Lily Dale: Awakening Read Online Free PDF Page B

they’ve seen so far was a four-car backup caused by a slow-moving tractor.
    They pass a number of houses, some of them more like cottages, really. Then they round a bend and a small blue lake comes into view. A lake?
    There was something about a lake, she remembers suddenly. When her mother and grandmother had their emotional falling out that long-ago day, one of them said something about a lake. No, not said — screamed . They were both shrill, Calla recalls, and crying. And when Odelia stormed out, her mother told her never to come back. She never did . . . until the funeral.
    “What is that water?” Calla asks her grandmother, hoping to jog her memory.
    “It’s Cassadaga Lake. And over there is the Leolyn Hotel.” Odelia indicates a large old building that doesn’t look like any hotel Calla has ever seen. It looks more like a haunted house.
    “Isn’t there, like, a Marriott around here?” she asks, wondering where her father is going to stay if he visits.
    Odelia laughs so hard she almost misses another turn. “Oops, here we are.” Scrambling, she corrects her steering, which sends them careening through the old-fashioned wrought-iron entrance to Lily Dale. There’s a guard—Odelia waves at him—but no actual gate.
    Obviously, gated communities up north are nothing like they are in Tampa, Calla thinks, looking around. She’s so busy gazing in dismay at the first smattering of small gingerbread structures, which must be over a hundred years old and look as though they haven’t been touched since they were built, that she fails to notice the sign as they pass it.
    L ILY D ALE A SSEMBLY . . . W ORLD’S L ARGEST C ENTER FOR THE R ELIGION OF S PIRITUALISM

THREE
    Odelia’s home is a stone’s throw from the main gate, on a tree-shaded lane called Cottage Row. The name fits. This small two-story structure is definitely more cottage than house, with its peeling pastel pinkish-orange paint and masses of flowers growing on either side of the front-porch steps.
    The garden looks as though it were planted by someone who closed her eyes and threw handfuls of seeds at the soil— and it probably was, knowing Odelia’s slapdash style.
    Calla can’t help but contrast these beds, overflowing with clashing blossoms of pink and orange, purple and red, with the ones her mother designed back home: carefully tended plots filled with mostly calming shades of white and cream, accented by lots of lush green tropical foliage. Of course, there were lots of Mom’s all-time favorite lilies, the waxy cone-shaped blossoms for which Calla was named.
    “Why do they call this place Lily Dale if there are no lilies?” Calla asks after a quick glance around as they climb the steps, each of them hauling a heavy piece of Calla’s luggage.
    “Oh, there are lilies. Your mother’s old favorites aren’t in bloom now, but they’re called lilies of the valley. They’re little white bell-shaped blossoms the size of your pinky fingernail, but they give off a tremendous scent.” Odelia’s smile is sadly nostalgic. “When they pop up everywhere in late spring every year, I think of your mother . . . and of you.”
    “Of me? Why? I’m named after calla lilies.” She’s pretty sure those striking, elegant flowers don’t grow just anywhere. Brides carry them in bouquets, fancy restaurants have them in vases, but you never stumble across a random patch of them.
    “Well, your father made a mistake when your mother was having you,” Odelia informs her. “Stephanie sent him out to get lilies of the valley when she went into labor, and he brought back calla lilies instead.”
    “You were there?” she asks, doubting it, and is surprised when Odelia nods. “And Mom didn’t like calla lilies?” Calla tries not to take that personally.
    “No, she did . In fact, they became her favorite, because of you. But when she was your age, living here, she was crazy about lilies of the valley. She loved the way they smelled.”
    Calla frowns,