Lily Dale: Discovering Part 32

As Calla and her father head up the front walk in the dark, she fights the urge to run back to the car. They rehea.r.s.ed what they're going to say. Dad is going to do most of the talking- or all of it, if she can't find her voice.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"he asks her as they climb the steps.

No. But she sees a curtain part at the window beside the door.

Too late to back out now.

"I'm sure."

He rings the bell, and Calla braces herself to meet her grandfather.

But it's a woman who turns on the outside light and answers the door.

She's stocky, with gray hair and a tired, weathered face.

"Are you Mrs. Lauder?"Dad asks.

"Yes."

"Is Jack at home?"

"Yes."

"Can we please speak to him?"

"About what?"

"About . . ."

Dad hesitates. He doesn't want to say anything about Jack having a daughter, Calla realizes. Just in case his wife doesn't know .

"Tell him it's about Lily Dale."

"Lily Dale,"the woman repeats. She looks at Calla. "And that's you?"

"Um . . . what?"

"You're Lily Dale?"

Oh! The woman thinks it's a person's name, not a place. Which means Jack, just like Mom, wanted to put his life there behind him when he left, not even telling his spouse about it.

Dad answers for Calla. "No, her name is Calla, and I'm Jeff."

The woman nods and closes the door, saying, "Wait here."

Calla hears the click of the lock inside and looks at her father.

"You can't be too careful these days,"he tells her.

Less than a minute later, the door opens again.

This time, a man is standing on the threshold.

Calla's grandfather.

Knowing Odelia as she does, she never pictured Jack Lauder to be quite so . . . elderly.

He's of medium height but slightly stooped over. He has very little hair, but what's there is pure white. His face was once handsome, but is now trenched with deep wrinkles.

"I'm Jack Lauder,"he tells Dad, and shifts his eyes- hazel, and startlingly familiar-to Calla.

She sees his bushy white eyebrows shoot up, sees the unmistakable flash of realization in his eyes. But he says nothing more.

"I'm Jeff Delaney, and this is my daughter, Calla."

The old man nods.

"We came here from Lily Dale, New York."

Another nod.

Then, "How did you find me?"

Dad hesitates. "Is your wife . . . ?"

"She's in the kitchen."He steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him.

"We found you through Odelia, your . . ."

"Ex-wife."He doesn't ask how Odelia found him. But then, he knows her. Maybe he's not surprised.

"Yes, your ex-wife. And my mother-in- law."

The man looks from Dad to Calla, as if calculating the connection.

Then, softly, he says, "You're Stephanie's daughter."

For the first time, she manages to speak. "Yes."

"You look like her."He swallows hard. "And Stephanie? Where is she?"

Calla and her father look at each other.

"She pa.s.sed away,"Dad tells Jack Lauder gently. "I'm sorry."

A sound comes out of the man- not a moan, not a sigh, not a sob, but some combination of the three, and it sends chills down Calla's spine.

"I-we-thought you should know ."

Jack Lauder nods sadly and bends his head, gingerly lowering himself onto the step.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens wail and a fire truck honks its guttural horn. A gust of wind kicks dry leaves against the concrete steps.

Yet again, Calla remembers what Ramona said about the bond between parent and child.

Maybe that's only true when the parents are psychic. Maybe Mom's father had no idea that she was no longer on this earth.

Seeing him wipe a tear from his eye, Calla finds that her sympathy for him is tainted by a flicker of anger.

"Why did you leave?"she hears a voice ask- and realizes, to her shock, that it's her own. She didn't mean to bring that up, especially at this moment, but she can't seem to help it. She's been waiting a long time to find out the answer to that question.

Jack looks up. "Why did I leave?"

The words seem to hang heavily in the air.

"I've asked myself that very question every day of my life,"Jack Lauder says at last, "and I think I know why I haven't been able to answer it until now."

"Why?"

"Because I don't like the answer. I don't want to face the ugly truth about myself."

Dad sits on the step beside him. "What is it, Jack?"

"That I couldn't accept the woman I married. I loved her, but I couldn't accept her, or the things that went on around her. I guess I wasn't man enough to handle it. I was afraid."

"A lot of people are afraid of things they can't understand,"Dad points out.

"Maybe. That's no excuse. I took a vow, and then I broke it. Ran away. What kind of man runs away?"

Calla thinks of Darrin.

Then of Mom, who twice in her life was abandoned by men she loved.

No wonder she didn't want to tell Dad where she'd come from. She was afraid of losing him, too.

Seeing the look on Dad's face, Calla realizes he's thinking the same thing- and forgiving Mom.

"So what happened, exactly? One day, you just woke up and couldn't take it anymore and decided to leave?"Calla asks her grandfather.

"Not exactly. One day I woke up and found my little girl talking to someone who wasn't there."

"What do you mean?"Calla asks, as an incredible thought takes hold somewhere in the back of her mind.

"Stephanie was having a conversation with someone only she could see. . . . That used to happen a lot, but I tried to ignore it. Told myself a lot of kids have imaginary friends. But that day, as I was watching Stephanie, I saw a chair pull itself out from her little table, like someone had just sat down in the spot where her imaginary friend would be. And I realized . . . it wasn't an imaginary friend. She was seeing ghosts, too."

Wide- eyed, Calla and her father look at each other.

"But Mom . . . she wasn't . . . I mean, she wasn't like her mother,"Calla protests, unable to grasp what Jack Lauder is telling her. "She didn't have the ability to-"

"Yes, she did. At least, she did when she was a little girl."

"How can you know that?"Dad asks.

"I know what I saw with my own eyes. And I know what Stephanie told me. I marched over there and I demanded to know who she was talking to, and she said it was a ghost named Miriam. What kind of kid makes up a name like Miriam?"

Calla feels as though the wind has been knocked out of her with a baseball bat.

"I yelled at her,"Jack says, wiping tears from his eyes again. "I yelled at my baby girl for something she couldn't help. I told her to cut it out. Stop making things up. She said she wasn't making things up. Then I told her . . . I told her she was nuts. Just like her mother."His voice breaks. "I'm so ashamed."

Sick inside, Calla can't find a thing to say that won't just make it harder on him.

He was wrong to say what he said, to do what he did. So, so wrong.

Because of him, Calla realizes, Mom denied who she really was- not just to the rest of the world, but to herself.

That's why Mom was so upset when she realized I had the ability, too, when I was younger. That's why she told me never to tell anyone, not even Dad.

"I've spent every day of my life regretting that,"Jack Lauder tells Dad and Calla, shaking his head. "So many times, I wanted to go back to my wife and daughter . . . but how could I? By the time I figured out that I loved them the way they were, too much time had pa.s.sed. I missed it all. I missed everything."

"But you remarried,"Dad points out.

"Yes. Don't get me wrong- I love my wife. We've had a good life together. Better than I deserved. But I never forgot what I left behind."He pauses. "Did Stephanie . . . did she ever mention me?"

"Just that you left,"Calla tells him honestly. "And that it really hurt her."

Understatement of the year.

"I'm so sorry,"Jack says again. "And now I'll never have the chance to tell her."

"No,"Dad says. "It's too late for that."

"But it's not too late to tell my grandmother."

Jack Lauder looks at Calla, startled.

"No,"he agrees thoughtfully, "it's not too late for that."

"Maybe some closure would be good for everyone,"Dad says.

"Where would I find Odelia?"he asks. "If, someday, I wanted to talk to her?"

"Same place she was when you left her."

"How is she?"

"She's great,"Calla says fiercely, not wanting him to think Odelia has been wasting away since he left.

Jack nods. "I'm not surprised. I knew she'd land on her feet. I'm sure she was better off without me."