Discovering Read Online Free PDF

when her grandmother did the same thing with ODELIA LAUDER, REGISTERED MEDIUM whenever Dad came to visit— now wonders uneasily whether it’s a good idea to deliberately keep him in the dark.
    If he’s going to freak out and leave, it’s better to just get it over with, isn’t it?
    Maybe we should all just come out and tell him. About Gammy, and Ramona, and . . . me.
    “Hello, hello! Come on in before it rains!”Ramona calls out, and Calla looks up to see that she’s waiting in the open doorway, beckoning them.
    Well, she is psychic. She was probably aware they were on their way the very second they finished washing the lunch dishes and headed for the door.
    Or maybe she’s been eagerly watching for them since Gammy called her a good half hour ago to say that Dad had accepted her invitation to stay here.
    That’s more what it seems like, really.
    Ramona, wearing one of her gypsy- style dresses, is all but bouncing with excitement as she holds the door open for them, chattering a mile a minute.
    “Welcome back, Calla! And I’m so glad to see you again, Jeff. What happened in Florida? Odelia said something about a problem down there, but—you’ll have to fill me in. Come in, ignore the mess, come right up the stairs,”she says, leading the way up the narrow flight with the three of them trooping behind her. “Watch your head at the landing, there, Jeff. Like I told Odelia, it’s not the Ritz, but it’s a place to sleep and, hey, it’s free.”
    “No, please, you have to let me pay you. If I were staying at a hotel, I’d be paying.”
    “True, but at a hotel, you’d have maid service. Have you looked around? There’s no maid here,”Ramona says wryly. “No ice machine, no room ser vice, no pool . . .”
    “Darn,”Dad says. “How about nightly turndown ser vice with a towel swan and chocolate on the pillow?”
    “Hmm . . . maybe that could be arranged.”
    They’re flirting. It’s so weird. Calla turns to glance at her grandmother to see if she’s noticed. Yup. There’s a thoughtful expression on Odelia’s face and a gleam in her eye.
    They pass the open doorway to Evangeline’s room, then her brother’s. “Company, Mason,”Ramona calls to her nephew, who’s sprawled on his bed with a handheld computer game.
    Looking at Mason is like looking at Evangeline—rather, looking at her if she wore owlish glasses, had frizzy, close-cropped red hair, and was perpetually fixated on a book or a screen of some sort.
    “Say hello, Mason.”
    “Hello.”His hazel eyes never leave the game.
    “Remember Calla’s dad, Jeff? He’s going to be staying in the guest room for a while.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Ramona sighs. “He’s normally much more communicative.”
    He is? Calla’s never witnessed it, but who knows? Maybe Mason turns into a real live wire when she’s not around.
    “I’ll see you later, huh, Mason?”Dad says.
    Mason—who lost both his parents before he was old enough to remember them— actually looks up. “Sure. See you later.”
    Watching the two exchange a brief smile before Ramona leads the group down the hall again, Calla can’t help but feel a tiny flicker of jealousy.
    It suddenly occurs to her that Mason—and Evangeline, too— will be sharing a house with her father now. And that she herself won’t be.
    She had thought it would be a good thing to keep him at arm’s length, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’s missed him too much for that.
    “This is it,”Ramona announces, and opens the door to the guest room with a jangle of bracelets.
    There’s a bed, dresser, and small bedside table that holds a fan of magazines and a vase of purple asters obviously cut from the clump growing beside the Taggarts’ front porch.
    “This is charming,”Dad declares, and turns to Calla. “What do you think?”
    “Charming,”she agrees.
    “And the best part of all is that your dad will be right next door,”Ramona drapes an arm around Calla’s shoulders and squeezes her. “I know