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suddenly noticing an overpowering floral scent wafting in the air. She sniffs, looking around for the source and finding nothing.
    “After Stephanie left Lily Dale,” Odelia goes on, seemingly oblivious to the mysterious tide of fragrance, “I’d bring her lilies of the valley, and she’d say they reminded her of home.”
    Home? Oh. She’s talking about this home, of course. Not their house in Tampa, a three-thousand-square-foot contemporary with professional landscaping and a pool.
    That this shabby little cottage in this shabby little town was ever home to her mother catches her by surprise all over again. Somehow, she forgot for a few minutes that this isn’t just Odelia’s home.
    Calla sniffs the air again and is relieved to note that the floral scent has vanished just as abruptly as it materialized. Maybe it was her imagination; they were talking about flowers.
    “Jacy! Come on over here and meet my granddaughter!” she hears Odelia call, and looks up in dismay. She isn’t in the mood to meet— A gorgeous guy her age?
    With his glossy black hair, black eyes fringed by lush lashes, and olive complexion, he looks a little like Billy Pijuan, a friend of hers at Shoreline. Billy’s Cuban. Maybe this guy is as well, with those exotic looks. He’s tall and lanky, dressed casually in a gray T-shirt and shorts.
    Calla’s hand lifts to smooth her windblown hair as she glances down to make sure she didn’t dribble Coke on the front of her white top on the plane. Nope, all clean.
    “Calla, this is Jacy Bly. He lives across the way.” Odelia points vaguely at the grassy green. “Jacy, this is my granddaughter, Calla—the one I was telling you about.”
    Uh-oh. What could Odelia have possibly told this guy about her?
    “Nice to meet you,” Calla says politely, and sticks out her right hand, the way her mother taught her to do whenever she’s introduced to someone new.
    “You, too.” Soft-spoken Jacy grasps her hand, and Calla nearly gasps. A current of—what, electricity?—seems to have shot up her right arm.
    Okay, that’s ridiculous. But she didn’t imagine it. Her arm is still tingling as he releases her hand. Maybe it was static electricity or something?
    She looks at Jacy to see if he seems jolted, but it’s impossible to read anything on his beautiful, enigmatic face.
    “Want to come in and have some lemonade with us, Jacy?”
    “No, thanks,” he tells Odelia. “I have to go.”
    Calla does her best not to turn her head and stare after him as he walks away. “He seems nice,” she says casually to her grandmother, watching her open the door—which, Calla can’t help but notice, wasn’t even locked.
    “He is nice. Come on in.” Odelia holds the door for her.
    Stepping over the threshold, Calla immediately sees a steep flight of stairs. Uh-oh. Instant flashback to what happened back home . . . to what she found there at the foot of the stairs when she walked in the front door that day after her social studies final.
    Mom. Long brown hair tousled around her head, matted with clotting blood. Neck twisted. Eyes open. Vacant. Gone.
    No, don’t think about that. Just focus on where you are right now. The past is in the past.
    She follows Odelia from the foyer into the next dim, cluttered room and looks around. Painted woodwork, chintz furniture, worn plank floors, rag rugs. A collection of odds and ends: a plastic white box fan, a metal TV tray, some kind of driftwood sculpture, a lamp whose glass base is filled with shells. Stacks of magazines are everywhere. Books line built-in shelves as well as the mantel and the small entertainment center that holds the modest television and stereo. There are a few sore-thumb heirlooms here, too—a gilt-framed oil landscape, an ornate coatrack, a stately grandfather clock. The windows are open, but the place still smells musty—kind of like the old books Calla buys at the library’s annual sale back in Tampa.
    It’s as impossible to imagine her