Maybe This Time

  She won’t let you take Alice. May left the doorway and came closer, and Andie backed up a step as more cold hit her. That wack job’ll kill you dead if you try to move Alice. I tried to get the kids out of here, I knew they’d have a better life in Columbus if we went to live with North Archer, and that bitch put me over the gallery railing. Alice saw her do it. You’d think she’d have thought of Alice, wouldn’t you? What kind of thing is that for a kid to see, her aunt murdered? But no, she put me over right in front of her. May swished her skirt again. Of course, she has no brain, so thinking was probably not part of the picture.

  “Jesus,” Andie said, looking at the thing at the foot of Alice’s bed with even more horror than before. “Does Alice know she’s there? Can Alice see her?”

  Of course. She’s always been there for Alice.

  Andie thought of the little girl, living with that horror her entire life. “Oh, God.”

  That’s nothing. You know why Carter’s sleeping in that room at the front of the house? Crumb thinks he killed me and he might do her next, so she keeps him as far away from her as possible, locks her door at night, and drinks herself unconscious. She dragged my body out to the moat so he wouldn’t be suspected because she doesn’t want anybody shutting this house down, but she won’t talk to him because she thinks he did me in. And he thinks Alice did it because I’d kind of yelled at her right before that. You know Alice, she has a temper.

  Andie tore her eyes from the thing to face May. “You didn’t tell Mrs. Crumb the truth? You didn’t tell Carter?”

  She doesn’t trust me, May said, her beautiful lips curving in a beautiful dead smile. She doesn’t like me.

  Andie swallowed, trying to process it all. She was having another conversation with a ghost. With May, who was practically a pal at this point, especially in comparison with the horror at the foot of Alice’s bed. “The . . . thing at the foot of the bed. The one who watches Alice. What . . . who is that?”

  An old governess, May said, drifting up to stand beside Andie, bringing icy cold with her. Alice calls her “Miss J.” There’s not much left of her. It’s been over two hundred years. The humanity kind of evaporates after a while and all that’s left is the need, the thing they didn’t get while they were alive. For her, it’s Alice. All she wants is Alice. Try to take Alice from her, hurt Alice, and she’ll get rid of you, but she won’t talk. She doesn’t have anything to say. She’s just . . . a need. A thing. A thing that holds on to Alice.

  “She won’t hurt Alice,” Andie said, zeroing in on the important part.

  Her whole existence is Alice. She’s still here because Alice is here. She loves her, as much as a thing like that can love.

  “Okay,” Andie said, not really reassured but taking what she could get. Her left side was icy cold because May was standing there, but it seemed rude to move away, and until she had a grasp on what the hell was going on, she wasn’t doing anything rude. She looked back at the thing. It was still drifting at the foot of Alice’s bed, its hands folded at its waist, watching her. “So, listen, I need to go see a friend of mine.”

  You need to call North. Things are going to get a lot worse now that all these people are here.

  “People.”

  There’s a lot of energy here now, May said, stretching like a cat. Lots of emotion. You know that little blonde who came here with your friend? She’s sleeping with the other guy, the one with the camera. And he’s jealous of your friend. He had a fight with her earlier tonight. It was fabulous, all that emotion. Perked us all right up.

  “Oh, hell,” Andie said, believing every word of it.

  No, no, it’s good. Makes us stronger. She’s probably gonna sleep with your friend tonight, that’ll be good for a recharge because the other guy’s really jealous. And then when your friend finds out he’s being cheated on, we’ll really be cooking. May smiled at Andie. It was harder when it was just you. You were too calm with the kids, the other nannies went crazy, but you just kept plugging away. We got stronger whenever you talked to North, though. I can’t believe you left him. You should call him now, have him come here.

  “I’m marrying somebody else,” Andie lied.

  May laughed. Nobody believes that. Even she doesn’t believe that—she nodded to the thing at the end of Alice’s bed—and she doesn’t have a brain anymore. It’s North who makes you hot. Bring him here and we’ll all be happy.

  “I’m having a hard time with this,” Andie said, holding onto the raveling edges of her sanity while she stared at the thing. It was a ghost. It was definitely a ghost. She was talking to a ghost. They were both ghosts. There were ghosts. We have ghosts.

  May nodded. Hey, I understand. I didn’t even know there were ghosts when I was alive. You’re ahead of the game.

  “Yay,” Andie said.

  Call North. Alice is safe here. Go.

  “Right.” Andie looked once more at Alice, wrapped in her comforter and sound asleep, and at the hollow-eyed thing at the end of her bed.

  Alice is safe, May said again. That thing has been with her since she was born. Go call North.

  “Okay,” Andie said. “I’ll be back. Don’t . . . do anything.”

  Then she escaped into the warmth of the hall and ran for Dennis.

  Half an hour later, after a visit to Alice’s room where Dennis failed to see or feel anything out of the ordinary even though the thing was right there at the foot of the bed, Andie stood in the hall just outside Alice’s door listening to him give several non-ghostly explanations for what she’d seen while she kept her eye on the thing. He could talk as long as he liked, but she’d passed from wavering on the ghost question to being a true believer. “There are ghosts here,” she told Dennis. “I can’t leave Alice alone in there with that thing.” She looked through the door to where Alice slept peacefully under the dead gaze of a dead governess. “I should be in there with her. She’s in there with her.”

  “Okay.” Dennis smiled at her as if she were a stubborn undergraduate. “Let’s assume there are ghosts.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  He gave her a stern look. “Hysteria will not help. You’re starting to sound like Kelly. Has this ghost ever hurt Alice before?”

  “The one at the foot of the bed? No. The other ghost, May, says Alice is safe.”

  “Then she is,” Dennis said.

  “Dennis, you don’t know that, you don’t even believe in her. I can’t leave my baby in there with her.”

  “Alice is not a baby. Alice is an extremely intelligent, extremely adept little girl. Leave her be and go to bed. You’re exhausted and hallucinating.”

  “Go to bed? There are ghosts in this house. I have to do something about this. The séance. My mother said you can ask ghosts to leave in a séance. Is that true?”

  “Well, you can ask, but séances are superstition and chicanery,” Dennis said, his basset-hound eyes practically rolling. “You’ll just be fueling a charlatan’s ego and reputation.”

  “Good, we’ll do that,” Andie said, and went out into the main hall and headed down the stairs to the second floor to find where Kelly was sleeping.

  But Kelly wasn’t in her room, and it wasn’t until Andie looked over the gallery railing that she found her in the darkened Great Hall, talking in low tones to Bill, the cameraman.

  “The séance tomorrow,” Andie called to her over the rickety railing. “Bring on your medium, I’m all for it.”

  “Wonderful!” Kelly called back. “Oh, Andie . . . honey . . . that’s wonderful. Bill and I were just talking about that . . . hoping you’d change your mind, and we’re so glad.” She treated Andie to a flash of teeth in the dim light and then went on, her voice a little unsteady, as if she were drunk. “I’ll call Isolde to confirm now that you’re on board.” Her smile morphed into manufactured sympathy. “You look really wiped out . . . all these unexpected guests. You go back up to bed and get some rest now.”

  “Right,” Andie said, and went back up to Alice’s room, sp
aring a thought about warning Southie that Kelly was two-timing him. And when he asked why, she could tell him that a ghost told her. One crisis at a time.

  When Andie went in, the old ghost was still standing at the end of the bed, her hands folded in the flounces of her skirt, her eyes still empty pits, and Alice was still fast asleep. May had been waltzing around in the hall by the bathroom, but she came back in when Andie went in.

  Did you call North?

  “No,” Andie said, as she felt Alice’s forehead for fever or any other signs of distress.

  Alice smiled in her sleep and then rolled over.

  Alice is fine. I told you, that nightmare has been watching her since birth.

  Andie turned on May. “She’s a nightmare? What does that make you?”

  Hey, May said. All I ever did was ask you questions. She swished her skirts again. You were sleeping in my bedroom. You owed me that much. When are you going to call North?

  “Tomorrow,” Andie lied, sitting down on the floor next to Alice’s bed. “It’s too late, he’ll be in bed now.”

  He won’t care if it’s you.

  “No.” Andie leaned her head against Alice’s mattress. She wasn’t calling North, that was the last thing she needed, North here feeding May’s fantasies, not to mention her own. No, she was going to have a séance, tell the ghosts to leave, and then get the kids the hell out of Dodge and back to Columbus. There might be ghosts in Columbus, too, but she was damn sure they weren’t in North’s house. If they fed on emotion, they’d starve to death there.

  Call him tomorrow then, May said and left, and Andie wrapped her arms around herself against the cold from the thing at the end of the bed and settled down to watch through the night until Alice woke up.

  When Alice woke up the next morning, she looked at Andie, half asleep with her head on the side of the bed, and said, “What are you doing?”

  Andie straightened to get the crick out of her neck and checked out the foot of the bed. Nothing there. “I was worried.”

  Alice looked down at her, perplexed. “Why?”

  “Because there was a ghost at the end of your bed.”

  “There aren’t any such things as ghosts.”

  “I saw her, Alice,” Andie said, pretty sure it was the right thing to say. “Your aunt May told me all about her. I can see them just like you can.”

  Alice stared at her for a long moment, and Andie thought, She doesn’t see ghosts, she thinks I’m crazy, she thinks she’s trapped with a crazy person, and then Alice said, “That’s just Miss J. She doesn’t hurt me.”

  “Miss J.” Andie was torn between relief that Alice saw the ghosts, too, and horror that Alice saw the ghosts, too. “Good to know. We’re moving into the nursery anyway.” Andie got up slowly as her muscles screamed. “You and me. There are two beds in there. We’ll be roommates.”

  Alice shrugged. “Miss J can go in there, too.”

  “Yeah, but in there I have a bed,” Andie said, and went to take a shower and face her day.

  It began with cornering Carter in the library where he was reading in the window seat, ignoring the storm that still raged outside.

  “I talked to your aunt May last night,” she said to him, and watched his eyes freeze on the page. “She said Mrs. Crumb thinks you killed her, but it was the ghost at the foot of Alice’s bed who pushed her through the railing because she was going to take Alice away. I don’t know how ghosts can push humans, but May says that’s what happened.”

  He kept his eyes on his book.

  “She thinks you think Alice did it.”

  He was still for a long time, and she was about to turn away when he said, “Alice wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Okay, then,” Andie said, filing that under “May doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does.” “I need you to know that I am going to get you out of here.”

  He ignored her, his eyes on his book, but he didn’t turn the page. He was listening.

  “It’s going to be okay. But first, I’m going to make you breakfast.”

  “French toast?” he said, looking up.

  “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.”

  He nodded and went back to reading.

  Dear God, she thought as she went to make breakfast, he listens to me talk about ghosts and still asks for French toast.

  When everybody except Alice was eating, she went to get Alice’s cereal, pulling Crumb into the kitchen with her.

  “Carter didn’t kill his aunt,” she said as she got the Cheerios box from the shelf.

  Crumb frowned. “What?”

  “Also, you’re fired.”

  Crumb drew back, shocked. “You can’t fire me. You didn’t hire me. I’ve been with this house for sixty years and—”

  “And you moved a body in a violent death and left two kids uncared for after the trauma. I’m calling Mr. Archer, and then you’re gone.”

  “I did it to save that boy,” Crumb said, panic making her voice rise, her watery blue eyes protruding even more. “I saved him.”

  “He didn’t kill May. The thing at the foot of Alice’s bed did that.” She went to the fridge and got out the milk.

  Crumb snorted. “He told you that? Well, how? That’s what I want to know. You think ghosts have hands? He did it.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything. May told me. She said you dumped her body in the moat, and then instead of getting him help, you stuck him away in a corner of the house.” Andie gripped the milk carton harder on that one, and then she got a cup down from the shelf. “You just abandoned him.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to turn him in to the police,” Crumb said virtuously.

  “He didn’t kill her.” Andie poured Alice’s milk. “You hung a little boy out to dry for no reason.”

  The phone rang, and Andie went to pick it up, telling her, “Pack your things. You’re done.”

  “That’s not fair,” Crumb said, and Andie said, “I don’t care, you’re done here.”

  When she picked up the phone, it was Will. “It’s me,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about us.”

  “Not now, Will, I have problems here.” She stuck the phone between her chin and her shoulder and opened the Cheerios.

  “We can make it work,” Will said. “The kids can come live with us.”

  “I’m going to call Mr. Archer,” Crumb said, her powdery white face even paler now. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Make sure you tell him what you did to Carter,” Andie said as she dumped Cheerios into the bowl. Then she spoke into the phone. “I appreciate the offer, Will, but no.” She put the milk back in the fridge. “Look, my plate’s a little full today.” I’ve got a TV reporter, a ghost expert, a wack-job housekeeper, two disturbed children, homicidal ghosts, and a séance this afternoon. “I have to go.”

  “I think I should come down there.”

  Andie clutched the Cheerios box. “Jesus, no, that’s all I’d need, more tension. I have to take care of these kids, I can’t handle anybody else.”

  “That’s right,” Crumb said. “You need me.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t be handling me,” Will said, annoyed. “Maybe I’d be helping you.”

  Sure, right after you have me committed for believing in ghosts. “No,” she said, shoving the cereal back in the cupboard. “I absolutely cannot take one more person here. I have to go.”

  She hung up, feeling annoyed, and then Crumb said, “Now you listen here,” just as Andie heard Alice scream, “No, no, NO!”

  She went into the dining room, saw the plate of French toast Southie had just put in front of Alice, and said, “Chill, I have your cereal,” swapping out the toast for the bowl of Cheerios and cup of milk. “You’ll get the hang of this,” she told Southie, deciding to give him the bad news about Kelly and the cameraman later. No point in bulking up the ghosts on emotion before the séance.

  Then she pulled Alice’s bat necklace out of her cereal bowl, picked up a fork, and started to
eat Alice’s rejected toast.

  Outside, thunder rumbled.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Late that afternoon, North was on the phone when he heard his door open and looked up to see his mother striding toward his desk, tailored and furious in black.

  “He took that woman and went to that damn house,” she said, biting the words off. “Did you know he was going?”

  North held up his hand to finish his phone call. “Thank you, Gabe. I’ll get back to you on that.” He hung up and said to his mother, “I told him not to, but today was not my day to watch him.”

  “Very funny. We’re going down there.” Lydia went over to the cabinets on the wall opposite his desk and opened the one that held his TV.

  “No we’re not. The worst that can happen to Sullivan is that he’ll have sex with a television reporter.”

  “He’s not the only one she’s threatening.” Lydia took a VHS box out of her purse, opened it, and slid the tape inside it into the player. “This was on the news this morning. I made them send me a copy.”

  A newscaster popped up in mid-sentence. “. . . Kelly O’Keefe with a breaking report from the south of the state,” he said, and then Kelly O’Keefe appeared, her face pale in some kind of dark paneled hall, her lips blazing red in her white face.

  “I’m here . . . at a country house . . . in southern Ohio,” she whispered, leaning closer to the camera as if afraid of being overheard, “where one . . . of the leading lawyers . . . of our great city . . . keeps his secrets.” Her nostrils flared. “Two young children . . . left alone . . . to face . . . what some say . . . are ghosts.”

  North frowned at the screen. He’d only seen Kelly O’Keefe’s broadcasts a couple of times, but she seemed odder than usual. Drunk, maybe.

  The picture shifted to Kelly in a studio talking with the last nanny who’d quit.

  “The place was haunted,” the girl said, her eyes huge.

  Enjoying herself, North thought from long experience with witnesses.

  “And those two little babies,” Kelly went on, “left there alone with no one to protect them . . . Their guardian was no help!”