Free Discovering by Wendy Corsi Staub Page B

I loved our little visits.”
    Only in Lily Dale, Calla can’t help thinking again.
    Only in Lily Dale do people speak of spirits dropping in the way they might mention a friend coming for tea.
    “Anyway,”her grandmother goes on with her tale, “Jack and I settled in here with the baby, and he found work at the steel plant down in Dunkirk. It wasn’t long before I really found my calling— I discovered who I was and what I could do, and eventually, I accepted myself. Which is right about the time Jack also discovered who I was—and did the opposite.”
    “Rejected you?”
    “Yes. He just couldn’t take it— the spiritualism, and everything that went with it. He thought I was nuts— even when things happened, things he witnessed with his own eyes. Who knows? Maybe he thought he was nuts, too. Maybe when he left us, he checked himself into an asylum somewhere.”
    “You mean he just . . . took off?”
    “In the middle of the night. Yup. Left a note that said You’re better off this way. That was it. I thought the note was meant for Stephanie . . . but I guess it was for both of us. He left both of us. Your mother was too young to remember, thank God.”
    “She never talked about it. Or him.”
    “No. She never did. I was always worried that it damaged her somehow. And frankly, I was shocked that he left the way he did. Not just me—left her. Whatever happened between the two of us, he loved that child. Doted on her from the moment she was born. She looked just like him, and had so many of his mannerisms. He liked to say she was a chip off the old block. I guess I’m just lucky he didn’t take her with him when he disappeared.”
    “You never heard from him again?”
    “Nope.”She shrugs, takes off her sunglasses, wipes them— and then her eyes—on the hem of her denim shirt.
    “Are you okay, Gammy?”Calla touches her shoulder.
    “Sure. It’s been a long time, you know . A lifetime. And this sort of thing does happen around here. Believe me, Jack’s not the first person to ever take off and not look back.”
    Thinking of Darrin—and of her friend Blue Slayton’s mother—Calla nods slowly. “Why do they leave, do you think?”
    “Jack left because he was weak. Plain and simple. I can’t speak for anyone else. Actually, I probably shouldn’t even be speaking for Jack . . . but . . . well, I knew him. I knew why he left.”
    “What do you think ever happened to him?”
    “Oh, he’s back in Pittsburgh. Remarried, with grown kids and grandkids. Still a steelworker, after all these years.”
    “How do you know that?”
    Odelia raises an eyebrow at her. “Let’s put it this way. If someone like me really wants to find someone . . . they can usually be found. Capisce ?”
    Calla nods slowly. “Capisce.”
    If someone like me really wants to find someone . . . they can usually be found.
    Someone like Odelia, Calla thinks. . . .
    And someone like me.
    Upstairs in her room, Calla types in her mother’s e-mail password.
    L-E-O-L- Y-N.
    Her hand trembling on the key, she hits Enter, then waits for the mail files to load.
    It doesn’t take long.
    Her breath seems deafening in her own ears as she scrolls up through the archives, back to last winter.
    She forces herself to reread the first exchange between her mother and Darrin, when they were rediscovering each other after all those years, and making secret plans to meet in Boston.
    Then she opens the first contact that came after. The one she couldn’t go on reading the other day.
    Darrin (like I told you, I can never call you Tom, no matter what you want me to do, sorry!)— seeing you yesterday was incredible, despite everything. You said you wanted me to think about what you told me, about what happened back then, and I’ve done nothing but that since you left me at the airport. A part of me can’t believe it really even happened, but I know you wouldn’t lie. Yes, you made some mistakes—terrible mistakes— but I understand why you did