. But is it what she wants? Just days ago, all she wanted was to leave, and now— Something catches the corner of her eye. She jerks her head around to see a familiar woman standing several feet away, in the shadows of a huge old maple tree. She has a dark bun, dark eyes, a slight build . . . and she’s wearing a strange, flowing, light-colored dress.

  It’s her.

  The woman she saw here before, and that day in the cemetery in Florida.

  Her hand is outstretched. She’s holding something out toward Calla.

  Mesmerized, Calla walks closer, forgetting to be startled or afraid.

  On the woman’s palm is something small and silvery. She lifts it directly under her face so that the item is clearly visible.

  It’s a charm—the kind you attach to a bracelet. It’s etched with the outline of a rugged landscape and some words Calla can’t quite read.

  She leans closer until she can.

  Rock House.

  That means nothing to her. Nothing at all. Should it? Rock House. She squeezes her eyes closed to think about it, feeling as though she’s forgetting something, and comes up blank.

  When she opens her eyes again a moment later, the woman is gone.

  Was she even here at all? Or am I losing my mind?

  Calla exhales shakily and looks up at the wispy clouds floating across the pale blue sky, as if she can possibly find an answer there. Nope. You’re losing your mind.

  She lowers her head again, and something catches her eye on the ground at her feet.

  Bending over, she retrieves the silver charm.

  So she really was here. It wasn’t Calla’s imagination.

  Rock House.

  “Oh my God,” Calla says breathlessly, remembering.

  That night at the message circle,Walter said the same thing when he read Elaine Riggs. He saw a rock . . . and a house.

  At the time, Calla thought he was seeing two separate images, and maybe he was.

  But on this souvenir charm, they’re put together: one phrase. The name of a place.

  But where is it? And what does it have to do with Kaitlyn Riggs?

  “Calla? Is that you?” Odelia calls when Calla walks in the door, as if she’s been waiting for her.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” Still clutching the strange silver charm, she heads toward the stairs. She isn’t in the mood to talk to her grandmother. She really needs to pull herself together before her coffee date with Blue later. That, or cancel it.

  “Wait.” Odelia appears in the doorway, wearing a red T-shirt, lavender Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops with a fist-sized plastic flower above the thong. “I have to tell you something.”

  Calla stops short. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. But you missed a phone call, and it was some good news for you.”

  “Dad’s letting me stay?” she blurts. Oops. Of course that’s not it. How can it be? She’s never even brought that up.

  “You want to stay?” Odelia asks slowly, looking stunned. “Here in Lily Dale? With me?”

  Calla opens her mouth to tell her she doesn’t, but somehow, she can’t bring herself to say that. Because it isn’t true. She does want to stay. At least for a while.

  “I . . . I don’t know. Maybe.” She can’t look her grandmother in the eye.

  Odelia walks over to her and hugs her. Hard. “Well, I would really love that. Having you here has been . . . I don’t want to get all mushy on you, so I’ll just say it’s been good.”

  Calla nods. No way is she going to get mushy if Odelia’s not. “It has been good.”

  “Listen,” Odelia says, “you can stay as long as you want. Forever and a day.”

  “I was thinking maybe just until November. There’s a beach house Dad found, and it isn’t available till then, so . . . I was thinking I could start school here, then transfer.”

  “Would you really want to do that?”

  Calla shrugs. “Why not? I’m already changing schools from Tampa, anyway. It’s not like I’m going to have this great senior year no matter where I am.”

  “You never know. Here, especially. The high school is small, but it’s good. Your mother loved it, back then.” Odelia is wearing a wistful, faraway smile.

  Calla opens her mouth, wanting to ask about Darrin. But, no, she shouldn’t. Not yet.

  “So you asked your father about staying?” Odelia asks.

  Calla shakes her head. “Can you ask him for me?”

  “Me? I don’t know if that’s—”

  “Coming from you, he’ll take it more seriously,” Calla tells her. “You can tell him that I’ve been doing well here, and that the school is good, and all that stuff.”

  “Oh, hell, why not? I’ll talk to him if you want me to. The sooner the better, if you’re serious about staying. I’ll have to get you registered at school, and get supplies. . . .” She sounds so enthusiastic, it sounds like a done deal.

  Dad will never let me, Calla thinks. Then again, he isn’t used to being the decision maker in her life, and Odelia can be very take-charge and persuasive . . . just like Mom was.

  “Wait a second.” Calla remembers something. “You said I missed a phone call, good news. What is it?”

  “Oh! I almost forgot. Your friend Lisa called. She said she’s coming to visit.”

  “What? When?”

  “Her brother is driving her here—they’re leaving first thing in the morning. She’ll be here Friday, fly home Monday.”

  “Are you serious? Lisa’s coming here?” With Kevin?

  “She asked me if it was all right with me, and of course I told her it is. I just hope it’s all right with you.”

  “Yes!” Then, hardly daring to breathe, Calla asks, “Is . . . is her brother staying, too?”

  “No, he’s dropping her off, then heading to school. Cornell, right? He must be smart.”

  “He is.” But not smart enough to hang on to me, Calla can’t help thinking. “Do you mind if I use the phone to call Lisa?”

  “Not at all,” Odelia says, “but first let me use it to call your father. I don’t want to waste another minute.”

  “When you’re done checking your e-mail, want to hang out for a while?” Evangeline asks twenty minutes later, watching Calla pull the desk chair closer to the keyboard.

  “For a couple of minutes,” Calla murmurs, dragging the mouse and clicking on the Internet icon. “I . . . have to be someplace in a little while, though.”

  “Really? Hot date?”

  Calla looks up sharply. “Who told you?”

  “Oh my God! You really have a hot date? With who, Blue Slayton?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Wait, I was just kidding . . . so you do? With Blue?” When Calla nods, she shrieks. “I can’t believe it! I so knew he was into you! Tell me everything!”

  “Just . . . give me a minute online, okay? Then I’ll tell you. Not that there’s much to tell.”

  “There must be something juicy if you’re going out with Blue.”

  Calla shrugs and flashes Evangeline a distracted smile, hoping she’s not going to stand there in the doorway the whole time and watch her use the computer.

  Good. She’s not. Evangeline returns the smile, then goes into the next room, where the television is on. She’s alone; her aunt took Mason to Applebee’s and a movie down in Fredonia.

  Waiting for the search engine screen to pop up, Calla thinks again about the whirlwind of action at Odelia’s house just now. First came Odelia’s report that her father is actually going to consider letting her stay. On the heels of that was Calla’s giddy conversation with Lisa.

  Calla can hardly believe she’ll be here in Lily Dale
by the weekend. She said her parents are probably letting her come only because they don’t want Kevin driving all that way alone, and neither of them can take off work to accompany him.

  “But who cares why?” she crowed. “I get to come see you. Isn’t it great?”

  Calla has been trying not to picture Kevin slowing his new car in front of Odelia’s house just long enough for Lisa to jump out. Of course he’s not coming here to see her. Lisa is. He’s just the chauffeur.

  And she’s not going to give him another moment’s thought.

  Definitely not right now, anyway, because the search engine is up and she’s typing the words Rock House in quotes.

  A list of links pop up a moment later. She clicks on the first one, reads a few lines, and gasps.

  Rock House is a real place, all right.

  It’s a cave in Hocking Hills State Park, just outside Columbus, Ohio.

  Having coffee with Blue Slayton is the last thing Calla feels like doing, but it’s definitely too late to back out.

  Calla knows, because she tried. But when she called Blue’s house, the housekeeper told her he wasn’t home.

  She’s lying, Calla thought. Somehow, she sensed that Blue was home but didn’t want to talk to her. Or maybe not to anyone. Whatever. She couldn’t demand that he get on the phone so she could break their date, and it wouldn’t be polite to leave him a message saying she can’t go.

  No, the girl who was dumped in a text message would never let anyone down in such an impersonal manner.

  She finds herself checking her reflection in the living-room mirror one last time as she hears a car door slam, then footsteps coming up the porch steps, through the screen.

  “You look pretty,” Odelia says from her recliner, where she’s reading People magazine with her bare feet up, flip-flops kicked into a distant corner.

  “Thanks.” Calla notices that her eyes in the mirror, accented by makeup for the first time in ages, look too huge in her thinner-than-usual face. A generous layer of concealer couldn’t mask the circles beneath them, either.

  Other than that, though, she looks fine. Maybe even pretty. She’s wearing jeans and a snug-fitting black tank top with spaghetti straps, and she’s left her hair down to fall around her bare shoulders. Not that she’s trying to impress Blue Slayton or anything.

  “Have fun,” Odelia says from her chair as the bell rings and Calla heads for the door.

  “Yeah, I will.”

  Blue—whose eyes, jeans, and chambray shirt reflect his name—smiles appreciatively when he sees her, jangling keys in his hand. “Ready?”

  Not really. She should be having a heart-to-heart talk with Odelia about Kaitlyn Riggs and Rock House Cave in Ohio.

  But that will open the door to a whole lot of something Calla isn’t ready to face.

  “Ready,” she tells Blue, who’s waiting.

  As she follows him out the door, she pats her back pocket to make sure she can feel the outline of her cell phone there. In case she decides to put Plan B into motion.

  Ten miles northwest of Lily Dale, Route 60 ends at the shore of another lake, this one much bigger than Cassadaga. The grayish green water looks like the ocean, stretching all the way to the horizon. But Calla knows her geography well enough to realize that the Atlantic is a good four hundred or five hundred miles from here, on the opposite end of New York State.

  No, this is one of the Great Lakes—Lake Erie. They’re in Dunkirk, a small city of tree-shaded neighborhoods lined with two-story clapboard houses, brick schools, plentiful church steeples, nineteenth-century storefronts, and a couple of factories. After Lily Dale, it feels like a metropolis. They passed a Super Wal-Mart on the way into town, and Calla asked Blue to stop there on the way back so that she can pick up a few things.

  He wrinkled his nose. “You don’t want to shop there.”

  She does . . . but she tells him to forget it. Maybe she can get Odelia to take her someday.

  The municipal parking lot isn’t at all crowded at this hour on a weeknight, but it takes Blue a few minutes to find a suitable space for his BMW, one that’s a good distance from the café, where there aren’t cars parked on either side.

  “Sorry we have to be way out here.” He opens Calla’s door for her. “I got a door nick on this a few weeks after my dad gave it to me, and he wasn’t thrilled.”

  She finds herself wondering about his dad as they walk toward the store, but she doesn’t want to ask. He hasn’t mentioned him except in passing, and he hasn’t brought up his mother at all. Probably because she isn’t a part of his life. Was she ever?

  Calla finds herself feeling empathetic—or maybe it’s more sympathetic—for him. He comes across as self-assured on the surface, but she suspects there’s a vulnerable little boy somewhere beneath.

  The Chadwick Bay Café is a stone’s throw from the long, wide pier jutting into the lake. Fishing boats and tugs are moored alongside it, and there’s a flock of ducks on the sloped launch at the base of the pier. A family is there—father,mother, little girl—doling out a loaf of bread to the ducks and laughing as they fend off swooping, angry gulls.

  Seeing them, Calla feels an ache in her throat and quickly turns away.

  “If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up covered in seagull crap.” Blue seems utterly uncharmed by the scene. But Calla sees a fleeting glint in his eyes, and she realizes that he, too, might long to be part of a family like that again. If he ever was.

  Death, even divorce, is one thing, but . . .

  How could his mother willingly leave him? Calla tries to imagine how she’d feel if her mother had abandoned her by choice. It’s all she can do not to reach for Blue’s hand and give it a squeeze as he opens the door to the café for her.

  The place is cozy, just a counter and a couple of small round tables with matching wrought-iron chairs. A glass case holds baked goods that seem picked over at this hour, and there are several stainless steel pump carafes behind the counter, along with an espresso machine.

  The teenage girl wiping down the counter looks up. “Hey, Blue, hey, Wil—oh.”

  Not Willow, exactly, but that’s what she was about to say.

  Blue must be a regular here with his ex-girlfriend. Nice.

  “This is Calla,” Blue announces, as Calla looks everywhere but at the counter girl, and him. “Calla, this is Sue.”

  They both say hi. Calla makes an effort to smile and show the girl that she can fit in here every bit as well as Willow . . . who, come to think of it, didn’t strike her as friendly at all.

  “What do you want?” Blue asks her.

  “Just . . . coffee.” She never drinks the stuff, but maybe it’s time she started. A little jolt of caffeine might be just what she needs. That, or a solid night’s sleep, she thinks grimly.

  “Flavored, or non?” Sue asks. “We have hazelnut,Viennese Cinnamon, Irish Cream, Black Forest.”

  Calla, who was hoping for chocolate, says, “I’ll just take nonflavored, thanks.”

  Blue asks for a complicated beverage in what sounds like a foreign language. The girl pours Calla a steaming cup from the carafe marked Regular before foaming the milk for Blue’s drink. Calla adds a liberal amount of half-and-half and two packets of sugar to her cup, takes a sip, and makes a face.

  “What’s wrong? Too hot?”

  She looks up to see Blue watching her. “No, it’s just . . . it seems kind of . . . flavored.”

  “Let’s see.” He takes the cup and tastes it. “Yeah. Hey, Sue, you gave her Irish Cream.”

  “I did?” The girl looks up, surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Here.”

  Sue takes the cup from him, sniffs it, then looks at the carafes. “I could swear I took it from the Regular.”

  “You did,” Calla tells her. “I saw you.”

  Frowning, Sue takes a tiny paper cup, fills it from the spout of the Regular, and sniffs it.

  “This isn’t flavored,” she says, and hands it across
the counter. “See?”

  Calla sniffs it warily. She’s right. It doesn’t smell like Irish Cream at all.

  “I guess I took the other cup from the wrong carafe by accident,” Sue says with an apologetic shrug. “It’s been a long day. Sorry.”

  As she gets Calla another cup—this time, regular—Calla uneasily studies the row of carafes. The flavors are clearly marked on laminated signs. The Irish Cream one is toward the end, a few carafes away from the Regular one. It’s not as if they’re right next to each other and Calla simply thought Sue was filling her cup from the Regular carafe when in fact it was the Irish Cream one.

  No, she knows what she saw.

  Yet she also knows what she tasted. That was definitely Irish Cream. Even Blue agreed.

  “Here you go. Sorry about that, again.” Sue hands her the fresh cup and turns back to preparing the espresso drink.

  Calla fixes the new cup with half-and-half and a couple of sugars. Then she takes a cautious sip.

  This time, it’s regular. But a chill slips down her spine.

  She realizes there suddenly seems to be a chill in the café as well.

  And in the air, mingling with the aroma of brewing coffee, is the unmistakable fragrance of flowers.

  “Hello, is this Mrs. Riggs?”

  “Yes . . . who is this?”

  Standing in the shadows on the pier outside the café, Calla hesitates, clenching her cell phone hard against her ear. “I . . . I’m a friend. I might have some information about your daughter.”

  There’s a gasp on the other end of the line. “Who is this? Are you calling from . . . Florida?”

  Caller ID, Calla realizes with a sinking heart.

  Well, of course. Mrs. Riggs can trace the call to Calla’s phone. And she’ll have the police do it, too. She might even think Calla had something to do with her daughter’s disappearance.

  Oh, God.What am I doing?

  She should have stopped to think this through, but she didn’t. She had come up with the plan earlier, somewhere between the Taggarts’ house and Odelia’s. Still, she wasn’t even sure she was going to go through with it.

  She was sitting there trying to sip her coffee and listen while Blue talked, but she was still unnerved by what had just happened. It wasn’t anything overtly scary, but the mistaken coffee, the chill, the scent in the air—it was all just off. She needed to get out of there . . . and yes, she needed to do something about Kaitlyn. So she impulsively snuck a hand into her back pocket and pressed the ringer button on her cell phone to make Blue think she had a call. Then she pulled it out, answered it, and excused herself to take it outside. Blue didn’t seem to mind. He was chatting with Sue the counter girl again before Calla even made it to the door. Still, she has to make this fast, because he might come out here looking for her.