Maybe This Time

Damn straight, May said, and twirled around again, and Dennis leaned forward, squinting.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Lydia snapped, and all three ghosts seemed to grow a little more defined.

  “Anger,” Isolde said. “Get that woman out of here or we’re in trouble.”

  Andie stood up. “Come on, Lydia.”

  “Not until I’ve—”

  There was a knocking sound, and Andie said, “I’ll get it,” and all but shoved Lydia out of the room. “Wait here,” she said when they were in the entry hall, “do not go back in there.”

  Then she went to savage whatever idiot was screwing with her séance now, but when she opened the door, it was North, tall and strong and calm. She said, “Oh, thank God,” as he stepped in, put her arms around him, buried her face in his wet overcoat, and said, “Save me.”

  She heard his overnight bag hit the stone floor as his arms went around her, and he felt so good that she held on longer than was polite. He said, “That bad?” and when she looked up, he was smiling down at her, just like the old days, and she lost her breath because it was him, holding her again.

  Then Lydia said, “Well, it’s about time you got here,” and Andie stepped back as he let go of her.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said, sounding annoyed.

  “It’s a damn good thing you came to your senses,” Lydia said. “These people have all lost their minds. They’re having a séance with that O’Keefe woman in the room.”

  “A séance?” North said, looking at Andie as he took his coat off.

  Andie took the coat and put it on the hall tree, trying to get her breath back while she figured out how to tell him that she believed in ghosts in front of his mother.

  “It’s over now,” Lydia said. “I went back in and the woman who was running it said I’d brought too much anger into the room, and it was strengthening the spirits.”

  “They like being bullied, do they?” North said, and then Andie saw Crumb come into the entrance hall from the living room, wearing her violently orange-flowered apron and a furious expression.

  Andie leaned up and whispered in the direction of North’s ear, “I fired Crumb this morning. Also, remember, we’re still married.”

  “There goes the nightly blow job,” North said under his breath and crocodile-smiled past her. “Mrs. Crumb. So sorry you’re leaving us.”

  “No we’re not,” Andie said.

  “I heard the knocking,” Crumb snapped. “We wasn’t expecting any of you. Four people last night and now this. You need me to take care of this mess.”

  “You can discuss that with . . .” North looked down at Andie. “Mrs. Archer.” He gestured to Lydia. “This is my mother, Mrs. Archer. The other Mrs. Archer.”

  “What other Mrs. Archer?” Lydia said.

  “How many more are there?” Crumb said to Andie, ignoring them all.

  “How many Mrs. . . . Oh, how many guests?” Andie did a fast count in her head. “Four more.”

  “We only got two more bedrooms. ’Course Mr. Archer will be in with you.”

  “What?” Lydia said, and North looked at her, and she shut up. “Fine.” She looked at Andie and then at North and then went back into the Great Hall.

  Okay, North’s sleeping in my room, Andie thought, no, May’s room. She’ll like that. It doesn’t matter since I’m sleeping in the nursery with Alice. “Of course he’ll sleep in my room,” she said to Crumb, and North looked interested but didn’t say anything.

  Crumb folded her arms. “I don’t know what that is to me. I been fired.”

  “Good point,” Andie said. “Leave.”

  “Well, now,” Crumb began, and then Southie came into the hall, saw Crumb, and said, “For the love of God, woman, get us drinks.”

  Crumb looked at Andie, and Andie said, “Fine, we’ll talk about it later.”

  The housekeeper smiled, triumphant, and said, “You’re going to have to share a room, Mr. Sullivan,” and went off to shift some guests.

  Southie caught sight of North and came as close to a glare as Andie had ever seen from him. “How nice to see Mother,” he said to North.

  “Don’t blame me.” North looked at him without sympathy. “I told you not to come here.”

  “The Beast of the Nightly News had him,” Andie told North, trying to find her way back to sanity. There were ghosts, but North was there. It might even out, especially if she threw herself at him again, and distinct possibility given the way her mind was going south just from his sheer proximity. “Southie was helpless in her clutches. She truly is a blot on humanity.”

  “Excellent,” North said, looking down at her with that beautiful, serious face. “Mother’s been spoiling for a fight. Let her have the Blot. You take me someplace, give me a drink, and tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Yes, Andie thought, but she said, “I think we’d better go in with the Blot. “I’m not sure your mother can take her.”

  “Nonsense. A good stake through the heart and she’s done.” North looked at Southie. “I beg your pardon, Sullivan, I should have asked. Do you love this woman?”

  “God, no,” Southie said.

  “Then let Mother have her.” He smiled down at Andie again. “And in the meantime, you can tell me what’s happening. It can’t be nearly as bad as you sounded.”

  “It’s worse,” Southie said. “We—”

  “Southie,” North said. “Go away.”

  “What?” Southie blinked at him. “Oh. Right. Sure.”

  He went back into the Great Hall, and North looked down at her and said, “Where were we?”

  “Well . . .” She stopped, knowing if she told him the truth, that there were ghosts, that he’d be calm and rational and probably have her committed.

  “If it’s that bad,” he said as her silence lengthened, “give me the short version.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “There are ghosts. We’re having a séance to get rid of them, but it’s not working. Kelly O’Keefe is here sleeping with her cameraman and Southie at the same time and all that emotion makes the ghosts stronger. The kids won’t leave because the ghosts kill anybody who tries to take them away. Your mother is furious with Kelly O’Keefe and that’s making the ghosts stronger. And my mother is here, too, and you know how she and Lydia are when they get together, so we’re all just feeding those things and I can’t get the kids out and I’m so tired . . .”

  She stopped, overcome suddenly by how awful everything was and now he was going to have her committed—

  He said, “What do you want me to fix first?” and she felt all her tension go.

  “Save the kids,” she said. “I don’t give a damn about the rest of them, but get the kids out of here.”

  “We can do that,” he began, and then Alice screamed bloody murder in the library, and Andie took off at a run.

  Andie threw open the library door and saw Alice shrieking in the middle of the room, turning blue from lack of oxygen. Her screams weren’t her usual “NO NO NO,” they were deeper, coming from a place of so much fear that Andie scooped her up and held her close and said, “It’s okay, Alice, it’s all right,” as calmly as she could while Alice screamed and screamed.

  “What happened?” she said to Carter, patting Alice frantically, and he nodded to Will. Andie turned on Will. “What did you do?”

  He looked horrified as he stared at Alice thrashing in Andie’s arms. “I told her she was going to come to Columbus to live with us.”

  “Jesus, Will! Why—”

  “He told us we didn’t have any choice,” Carter said flatly, and Andie thought, You fucking MORON, but then Alice’s screams deepened, her eyes rolling back into her head, and she forgot Will entirely. She turned to take her out of the room and saw North in the doorway, surveying the mess calmly, and pushed past him and into the hall, carrying Alice with her, past Southie, who looked alarmed, and Lydia, who looked confused, and a distressed Flo, and a sympathetic Dennis, and an avid, staring Kelly, up the two
flights of darkened stone stairs, whispering to Alice that it was all right, that she wasn’t going anywhere, that Andie was with her, but Alice was beyond that now, flailing in a place where there was only terror. Andie could hear Carter on the stairs behind her, but he was going to have to wait. She carried Alice into the nursery and sat down in the rocking chair there—no ghosts in this one, Andie thought—and began to rock, humming “Baby Mine” to the little girl since she couldn’t hear words.

  Alice’s screams were guttural now, her throat raw, and Andie kept humming, her cheek on Alice’s hair, rocking and rocking. Alice slowed to rasping, gasping breaths, and then as Andie hummed and patted, she quieted down even more, to shaky, moany little sighs, and Andie began to sing, and Alice listened until Andie sang, “Never to part, baby of mine.”

  Alice straightened, her face dirty with tearstains. “You promised.”

  “He was wrong, I promise I won’t take you until you want to go, we’re never going to be with him,” Andie said, and Alice subsided into her arms again, and said, “Sing.” Andie did, and Alice relaxed, sighing whenever Andie sang “baby of mine.” When she’d finished the song, Alice sniffed and said in a shattered little voice, “Sing it again,” and Andie did, and Alice curled into her and began to suck her thumb as they rocked.

  “Again,” Alice said when Andie was done, pliant now, and Andie sang again, smoothing back Alice’s hair from her feverish little brow, wondering how it could be that she could hate any kind of commitment and still know she’d be with Alice forever. Because she was going to be. Nobody was going to raise Alice but her. She’d get through to Carter, too, if it took her years, he was going to feel safe and loved again. They needed her. And she needed them. This kind of love, this went so deep she’d never get out of it.

  “Never to part,” she sang again, more sure than ever, and Alice turned her head up. “Never to part,” Andie said to her, looking into her eyes. “I will stay with you forever. I will never desert you. Never.”

  Alice took a deep shuddering breath and nodded, and then said, “Sing the other baby song,” and after a moment, Andie figured out what she wanted, and began to sing “Somebody’s Baby,” soft and slow, and Alice put her head on Andie’s arm and fell asleep, sucking her thumb.

  Andie brushed the white-blond strands of hair back from Alice’s clammy forehead again and kissed her. Mine, she thought, and then looked up and saw Carter in the doorway to the little hallway, watching them.

  “She’s all right now,” Andie whispered to the boy, and Carter nodded and turned to go. “Carter.” He turned back and she said, “That goes for you, too. All of it. I’m with you forever.”

  His face was in shadow and he didn’t move for a long moment. Then he went down the hall to his room.

  “You might have checked that with me first,” Will said, exasperated, and Andie turned and saw him standing in the doorway to the gallery hall, Southie and Kelly behind him, and behind them North. Will looked annoyed, Kelly looked avid, Southie looked kind, and North looked calm. Beautifully, competently, unflappably calm.

  “What do you need?” he said to her over them all, and she said, “We just need to be alone.” He reached past them all and pulled the door closed, shutting them all out swiftly, and Andie stood up and carried Alice over to the bed she’d made up for her by the fireplace. She pulled the spread and sheet back and tipped Alice into bed and took off her grubby tennis shoes and looked at her narrow dirty feet. Bath tomorrow, she thought, comforted by the banal thought, and pulled the sheet and comforter up over her.

  Then she stood and watched Alice sleep, the little girl’s breath still coming in little shudders but more evenly now, her pale lashes almost invisible on her tearstained cheeks.

  How had she survived the past two years? How had Carter? All that death, all that loss, all the strangers, the ghosts?

  She leaned down to Alice’s ear and whispered, “I will always be with you,” and Alice smiled in her sleep.

  “Oh,” Andie said, and sat down on the floor beside Alice’s bed and cried.

  • • •

  North stood in the hallway while Kelly yapped at him, ignoring her to take stock. It was one thing to hear that the little girl went crazy when they tried to take her away, another thing to see that pale little face turn blue, those wild little eyes roll back in terror. Andie was right, the first priority was to get the kids out of this house into someplace safe and normal.

  “I just want to go in and help,” Kelly said, trying to get past him.

  “Get her out of here,” he told Southie, and Southie took her arm.

  “Well, really, Sullivan,” Kelly said, trying to pull away.

  “We saw your newscast,” North said, looking down into her greedy little face, and saw her eyes go wary.

  “Newscast?” Southie said, looking at her with narrowed eyes.

  “I did it for the children,” Kelly said, and Southie said, “Come downstairs and tell me about it,” with a grimness in his voice that even Kelly heard since she let him drag her down the stairs.

  “I don’t care about any newscast,” Will said, confronting him. “I’m going in there.”

  “No,” North said, “you’re not. That’s my ward in there and you don’t have my permission to interfere with her upbringing.”

  “Andie wants to raise the kids.” Will met his eyes. “And that means I am, too. We should talk about this, since we’ll probably be adopting them . . .”

  North let him blather on, feeling almost kindly toward him. He was handling the situation so badly that Andie would probably break up with him before morning. Plus Andie was wearing her wedding ring again; he’d seen it on her hand as she’d cradled Alice in the rocking chair. It was probably just part of her charade, but she was wearing that cheap, pathetic ring again. His ring.

  “. . . so you understand why I should be in there.”

  “The children are not available for adoption.”

  Will folded his arms. “You think you’ll get Andie back this way. She’ll never leave those kids. They’re a deal breaker for her.”

  “So you want to adopt them to keep Andie.”

  “I care about them.”

  “You don’t even know them,” North said. “If Andie decided tomorrow that she didn’t want them, you’d walk away from them without a backward glance. So, no, I will not be letting you anywhere near them. Go downstairs.”

  “I’ll go when you go,” Will said, looking stubborn.

  “Spenser,” Southie called from the archway, and Will turned around. “Come on downstairs. I’ll buy you a drink. You have to try the house brandy. I think Crumb makes it in the basement.”

  Will shook his head. “I—”

  “You’re an uninvited guest in this house,” Southie said, coming to join them, still affable. “And my brother asked you to leave his wards alone. So come down and have that drink.”

  Will got the same look on his face that Kelly had, surprise that Southie had a serious voice and wariness about what he’d do next. “I’m not leaving without Andie.”

  “Let me put it another way,” Southie said, standing beside North. “There’s two of us and one of you. And one of us is nobody to mess with. Come downstairs on your own power or we’ll drag you down.”

  Will looked back at North, who thought, Try me. Please, and he must have read the look in his eyes because he gave up. “Tell Andie I need to talk to her.”

  “You bet,” North said. You jerk.

  Will headed for the stairs, and Southie shook his head and rolled his eyes as Will went past him and then followed him down.

  Dumbass. Trying to adopt kids to keep Andie. Nobody kept Andie. And the kids deserved to be wanted for themselves, not as Andie-bait.

  He leaned against the wall and stared into the echoing space above the Great Hall. They deserved a guardian who paid some attention to them, too. He’d screwed up leaving them down here, but now things would be different.

  Voices rose up, two women a
rguing, and he looked over the rickety banister and saw his mother and Flo going at it down in the Great Hall, and another woman, sharp and odd-looking even from his angle above, watching them. No wonder Andie had been so glad to see him.

  He went downstairs and into the Great Hall, and when Lydia and Flo turned to see who’d come in, he said, “Andie has enough problems without you two rehashing old arguments. Either pull together to help her or get out.”

  “I’m not leaving while that woman is here,” Lydia said, but Flo nodded.

  “He’s right,” she told Lydia. “Andie doesn’t need us behaving badly, and the anger just makes the ghosts stronger.”

  “There are no ghosts,” Lydia snapped, rounding on her.

  The woman with the big hair and bigger hoop earrings said, “Oh, yeah, there are, and this one’s right. You gotta calm down.” She looked like a caricature of a New Jersey princess, but her voice was serious and strong.

  “And I don’t see why you won’t leave as long as Andie’s here,” Flo went on, indignant. “She’s been here—”

  “Not Andie,” Lydia said, exasperated. “Kelly O’Keefe.”

  “Oh.” Flo’s face changed to puzzlement. “What’s she doing here? Andie didn’t invite her.”

  “She wants Sullivan,” Lydia said, her eyes practically glowing with rage, “and she’s trying to ruin North using the children—”

  “Well, then, we’ll just get rid of her,” Flo said, and Lydia shut up.

  “Good idea, you work on that,” North said. “She’s in the sitting room right now.”

  “Okay.” Flo turned to go and then stopped. “How’s Alice?”

  “She’s quiet now. Andie’s with her. But O’Keefe wants to talk to her—”

  “Over my dead body,” Lydia said.

  “I say we just throw her out of the house,” Flo said, and set off for the living room.

  “I may have misjudged Flo,” Lydia said, watching her go.

  “Go help her, then,” North said, and Lydia shot him a sharp look and went.

  North turned back to the woman sitting at the table, watching him carefully. “I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced. I’m—”