Discovering Read Online Free PDF Page A

The bed is empty. She’s all alone.
    Trembling, she sinks onto the mattress and touches the spot where she saw her mother.
    Jacy once mentioned a theory that events can leave psychic imprints on the places where they occurred.
    That’s what must have happened; it’s as if a door opened just long enough for Calla to glimpse the past before it was slammed shut again.
    Calla didn’t feel Mom’s presence, though.
    Not the way she’s felt other spirits. Kaitlyn Riggs, for instance— the girl who was kidnapped and murdered. Or her schoolmate Donald Reamer’s dead father. Or Aiyana . . .
    Those were all visitations.
    She’s been waiting for one from her mother.
    But this was more like . . . looking at an old snapshot.
    An odd snapshot, really, because the book in Mom’s hands was meant for a much younger reader. Not that it matters.
    “Mom, can you hear me? I need to see you. Really see you. The way I knew you. I need to feel you here. I need you to come to me, please. I need to know what happened.”
    I need . . . I need . . . I need . . .
    Calla sinks onto the bed and buries her face in her hands, frustrated.
    She needs answers.
    Why is it that finding out who killed her mother only opened the door to more questions?
    Like . . . what happened to her mother’s other child?
    There are only three options, really. Either Mom and Darrin gave the baby up for adoption, or Darrin raised it himself, or . . .
    It died.
    She glances at the laptop.
    There’s a chance she could log in right now and find out that she has a brother or sister living in Boston or something.
    Are you ready for that, though?
    Calla hesitates.
    Not yet.
    Not right this minute, anyway.
    First things first.
    With a trembling hand, she dials Jacy’s phone number.

FOUR
    Lily Dale
Monday, October 8
3:33 p.m.
    “I really can’t stick around for very long,”Calla informs her grandmother and father as the three of them walk out the door and down the front steps beneath an ominous sky. “I’ve got to study, and then I’m meeting Jacy for a little while.”
    When she called him earlier, he was headed out the door with his foster dads and couldn’t talk.
    “Are they right there with you?”she asked. “Because I can talk, and you can listen. There’s some stuff I want to tell you.”
    “Tell me in person. I’ll come over when I get back.”
    “How about if we just meet down by the lake at five o’clock or so?”she suggested instead.
    She isn’t exactly eager for Jacy to come face- to-face with Gammy and Dad now that they know about his part in her lie.
    “Make it five fifteen,”Jacy told her, and she reluctantly agreed, wondering how she’s going to last that long without telling someone the whole shocking story and asking for advice.
    “Listen, I know you’ve got a life here, and you’re busy with your friends and schoolwork—hopefully not in that order,”Dad says, patting her shoulder as they cross the yard toward the Taggarts’ porch. “I just wanted you to come over and see where I’ll be staying, that’s all.”
    Calla bites her tongue to keep from saying that she’s seen the Taggarts’ guest room plenty of times, and even spent the night in it a few weeks ago when she and Evangeline had a sleepover.
    Brat, she scolds herself. What you really want to tell him is that you belong here . . . he doesn’t .
    Yeah, but only because you know he’s going to freak and want to leave when he finds out what really goes on in this town.
    Which is bound to happen any second now, when Dad notices . . .
    Wait a minute.
    The shingle that ordinarily hangs beside Ramona’s door— the one that reads RAMONA TAGGART, REGISTERED MEDIUM — seems to be missing.
    Calla raises an eyebrow at her grandmother and gestures with her head at the empty bracket overhead.
    “I asked her to take it down for a few days.”Gammy’s whisper is muffled by a rumble of thunder in the west. “Just until your father gets settled in.”
    Calla—who was grateful