FOURTEEN

Geneseo, New York
Saturday, September 29
10:16 p.m.

Calla is more ready than ever to call it a night.

Even if they left now, though, they wouldn’t make the last dance.

What a waste of a potentially good—potentially great— evening.

Nobody she and Jacy have asked, mostly college students who are either hanging out or working at the businesses on Main Street, has ever seen Darrin Yates before.

“I guess old Red Beard Bob has a lot of work to do on his psychic abilities,” she tells Jacy as they shuffle down the street again.

“Not necessarily. Maybe we shouldn’t have interpreted his vision so literally. Maybe there’s another statue with a bear in it, in some other town . . . some other country, even. You just don’t know.”

“No, but I really felt like there was something here when we got here.”

“So did I. The funny thing is, I still do.”

So does Calla. That’s the hard part.

She can’t seem to ignore the gnawing idea that this place has some connection to Darrin.

Maybe he’s not here now, but that doesn’t mean he never was.

Regardless, she’s exhausted and her feet are being tortured by these shoes, and it’s really time to go, she concludes as they pass a couple of modern-day hipsters who are very much alive, and a 1960s hippie clad in a headband and bell-bottoms who obviously is not. He gives Calla a transparent peace sign before drifting into oblivion.

“Let’s go, Jacy. Really.”

“Let’s just try this last place,” Jacy suggests, pointing at a small café called Speakeasy, “and then we’ll head back.”

“Good idea.”

The place is dimly lit, with high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and battered hardwood floors. There are stacks of freebie publications and a cluttered bulletin board covered in homemade fliers asking for or volunteering apartment rentals, roommates, or ride shares to various locations over the upcoming break.

Between the door and the counter, almost all of the small, round café tables are full. Most of the patrons are very much alive: studious types sitting alone using laptops, boisterous groups of kids laughing and talking, couples who seem oblivious to everything but each other.

Yet there are a few apparitions hanging around, too, flappers with feathered headbands and dapper guys in pin-striped suits who could have stepped out of the Roaring Twenties. Hearing a faint Charleston playing in the background, Calla wonders if the place really was a speakeasy back then. Probably.

As she and Jacy wait for two alive-and-well coeds to place an order, Calla can’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation. They’re laughing and talking about what to wear to a party they’re going to later, sounding as if they don’t have another care in the world.

That’s what my life will be like next year at this time. I’ll be like them: totally on my own, with no one to tell me where I can go, or what time to be home, or to be careful.

For the first time in a long time, Calla feels a spark of excitement about next year.

Maybe tomorrow, she’ll start working on that list of colleges for Mrs. Erskine.

The girls move on with their coffees; it’s Jacy’s and Calla’s turn now.

“What can I get you folks?” The heavyset gray-haired woman behind the cash register is wearing a black Harley Davidson T-shirt and has a tattoo of a rose on her bare, fleshy lower arm.

Hovering behind her is the spirit of a beefy Hells Angel in a do-rag and a hideously bloody T-shirt. Calla tries not to look at him as Jacy shows the woman the picture and launches into the spiel they’ve been giving everyone they meet.

“We’re trying to find this guy. This is an old picture, but can you take a good look at it and tell me if you’ve ever seen him?”

“Sure, why not.”

“He’d be in his forties,” Calla tells the woman as she takes a step back and holds the photo to better light.

“He can’t be in his forties. He looks like he’s about your age—eighteen, nineteen.”

Calla and Jacy look at each other. They’ve been through this repeatedly tonight.

“That’s not me, in the picture,” Calla tells the woman.

“It’s my mother.”

“But . . .” She looks at the picture, then up at Calla, obviously confused. “You’re wearing the same dress?”

She nods.

“Man oh man, do you look just like your mother or what?”

Calla wishes, again, that she weren’t wearing the same outfit tonight that her mother has on in the photo—same outfit, same makeup, same hairdo.

It was eerie, the way people will glance at the picture, and then at her . . . as if she’s somehow stepped right out of the photograph, and out of the past.

“So this picture was taken, what? Twenty, thirty years ago?”

“About.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.” Rose Tattoo shakes her head.

“Are you sure?” Jacy asks.

“He doesn’t look familiar. Did he go to school at Geneseo or something?”

“I’m not sure,” Calla admits, accepting the frame and tucking it back into her purse. “I don’t know much about him.”

“How come you’re looking for him here?”

“Good question,” she mutters, mostly to herself, then adds politely, “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem.”

“We might as well get going,” Calla tells Jacy.

“You don’t want to go around and ask the customers?”

“Why bother? I think if Darrin lives around here, we would have found someone who recognizes him by now. We’ve asked, like, a hundred people.”

“At least. Okay. You’re right. We can go. But first, let’s order something.” He gestures at the beverage menu written in colored chalk on a blackboard behind the counter, and she notices that the ghostly Hells Angel has disappeared.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Calla says, “I’m not—”

“Listen, Walt gave me ten bucks and told me to take you out for hot chocolate after the dance.”

“That’s really sweet.”

“So . . . two hot chocolates?” asks the woman behind the counter, and they both nod. “Whipped cream, too?”

“Why not? Want a brownie or something, too?” Jacy asks Calla, and she’s catapulted back in time to Florida and a rainy night and the scent of freshly baked brownies in the air.

Was it really only about nine months ago? How can that be?

The memory seems to belong to somebody else’s life story, not hers. Not the person she is now, anyway.

But it did happen—to the person she used to be, living the life that was pulled out from under her without warning.

Kevin was home from Cornell that night, on winter break. She baked for him, and they snuggled on the couch, watching a silly eighties movie and eating molten brownies straight from the oven.

I really miss Kevin, she realizes with a pang. A lot. Even now.

Well, of course. He was her first love.

But maybe he isn’t her last, as she concluded when he dumped her and it felt like her life was over.

She looks at Jacy, wondering if the two of them might ever become as close as she and Kevin were.

It’s hard to imagine . . . but not impossible. If she’s learned anything these last few tumultuous months, it’s that nothing’s impossible.

“Sure, I’ll have a brownie,” she tells Jacy, trying to sound casual, toying with the emerald bracelet, which Mom gave her last spring to help ease the pain of Kevin’s dumping her.

Jacy orders two brownies, then catches her watching him and smiles a little. “What?”

“Nothing . . . just, thanks for doing this with me.”

He grabs her hand below the bracelet and gives it a squeeze. “Don’t be disappointed. Okay?”

Caught off guard by the pleasure of his fingers clasping hers, it takes Calla a moment to figure out what he’s talking about.

Darrin Yates.

Hello? That’s why you’re here, remember?

She sighs. “I just really thought we were going to find him—or at least, find out something about him.”

Behind the counter, Rose Tattoo squirts a generous dollop of whipped cream on the hot chocolates, then covers them with domed plastic lids.

“It doesn’t mean we won’t find him,” Jacy points out. “Just not here, and not tonight.”

“What do we do next, though? Drive around the country aimlessly looking for neon purple houses?”

“Neon purple houses?” Rose Tattoo slides the cups across the counter to them. “Now that, I can help you with.”

“What do you mean?” Calla asks.

“There’s only one neon purple house here in town, and I happen to live on the same street.”

Jacy and Calla exchange a glance.

“Maybe it’s Darrin’s house,” he says.

“Nope.” Rose Tattoo shakes her head. “I know the people who live there, and it’s not the guy you showed me in that picture. It’s a mother and daughter.”

“Maybe he lived there before they did,” Calla suggests, trying not to get too excited, though it seems like they finally have a lead.

“Nope,” Rose Tattoo says again. “Sharon Logan’s owned the house for twenty, maybe almost thirty years now. I remember when she moved in—her kid was just a baby. She’s all grown up now, in her twenties, and I think she must’ve moved out because I haven’t seen her lately.”

“So, there’s not a man living there now?”

“No men. Never. It’s not like that. The Logans keep to themselves.”

Okay . . . but Calla refuses to give up on the lead. Maybe there’s some connection to Darrin Yates. How many neon purple houses can there be in the world? And this one is right here in Geneseo.

“It’s worth a look,” Jacy agrees, and asks Rose Tattoo to write the directions on a napkin.

“I wouldn’t go ringing their doorbell at night,” she advises as she hands it over. “Mrs. Logan isn’t the friendliest neighbor on my block, if you know what I mean.”

Undeterred, Calla and Jacy thank her for her help.

A few minutes later, they’re in the car, steaming hot chocolates sitting in the cup holders, all but forgotten.

Center Street isn’t at all hard to find—it branches off Main, a stone’s throw from the café (which Rose Tattoo confirmed to Calla really was once a speakeasy). She also said they could actually walk to the purple house from there, but Calla’s toes are pinched in the satin pumps, and anyway, she’s anxious to get there.

Her nerve endings sizzle with anticipation as they roll on up the dark street, past a lineup of old houses—most bigger than the ones in Lily Dale but definitely built in the same era. She can tell by the gingerbread porches, cupolas, fishscale shingles, and mansard roofs.

The neighborhood appears to be a blend of well-kept family homes, shabbier student rentals, and even a few fraternity and sorority houses marked with large Greek letters.

“You do know this might be another dead end.” Jacy leans toward the windshield as he drives, straining to make out the house numbers, and paint colors, in the dark.

“I know it might. But it might not.”

“I don’t want you to be disappointed again.”

“I won’t be,” Calla lies.

The truth is, she has a powerful gut feeling that they’re about to find . . . well, if not Darrin Yates himself, then something. Some new information, another piece of the puzzle.

“It should be right around here somewhere.” Jacy consults the napkin again, then slows the car to a crawl.

“There!” Calla points excitedly.

In the glow of the headlights and a nearby streetlamp, it’s easy to see that the turreted two-story Victorian house is painted a bright shade of purple.

At the sight of it, an inexplicable rush of emotion sweeps through Calla.

She can’t put her finger on why, but she’s positive there’s a strong connection between her mother and this house.

The instinct is so overwhelming that Calla jumps out of the car even before Jacy has come to a stop at the curb out front.

“Calla, wait!”

“What?” She turns back and sees that he, too, is out of the car, though his door is open and the engine is still running.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to . . .” He trails off and looks around them at the dark, deserted street. “I just don’t know.”

She nods, uneasily remembering all the warnings that have come her way lately. Still . . .

“You said you saw me struggling in the water. There’s no water here.”

He nods. “I know. But to walk up to someone’s door at night might be asking for trouble. You heard what the woman at the café said about the people who live here.”

“I know, but we can’t just leave.”

“No,” he agrees, “we can’t.”

Together, they walk up the leaf-strewn steps onto the shadowy porch, century-old boards creaking beneath their feet. Calla hesitates only a moment before ringing the old-fashioned bell. She can hear the loud buzz echoing on the other side of the door.

After what seems like a long wait, the overhead porch light flicks on and a face parts the curtains shrouding the door’s glass window.

A woman’s face, Calla realizes. Must be Sharon Logan. And Rose Tattoo was right, she doesn’t look particularly welcoming. In fact, there’s something downright scary about the way her gaze narrows directly at Calla before she opens the door.

“What is it?”

At a loss for words, Calla is silent, taking in the formidable face before her. It isn’t just that the woman is unattractive, with close-set, slate-colored eyes, sagging jowls, and a faint hint of fuzz across her upper lip. But her attitude is downright hostile.

“Mrs. Logan?” Jacy speaks up.

“No.” The woman glares harder. “Not Mrs.”

“Ms. Logan”—Jacy doesn’t wait for an affirmation—“my name is Jacy Bly, and this is Calla Delaney, and we’re in town looking for this man. Have you seen him?” He offers the framed photo, but the woman doesn’t take it.

She merely flicks a glance at the picture, then back at them. “No.”

Is she lying? Maybe.

But Calla isn’t eager to toss out an accusation and risk the consequences.

“Are you sure?” Jacy asks, still holding the frame.

“Positive.” Sharon Logan’s gaze shifts from him to Calla. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s bad manners to go around ringing strangers’ doorbells at this hour of the night?”

She closes the door in their faces without another word. A split second later, the overhead light is extinguished, leaving Calla and Jacy in the dark.

“Come on,” he says in a low voice. “Let’s get out of here.”

“But I need to know about my mother,” she says desperately. “And Darrin.”

“You’re going to Florida next weekend. Maybe you’ll find something when you go through her things at the house, and check the laptop.”

“Maybe.”

Leaves rasping beneath their footsteps, they head down the steps and along the walk toward the car.

They’re almost there when Calla feels a pair of eyes boring into her. She looks over her shoulder at the house again, expecting to see Sharon Logan in the window.

But instead, the silhouette of a man stands squarely on the front steps, facing her.

This time, it’s no shadow ghost.

“Jacy,” she whispers, heart pounding, “there’s someone—”

“I know, shh, I see him.”

Him.

Calla knows who it is even before he walks down the steps and into the moonlight, where she can recognize him.

“Darrin Yates,” she breathes.

It’s him.

It’s really him.

She presses a trembling fist to her mouth.

After everything she’s been through, trying to find him, here he is, walking toward them.

It’s too good to be true . . .

Good?

Remembering that this man may have had something to do with her mother’s death, Calla instinctively moves closer to Jacy’s side and feels him slip a protective arm around her.

She shivers, noticing for the first time that the night air is cold, and leans into his solid warmth.

Darrin comes to a halt a few feet away. His eyes are wide.

“Stephanie?”

Her mother’s name on his lips catches Calla off guard.

She opens her mouth, but she can’t seem to find her voice.

“You’re so beautiful, baby . . . look at you.” He’s staring at Calla in wonder, shaking his head.

He thinks I’m her. He thinks I’m Mom, just like everyone who’s seen that snapshot tonight.

Only Darrin Yates isn’t comparing her to a picture. He’s comparing her to the real thing—his lost love, Stephanie.

And the way he’s looking at Calla, with utter reverence . . .

He’s still in love with her.

That much is clear.

That, and the fact that he thinks he’s seeing a ghost.

She glances at Jacy, who nods.

She clears her throat, manages to speak. “I’m not—”

“Stephanie, I’m so, so sorry.” Darrin Yates falls to his knees in front of her, stunning Calla into silence.

Darrin looks up, his face ravaged with remorse. “I’m so 170 sorry for what I did to you. You had everything to live for— a husband, a daughter, a house, a job . . . you had a life.”

Emotion clogs Calla’s throat; tears blind her eyes.

So he did do it. He killed her.

“If I hadn’t sent you that first e-mail, none of this would have happened. You’d still be alive. But—I don’t know . . . it was Valentine’s Day, and I was thinking of you, and . . . I just never meant to start anything. I never meant to hurt you. I never imagined where it would lead. Can you ever forgive me?”

He reaches toward her with trembling, pleading hands. She inches closer to Jacy, a shudder running down her spine.

“Darrin—”

“No! No, don’t call me that!”

“But—”

“It’s Tom, Stephanie. Tom Leolyn. Remember? You’ll get used to it. I did.”

Calla gulps, manages to say obediently, “Tom, you have to tell me what you did. You have to tell me why I should forgive you.”

She feels Jacy’s arm tensing up on her shoulder.

He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t want her to go along with it, to let Tom think she’s her mother.

But somehow, she’s certain that the man kneeling before her isn’t going to hurt her. Not now.

He already has.

All he wants is forgiveness.

“You know what I did,” he tells her, his voice laced with despair. “I should have left it all alone. All those years . . . you never would have had to know. But it was eating away at me. I couldn’t let you go on thinking she was dead, when all along she was right here.”

“What? What are you talking about? Who was right here?” Calla asks, heart pounding, trying not to strangle on the lump of dread in her throat.

But he’s too far gone to even hear her. Words are pouring out of him, a heartfelt confession Calla knows she has no business hearing, and yet . . .

He blames himself for what happened to Mom.

He pushed her down those stairs. Why?

“I couldn’t carry that secret with me for the rest of my life, Steph. I couldn’t live with myself. I had to tell you, and I told myself I was willing to take the consequences. Now . . .

look at me. I’ve paid the price. But so have you.”

“What did you do, Tom?” Calla asks raggedly. “What did you do to me?”

“I never meant for it to happen. I’ve always loved you. There was never a day that went by that I didn’t miss you, and wonder about you, and need you.”

He’s sobbing now, reaching for her.

Jacy steps between them. “No. Don’t touch her.”

It’s as if Tom is noticing him for the first time, and his eyes narrow. “Who are you?”

“She’s not who you think she is. Calla, come on. Let’s go.”

“But—”

“We have to go. I don’t like this.”

Jacy grabs her arm and pulls her to the car, all but shoving her into the passenger’s seat before he jumps behind the wheel.

As they pull away, she looks back at Darrin, standing alone.

Then she turns on Jacy. “Why did you do that? He was telling us what he did to her!”

“He thought you were her.”

“So?”

“I told you. It wasn’t safe.”

He’s probably right.

Looking back on what just happened, Calla knows it probably wasn’t smart to let Darrin believe she’s her mother.

But she came here looking for answers. Darrin was giving them to her.

“What more do you need to know?” Jacy asks. “He said he was responsible.”

“But he didn’t say why.”

“Does it matter?”

Yes. It does.

And she has the feeling she’ll be haunted by Darrin Yates’s ravaged face for a long, long time.

But . . .

Not Darrin Yates. Tom Leolyn. That was the name he gave. Apparently, it’s the name he’s been going by for all these years.

Leolyn, as in . . .

Leolyn Woods.

Odelia was dozing in her chair when Calla came in the door, but she stirred enough to ask about her night.

“It was great!” Calla told her, around an enormous yawn.

She didn’t have to feign exhaustion—she was utterly depleted by that time—but when Odelia started asking questions, she did have to work up a convincingly enthusiastic, and pathetically generic, description of the evening she and Jacy had supposedly just shared.

She talked about a punch bowl and crepe paper streamers and how a DJ would have been better than a live band. She said she and Jacy danced to a few slow dances, and she danced to the fast ones with her friends.

Every single school dance she’s ever been to is the same old story. For all she knows, this one was drastically different, but she wouldn’t bet on it.

Finally, carrying Gert up to her room with her as usual, she dropped into bed, exhausted, wanting only to sleep.

But sleep refused to come.

She’s been lying here for hours now, staring at the shadows on the ceiling as the kitten purrs peacefully at the foot of the bed. She can’t seem to stop her mind from working; she keeps going over and over what happened in Geneseo: the confrontation with the sinister Sharon Logan, and finding out that Darrin really did kill her mother, and wondering what she’s going to find out in Florida next weekend.

At last, she feels sleep beginning to overtake her. Her eyelids close.

One thing is certain: first thing tomorrow, she’s going to go next door to use the Taggarts’ computer and check the name “Tom Leolyn.”

She burrows into her quilt, absently wishing she had on warmer pajamas. It’ll be good to get to Florida on Friday and feel warm again for a change.

For the first time, she allows herself to think past her obsessive mission there and considers the fact that she’s about to step back into her old life. What will it be like, weather aside, to be back in Tampa?

Again, she thinks of Kevin, missing him, remembering the good times . . .

Hearing Gert’s startled meow and abrupt scrambling at the foot of the bed, Calla opens her eyes.

What the—?

Gert has fled the room.

And Darrin—Tom—is standing across the room, looking directly at Calla.

With a terrified scream, she bolts from the bed.

“Stephanie!” he calls after her. “Wait!”

“Gammy! Gammy!” Calla shrieks, and bursts into her grandmother’s room to find Odelia sound asleep.

“Gammy!”

“Wh-what?”

“Wake up! Someone’s in my room!”

“What?!”

“Someone’s in my room!” Frantic, Calla looks around for a phone. “Call the police! Hurry!”

“There’s no phone up here.” Odelia grabs the table lamp from the nightstand, casts the paper shade aside, and yanks the plug from the wall, then barrels fearlessly toward the hall with it, Calla dogging her heels.

She pictures her grandmother hitting Darrin over the head with the lamp and can only hope he won’t retaliate. Remembering the scene with the intruder—who meant to kill her— she has to force herself not to turn and run right down the stairs and out of the house.

Instead, she follows Odelia into her room . . . and stops short.

“There’s no one here,” her grandmother says, and bends to peek under the bed.

“Careful, Gammy!”

“No one.” Odelia opens the closet. “No one here, either.”

“But he was! He was here! I saw him!” He must have escaped from the room while she was across the hall. Either he ran off into the night, or he’s still lurking somewhere in the house.

“Who was here?” Odelia asks.

“Darrin Yates.”

Her grandmother’s mouth tightens into a straight line.

“I’m sure it was just a dream. A nightmare.”

“No, Gammy, he was here. He must have . . .”

Followed me home from Geneseo, is what she was going to say. But she can’t.

Her grandmother doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s only natural that you’d be having nightmares, after what you went through a few weeks ago with that maniac who tried to kill you.”

“But it wasn’t a nightmare. He was here.”

Her grandmother hugs her. “I know how real it seems when you wake up from something like that—you think it really happened.”

It did really happen, she thinks stubbornly. He really was here.

Why?

Maybe he’s lost his mind—he killed someone, he must be crazy, right?—and he really does think Calla is her mother.

Maybe he’s come after her to kill her all over again.

Or maybe he honestly believes she’s her mother’s ghost. He grew up here in Lily Dale and his parents are mediums— he’s no stranger to people seeing the dead; maybe he sees them himself.

“I guess I don’t need this,” Odelia says, gesturing wryly with the table lamp.

Calla says nothing.

“Most people just use a flashlight to see their way around a dark house at night. Leave it to me to go overboard, huh?” Odelia chuckles, then looks closely at Calla. “I’m trying to make you laugh.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She sighs. “Gammy, can you please check the house and make sure there’s no one here? I’m really freaked out about this. I can’t help it.”

“Sure. Let’s do it together. Come on.”

They go through the house from top to bottom. Gert turns up downstairs, looking agitated—at least, in Calla’s opinion.

Odelia scoops her into her arms and carries her around, making a big show of checking behind doors and curtains, under the furniture, even inside the kitchen cupboards, at which point Calla realizes her grandmother is strictly humoring her.

“There’s nobody here,” Odelia says. “Just you and me and Gert . . . and maybe Miriam. You don’t think she’s the one you saw?”

Calla shakes her head. “No. I saw Darrin Yates.” Tom Leolyn. Her mother’s killer.

“In a dream.”

“I wasn’t dreaming. Gert was on my bed, and he scared her, and I opened my eyes and there he was.”

“Gert is down here, though,” Odelia reminds her.

“Now she is. She was on my bed. She ran away when he showed up.”

Odelia says nothing, just pets Gert in her arms.

I wish you could talk, Calla silently tells the kitten, who looks back at her with unblinking green eyes. You know he was there.You saw him, too.

Whatever.

The house really is empty, aside from Miriam, who flits somberly and silently from room to room with them.

“Ready to go back up to bed?” Odelia asks around a monstrous yawn, after checking all the locks.

“I guess so.”

Maybe Odelia is right, and Darrin was never here at all.

Calla was starting to drift off . . . maybe she did fall asleep, without even realizing it. And of course Darrin Yates was already on her mind.

But what if Odelia is wrong?

What if he really was here?

What did he want with her?

And what if he comes back?