Maybe This Time

Twelve

When the cookies had come out of the oven, Andie had asked Lydia to sit with the kids in the library so Kelly couldn’t get to them, and Lydia said, “No problem,” with enough grimness in her voice that Andie didn’t worry about the kids again. Lydia would put a stake through Kelly’s heart before she’d let her near Carter and Alice.

Then she and Flo went to join the others in the Great Hall, but Will stopped her, his overnight bag in his hand.

“I’m leaving,” he said, his face sulky.

“Good,” Flo said, and went into the Great Hall.

Good, Andie thought at the same time. “Be careful getting out of the drive. It’s really dangerous.”

He nodded. But first, “I have to tell you something.”

Andie looked toward the arch to the Great Hall. “Can you make it fast?”

“Sure,” he snapped. “I slept with Kelly last night.”

Andie swung back to him. “Really? With Kelly?”

“I was just so upset with you, with the way you handled-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Andie said, “it doesn’t matter, we’re done, you can sleep with anybody you want, but… Kelly?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Will said. “She came to my room. I tried to tell her no, but she said, ‘Andie’s in love with North, and I’m right here,’ and I thought, ‘She’s right-’ ”

“Perfectly understandable,” Andie said, still confused. “Best of luck in the future-”

“There’s not going to be any future,” Will said, sounding exasperated again. “She was weird.”

“I really don’t want to know,” Andie began and then remembered Southie saying the same thing. “Weird how?”

“Cold. Like she wasn’t really there. She wasn’t like you. It wasn’t like us. Andie, if you’d just be rational about this-”

“No,” Andie said firmly, but she thought, Weird?

“So you’re sure,” Will said, sounding annoyed again.

“Absolutely. Be careful on the ride home,” Andie said, and when she’d closed the door behind him, she headed for the Great Hall. Isolde was there, and so were Flo, Dennis, and Kelly, with Bill on camera.

“No camera,” Andie began, and Isolde said, “Let her do it. Sometimes things show up on film. It can’t hurt.”

“It can if she shows the footage on TV,” Andie said.

“It’s just for atmosphere,” Kelly said. “I wouldn’t do anything to make you look bad.”

“I wouldn’t trust her an inch,” Dennis said, and Andie realized he was full of brandy. So was Isolde, but she evidently could hold her cognac. Dennis, not so much.

Well, she’d dry him out later.

Southie came in and took his place and smiled at Andie. “Sorry, didn’t mean to delay you. We’re not in any hurry, are we?”

“Did Kelly sleep with you last night?”

Southie looked at Kelly, who said, “I did not,” and then at Andie.

“It’s important,” Andie said.

“Yeah,” Southie said.

“What?” Bill the cameraman said.

“I didn’t,” Kelly said, and she sounded honestly outraged.

“This is interesting,” Dennis said owlishly.

“She slept with you, too?” Andie said to the cameraman.

“You said you were done with him,” Bill said to Kelly. “I’ve had it with you.”

“I didn’t sleep with either one of you,” Kelly said.

“This isn’t helping,” Isolde said to Andie. “Knock it off.”

“No, it’s important, she slept with Will, too,” Andie said to her. “He just told me in the hall.”

“I didn’t!” Kelly’s denial was clear now, outrage and anger but no guilt. “Those were dreams. They weren’t real.”

“Yeah, they were,” Andie said, feeling almost sympathetic. “You were possessed. We have a nympho ghost here, and she hijacked your body and made the rounds.”

Kelly stopped, her mouth open.

“Oh, crap,” Isolde said.

“I don’t remember anything like this in the literature,” Dennis said.

“I slept with a ghost?” Southie said.

“Twice,” Andie told him.

“Wish I’d known,” Southie said. “I’d have paid more attention.”

“That’s insane,” Kelly said. “They were dreams. This is crazy.”

“Welcome to my world,” Andie said.

“Can we get started?” Isolde said. “Harold’s really enjoying this, but he can turn on a dime.”

“Sure.” Andie sat down and a visibly upset Kelly joined her.

“I didn’t sleep with them,” she said to Andie, and she sounded more distressed than angry now.

“You did, you just didn’t know,” Andie said. “And then when you woke up, you were freezing, and then you threw up.”

Kelly’s face was pale.

“There really are ghosts, May really did possess you, and it really would be better if you left before she comes back for more tonight. I’m sorry, I really am. The best thing is for you to go before she tries again.”

Don’t run her off, May said. We need her.

Andie jerked her head up and saw May, twirling in the open space beyond the table, blue and lovely and treacherous, and beyond her two shadowy forms, Miss J and the man in the old-fashioned coat.

Dennis squinted in their direction.

“Hello, May,” Andie said, tamping down her anger. “We need to talk.”

“What are we looking for exactly?” Gabe said when they were in the truck.

“Videotape of the kids, the house, anything.” North looked at the racks of equipment. “You start at that end, I’ll start down here.”

Ten minutes later, they’d found tapes marked with dates, not names.

“This one’s yesterday.” Gabe slid it into a VCR slot and pushed play.

The tape flickered and then the camera focused on Carter, sitting in the window seat, reading.

“So you live here at Archer House!” Kelly’s voice came from off camera.

Carter ignored her.

“What’s it like living in a haunted house!”

Carter ignored her.

“All alone with just a nanny.”

Carter ignored her.

“I like this kid,” Gabe said.

“I do, too,” North said.

Kelly evidently didn’t because after three more questions, she quit. There was snow on the tape and a shot of Alice, sitting on a chair in the dining room, looking fairly depraved, her hair sliding down one side of her head, pizza stains on her shirt.

“So you live here at Archer House!”

“Yes,” Alice said. “You have a lot of teeth. Andie says you have to brush your teeth every night or they’ll rot out of your head.”

“What’s it like living in a haunted house!”

“I don’t like nuts,” Alice said. “But I eat them in the chocolate chip cookies and banana bread because Andie says, if you don’t like nuts, don’t eat the cookies.”

“Andie is your nanny, right?”

“No. Andie is my Andie. She says you’re a hag from hell.” Alice smiled serenely as if she were just a cute kid, repeating what some adult had said, but North could see the glint in her eye.

“We’ll edit that out,” Kelly said to somebody, and then asked Alice, “Aren’t you scared to live in this haunted house?”

“Guess what?” Alice said. “Andie says bananas have to be brown before you can bake with them.”

“Alice,” Kelly said, her voice stern. “Tell me about the ghosts.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “There aren’t any such things as ghosts. I can tell you about butterflies. I have a butterfly garden. Andie says I can have a hummingbird garden, too.”

“Alice, people say this house is haunted!”

Alice grew still, and the look in her eyes wasn’t pretty. “Kelly,” she said, and the pitch of her voice was so much like Andie’s that North started to laugh, “people will say anything.”

“Forget it,” Kelly said to somebody off camera, and the tape ended.

“You might as well leave that one,” Gabe said. “The kids defeated her.”

“No.” North held out his hand and Gabe ejected the tape and gave it to him. “She’d find a way to cut it or overdub it. I want anything she filmed here.”

“Fine,” Gabe said and picked up the next tape.

“And we should hurry,” North said, “because I don’t know how long Southie can stall a séance.”

“This time I want you to tell me everything that’s happening,” Southie said. “Like where is May standing?”

“Right there,” Andie said, pointing behind him. “May, what the hell were you doing last night?”

“Can she really see them?” Flo said to Dennis, but he was frowning, squinting in May’s direction.

I was taking my second chance, May said, floating closer. It wasn’t fair that I died at nineteen, I wasn’t even-

“It’s not fair to steal bodies, either,” Andie said. “You don’t get to take our bodies because you got a bad deal. That’s rape, May.”

“Steal bodies?” Southie said. “Could you explain that?”

“Yes, that would be good,” Kelly said. “Explain that fully. I mean, rape. Wow.”

May drew back, scowling. It is not rape. I can’t make you do anything you wouldn’t do anyway. Look at you, you wouldn’t go to North no matter how hard I tried.

“Kelly didn’t-”

“What did she say?” Southie said.

“She’s talking about me?” Kelly said. “The ghost is talking about me?

Kelly was going to sleep with them all anyway. She’s been doing the guy with the camera to get him to bring the satellite truck down here. She’s doing Southie to get her story. She went along with Will because he’s famous or something and to find out about you. I was trying to seduce him and she kept asking him questions about you. She was there, Andie. She might be telling herself it’s a dream, but she was there. You were there, remember?

“Does this rape have anything to do with North Archer?” Kelly said.

“It’s not rape,” Andie snapped. “Because May says you would have slept with all of them anyway. And since you were already doing two of them, I think she’s right.” She looked into the camera. “That’s right, Columbus, your reporter here nailed three guys in one night, sixty percent of the adult male population of this house. Let’s give the little lady a hand.”

“That’s not fair,” Kelly said, pulling back.

“Neither is what you’re doing to North.” Andie turned back to May. “So she’d have done it anyway. Let’s talk about me.”

“Or we could talk about Kelly some more,” Southie said, checking his watch. “What do you want to know?”

“Sullivan!” Kelly said.

“You shouldn’t have gone after my brother,” Southie said, before turning to the camera. “She fakes her orgasms, and she’s not very good at it.”

“If you were any good at it, I wouldn’t have to,” Kelly snapped.

“She fakes ’em?” Bill said from behind the camera.

“Nobody makes sounds like that naturally,” Southie told him.

“Do you mind?” Andie said. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation here?”

“There’s way too much emotion in this room,” Isolde said quietly. “Dial it down, Andie.”

Andie nodded and turned back to May. “You were out of line,” she said calmly, and thought, You body-snatching bitch.

That was a mistake and I’m sorry. May smiled at her. I thought you’d want to go to him. I mean, North Archer. Who wouldn’t?

“You can’t ever do that again.”

I don’t want to, May said. It was interesting for a night, but you’re mad at me, and that Kelly was awful. At least in you I was warm. She’s just cold clear through. I’m not sure there’s a soul there.

“There is, and you can’t have it.”

“Can’t have what?” Southie said.

“Southie, be quiet,” Andie said.

Okay, okay. May swished again. What’s he looking at?

“Who?” Andie followed May’s eyes and saw Dennis, frowning in May’s direction. “Dennis?”

“Is there something moving over there?” Dennis said. “Or am I tipsy?”

“Yes,” Isolde said. “There’s something moving and you’re drunk.” She turned back to the table. “Harold, find out what the hell is going on.”

Oh, hell, not Harold, May said. He keeps hitting on me. I don’t know what the hell he thinks we can do. We’re both fucking dead.

He thinks you can do dead fucking, Andie thought. “You have to go.”

Where? I’m tied to this place, I can’t leave. You think I’d stay here if I could haunt someplace else? My best friend scattered my ashes at the Grandville Grill, but do I get to haunt there? No. I’m stuck here with Crumb.

“Ashes,” Andie said with a sinking heart. If May had been cremated…

“Harold says she says she was cremated,” Isolde told Andie. “What about the others, Harold?”

I don’t know about the others, May said. Harold, get the fuck off my leg, I am not interested in you. Jesus, men. They don’t listen.

“I know,” Andie said. “May, you have to move on. To the other side.”

May stopped dancing. You mean, DIE?

“You’re dead,” Andie said. “It’s over. Move on.”

It’s not over, May snapped. I’m here. I’m staying.

“Harold says you’re making her mad,” Isolde said to Andie.

“Yeah, well, she pissed me off first,” Andie said.

“I can see two people,” Dennis said, a little pompously. “Early nineteenth-century dress. I don’t think they belong here.”

He’s loaded, May said, not judgmentally.

“Harold says their names are Peter and Miss J,” Isolde said. “But they’re not communicating much else.”

“Tell me how to get rid of the other two,” Andie said to May. “Okay, you can stay”-The hell you can-“but you must know how to get rid of them.”

I don’t know anything about them, May said. Keep the fires going and you’ll be fine.

“I had a fire going in the nursery. Somebody turned it off.”

May stopped dancing. I made Crumb do it. I just wanted to be with North Archer. He liked me when he came down that first time. He was so beautiful and expensive, and he liked me, he told me he really appreciated everything I was doing with the kids, like I was doing him a favor…

That was North, Andie thought. All that cool charm, and there was nineteen-year-old May-

… and I thought he’d come back and then he’d love me, and I waited but he never did.

“May,” Andie said.

So I wrote him and asked for things, but I always got his secretary, and that’s when I decided it was time to take the kids to live with him. We’d all live with him. She swished her skirt again. And once I was there, he’d love me. I’m lovable.

“Yeah, you probably were,” Andie said.

I’m lovable NOW, May said, her face contorting for a moment, and Andie saw the empty eyes she’d seen that first night, the skull beneath the phantom skin May clung to.

“All right,” Andie said.

And then that bitch KILLED ME.

“Harold says things are not good,” Isolde said. “I’m ending this.”

“She killed you,” Andie said, talking fast, “so let’s return the favor. Let’s get rid of her. How do we do it?”

May hesitated.

“She stole your life,” Andie said. “For no reason, she took your life. Let’s end hers. Tell me something that will get rid of them.”

There might be one thing, May said.

“Somebody’s been doping people here with salvia,” Gabe told North when they’d locked the satellite truck and were in the pantry with the tapes.

“Salvia.” North shook his head. “Red flowers?”

“Wrong branch of the family. I called Chloe and had her look it all up to make sure, but I remember this stuff. We caught Riley growing it out behind the agency once a couple of years ago. You know teenagers.”

“I will very shortly. Carter’s twelve. What’s salvia?”

“Salvia divinorum. Very old natural high, not dangerous, produces visions.”

“Hallucinations,” North said, everything dropping into place.

“Yep. It’s not illegal, it’s not addictive, and it doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s not a crime to grow it. I still kicked Riley’s ass, though.”

“So how-”

Gabe pulled the jug of tea out of the lineup of decanters. “I tasted this. It’s not tea.” He jerked his thumb at what North had thought was a bundle of dried herbs. “Somebody’s drying Salvia divinorum, steeping the dried leaves and, I will bet you anything, spiking your booze with it.”

“Andie told me she drinks tea with a shot of Amaretto at night to sleep,” North said.

“Which somebody spiked.” Gabe leaned back against the counter. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know why people see ghosts. They’ve been doped.”

“You are a good man,” North said, more relieved than he thought possible. “Let’s go tell Andie.”

But when they got to the doorway to the Great Hall and saw the séance in progress, Gabe stopped him.

“It’d be smarter to watch this,” he told North in a low voice. “See who’s benefiting from people believing.”

“It has to be Crumb,” North said. “She’s the one who’s been here with Andie and the kids the whole time.”

“Yeah, but what if somebody is paying her to do it?”

North looked at the people around the séance table, watching Andie talk to empty air. Southie wouldn’t drug Andie, but the rest…

Isolde, whose reputation rested on ghosts being real.

Dennis, who’d told him the night before that he could get a book sold if he ever really saw a ghost.

And Kelly, who needed the fraud for her big comeback.

“Okay,” he told Gabe. “Let’s watch.”

There’s a piece of each of them someplace in the house, May said. I don’t know where, I’d tell you if I did, but there’s a piece from each of them. Find that and burn it. I think that’ll do it.

“It didn’t do it for you,” Andie said. “You were cremated.”

Part of me is here, too, May said. You said I could stay. But not them. That bitch killed me and I want her gone.

“Okay, a piece of each of them. Like what? What are we looking for?”

But May had turned and was looking at the thing that Alice called Miss J. Get rid of her. Burn her out. I HATE HER.

The thing moved toward her, its empty eyes trained on her, and May laughed and went for it, and Isolde stood up and said, “End it, Harold, get them out of here,” and then they were gone, and the Great Hall was empty, and Andie sat back and thought, Something in the house.

“I have no idea what just happened here,” Southie said. “Was any of that tape usable, Kelly?”

“Yes,” Kelly said, all the animation in her voice gone when she looked at Southie. “Good, give it to me,” Southie said. “So Isolde and Andie can see it.”

“I’ll make a copy of it for you.” Kelly stood up.

“No, I’ll take the tape now.”

“No, it’s the property of the station.”

“But you didn’t have permission to tape here.”

“Of course I did,” Kelly said, outraged. “Isolde and Andie-”

“Don’t own the house and aren’t the guardians of the children.” Southie held out his hand to Bill. “You don’t really want to go to court for taping this, do you?”

“No,” Bill said and handed the tape over.

“Bill!”

“Three of us,” Bill said, disgusted, and Kelly grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over to the window and began spitting words at him, too low for the others to hear.

“Well, this has been a nightmare,” Isolde said to Andie.

“May says we need to find something in the house that belonged to them,” she told Isolde. “There’s something of theirs here.”

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Isolde said. “Harold says he doesn’t like it. He’s thinking about going back to Florida. And he hated Florida.”

“I couldn’t see anything,” Flo said, sounding disappointed.

“I couldn’t, either,” Southie said, cheerful again now that he had the tape. “It’s like listening to somebody else have a phone conversation. So explain to me again how I slept with a ghost?”

Dennis got up and left the table and went back into the dining room.

“Was it something I said?” Southie said.

“Of course, Harold hates Ohio, too,” Isolde said. “The big thing is, Harold’s getting cold feet.”

“He’s a ghost,” Southie said. “He always has cold feet.”

Isolde glared at him and he shut up. “It’s too dangerous, Andie,” she said, serious as death. “No more séances, I won’t do any more.”

“I just have to find out what it is that’s holding them here,” Andie told her. “I just need to know that.”

“No. More. Séances,” Isolde said.

“Then I’ll find out without you,” Andie said, and went to check on the kids before she searched the house.

North watched her go, and said, “So what did you learn from that?” and Gabe shook his head.

“I got nothing,” he said. “They’re all crazy.”

North saw him to the front door and then went to look for Andie, finding her in the library with the kids. “I need to talk to you,” he told her, and when she came out, he tried to take her into the sitting room, but Isolde was in there by the fire, looking exhausted, so he took her into the dining room, but Dennis was there, making notes-“The brandy’s gone,” he said-and North nodded and moved on to the kitchen.

“It’s almost five,” Andie said. “Talk to me while I make dinner.”

“Sit down,” North said, and Andie looked surprised, but she sat down. “You’ve been drugged.”

Andie blinked at him.

“Mrs. Crumb has been putting a hallucinogen called salvia in the liquor,” North said, “and in God knows what else. You’ve been systematically drugged since you got here.” And I let it happen.

“No,” Andie said.

“I should have been here,” North said, the guilt that had been pressing him down since he’d heard about the salvia finally breaking. “I sent you down here alone. I left you alone again.”

“North-”

“Salvia looks like a weed. Crumb grows it in Alice’s butterfly garden, then she makes it into tea and cuts the liquor with it. That’s why she decants it. Anybody who’s had a drink here has been doped.”

Andie started up from the table, and North said, “Gabe took samples of it and we dumped the rest down the sink. I’ve already talked to Mrs. Crumb and there’s a car coming from town to take her out of here. She’s packing now. She swears she didn’t do it-”

“She didn’t,” Andie said. “Crumb’s not the type to garden. It was May. The butterfly garden was May’s.”

“There is no May,” North said gently. “May died.”

“May possessed Crumb to do it,” Andie said, sounding calm even though what she was saying was insane. “You don’t understand, the ghosts are real.”

North nodded, trying to think of a way to reach her through the hallucinations. They had to have felt very real, especially since she was down here alone, nobody to talk to. “Have the ghosts ever told you anything you didn’t already know?”

“Yes,” Andie said. “May told me about earrings her boyfriend gave her. She told me how she died. She-”

“Those aren’t facts,” North said. “They’re things you could have made up in a hallucination.”

“No,” Andie said.

North shook his head. “Honey, you were drugged. I don’t know why Alice and Carter won’t leave, we’ll find that out now, but it’s not because of ghosts. There are no ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real.”

He watched her face as she struggled with the idea, her brain so soaked in salvia by now that it probably couldn’t separate fantasy and reality.

And he’d been in Columbus the whole time. Keeping in touch by phone. A real help.

“God, I’m sorry, Andie,” he said. “I’ll never leave you again, I swear.”

“They’re not real?” she said, looking distressed and confused. “They have to be real.”

“Imagine if they’re not,” he said, trying to break through. “Imagine if this has all been hallucinations. Maybe the conversations you had with May were things you had to work out for yourself. Maybe it was like talking to yourself and she’d say the things you couldn’t say.”

Something in that got to her.

“What?” he said gently.

“The first night we talked,” Andie said, looking almost sad, “she told me she was my younger self. She asked me who I loved and I said Will and then she said, no, who do you really love, and it was you.” She looked him in the eyes then. “We always talked about you. She had such a crush on you. She so wanted you to love her.”

“She wasn’t real,” North said. “And I love you.”

Andie took a deep breath. “I love you, too.”

He closed his eyes for a moment just from sheer relief. “I’ll never let you down again. I will never let you down again.”

“It was all a hallucination,” Andie said. “Which means I’ve been driving the kids crazy because I thought there were ghosts.” She stopped. “They’re so real, North.”

“Hallucinations always seem real,” he told her. “And the kids are fine. We’ll talk everything out with them, and they’ll be fine, and we’ll take them back to Columbus and start a new life.”

“I’m not sure-”

“Whatever you want,” he told her. “We’ll do whatever you want. Just accept that the place isn’t haunted. We’ll work the rest out from there.” She hesitated and he said, “Andie, this is reality. There are no ghosts in reality. You’re a levelheaded woman, use your common sense. You know there aren’t ghosts here. You were drugged. None of it was real.”

She bit her lip and nodded, and he got up and went around the table to her, and she rose up out of her chair to meet him.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told her, and she put her arms around him, and he thought, Because this time I am not going to fuck this up.

Then Alice came through the kitchen door and said, “I’m hungry now, I’m starving, what are you doing?” and Andie let go of him to make dinner.

“Were you hugging Andie?” Alice demanded.

“Yes,” North said. “I’m going to be doing it a lot, so get used to it.”

“We’ll see,” Alice said darkly, and he left her to help Andie with dinner-“No broccoli!”-so he could sort out the rest of the wingnuts in the house.

Andie walked her way through cooking and serving dinner like an automaton, trying to find her way through the I-was-drugged and There-are-ghosts paradox. She believed North, North would never lie to her, but she believed May, too.

Except that everything that May had said about wanting North, that was her, too. She’d been isolated and sexually frustrated and she had wanted North, she was pretty sure she’d taken the job so she could stay in touch with him, and that was May all over. That girl with the curly hair like hers had been in love with North the way she’d been in love ten years before. May danced all the time the way she had danced ten years ago, the way she’d started dancing with Alice in the kitchen again. Maybe the hallucinations were just her way of getting back to the reality that she loved North. Maybe seeing May was seeing herself, the way she was supposed to be, carefree and dancing and unashamedly in love with North Archer.

If that was true, everything was good. May hadn’t possessed her, she’d just been so drugged on brandy that her subconscious had tried to drag her into that bedroom while her conscious mind fought it because it was such a bad idea, like a nightmare while she was awake.

Maybe Kelly hadn’t been possessed, maybe she’d just made the rounds to solidify her career and then lied about it.

Maybe everything was all right. Maybe all she had to do was get her grip on reality again. Common sense told her there were no ghosts. The salvia had convinced her otherwise, but that was over. There were no ghosts.

“Are you okay?” Flo said to her anxiously in the sitting room when dinner was over. “You haven’t said a word.”

“Yeah,” Andie said, trying a smile. “I think everything’s okay.”

“Well, I could use a drink,” Kelly said. “Where’s the brandy?”

“Gone,” Southie said. “But there’s a case of beer in the car. Every bottle sealed with its own little cap.”

“Aren’t they always that way?” Kelly said, confused, and Andie left them all and went into the kitchen to think.

She turned on the radio, pulled out her baking stuff, and began on the six bananas she had that were sufficiently brown to make bread.

North had to be right. It had all been a hallucination. Because, rationally, ghosts did not exist.

She let out her breath. It was okay. Everything was okay. Reality was back.

Once she accepted it, the relief was overwhelming. So was the anger-if North hadn’t turfed Crumb, she’d have strangled her with her apron-but there weren’t ghosts, she’d just been drugged, everything was fine…

The radio blared, “And now here’s Kathy Troccoli, going out to Steve from Jen… ‘Everything Changes’!”

“Yes,” Andie said to herself, and picked up her bowl full of bananas and bopped around the kitchen, mashing as she went.

May had been right. No, she had been right. Dancing made you know you were alive. Life was good. Life was normal. If she hadn’t lost her grip on reality, if she hadn’t lost her common sense, she wouldn’t have been so crazy the past month. And now she wasn’t crazy anymore. Thanks to North, she wasn’t crazy at all.

“I’ll never be the same,” she sang, as she dumped in egg and vanilla and butter and then mixed them as she danced. Fifteen minutes and four song dedications later, two loaves of banana bread were in the oven, and when the DJ said, “And here’s an oldie, going out from Joe to Brenda…” Andie belted out “Hurt So Good” using her pepper mill as a microphone as she danced around the kitchen because that’s what normal people did when they sang to the radio.

Then she looked up and saw North, leaning in the doorway, holding a longneck beer bottle and grinning at her, and she thought, That’s normal, too, and kept dancing and singing, happier than she’d been in years.

Ten years.

The music stopped, and North said, “Southie sent me in here. He didn’t tell me it was a concert,” but he was smiling at her in that old way that said, I don’t care what you do, I just want to be next to you when you do it.

“I’m happy,” Andie said, smiling back as she put down the pepper mill. “I’ve decided you’re right, it was all just a hallucination because I was here all alone, and from now on I’m not going to be crazy, I’m not going to lose my grip on reality, I am going to be smart and sensible.”

“Okay,” North said, looking not sure about it. “You got all of that from finding out there aren’t ghosts?”

“I really believed there were. I talked to the kids as if there really were ghosts. They must have thought I was nuts. And then you saved me.” She beamed at him. “Plus, you saved Alice and Carter from Crazy Andie, which means extra points for you.”

“What do I get for extra points?” North said, his eyes steady on her, and she felt her blood heat from relief and happiness, but mostly from looking at him, strong and tall and beautiful in the doorway, feeling the way she’d used to before everything had gone wrong.

Which didn’t mean it would go wrong again.

“Listen,” she said sensibly. “We can’t go back to where we were. We’ve changed too much, there’s too much at stake with the kids-”

“I don’t want to go back to where we were,” he said, and she thought, Oh, and felt depressed. Then he said, “I want to start something new,” and she said, “Oh,” and thought, Don’t lose your grip here.

“Well,” she began, trying to be rational about the whole thing, and then the DJ on the radio said, “This one goes out to Andie, from North. North of what, I don’t know. Okay, then, here you go, Andie…” and the first bars of Clapton’s acoustic “Layla” began.

North looked as surprised as she did. “Not me.”

“Southie sent you in here, right? Southie called that in.” Clapton’s guitar distracted her with that low, swinging rhythm, and she took a deep breath. Sexiest song ever. “Why ‘Layla’?” she asked him, trying to get her mind back to reality.

He grinned, and she said, “Tell me,” and he shook his head and crooked two of his fingers at her.

Like I’d just come because you called, she thought, but he was moving toward her, and she met him halfway without even thinking about it.

It’s just dancing, she thought as he reached for her. Nothing crazy about this.

“I’ve missed you,” he said as he slid his arm around her waist, and she shivered and said, “I’ve missed you, too,” and he pulled her close and rocked her to that perfect rhythm, pulling her hips to his as her blood heated, and she didn’t miss a beat. Ten years went away and they were dancing in the attic again, everything was the way it was…

No it’s not, she thought, but he was there, and she was glad, she never wanted to stop dancing with him, never wanted to lose his hands sliding over her, never wanted to leave him…

“Andie,” he whispered, and she knew the question without him asking.

“No,” she whispered back. “The place is full of people, we’d get caught.”

He smiled down at her, rocking her to the beat, and she thought, If it wouldn’t be so insane, I’d say yes, I would, I would.

“Andie,” he said, and she put her forehead on his chest.

“No,” she said, “we’re in the real world now, we have to think about the consequences,” but his breath was warm on her neck as he kissed her there, his hands hot on her as he pulled her hips against his, and she thought, Don’t lose your grip on reality, that never works for you.

The song ended and there was some advertising blather but she couldn’t hear because North said, “Andie,” as he gently pressed her back against the counter, and she breathed deep and realized that reality was losing its grip on her.

“Okay, somebody’s going to walk in on us,” Andie said breathlessly.

“I like this T-shirt,” he said in her ear, making her shiver. Then he drew his finger slowly across the “Bad Witch” lettering, and made her shudder.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered, but his hand had already moved to cup her breast, and he was bending down to her, and she tried to think, but all she wanted was his mouth on hers, her hips tilting to meet his.

He kissed her softly, going deeper as she relaxed against him, his hands moving under her T-shirt now as he slipped his tongue in her mouth, and she forgot everything else, kissing him back, wanting him more than she ever had before.

“Okay, but upstairs,” she breathed as he pushed her T-shirt up. “We have to be practical here. Come on.”

She tried to slide away from him, but he held her trapped against the counter.

“Here,” he said, his eyes dark, the old, hot, demanding North back, unsnapping her bra with one hand and unzipping her jeans with the other.

“No, no, this is crazy, I’m not crazy anymore,” she said, fumbling to block his hands. “You were right. Reality, common sense, come upstairs.”

“Here,” North said, his voice low, going right into her spine, and she shivered, and then he stripped her shirt and bra over her head and tossed them behind him.

“Wait!” she said, grabbing for them and missing, and then closed her eyes as she felt his lips on her skin. “Crazy,” she whispered. “We should-”

“Here.” He bent his head down and kissed her neck, and then she felt his mouth on her breast, and common sense evaporated along with sanity and all the other buzzkills, and she said, “Yes.”