‘ … and I miss my bed, and I miss running through the sprinklers, and I miss swimming in the lake,’ seven-year-old Max ticks off on his fingers. ‘And digging for pirate treasure in the back yard, and riding my scooter, and …’
Seated beside him in the back seat of the big black luxury sedan transporting them to O’Hare airport, Bella Jordan checks her watch. She hadn’t expected much traffic this early on a Sunday morning, but they’re crawling along the expressway, an hour into a fifteen-mile trip.
Returning her gaze to the string of brake lights ahead, she reminds herself that their flight doesn’t take off for another two hours. They have their boarding passes, and they aren’t checking bags.
It’ll be fine. Of course, it will. In three hours, they’ll land in Buffalo, and an hour after that, they’ll be home in Lily Dale. Except …
This is mid-August, the height of vacation season. O’Hare will be crowded, and it’s massive. How is she going to hustle one small boy and two heavy carry-ons from the car to – and through – security to the gate to the plane?
At times like this, she isn’t just anxious, she’s wistful, imagining how different things would be, should be, if Sam were here.
‘Mom? What do you miss the most?’
Startled, she looks at Max. Lately, he’s known so many things he couldn’t have known. Maybe he really is—
‘You miss Chance and Spidey the most, right, Mom?’
Oh. Max wasn’t reading her thoughts, asking what she misses most about his daddy. Of course not.
‘I do miss the cats,’ she assures him, ‘but we haven’t even been gone two full days.’
They’d flown to Chicago Friday evening to attend her mother-in-law Millicent’s whirlwind wedding, which had capped off a whirlwind courtship. Bella had never seen it coming, but Max had predicted back in June that his grandmother’s new friend, George, would soon become his step-grandfather.
Bella reminds herself yet again that her son isn’t psychic, no matter what her friends back in Lily Dale would have her believe. He’s just an ordinary, homesick little boy.
One who sometimes knows things he has no way of knowing.
One who looks more and more like his late daddy every day.
While Bella is a blue-eyed brunette, Max’s brown hair is the same sandy shade as Sam’s, with a distinct cowlick in the same exact spot as Sam’s. Max wears glasses, as his father did. His eyes are the same gold-flecked brown as Sam’s, with the same earnest expression Sam so frequently wore – when he wasn’t grinning. Max has the same grin, minus the front tooth he lost a few weeks back.
He’s growing up, Sam. If only you could see him.
If only I could see you.
Max is back to counting on his fingers. ‘I miss Valley View …’
That would be the Victorian guesthouse they’ve called home – and Bella has managed – since last summer.
‘And Jiffy …’
Jiffy Arden, Max’s best friend.
‘And Jelly.’
Jiffy’s puppy.
‘Mom, can I have—’
‘No.’
‘But I didn’t even finish asking.’
‘I know what you were going to say, and you know the answer.’
And neither of us is psychic.
‘But puppies are so cute and fun and I really really really wish I had one.’
Bella sighs. ‘We aren’t talking about puppies, though. We’re talking about things we miss about home.’
‘Oh. Right. I miss playing Ninja Zombie Battle on Jiffy’s Playbox. Can I have—’
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘Max, video games are a special treat. You can play them when you visit Jiffy. And at this time of year, it’s much more fun to be outside in the fresh air, isn’t it?’
‘Oh! I miss fresh air! Chicago air isn’t fresh. And I miss the playground.’
‘You did get to go to the playground across the street from Grandma’s apartment, yesterday morning before the wedding,’ Bella reminds him.
‘Yes, but the air was too hot and stinky. And I like the rusty metal kind of swings with the chains that pinch your fingers, like at home.’
‘You told George you liked these better.’
‘I didn’t want him to feel bad because he was practicing to be my new grandpa and it was nice of him to take me.’
‘It was,’ Bella agrees, though she suspects the groom had been as eager as Max had been to escape the flurry of wedding planners, caterers, florists, musicians and salon staffers.
She, too, longed to flee, because the pre-nuptial chaos reminded her of her own wedding day well over a decade ago, and because Sam should have been there yesterday, for his mother’s.
‘And you really do think he’d be OK with my marrying George?’ Millicent had whispered to Bella, her maid of honor, as they waited in the church vestibule for the organ music to begin.
Bella had assured her that as much as Sam had loved his father, he’d always worried about his mother, long before she was widowed. Bella had never met Thierry Jordan, but she knows he wasn’t home a lot, due to business travel and late nights at the office. Sam always said his mother played a far bigger role in raising him, which was why he was so determined to be a hands-on father himself.
‘Children need their dads as much as they need their moms,’ he’d told Bella when Max was born. ‘I don’t ever want him to need me and I’m not there. I don’t want to miss a thing.’
Yesterday, Bella had swallowed a lump in her throat and assured her mother-in-law, ‘Sam would want you to be happy. Not lonely and living alone for the rest of your life. Remember what George said when you two got engaged? That everyone deserves a second chance at love? I know Sam would have felt that with all his heart.’
Millicent looked closely at her, and said, ‘I believe he would have – and not just for me, Bella, but for—’
The first strains of the Wedding March had cut off whatever she was going to say. But Bella is pretty sure she knows what it was, and that it’s not something she’d want to discuss with Sam’s mother. Or with anyone, really. Not yet. Not—
‘You know who else I miss, Mom? Dr Drew. I’ll bet you miss him even more,’ Max adds slyly.
Drew Bailey isn’t merely the veterinarian who’d saved Chance and Spidey’s lives. Nor is he merely a trusted friend and confidant. He’s become … well, important.
Very.
‘I do miss Drew,’ she admits, remembering that she hadn’t responded to his most recent text. He’s been running Valley View in her absence, and they’d gone back and forth earlier this morning when he’d reached out to ask her how to handle a last-minute reservation cancellation for a guest who’d had an unexpected death in the family.
She pulls her phone from her pocket and rereads the latest message, which had popped up just as she and Max were leaving for the airport.
Are there extra cushions for the chairs by the firepit? It was chilly so I lit it for the guests, and storm came in overnight. Sorry.
Bella writes back, No extras, but no worries. They’ll dry. But how’s the roof in the rain?
Leaky but holding up, he responds.
Like many things around Valley View, the roof needs a costly repair that the owner has been trying to put off as long as possible.
Everything else OK? she asks Drew.
He replies with a thumbs-up emoji, and she smiles.
Good. Can’t wait to get home to …
She’d like to conclude the sentence with a heartfelt you, but it seems like too much.
Instead, she writes, cool weather. Heatwave here all weekend.
Her thumb hovers over the Send button. Is she really going to make this about the weather?
No. She deletes everything after home, adds a period, and sends the message.
Wobbly dots appear, meaning he’s typing something. The dots disappear. She waits, wondering if he, too, is trying to figure out how to say what they never say – not in text, or on the phone, or in person.
The dots reappear, and then, Checked your flight again. Still on time. Safe travels.
He isn’t the most effusive man in the world. But it’s clear he’s been thinking about her, and he misses her, too.
Thanks! See you soon, she responds, and adds a heart emoji before returning the phone to her pocket.
‘And I miss Odelia, and Luther, and Misty,’ Max is saying.
Odelia Lauder lives next door to Valley View; Luther Ragland is her retired law-enforcement significant other; Misty Starr is Jiffy’s mom.
‘I even kind of miss Miss Feeney. Hey, I said miss-Miss. That’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘Mmm hmm.’
‘Do you miss-Miss Feeney, too, Mom?’
‘Sure.’
Though Pandora Feeney is the kind of neighbor who pops over to mention that the flowerbeds need watering or the grass needs mowing. She tends to borrow books Bella has yet to read, and to offer spoilers for the ones Bella’s about to finish. She often rummages through Bella’s fridge, critiquing the contents while helping herself.
No matter how her intrusions – er, visits – unfold, at some point she always, always pauses to address someone Bella can’t see, or hear.
Pandora Feeney talks to dead people.
She isn’t the only one.
Lily Dale, founded in the nineteenth century by spiritualists, remains populated by psychic mediums to this day. During the busy summer season, there’s a full slate of daily programming, with lectures, presentations, group readings, and classes on everything from levitation to psychometry. The mediums provide spirit messages, psychic visions about the future, physical healing, spiritual counseling, information. It often seems to be delivered by their ‘guides’, immortal beings they believe are with them throughout their lives – lives being plural, as in reincarnation.
As a former science teacher, Bella is grounded in facts, evidence and logic.
OK, she’s also a widow who’d give anything to connect with her late husband. But if it were possible to communicate from the Other Side, Sam would have come through to her by now.
Her Lily Dale friends are convinced that with open-mindedness and mediumship training, everyone is capable of interacting with the spirit world.
They’re also convinced that Bella has heard from Sam.
Granted, a few rather … unusual things have happened since her arrival. But in retrospect, she always – well, almost always – finds a logical explanation.
At first, she simply assumed that her mind – or the mediums – might be playing tricks on her. But now, more than a year into living in the Dale and nearly two into widowhood, she’s more confident in her own perception and the mediums’ integrity. Now, she attributes these so-called mysterious occurrences – most of them, anyway – to electromagnetic energy, sensory phenomenology, mere coincidence …
There are no coincidences.
That’s an oft-repeated motto in Lily Dale, where such things are invariably attributed to Spirit, as the locals refer to the dearly departed.
In Lily Dale, when you stumble across a hidden compartment in an old house and find the tourmaline necklace your husband was planning to give you for the Christmas he didn’t live to see …
In Lily Dale, that’s your husband reaching out from beyond the grave. In Bella’s mind, it’s …
Well, she doesn’t know what it is, but she’s pretty sure it isn’t Sam, sending gifts and messages from the Other Side. Because if he were capable of that, wouldn’t he just … appear? Especially knowing Bella as he does …
Did.
Sam is past tense. Sam is dead.
There’s no such thing as dead is another oft-repeated local credo in Lily Dale, where souls that have departed the earthly plane reportedly pop in to offer wisdom, warnings, and the occasional prank. Bella has grown accustomed to her medium friends interrupting the conversation at hand to address invisible visitors from a family ancestor to Winston Churchill.
In the moment, it’s often believable, but in retrospect …
Yeah, not so much.
‘Mom! Duck!’ Max shouts.
Bella, hearing a roar overhead, throws herself over his small body before realizing that it’s just a low-flying 747 coming in for a landing.
Max wriggles from her grasp. ‘Whoa! That was a close call! Wait till I tell Jiffy! I bet he never almost got squished by a giant airplane!’
Max is no slouch in the creative imagination department, but Jiffy Arden is the kind of kid who can spin an everyday garter snake sighting into a narrow escape from a Burmese python’s death grip. He is also, according to Odelia, one of the Dale’s most gifted young mediums.
Up front, Barb, the driver, announces, ‘We’ll be at the terminal in three minutes, folks.’
‘Three?’ Max asks. ‘Not four? Not two?’
‘Three.’ She points to the dashboard clock. ‘You’ll see.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I do this a lot,’ Barb says with a smile.
She’s a gray-haired woman who’d retired from a long career as an accountant only to find that she hated being at home with her retired husband puttering around. Earlier, she’d told Bella that working for the car service had saved her marriage.
‘Too much togetherness, if you know what I mean,’ she’d said.
Bella pretended that she did, imagining a life in which that might be an actual thing. Imagining herself, always home with too much time on her hands, sick of Sam, also always home and underfoot.
Exactly three minutes later, they’re double parked in the passenger drop-off zone in front of the terminal. Barb pops the trunk.
‘I’ll get your bags. Make sure you don’t forget anything.’
Bella pats her pocket to make sure she has her cell phone. She has a habit of putting it down and losing track of it – which is one thing when you’re at home, and quite another when you’re in a cab and about to board a plane.
She remembers to check her purse, too, for the envelope Millicent had handed her this morning.
‘George has college funds for all of his grandkids.’
‘And you set one up for Max when he was born,’ Bella reminded her.
‘But I haven’t contributed since then. Take this check, Bella. I know Sam was listed as the co-owner at the time, but since you’re his heir, you shouldn’t have any problem depositing it. It’s made out in your name, see?’
She’d gasped when she’d seen the amount.
‘Two hundred thousand dollars? Millicent, you don’t have to—’
‘I want to. We want to,’ she’d amended. ‘George has been telling me how quickly tuition is rising these days. I had no idea what it costs to get an education.’
‘But this … this is too much money to just give away!’
‘To my grandson? Don’t be silly. Anyway, George and I are getting up there in years, and we can’t take it with us. This should be enough for Max to go wherever he chooses, even a decade from now.’
Max – in college. It’s so hard to imagine, but Millicent had warned her that the day will come sooner than she thinks.
‘I just hope I’m here to see it,’ Millicent had said.
‘Of course you will be.’
‘You never know.’
No, you never do. Bella had never considered that Max’s dad wouldn’t be here for that – for any of it.
Oh, Sam. You’re missing everything.
She unbuckles Max’s seatbelt, makes sure his sneaker laces are tied, tells him not to budge until she goes around to the curb side, and gets out of the car.
Whoa. Even at this early hour, the sun beats down with searing heat.
The place is a madhouse – cars and cabs maneuvering for space, passengers hauling luggage, people shouting, horns honking, security guards blowing whistles, jackhammers vibrating in a construction zone that blocks off a good-sized section of road and walkway.
Bella hurries to open the door for Max, gripping his hand tightly as he climbs out.
‘You know what else I miss about Lily Dale?’ he asks. ‘It’s not hot. Sometimes it’s even cold. And snowy.’
‘Not in August.’
Though you never know. Given the volatile weather patterns along the eastern edge of Lake Erie, July is reportedly the only month of the year when snow is pretty much guaranteed not to fall in Western New York.
‘Well, at least it’s never as hot as …’
The rest of Max’s sentence is drowned out by a blast of whistle and a security guard shouting at a driver behind them, ‘Hey! This is passenger drop-offs only!’
Barb pulls the rolling bag over with the duffel balanced on top. ‘Got everything?’
‘Yes, thank you so much.’ Bella fumbles in her purse with one hand, still gripping her son with the other and wondering how she’s going to wrangle Max and the bags through this chaos. ‘Hang on, and just let me find my wallet.’
‘No need, Mrs Jordan. Your in-laws took care of everything. I’m all set.’
Her in-laws. She smiles. They’d been so generous, sending her and Max to the airport in a limo instead of—
‘Mom! I forgot my …’
Again, Max’s words are lost in the blast of a whistle and a shout.
‘Hey! Hey, what are you doing?’ the guard bellows. ‘I said, this is passenger drop-offs only! Get back in your car!’
‘What did you forget, Max?’ Bella asks.
He’s slack-jawed, gaping at something behind her.
She whirls, expecting to see another low-flying jet. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she turns back to him.
‘Come on, Max, we have to hurry. What did you forget? Is it in the car, or at Grandma’s?’
Barb leans into the back seat. ‘It’s his backpack. I’ve got it.’
‘Mom! Look! It’s the golden car!’
Again, Bella turns to follow Max’s gaze.
A uniformed security guard is standing beside the open driver’s side door of the car pulled up behind theirs. It’s an older model Subaru, with dingy metallic paint and a dented fender.
‘Sir, you need to get back behind the wheel and move this vehicle immediately!’ the guard shouts.
Bella tells Max, ‘They’re just parked in the wrong spot, sweetie. It’s OK. There are rules about—’
‘Hey, Mom! Look at the guy!’ Max is urgent now, clutching her arm.
‘He’s a policeman, Max. He’s just trying to—’
‘Not that guy! The guy in the golden car!’
Bella looks. As the Subaru slowly rolls past them, the driver’s face is clearly visible behind the windshield. He’s looking right at them. He’s …
He can’t be. It’s impossible.
But it’s not, because he is. He’s …
‘Daddy!’ Max shouts.
‘Sam!’ Bella breathes.
And then he’s gone.