Maybe This Time

Three

After North hung up, Andie put more coins in the phone and called Flo and told her everything was fine, and then called Will and said the same thing, but he wasn’t as easily put off.

“Have you talked to North?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I asked him to get us cable.”

“I wish you weren’t talking to him.”

“I’d talk to Satan to get cable,” Andie said, and changed the subject, giving him half her attention while she watched Alice lean against Carter’s arm, sitting as close to him as possible. “I have to go,” she said when they’d finished their ice cream, and then realized she’d interrupted him in mid-sentence. “Sorry, the kids… I have to go.” She hung up and went back to collect the kids, taking a phone number tab from a flyer for the Happy Housekeepers cleaning service she found on the Dairy Queen’s bulletin board. She lost the kids again as soon as she stopped the car on the flagstones behind the house, Carter taking the bookstore bags and Alice dragging the bags of clothes and office supplies. Andie took everything else into the kitchen and put the food away, taking a surprised satisfaction in seeing the fridge and cupboards fill up. Then she took the rest of the bags upstairs, dropped Carter’s striped comforter off in his room without getting so much as a glance from him, and took Alice’s blue comforter into the nursery where she set up her sewing machine, tore the sequined chiffon into strips, and sewed the strips all over the comforter.

Then she went to Alice’s room, knocked on the door, and said, “Alice, I have your comforter.”

“Come in,” Alice said, suspicion heavy in her voice, and Andie opened the door and went in.

Alice watched critically as Andie pulled the old pink bedspread off and shook the glittery blue comforter out, snapping it over her bed and making the chiffon strips flutter and gleam as it settled. Alice looked closer at it. “It should have swirls,” she told Andie.

“Swirls.”

“Like dancing. I’ll do it with my marker.” Alice narrowed her eyes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Andie said. “You do that, and I’ll go make dinner.”

Alice got the blue marker out of her new set, put the headphones to her Walkman back on, and began to draw swirls on the chiffon.

Half an hour later, Andie came back with two bowls of tomato soup, two grilled cheese sandwiches, and two glasses of milk, and put half on Alice’s bedside table. Alice ignored her and kept making swirls. Then Andie took the rest of the tray in to Carter, who ignored her knock and glared when she came in, closing the new sketchbook he’d been drawing in.

“Dinner,” she said, and put the tray on the table beside his bed.

He looked over at it, picked up a wedge of cheese sandwich, bit into it, and opened the sketchbook again, careful to shield it so she couldn’t see what he was doing.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and went back to her bedroom to work on the curriculum since she was going to start beating education into them the next day.

At eight o’clock, she went to collect their dishes and call bedtime. Alice was sitting on her bedspread, her dinner gone, staring at the sequins and the swirls she’d marked all over the chiffon. “It’s bee-you-tee-ful,” she was saying when Andie walked in.

“Yes, it is,” Andie said, and Alice looked up surprised, as if she hadn’t noticed she was there.

“Brush your teeth,” Andie said, prepared for a fight, but Alice went off to the little bathroom on her own. When she came out, changed into her too-big Bad Witch T-shirt, Andie said, “Bedtime,” and Alice picked up her Jessica doll, got into bed, and smoothed the comforter under her hands after Andie pulled it up over her knees. “Let me get the scrunchie out of your hair.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO,” Alice began, and Andie said, “We’ll put another one in tomorrow,” and pulled the scrunchie out while Alice was taking a breath to scream again.

Her white-blond hair dropped around her ears, smooth and silky now. Alice scratched the top of her head and said, “Okay,” in a normal voice and slid down under the covers.

So far, so good, Andie thought, blessing her mother for the tip on the sequins.

Now maybe if they started a bedtime ritual, Alice would start talking to her.

“So this bedtime thing,” she told Alice. “Is there anything I should be doing for you?”

Alice looked down at the rocker at the end of the bed.

“Get you a glass of water?” Andie said. “Read you a story?”

“Tell me a story,” Alice said, and Andie thought, Oh, hell, and sat down in the rocker.

Alice froze.

“What’s wrong?” Andie said, looking around.

“Don’t sit there,” Alice said, and Andie moved over to the foot of the bed, and Alice relaxed. “Okay. Tell me the story.”

“Okay.” Andie thought fast. “Once upon a time, there was a princess named Alice who lived in a big stone castle.”

“Was there a dungeon?”

“No, but there was a moat,” Andie said, thinking of the ugly water that surrounded the place. Their very own mosquito breeding ground.

“Okay,” Alice said.

“She lived there with her brother and her nanny and a cook,” Andie went on, thinking, This story sucks.

“The nanny was a Bad Witch,” Alice said, ignoring the message on her nightgown.

“And everybody,” Andie went on, ignoring Alice, “loved Alice.”

“That’s right.” Alice sat back against her pillows, still clutching Jessica. “Because Alice was very beautiful.”

Andie looked at the plain little girl in front of her, white-blond hair and skin as pale as her pillows. “Yes.”

“What did she look like?”

“She had beautiful blond hair,” Andie said, almost reaching out to smooth the wisps away from Alice’s face, but stopping just in time. Alice would not like it. “And big blue eyes.”

“Blue?” Alice said, frowning again.

“Gray-blue. Like a stormy sky.”

“And did she have lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow?”

Andie looked at Alice’s pale little face. “She had skin as white as snow because she didn’t eat a good breakfast. If she’d had a hot breakfast instead of sugary cereal-”

“Princesses don’t eat hot breakfasts,” Alice said, looking stormy again.

“They do if they want rosy cheeks.”

“This princess doesn’t want rosy cheeks.”

“Fine. She had skin as white as snow.”

“And she wears a beautiful blue gown that flutters when she walks,” Alice said, kicking her comforter so the chiffon fluttered again. “Like wings or cobwebs or butterflies.”

“Sure,” Andie said, losing her place in the story.

“And she is very strong,” Alice went on, “and nobody can make her do anything, not even her Bad Uncle who tries to kidnap her.”

“Hell-o,” Andie said, pulling back a little.

“He does,” Alice said, very sure. “He is tall and he has white hair and he frowns and he says, ‘You must leave!’ but Alice shoves him out the door”-Alice pushed her palms out in front of her-“and he has to let her stay in the castle.”

“Alice met her uncle?” Andie said, taken aback, and then remembered that North had said he’d gone to see the kids right after his cousin had died.

Alice nodded. “Nanny Joy said that Bad Uncle said they had to go away.”

“Nanny Joy, huh?” Rotten bitch of a nanny. Although it was possible North had said that. He wouldn’t have known how upset they’d be since he’d have kept his distance.

“Nanny Joy was a bad fairy,” Alice was saying, warming now to her story. “She wasn’t like the other princess.”

“There was another princess?”

“Yes. A blue princess. And she would dance all the time. Like this.” Alice pushed the Jessica doll away and slipped out of bed before Andie could stop her, her feet hitting the floor with a thunk, and began to dance, a kind of hoochie-coochie Kabuki glide that involved twitching hips and swaying hands, stopping for moments of tai chi. She hummed something as she moved, completely absorbed in herself, and then finished with a twirl, spreading her arms as she turned in a moment of absolute grace. “She was a very good dancer,” Alice said as she climbed back into bed. “Then what happened?”

“Uh,” Andie said, trying to figure out where Bad Uncle and the dancing princess fit with Alice in the castle. “Well. Alice lived in the castle with her brother and the cook and the, uh, dancing princess, and she was very happy except for one thing.”

Alice folded her arms, but it seemed to be more of a concentration thing than resistance.

“She was very lonely,” Andie ventured.

Alice frowned.

“She had her brother and the cook and the dancing princess,” Andie went on hastily, “but she wanted somebody her own age to… dance with.”

Alice frowned harder.

“So she decided to go on a quest.”

“What’s a quest?”

“A trip to find something. Like to school, to find other children to play with. She went out to look for a school-”

“No she didn’t.”

“Okay, what did she do?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said, exasperated. “You’re telling the story.”

“If I’m telling the story, why doesn’t Princess Alice eat her hot breakfast and go on a quest for a school?”

“Because that’s wrong.”

“Okay.” Andie gave up. “I have to think about this story for a while and then tell you more tomorrow.”

Alice sighed. “All right. But there should be more dancing.”

“More dancing. Got it. Anything else?”

Alice grew still, and her eyes seemed sadder suddenly, the shadows underneath them growing darker. “No,” she said, and rolled over, away from Andie, scooting down under the covers as she turned.

“Okay.” Andie got up, picked up the Jessica doll from where it had fallen to the floor, tucked it in beside Alice, and turned off her bedside light. “I’ll be right across the nursery if you need me.”

“I won’t,” Alice said, her voice muffled by the covers.

“Right.” Andie hesitated and then bent and kissed the top of Alice’s head, and Alice batted her away. “Sleep tight, baby,” Andie said, and went across the hall to check on Carter.

He said, “Come in,” when she knocked, which she considered progress, and when she said, “Don’t stay up too late, we have to start schoolwork tomorrow,” he nodded without looking up from his book. Since saying “Stop reading so you can learn something tomorrow” seemed contradictory, Andie picked up his empty tray, said, “Good night,” and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Dancing princess, she thought, and wondered which one of the nannies that had been.

Andie put the dishes in the sink and then used the phone in the kitchen, now complete with dial tone, to call the Happy Housekeepers number she’d found at the Dairy Queen to set up a cleaning crew. Surprisingly, they said they’d come the next day. Something moved behind her as she hung up, and she turned around expecting to see Mrs. Crumb, but she was alone. Weird, she thought, but that was the least of her problems. She was making a difference with the kids, a small difference, but a start, but there was something just out of her reach, something about the place that she couldn’t put her finger on yet. Mrs. Crumb might be up to something, the kids were probably always up to something, but there was something else.

Frustrated because she couldn’t puzzle it out, she got out a bowl and cookie sheets and the baking supplies she’d stocked up on and made chocolate chip cookies. The oven was ancient, but chocolate chip cookies were hard to screw up. She hesitated before adding the almonds and cashews, pretty sure Alice would turn her nose up at nuts, and then decided that if Alice wanted cookies, she could damn well eat nuts. The measuring and the mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes-nothing was as calming as creaming butter-and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating and the smell of baking chocolate, she took final stock of where she’d been and where she was going. Everything was fine. There was no reason to be uneasy. She was in a transition phase and so were the kids. In a month, the kids would go to Columbus together, where they’d start their life with North and she’d start hers with Will…

She went on planning, keeping a close eye on the cookies and turning down the heat as they browned too fast. She pulled out the first tray of cookies and slid in the next unbaked tray, and by the time the whole batch was done-the oven really was a sadistic bastard, doing its damnedest to scorch everything she put in it-she was back to normal. Everything was fine. The former nannies had been idiots. It was going to be okay.

She left the cookies to cool and went back upstairs and got ready for bed. Then she climbed into the big four-poster with the third-and seventh-grade curriculums, along with a box of workbooks for grades one through ten since the nannies hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly where the kids were in their education. At ten, she heard somebody outside her door, but by the time she opened it, the only thing in the hall was a tray with a pot of liquor-laced tea and a striped cup, with two of her cookies on a plate beside it.

She crawled back into bed and sipped her tea-Mrs. Crumb still with the heavy hand with the schnapps-and ate her cookies, which were exceptional, as always. God, I’m good at this, she thought, and then put her mind back on the trouble at hand: Mrs. Crumb. They were going to talk about housekeeping and when that was over they were going to talk about ghosts. It was one thing for the housekeeper to have a few screws loose after living in the House of Usher for sixty years, another thing entirely to drive nannies away with ghost stories, especially when there were two kids who so desperately needed their help. Not that the kids looked like they wanted any help. In fact, they were downright hostile. Maybe I shouldn’t have come, she thought, feeling the old urge to break and run to someplace better, but Alice and Carter needed her, North had been right about that, and she could last the month, get them back to Columbus where North could get them professional help. It was only a month.

She put her empty cup back on the bedside table, punched her pillow, slid down into bed, and turned out the light, her thoughts still racing even though the tea had made her groggy. She was going to have to tell Mrs. Crumb to knock it off with the tea, she was going to have to tell Mrs. Crumb a lot of things. Mrs. Crumb was…

Who do you love? She heard the whisper as the night grew chill and she drifted off. Who do you want?

Not Mrs. Crumb, she thought, but the whisper was insistent. Who do you love? And then North was there in her dreams again, turning toward her with his rare, slow smile-

Who is HE?

Andie roused and looked around, disoriented. That had been a real whisper, not a dream, and the room was cold, much colder than it had been when she’d turned out the light, it was always cold in her dreams-

The window across from her bed rattled, and she thought, That’s what I heard, the window’s got a leak and it’s letting in the cold air, and got up to stick a piece of paper into it to stop the noise and pull the drapes against the cold. There were too many noises at night in this house, walls sighing and floors creaking and now this damn window…

She tried to shake the top pane but it was tight, stuck, not rattling at all, so she dropped her hand to the lower pane and then froze, looking down at the ground two stories below.

North stood there, his hair white in the moonlight, staring up at her.

Andie caught her breath, blindsided by the fact of him, looking at her with the same intensity of their first night, the night they’d made love until dawn, starving for each other, and he was down there now, she couldn’t believe it, he was down there now. He’d asked her if she wanted him to come, and she had, but she’d said no, but maybe he’d known, maybe he’d come for her, the way he’d crossed the bar all those years ago to meet her, maybe-

A cloud scudded across the moon and everything went dark, and when the moonlight lit the lawn again, he was gone.

This is still a dream, she thought. She was losing her mind. She was almost engaged to another man. She didn’t even want North. It was because she’d taken this job, with these two kids who didn’t want her. She should get out of there, she should run-

Tell him to come to you.

She closed her eyes and thought about rolling in his arms again, the weight of him bearing her down, the push of his hips and the surge of him sliding hard into her-

Call him!

Andie jerked back from the window and looked around. Somebody had said that, somebody must have said that, but there was no one in the room but her. This is a dream.

Yes, it’s a dream, you’re dreaming of him. Call him. He’s the one. Bring him here.

Andie shook her head to clear it, dizzier than ever now. And cold, so cold that she climbed back into bed shivering. She pulled the comforter up over her, and thought, No more dreams, and then sank down into the pillows and eventually into a fretful sleep, ignoring the voice that whispered, Who do you love?, and then dreamed of making love with North.

North had been sitting at his desk, working late to figure out a way to keep the next day’s jury from noticing his client was a total waste of space and air, when his mother opened his office door without knocking and walked in, elegant and annoyed, and said, “We need to talk.”

Oh, hell, not now. North stood up. “Hello, Mother. How was Paris?”

“Loud.” Lydia sat down, every platinum wave in place, the pearls around her throat in regimented rows.

North sat down. “The little people talking in the streets again?”

Lydia ignored that. “I assume Sullivan has been in.” She sat with her back straight and her arms along the arms of the chair, symmetrical and unbending.

“Yes,” North said and waited to cut to the chase so he could get rid of her.

“And?” Lydia said and waited.

“He’s looking well.”

“He always looks well. He’s my son. What did he say?”

“He said you were in good health.”

Lydia smiled, her lips curving in the tight little half circle that had sent opposing lawyers scurrying to offer settlements for forty years. “This is amusing, North, but I don’t have the time. What did Sullivan tell you?”

North leaned back. “That’s privileged. I’m his lawyer.”

“North-”

“What do you want, Mother?”

Lydia drew in air through her nose, her patrician nostrils flaring like a Derby winner’s. “He’s found another woman.”

North nodded. “He does that.”

“Or should I say, she’s found him.”

North nodded. “They do that.”

Lydia’s brows snapped together. “You are not being helpful.”

“I don’t want to be helpful.”

“He’s your brother-”

“Which is why I don’t want to be helpful.” North straightened. “Mother, he’s thirty-four. And although you may not have noticed, he has a cheerful cunning that has kept him single and solvent through adulthood.”

“Only because we were watching him,” Lydia snapped.

“I never watched him.”

“Well, you should have.”

North smiled back at her, the same tight smile she’d given him, the one Andie had called “the crocodile smile.” Has the same sincerity as crocodile tears, she’d told him once in the middle of an argument. Just less emotion.

He twitched his lips to get rid of it now. “Southie’s fine, he always has been. Leave him be.”

“Southie?” Lydia said, suddenly alert.

“Sullivan.”

“You haven’t called him Southie in years.” Lydia narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?”

North sighed. “Mother, go away.”

“He’s seeing that woman from Channel Twelve. The one obsessed with children in jeopardy who browbeats the people she interviews.”

“Imagine that,” North said, meeting her eyes.

“I do not browbeat people.”

“Mother, you’ve made a career out of browbeating people.”

“Witnesses,” Lydia said. “Lawyers. Not people.”

“Thank God you have standards.”

Lydia glared at him. “Are you telling me that that woman is like me?”

North pictured Kelly O’Keefe in the last interview he’d seen her do, the one where the woman she was haranguing cried so hard she threw up on camera. “No.”

Lydia sat very still for a few moments and then said, “I have heard it said that men either marry their mothers or their mothers’ opposites.”

“Well, they’ll say anything.” North smiled at her, a real smile this time. “Mother, you are not like Kelly O’Keefe. Sullivan is not interested in her because he thinks she’s you. Neither of us is Oedipal.”

“Oh, please,” Lydia said. “Andromeda was exactly like me.”

North lost his smile. “I beg your pardon.”

Lydia frowned at him again. “Aside from her teeth and those damn peasant skirts, she was practically my twin.” She thought for a moment. “Except for the baking. I don’t bake. I haven’t had decent banana bread since she left.”

“No,” North said, showing what he thought was remarkable restraint. “I never looked at Andie and saw you.”

“Not consciously, but a weak, silly woman would have bored you to tears.” She nodded once at him. “You picked a ballbuster, just like me.”

“Excuse me,” North said. “I’d like to continue this conversation but I find myself in need of a therapist.”

“Kelly O’Keefe is a stupid woman. She thinks bullying people will make her look tough. Instead, she just looks like a sociopath.” Lydia stared angrily into space. “I think she is a sociopath. They’re often very successful, you know.”

“I know. I’ve defended several. Well, this has been-”

“I’m going to call the McKennas, have them look into her. She’s hiding something. And of course, she’s using him.”

North was tempted to argue the “of course, she’s using him,” but of course, she was. And of course, Southie was using her, too. It seemed fair. “No, you will not put a private detective on Kelly O’Keefe.”

“Then I’ll have to meet her.” Lydia narrowed her eyes at him. “You should meet her, too. Your judgment is very good.”

“I don’t even like watching her on television. Was there anything else?”

“Yes,” Lydia said, exasperated. “I want you to stop Sullivan from seeing that woman. I don’t want teeth like that on my grandchildren.”

“I doubt very much that Kelly O’Keefe will give birth.”

“Which is another problem,” Lydia said. “Sullivan is my only hope for grandchildren. I don’t want all my genes in Kelly O’Keefe’s egg basket, especially if she’s not going to use them.”

North raised his eyebrows. “Leaving aside Kelly’s… basket, Sullivan is your only hope?”

“Well, you’re not going to give me any. You’ll never stop working long enough to procreate.”

North opened his mouth to disagree and Lydia ran right over him.

“We have to stop this, North.”

“Mother, leave Sullivan to his dentally challenged newscaster. He won’t marry her. If he does, it’s his life and his choice. The umbilical cord was cut thirty-four years ago, stop trying to haul him back by it. You don’t do that with me, give Sullivan the same respect.”

“I can’t do that with you. You bit through yours at birth.”

“And now I’ll be canceling dinner.”

“I have heard that she’s asking about Archer House. She’s asking about the children and the house.”

North considered how much to tell her. “She’s interested in the ghost stories.”

“She’s not asking about ghosts. She’s asking about you and the children. That’s her specialty, stirring up outrage about children. I don’t like it. I especially don’t like it with all the trouble we’ve had keeping nannies. How’s the new one doing?”

“She quit. I don’t see how Kelly O’Keefe can use the kids. They’re not being starved or beaten. What’s her hook going to be?”

“That they’re down there alone in a haunted house?” Lydia snapped. “I think if she got hold of that last demented nanny, she could make a story out of that. You’ve got to get somebody else down there-”

“Already did,” North said, seeing danger ahead. “Very competent. Not a problem. You’re looking tired, Mother. I’d make it an early night if I were you.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes. “Would you? That’s very thoughtful. Where did you get this nanny? From the same service?”

“No.” North picked up his pen. “Anything else?”

Lydia’s icy blue eyes met his. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now, or do I have to sit here all night and stare at you until you break?”

North put the pen down. “I sent Andie.”

Lydia’s face went slack with surprise, which was some reward, North thought. It took a lot to surprise Lydia.

“Andromeda?”

“Yes,” North said. “You remember her. Dark eyes, curly hair, smart mouth, about this tall”-he held his hand out at about ear height-“used to be married to me.”

“Andromeda is back?”

“She called and asked to see me two days after the last nanny quit. She was free, and I asked her to go down there and straighten things out, and she said yes.”

“Are you going to resume the relationship?”

“No. Now I have work to get back to-”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to see her again. It’s been ten years, she’s probably dressing like an adult now-”

“She’s engaged,” North said flatly.

Lydia lost her smile. “Why?”

“I assume because she’d like to be married again.”

“Who could she find that would be better than you?” Lydia said, outraged.

“I think ‘better’ is subjective.” North picked up his pen and tapped it on his legal pad. “And now I really have to work.”

Lydia looked at him, exasperation plain. “I gave birth to idiots. My oldest son can’t keep his wife, and my youngest son is chasing a woman that’s mostly teeth and hair.”

“We blame you,” North said.

“Are you going to see Andromeda again?”

“No.”

“Are you going to keep that harpy away from your brother?”

“No.”

Lydia lifted her chin. “Fine, I will handle things myself.” She stood up and tucked her purse under her arm. “But if the future face of the Archer line is ninety-nine percent tooth enamel, it’ll be your fault.”

Of course, North thought as she walked out.

He tried to go back to work, but his mother had broken his concentration. She’s probably dressing like an adult now, Lydia had said, and Andie had sat there in an awful suit jacket, acting like an adult. If they got back together, he was burning that damn jacket-

They weren’t getting back together. She was marrying somebody else.

She’s a bolter. Even if she marries this other guy, she won’t stick.

Unless she’d really changed. Unless she’d found somebody she wanted to stick to.

That was the worst thought he’d had in a long time, so he shoved it out of his mind and went back to work.

The next morning Andie went downstairs, made breakfast, and put French toast in front of Alice and Carter.

“Cereal,” Alice said, clutching her pearls, her locket, her shells, her Walkman, and her bat as if the French toast was going to contaminate them. She’d put her hair up in a topknot on her own, and it was sliding down the side of her head, but Andie was willing to let that go if Alice was going to be proactive about grooming.

“Try the French toast,” Andie said while Mrs. Crumb sniffed.

Alice shrank back. “No, no, no, NO, NO-”

“It’s good,” Carter said without looking up from his book.

Alice stopped shrinking, leaned forward, and took a tiny, cautious bite. “AAAAAAAAAAAAGH.”

“Fine,” Andie said, and took the plate away.

Alice pushed her chair back and went and got her cereal and ate a big bowl of it. She was scraping the bottom loudly when they heard a loud, sharp rapping echo through the open door to the hall.

“That’s the front door,” Mrs. Crumb said, surprised.

“Right,” Andie said, remembering. “That might be a cable company, and there’s also a team of housecleaners coming in to clean-”

“What?” Mrs. Crumb said, her eyes protruding even more in her shock.

“I’ll get the door,” Andie said, and went out into the small hall, through another door, across the Great Hall, through the stone arch into the entrance hall, and finally arrived at the heavy front door. “Sorry,” she said as she opened it. “It’s a real trek to get here.” Then she stopped.

There was a crowd on the doorstep.

“We’re the Happy Housekeepers,” the woman in front said cheerfully. “Where do you want us?”

“The whole house is filthy,” Andie said. “Go nuts everyplace but the kitchen. Mrs. Crumb is in there with knives.”

“That’s a good one,” the woman said. “We’ll start at the top and work down.”

They all piled in, one of them stopping to say, “That driveway of yours is awful.”

“I know, I know, I’m getting it fixed,” Andie said.

“It’s all right,” the woman said. “We’d have climbed down that bank to get to see into this house.”

“Oh. Uh, good,” Andie said, and went back to the kitchen where Mrs. Crumb was hyperventilating. “Look,” she said when she was facing the old woman, “you can’t keep this place clean. No one person could keep this place clean.”

“This is my house,” Mrs. Crumb snapped, shaking with rage, even her teased red updo quivering now.

“No,” Andie said, when she heard the doorknocker again and went to let the cable guy in.

“That driveway,” he said, and she said, “I know, let me know if you need anything,” and then she went back to the kitchen to deal with the red-faced housekeeper again, only to be pulled back to the front door by a FedEx guy, who handed over a big box.

“I had to walk that down your driveway,” he said as she signed for the package. “You need to get that fixed.”

“Yeah,” Andie said, and then met Carter at the bottom of the stairs as he headed for the library. “Here,” she said, handing him the package. “This is addressed to you, and I have to deal with Mrs. Crumb before she knifes one of the cleaning people.”

She turned back to the kitchen but the knocker went again, this time a guy named Bruce who said he’d been sent to look over the house for repairs. “I walked around it,” he said slowly. “You gotta lotta work here.”

“Driveway first,” Andie said, “and then-”

Upstairs, Alice began to scream, “NO NO NO NO NO NO,” and Andie said, “Just make a list,” and ran for the stairs.

Once she’d gotten Alice’s comforter away from the poor woman who was trying to put it in the laundry-“It’s new,” she said, “it’s okay”-and Alice and the comforter and Jessica-the-dead-blue-doll back down to the kitchen with some cocoa as an apology, she confronted Mrs. Crumb again.

Mrs. Crumb turned on her and spat, “I’m not going to put up with this!”

“You’re quitting?” Andie said, hope rising, but Mrs. Crumb saw the abyss and stepped back.

“You brought those women into my house,” she said, and pressed her lips together until her small mouth almost disappeared. “You had no right-”

“It’s not your house,” Andie said calmly. “It’s Carter and Alice’s house. And they deserve to live someplace clean.”

Alice looked up at that, a cocoa mustache making a pinky-brown slash on her colorless face. Her topknot was now over her ear, and Jessica had a new brown splotch on her blue-white face.

“You are the housekeeper,” Andie went on as she pulled out Alice’s scrunchie and moved her topknot to the center of her head again, “which means you’re supposed to keep the house in good condition, which you have not done because it’s impossible for one person to do so.” And because you haven’t tried. “Therefore I have brought in people who will. You can assist them, you can ignore them, or you can leave. It’s your choice.” She picked up the doll and wiped the cocoa off and part of the discolored paint came with it. “Sorry,” she said to Alice and handed the doll back to her.

Alice put the doll under her arm and drank more cocoa, watching as Mrs. Crumb turned an interesting shade of puce.

“I’ve been here for sixty years,” Mrs. Crumb said, and Andie started to slap her down and realized that it wasn’t just rage, it was fear.

The woman had been at Archer House since her teens and she was in her seventies now. She wasn’t going to get another job and the chances that she had much retirement were slim. Oh, hell, Andie thought. Torturing old ladies was not in her job description even if the old ladies were hags from hell. “I suggest that we have the Happy Housekeepers come in every week, and you supervise. After all, no one knows the house like you do.”

“Well,” Mrs. Crumb said, her breath slowing slightly.

“Somebody named Bruce is going to be doing some repairs, too,” Andie said, not adding, And Mr. Archer would like to know where the money he gave you for that went. Let North fight that battle.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Crumb said, but it was all bluster now.

“Is it lunch yet?” Alice said from behind them. “Because I would like a cheese sandwich. But no tomato soup.”

“How about chicken noodle?” Andie asked her.

“No. NO NO NO NO NO-”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Alice, it’s soup, not poison.”

Alice looked at her darkly. “Maybe.”

“I’ll make it, you try it.”

“No.”

“I made cookies last night. Try the soup, you can have a cookie.”

“No.”

“I said try it. One spoonful.”

“NO.”

“Fine.” Andie turned back to Mrs. Crumb, who seemed distracted now, her eyes darting like a cornered rat’s, falling finally on Alice, slopping her cocoa onto the table.

“You be careful,” she snapped at Alice, her eyes cold on the little girl. “You’re making a mess on my nice clean table.”

“It’s not your table,” Alice said calmly. “It’s mine. Andie said so.”

“We’ll clean it up later,” Andie said, taken aback by Alice’s use of her name.

“This ain’t right,” Mrs. Crumb said, and Andie realized she was near tears. “I been here for sixty years. None of you was born yet but I was here. You don’t know this house. You’re stirring things up. You-”

“Which brings us to my next point,” Andie said. “You will stop talking about ghosts. I have no idea why you thought that was a good idea, but from now on the official position in this house is that there are no ghosts.”

Alice drained her cocoa cup. “I want my sandwich now.”

Andie got out the whole wheat bread as Mrs. Crumb said, “I never said there were no ghosts.”

“Yes you did,” Alice said, and Mrs. Crumb glared at her with absolutely no effect.

“Even if there were,” Andie said, “I don’t see why a good housecleaning would upset them. They don’t live in the dust.”

“Oh, they care,” Mrs. Crumb said to Andie, folding her arms over her orange-flowered apron. “You’ll see they care.”

“For the last time, I do not believe in ghosts-” Andie began, and then Carter came into the kitchen with the box opened.

“It’s computers,” he said, more confused than defiant, and Andie looked inside and saw two sleek Apple boxes holding Mac PowerBook 145s. She took the boxes out and put them on the table and found a note from Kristin that said, “Mr. Archer wanted to make sure the children had computers.”

“Those are from your Uncle North,” Andie said, showing him the note, thinking, Thank you. North never missed on the details.

“Who?” Alice said.

“Bad Uncle,” Andie told her. “They come with a graphics program,” she told Carter.

“What is it?” Alice said poking at her box. “Is it candy?”

“Better,” Carter said, and left with his Mac, undoubtedly heading for the library.

“You think you’re so smart, but you’re not,” Mrs. Crumb said. “All this change, all this stuff. It’s bad.”

Andie gave up on the pity. “Mrs. Crumb, I do not want to have to fire you, but I will if you cause any more problems. You will keep the kitchen clean and you can supervise the Happy Whosis, but you will not tell any more stories about ghosts, and you will not make any more veiled threats, and you will either assist me with the cooking or get out of my way, and you will answer any questions I have without muttering. Is that clear?”

Mrs. Crumb’s nostrils flared, but she said, “Yes.”

“Good,” Andie said, and finished making Alice’s lunch.

When she was done, she put the sandwich in front of Alice.

“I think I’ll have cookies,” Alice said.

“I think you won’t,” Andie said.

Alice glared at her, and Andie glared back, and Alice put her headphones on and ate her sandwich, swathed in her pearls and her shells and her locket and her bat, pretending Andie didn’t exist.

It’s only a month, Andie thought, and no matter what North thinks, I can make it a month easy.

“It’s mean not to give me a cookie,” Alice said.

Not that it mattered what North thought. He’d forgotten her already. He-

The doorknocker thudded again.

I’m going to get a scooter, she thought, as she race-walked across the Great Hall and opened the door.

A deliveryman with a clipboard stood there. “We got a stove for a Mrs. Andromeda Archer.”

“A stove,” Andie said.

North had sent her a new stove.

“This the place?” the guy said.

“Yeah, this is the place,” she said, and silently apologized to North as they wheeled in her new stove, the latest model of the stove he’d bought her ten years ago. She hadn’t asked then, but he knew. She hadn’t asked now, but-

So he’s good with stoves, she thought, trying to dismiss the whole thing.

But he hadn’t forgotten her.

“It means nothing,” she said to nobody, and went back to the kitchen to feed Carter.