“Twenty?” Andie said, alarmed. “I don’t want any.”
“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind.” Will hesitated and then he said, “You won’t be seeing North, will you?”
Andie frowned at the phone. “Are you jealous? Because, trust me, he’d forgotten I existed until I showed up in his office. And no, I won’t be seeing him.”
“Nobody has ever forgotten you,” Will said with feeling. “Just remember who you’re potentially engaged to.”
“How could I forget?” Andie said, and moved on to the I-love-yous before North became a permanent part of their conversation. Then she picked up the last of her three suitcases and her CD player and went out to deal with her mother, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of her little brick German Village cottage in her jeans and faded Iron Maiden T-shirt, looking worried as she stared at Andie’s ten-year-old bright yellow Mustang.
“I don’t like this,” Flo said, for the fortieth time, her long, curly, graying hair bobbing as she shook her head. “I dreamed about you last night. You fell into a well.”
“Thank you, Flo.” Andie opened the hatchback. “That’s encouraging.”
“It means your subconscious is calling to you. You’ve been repressing something. That’s what the water means anyway. The falling part is probably about being out of control, or since it’s you, maybe it’s about running away. You know what a bolter you are.”
“I am not a bolter,” Andie said to her mother, not for the first time. “I go toward things, not away from them.”
“I think you got the bolting thing from your father,” Flo said. “You’re very like him.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Andie said coldly. “Except that I don’t desert children, so no, I’m not like him.”
“Don’t go,” Flo said.
“Because you had a dream? No.” Andie put the suitcase in the car next to the sewing machine she’d already stashed there.
“There was so much negative energy in your marriage,” Flo fretted.
That wasn’t negative energy, that was raging lust. “I’m not revisiting my marriage. I’m taking care of two orphaned kids for a month—”
“This is a terrible time astrologically,” Flo went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your Venus is in North’s Capricorn—”
Andie slammed the hatchback closed. “Flo, my Venus isn’t anywhere near North. If his Capricorn was in my Venus, I could see your point, but it’s staying here in Columbus while I go south.” She went around and opened the back door of the car and shoved over the boxes of school supplies that Kristin had given her to make room for her stereo while her mother obsessed about her life.
“North is a powerful man, and you’re still connected to him.” Flo frowned. “Probably sexual memory, those Capricorns are insatiable. Well, you know, Sea Goat. And of course, you’re a Fish. You’ll end up back in bed with him.”
Andie slammed the car door. “You know what I’d like for Christmas, Flo? Boundaries. You can gift me early if you’d like.”
“If you keep seeing North, he’s going to get you again, and you were so miserable with him—”
“I’m not seeing North. I’m going to have a stable, secure relationship with a good man who loves me and won’t desert me for his career. Which reminds me. I left that stupid suit jacket on the bed, so the next time you’re at Goodwill, drop it off, will you? I don’t know why I kept it. I’m never going to be near anybody who’ll want me to wear a suit again.”
Flo folded her arms. “Will’s a Gemini. Volatile. Well, he’s a writer. You’re not sexually compatible, you’re both so scattered. You must be all over the place in bed.”
“Boundaries, Flo,” Andie said, thinking, The sex is just fine. Not wall-banging, earth-shattering, oh-my-god sex, but fun and energetic and damn satisfying just the same. Wall-banging, earth-shattering, oh-my-god sex was probably for people in their twenties. At least that was the last time she’d had it. “Will and I are good. And I don’t believe in astrology. Or dreams.” She looked sternly at Flo.
“Of course you don’t, dear. Did you get the birth signs for the children?”
“The boy is a Taurus and the girl is a Scorpio. And yes, even if it turns out that means they’re going to kill me in my sleep, I’m still going.”
“Well, the boy will be all right. You can always count on a Taurus. Steady as they come. Strong. The Bull.” She looked thoughtful. “They like things, you know? Good food, comfort, they’re very materialistic. If you need to win him over, that could help.”
“I’d think good food and comfort would win anybody over,” Andie said, and Flo looked at her curiously.
“Now why would you think that? The little girl’s going to be completely different. Intense. Secretive. You won’t buy her with comfort. And you won’t be able to bamboozle her, either. Scorpios. They’ll kill you as soon as look at you. They like sparkly things, though. You might get her with sequins.”
“Flo, she’s a little girl.”
“Although I’ve always liked Scorpios. They’re interesting. And they’re survivors. Taurus, too, those are both survivor signs. Tough kids. They’ll make it without you.” Flo bit her lip. “Andie, don’t go.”
“I’m going.” Andie opened the driver’s side door to escape before her mother started on rising signs. “I’ll be back in a month, and everything will be fine.”
“No it won’t.” Flo took a deep breath. “It’s not just the dreams and the stars. I read your cards last night. The Emperor was crossing you. That’s power and passion, so it has to be North. It was a bad, bad reading. You’re going down a path that’s all conflict and struggle. There’s no peace there. Will can’t help you, he’s not strong enough for you. North’s too strong.”
“Mother—”
“Leave both of them,” Flo said, serious as death. “I’m scared for you, Andie.”
“Well, stop it,” Andie said, and got in the car. Then she got out again and hugged Flo, who hugged her back, hard. “Sorry, Mom. I love you much. Don’t worry. In a month, I’ll be back and living here in town and you can run the cards for me every day if you like.”
“You don’t understand,” Flo said. “You’re not a mother. When you have a child, you can’t let her go into danger, you have to be there for her—”
“Flo, I’m thirty-four. The child part is over.”
“It’s never over,” Flo said, and Andie shook her head at her obtuseness and got back in her car.
“I’ll call you while I’m there,” she said, and put the Mustang in gear, and then waved at her mother in her rearview mirror as she drove away.
Sea goat, she thought.
A little Flo went a long way.
Andie headed south on I-71 and then turned off onto a winding two-lane highway and then from there onto another narrower road that moved into a heavily wooded area, making the drive dark in the middle of the day. The general air of desolation was not helped by the fact that she saw only two other cars once she passed the last sign of civilization—a shopping center—before she hit New Essex, the depressed little town that marked the turnoff to the long dead-end road the house was supposed to be on. By then the sun was going down, so fifteen miles later, when she saw the battered sign that said ARCHER HOUSE in the middle of some weeds, she pulled off to the side of the road in the deepening twilight and got out to investigate.
There had been a drive next to the sign, but it seemed to have collapsed. What was left was a steep slope, not anything she’d want to drive down if she had a choice.
She got back in the car and drove slowly over the edge, her wheels crunching on sparse gravel.
The road dipped down sharply, scraping the Mustang’s front fender, which made her shudder, and then leveled off into the pothole-laced lane that wound through the trees for about a quarter of a mile and came out into meadow gone to seed. Beyond that an ancient three-story stone house rose up, flaunting two rose windows, a crumbling tower, and a moat, all its windows dark in the tw
ilight and beyond that more clustered trees over which crows circled and cawed. “The House of Archer,” Andie said to herself as she slowed to take it all in. Well, it was a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year.
She followed the drive around to the side where a little bridge crossed the moat onto an untended stretch of pavement that split, the right going to the front of the house and its weathered, stone-arched entrance and the left to the back and a large, weedy flagstoned yard beside a row of garages that had probably once been stables.
She pulled the Mustang up in front of the garages and got out, looking around the deserted yard as she slammed the door, the sound echoing in the gloom. The place wasn’t just neglected, it was slovenly: weeds everywhere, the flagstone broken, the steps to the back door crumbling. The house was plainer in back, with just a single column of porch topped by bay windows, one to each floor, the window frames peeling and the gutters rusting, and everything oppressed by the bleak gray stone.
And all of it was really wrong. North wouldn’t leave property looking like this. Not for two years. And he’d have made sure there was somebody there to greet her when she pulled up.
She shook her head and got one of her suitcases and headed for the house, now really wary of what she was going to find. She pushed the back door open, banging the case on the frame, and then went through a small mudroom and into a big, cold, gloomy, sitting room filled with heavily carved Victorian furniture including an ornate couch covered in green-striped silk, green-striped bolsters against each arm, and several side chairs covered in threadbare needlepoint.
She opened a side door into another cold room, this one all mahogany and brass, with a long, heavy dining table surrounded by equally heavy, ornate chairs.
There was another door in the opposite wall, and she opened that one, feeling more and more like Alice through the Looking Glass, but this time, light hit her as she walked in. It was a huge, white kitchen, but a less welcoming heart-of-the-house would be hard to imagine, nothing like the kitchen full of color North had given her in Columbus. Every surface was scrubbed and empty except for the long wood farmhouse table in the center.
A boy sat at the end, all shoulder blades and elbows, hunched over a bowl of something orange, his brown hair falling into his eyes as he looked up at her from under his thick lashes, his mouth set in a tight, hard line. Sitting close to him was a thin little girl cupping her hands around her own bowl of orange, her pale gray-blue eyes narrowed under her long, tangled white-blond hair, her T-shirt almost covered by all the stuff she had strung around her neck: an old strand of discolored purplish plastic pearls, an ancient locket on a pink ribbon, a string of tiny blue shells, a blue Walkman on a black cord, and a glittery bat on a black chain.
Wonderful, Andie thought, and said, “Hi.”
Two
“You’re late,” a voice snapped from behind Andie, and she turned and saw a plump, overly powdered, elderly woman, her pale, watery, protruding eyes hostile under her improbably red-orange updo, her large white arms folded.
“Yes,” Andie said, putting her suitcase down on the floor. “You must be Mrs. Crumb. I’m—”
“Andromeda Miller. Mr. Archer told me.” Mrs. Crumb nodded, her arms folded over the aggressively flowered apron that covered her equally aggressive bosom. “He tells me everything. He trusts me like I was his own mother.”
The enormity of the lies in that short speech left Andie stunned, not just at the thought of North telling the old lady everything—North didn’t tell anybody everything—but also at him somehow collating Lydia and Mrs. Crumb.
“I know what’s best, so you do as I say, and we’ll all get along fine.” She smiled at Andie, but her eyes were cold. “That’s Carter,” she went on, jerking her head toward the boy without looking at him, “and that’s Alice, and they’re your students. Everything else, I take care of.” She transferred her reptile smile to the little girl. “I’m the one who stays with the little lambs. They know I’m the one they can count on.”
The girl ignored her, but the boy looked back at her, his eyes like stone.
If that kid is a lamb, the wolves are toast, Andie thought.
“So now that you understand how things work,” Mrs. Crumb went on, “I’ll take you to your room.” She took a step closer and Andie caught a whiff of peppermint and booze. “But don’t you get any ideas about me working for you.”
Andie looked at her, exasperated. She might just be feeling threatened—
Mrs. Crumb made a short nod toward Andie’s suitcase. “You’ll have to carry that. I’m not your servant. And I’ll be needing some help around the house, so don’t think you’re too good to pick up a broom.” She sniffed. “I know your kind.”
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” Andie said, stepping on her temper. “I’m not a nanny. And for the next month, I’m the one in charge.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Crumb smiled again, false pity in the tilt of her head. “Mr. Archer put somebody he doesn’t even know over me?” She chuckled without humor. “I don’t think so. You’ll do as I say or I’ll tell Mr. Archer. And then we’ll just see what happens.”
The little girl continued scooping orange whatever, but the boy was watching now.
“Miller is my professional name,” Andie said. “My married name is Archer.”
Mrs. Crumb’s smile froze in place.
Andie shoved her ringless left hand in her coat pocket. “Mrs. North Archer. My husband sent me here for a month to fix whatever’s wrong.” She walked over to the table and looked into the bowls, since meeting Mrs. Crumb’s eyes after that lie was not easy. “After we make our assessment, we’ll decide on the children’s future.”
“Your husband?” Mrs. Crumb said, sounding torn between outrage and fear.
Andie pointed to the kids’ bowls. “Mrs. Crumb, what are the lambs having for dinner?”
“Macaroni and cheese.” Mrs. Crumb put her chin up. “That’s good for them.”
“And . . . ?”
“And what?”
“Where are the vegetables? Fruit? Protein? Grains? Dairy? You have fat, starch, and yellow dye number two covered, now let’s try fiber and vitamins.”
“I don’t need to listen to this,” Mrs. Crumb said, her smile gone now.
“Actually, you do.” Andie went over to the cupboard and opened it to see boxes of mac and cheese and jars of pasta in some kind of toxic orange sauce. “Oh, my God.”
“You fancy city people,” Mrs. Crumb said as Andie opened the refrigerator.
There was a jar of jam, a loaf of white bread, a gallon jug of milk that was almost empty, and two squares of American cheese.
She turned back to the table. “You’re going to have to do better than this.”
“That’s what they eat,” Mrs. Crumb said. “That’s kid food.”
The children were both watching her now, the little girl scooping more mac and cheese, the boy with his head ducked low, two pairs of Archer blue eyes boring into her over Archer cheekbones. They were thin, pale, and hostile, but nothing about either one of them said “victim.”
Andie smiled at the little girl. “So you’re Alice.”
The little girl put on the headphones to her Walkman and turned up the volume.
Andie transferred her smile to the boy. “And you must be Carter.”
He ignored her.
“Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here, too,” Andie said. “But since we’re stuck with each other—”
“Now you listen here,” Mrs. Crumb blustered. “You can’t come in here and change things all around. I don’t believe you’re married to Mr. Archer.” She lifted her chin again. “You are not a lady.”
“And you are not a cook.” Andie turned her attention back to Carter. “Things will get better,” she told him.
He ignored her and ate more mac and cheese.
Andie took a deep breath. “Okay, look, it’s my job to make you safe and healthy and I’m going to do that. For the next month,
you’ll have decent meals . . .”
“Well, I never,” Mrs. Crumb said.
“. . . and I’ll see to your education and maybe we can get you both back to school in your regular grade levels, and when I leave, there’ll be good people taking care of you, I promise.”
Carter stared at her with his flat eyes, unimpressed.
“Not military school. We’ll put you in public school. In Columbus. There are very good schools there.” She looked at Alice.
Alice kept eating, her headphones blocking all other sound.
“She won’t go,” Mrs. Crumb said, her voice fat with satisfaction. “You don’t understand—”
“Mrs. Crumb, do you want to remain employed?” Andie said. “Because right now, it’s not looking good for you.”
The housekeeper glared at her, and Andie stared back, unimpressed.
After a moment, Mrs. Crumb pursed her painted lips and sat down across the table from where Andie stood, forcing a smile. “We got off to a bad start.”
“Yes,” Andie said, waiting to see what her next move was.
“There are things about this house you don’t know,” Mrs. Crumb said, leaning forward, and Carter stopped eating to watch her. “It’s a big house, there’s history in this house. I’ve been here all my life, since I was sixteen, I know this house. You need me.”
Carter went back to his mac and cheese and Andie thought, That’s not what he was expecting. “The history of the house isn’t important to me. The kids are.”
“It ain’t just the history,” Mrs. Crumb said, her eyes dark. “There’s things here you can’t understand.”
“Ghosts?” How dumb do you think I am? “I don’t believe in ghosts. I do believe in nutrition and basic curriculum skills, so that’s what I’ll be concentrating on.”
Mrs. Crumb dropped her voice. “Some things you can’t believe are real.”
“Like this stuff you’re feeding the children.” Andie looked at the orange smears left in Alice’s bowl as she polished off the last of her pasta. “I’ve never seen macaroni and cheese that color before. Does it glow in the dark?”