Maybe This Time

Four

That afternoon, while the cleaning crew worked around them, Andie sat the kids down in the library and explained their educational goals to them: They had to be up to their grade levels by January, and the only way she’d know that was if they took the achievement tests. Carter looked at his PowerBook with longing, and Andie handed him the curriculum. “Here’s what you need to know. The notes from your last nanny said you had all your textbooks. I can go over this with you, or you can look it up and ask me for help when you hit a snag.” Unless it’s math; then we’re both screwed. She went over everything with him and then said, “Can you do this on your own?” He nodded. “Yell if you need me,” she told him, and turned to Alice.

“I’m not gonna do it,” Alice said, folding her arms.

“Too hard, huh?” Andie said. “Poor baby. Here, you can start with the kindergarten workbook.”

“I’m not in kindergarten!” Alice said, outraged.

“Oh, sorry.” Andie handed her the first-grade workbook.

“I’m not in first grade, either!”

“Prove it. Do the final test at the back of the book. I bet you can’t.”

Alice grabbed the book and started working, bitching the entire time. Andie went to see how the cleaners were doing on the second floor-“You’re going to need new linens everywhere,” one of the women told her, “this stuff is rotted through”-and checked to make sure the cable guy hadn’t fallen in the moat-“You’re ready to go,” he told her, “but it wasn’t easy, all this stone, and some of it’s loose”-and gave a glowering Mrs. Crumb instructions for dinner, and then went back to Alice and Carter.

“You’ve got cable TV,” she told Carter, who said, “Cool,” the first positive word she’d had from him, and then she turned to Alice.

Alice was working on the fourth-grade final test. Andie went back and checked the first-, second-, and third-grade tests. Perfect scores on first and second and near perfect on the third.

“How is this possible?” she asked Carter, showing him.

“The nannies weren’t dumb and neither is Alice.” He held up the curriculum. “You got a test for this?”

“I can make one up,” she said, just as Alice pushed the fourth-grade final across to her.

“Can I have candy now?” she said.

“Candy?” Andie said, and Carter said, “They bribed her to work.” Andie shook her head at Alice. “No, no candy. Here’s what you missed on the third-grade test.” She shoved the workbook back to Alice who looked outraged again. Alice was looking outraged a lot today. Suck it up, Alice. “We’ll go over the questions you missed in a minute.” She looked back at Carter. “I’ll make up the test for you to see if you’ve got the curriculum down, and then we’ll figure out independent studies for you. I’m telling you now, I’m terrible at math, so we’ll have to get you outside help there, but I’m a whiz at language skills, so there I’ve got you covered.” He gave her his usual blank stare, so she said, “I’ll give you something to read, and we can talk about it-or not-and then you’ll write a short paper on it. I’ll show you. It’s easy. You just think about what you read, organize your thoughts, and write it down. As long as your arguments are clear and make sense, you’re good. Math, of course, will still be math.”

He went back to the computer.

“These questions were wrong,” Alice announced, looking at the ones she’d missed.

Andie sighed and sat down with her and went through everything, including the fourth-grade test, which Alice had done pretty well on, considering she was a third-grader. “This is what we’re going to be studying,” she told Alice. “Candy,” Alice said, and Andie worked out a series of rewards for her, including the right to pick out bedding for each of the ten bedrooms in the house and a dinner at Dairy Queen for every completed unit.

“The stove is exactly right,” she told North when she called him to thank him after the kids were in bed. “I’m making banana bread tonight in celebration. And the computer for Carter was a genius move.”

“Banana bread,” North said. “Send some of that up here, would you?”

“Sure,” Andie said, surprised he was asking for something. He never asked for anything. “I’m going to teach Alice to make cookies tomorrow. You want some of those, too?”

“Chocolate chip?” North said, sounding like a kid.

“Yes.”

“Yes, please.” There was a pause, and when he spoke again, he was back to business. “So everything is going well there?”

“Sort of. The kids have been through a lot, and this place is Amityville, the House of Usher, and Hill House combined, so their environment isn’t working in their favor, but they’re very bright and very tough and they’ve had each other. The worst mistake was sending Carter away to school. But if I can keep bribing Alice, and Carter will do the work, they’ll be ready to go back to school by January. The nannies did a good job educating them. From what I can tell, they were sensible, competent women except for the last one. Nanny Joy. Telling her to kidnap them and take them to Columbus was not a good idea. Alice calls you ‘Bad Uncle.’ ”

“I did not tell her to kidnap them,” North said, sounding exasperated. “I told her to bring them to Columbus if she possibly could.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t sure. You are sort of a hand-of-God, forget-the-feelings, don’t-bother-me-while-I’m-working kind of guy. And in your defense, it was a good idea, her execution of it just sucked. We have to find a way to get them to agree to go, not trick them into it.”

“Well, you have a month,” North said, his voice suddenly cold, and she reacted to the undercurrent more than to the words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That was our deal, a month.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, assuming you don’t bolt before then.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Never mind. Is there anything else you need?”

Andie scowled at the phone. “Yeah, I need you to back off that bolting thing.” Or no cookies, you jackass.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“I just got here,” Andie said, ignoring the sympathy she’d felt for the nannies who’d left. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hand-of-God guy?” North said.

“Well, you do like your distance. You like to do your caring from another room.”

“Whereas you do limited engagements and then head for another state.”

“Hey, I’m not the one taking care of Damian and the Bad Seed from a hundred miles away. I’m here.”

“And at the end of the month, you won’t be taking care of them at all. You don’t stay.”

“You don’t care, you don’t even see them.” There was a long silence, and Andie thought, This is stupid. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to have this dumb argument. Of course you care, you sent me down here.”

“Fair enough,” North said, as distant as ever. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

Not anymore, Andie thought. “No, we’re fine. Unless you’re willing to come out here and burn the place down for me so we have to leave.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the phone.

Andie thought, That wasn’t North, somebody is listening in.

It had to be Crumb; Carter wasn’t interested in anything but his books and his drawing, and Alice would have contributed to the conversation by now. “Well,” she said brightly. “I can’t wait to get home to you, baby. I really miss you.”

“What?”

“I know how hard this separation is on our marriage, but it’s worth it to see that the kids are safe.”

“What?”

“But I’ll be home in a couple of weeks,” Andie said. “I’ll send the cookies and banana bread tomorrow. Can’t wait to see you. Love you. Bye.”

“Uh, good-bye,” North said, and Andie thought, Jesus, you suck at improv, as he hung up.

She went downstairs and told Mrs. Crumb to stop eavesdropping-“I never!”-and that she’d be making her own tea from now on. She went into the pantry, a dark narrow little room off the back of the kitchen, and found a row of old glass decanters in a cabinet, most of the bottles empty except for one with peppermint schnapps and another that smelled like musty Amaretto and a third that was some kind of brandy. She made a cup of tea with a shot of Amaretto in it-one shot-and took the cup upstairs and sipped it in the warmth of her bed while looking over the kids’ schoolwork, which was really very good. When she was done, she put the empty cup on her bedside table, and slid down into the sheets, thinking about the kids. They had such potential if only they weren’t so…

Her thoughts clouded, and she slipped into a deep tea-and-liquor-aided sleep. The whispers began again-Who do you love? Who do you want?-and she thought, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and when North showed up in her dreams, she thought, Bad Uncle, and refused to have anything to do with him.

After the first week, Andie kept pushing and the changes came fast. Alice worked her way through the third-grade workbooks, her tongue stuck between her teeth, her pearls, shells, locket, and bat swinging forward as she bent over her papers, her Walkman cast forlornly to one side so she could concentrate. It really was a miracle she hadn’t become hunchbacked from the weight around her neck. She’d decided she liked the black-and-white-striped leggings Andie had bought her, but they were too small, so when Andie went back and bought her the larger size, Alice cut the pants off the too-small ones and tied her topknot with one of the legs. She liked it so much she began ordering Andie to do her hair every morning, which was an annoying improvement. It took Andie a while to realize who Alice looked like: a very short Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan, except Alice hadn’t discovered earrings and eye shadow yet. Well, it was only a matter of time.

Alice cooperated with everything once she was bribed, earning many trips to the shopping center, which resulted in each of the bedrooms sporting different treatments: red and black paisleys, pumpkin-orange stripes, purple checks, a violent green leaf pattern, a multicolored dot extravaganza that made Andie dizzy when she looked at it, and a green Sesame Street comforter with Bert and Ernie waving on the top. “Bee-you-tee-ful,” Alice said with each one, and since Andie didn’t have to sleep in any of them, she said, “Yep,” and moved on. Alice and Andie painted Alice’s bedroom walls white, and Alice spent the ensuing days drawing pictures on her wall in marker. The black got quite a workout since that’s what she drew everything in, and the red was almost as bad since there was a lot of blood in Alice’s imagination, but the blue ran out first, used for many butterflies and a woman in a long blue dress. “Who is that?” Andie asked, and Alice said, “Dancing princess,” and drew on. She also badgered Andie to tell her the princess story every night and then critiqued it mercilessly as it evolved into a story about a brave princess in a black ruffled skirt and striped stockings, and the Bad Witch who lived with her and tried to make her eat soup.

But it wasn’t all Bad Witch. Alice also began to follow Andie around after school time, asking, “Whatcha doing?” and then criticizing whatever it was with great interest and enthusiasm, which evolved into the Three O’Clock Bake, when Andie would turn on the radio and they’d listen to the only station they could get-“All the Hits All the Time”-while Andie mixed up whatever she was making in time to the music, and Alice helped a little and danced around the kitchen a lot, belting out the hits with fervor if not technical accuracy.

Alice was singing “I’m too sexy for my shirt” one afternoon as Andie began to make banana bread. “This is my specialty,” she told Alice as she got out her mixing bowl. “Do you want me to show you how to make it?”

Alice said, “My specialty is dancing,” and kept hoochie-coochieing to Right Said Fred.

My specialty used to be dancing, too, Andie thought, and began to peel bananas for banana bread.

Alice stopped and peered over the bowl. “The bananas are yucky,” she said. “They are spotted and brown and dead.”

“They’re supposed to be spotted and brown for banana bread,” Andie said, smooshing them up in the bowl with her fork. “That’s how you know they’re ready to make into banana bread. If they’re yellow, they’re no good for bread. Everything has a time, Alice, and it is time to make these bananas into bread. It’s very good.”

“I do not like nuts,” Alice said, frowning at the bag of walnuts on the counter.

“Then don’t eat the banana bread,” Andie said, and beat the banana bread in time to the music, bouncing while she stood at the counter and Alice danced around singing, “I don’t like nuts” to “Achy Breaky Heart” (“I do not like nuts, I really don’t like nuts”). Then Andie put the bread in the oven, and Alice went back to singing with the music.

When the banana bread came out, Alice ate it.

The next day she danced to “Everything Changes” while Andie made chocolate chip cookies with nuts-“I do not like nuts.” “Then don’t eat the cookies”-and ate the cookies. The day after that, she belted out “I Will Always Love You” as cupcakes came out of the oven-“I will eat these because there are no nuts”-and after the first two weeks and many Hits All the Time, she added waffles and pancakes and lasagna and spaghetti and whole wheat rolls to her menu-“I do not like whole wheat.” “Then don’t eat the rolls”-and began to put on ounces and bounce just from consuming Andie’s quality calories as she danced around the kitchen. After a while, Andie danced, too, which Alice, surprisingly, approved of. She was still pale as a little ghost, but she was a healthy little ghost. By the time the first three weeks were up, the only problems Alice still had were intractable stubbornness, occasional screaming, and nightmares.

Andie didn’t realize Alice was having nightmares until she used the kids’ bathroom one night and heard her crying as she came out. She knocked on the door and went in, and found Alice weeping helplessly in her sleep. She woke her and then picked her up and carried her to the rocker and began to rock her, saying, “What happened, baby, what did you dream?” and Alice sobbed, “They had teeth.” “What had teeth, baby?” Andie said, and Alice said, “The butterflies.” Andie kissed her forehead and said, “Butterflies don’t have teeth, it was just a bad, bad dream,” and rocked and rocked as Alice cried, quietly now. I need a lullaby, she thought, but the only one she could think of was from a Disney cartoon Alice played over and over. She began to hum “Baby Mine,” and when Alice quieted down a little, she sang, “so precious to me,” holding her close. Alice sighed and in a little while fell back asleep, and Andie held her for a while longer, just for the chance to hold her and in case she dreamed again, and then she put her back to bed and tucked her in. The next day she asked Alice about the butterflies, but Alice said, “I don’t remember,” and turned away, stubborn as ever in the daylight. After that, Andie put a baby monitor in Alice’s room so that when the little girl had bad dreams, she could go to her.

Meanwhile, Carter aced the tests Andie wrote based on the curriculum, listened patiently to her explanation of whatever lesson was next, and wrote his critical thinking papers. Whenever possible he wrote on comic books, but his arguments were clear and concise and that’s all Andie was looking for. After one particularly good paper on the way comics were drawn, she took the kids to an art supply store on their way to the shopping center and saw him smile for the first time. Okay, she thought, I’m getting the hang of this, and loaded him up with quality drawing supplies. Other than that, nothing changed: Carter did his work silently, read silently, drew in his sketchbook silently, worked on his computer silently, and ate everything Andie put in front of him, although he was now growing at such an alarming rate that she thought there was something wrong. “I swear, he’s grown two inches in three weeks,” she told Flo when she called her for help. “I expected him to grow out with all the food I’m shoving at him, but not up. And he walks like his legs hurt. I want to call a doctor but he won’t go.” “He’s twelve,” Flo said. “It’s a growth spurt. Keep feeding him, he’ll be fine.” So Andie bought him new pants that would cover his newly exposed ankles and gave him aspirin when he winced, and kept feeding him, and Flo was right, he was fine. Silent, but fine.

And during it all, Andie tried to figure out what the hell was wrong in Archer House.

Because once the routines were settled-schoolwork in the morning, grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, reading and drawing and baking in the afternoon, reluctant eating of new food for dinner, Go Fish after dinner (there was a routine Andie regretted immediately since Alice seized on it and refused to give up, snarling, “Go fish!” with venom whenever possible), and then bedtime and reading comics for Carter, and bedtime and the princess story for Alice-once all that routine was in place and the house was clean, and at least the illusion of stability had been established, Andie still felt that whatever was wrong was as strong as ever, waiting out there for her. And she was pretty sure the kids felt it, too: Carter seemed to be always looking over his shoulder, waiting for something, and Alice’s screaming seemed to be tied to more than just being crossed, erupting when anything threatened her routine. There was more fear in those screams than Andie had realized at first, mostly rage, true, but definitely fear underneath. It’s the house, Andie thought, and tried to find a way to break through their resistance to comfort them with no success.

“They’re just tolerating me,” she told North when she called him at the end of the third week to give him the update on their education. She was on the pay phone at the Dairy Queen, which wasn’t the best place to have long conversations but had the advantage that Mrs. Crumb would not be listening in. Add to that it was a sunny day in late October, and she was wearing her favorite skirt-greeny-blue chiffon with turquoise sequins-and Alice hadn’t screamed at all so far that day, and things seemed more doable than usual. It helped that she and North were being polite again after sniping at each other for a couple of weeks. The politeness was cold, but it wasn’t annoying.

“You’re getting the job done,” North said, his voice brisk and detached. “Everything is back to normal there.”

Andie thought about Alice sobbing the night before in another nightmare. “I think normal is still a long way off. I can hear Alice over the baby monitor talking to an imaginary friend at night after she’s supposed to be asleep, and she’s still having terrible butterfly nightmares.”

“Butterfly nightmares?”

“She cried last night because the butterflies were mad because we hadn’t mulched their garden. She said she and Aunt May put in a butterfly garden here and we needed to get it ready for winter. We just got mulch, so we can do that tomorrow, but in a day or so, there’ll be another nightmare. She has a lot of angry butterflies in her dreams. And she loves butterflies, North. I just don’t get it.”

“Poor kid,” North said. “I don’t know what a butterfly garden is, but we’ll put one in. How’s Carter?”

“Still silent as the grave. The only things he cares about are comics, drawing, and Alice. He won’t let me see his drawings but he works hard on them. I took him to an art supply store, and he looked like he’d died and gone to heaven. There was a drawing table there he kept looking at, but I didn’t want to buy it and put it in at the house since I’m trying to get him to move to Columbus.”

“Let me know which one it was and we’ll put it in his room here. Mother’s getting the bedrooms on the second floor cleared out now. She asked if there was anything the kids wanted.”

“Alice likes blue. And sequins. And butterflies. The butterfly garden will be important for that.”

“I’ll call a landscaper in the spring. That way Alice can plan whatever she wants with him.”

“Oh,” Andie said, taken aback by how careful he was being. Somebody else would have just socked in a butterfly garden, but North wanted Alice to be a part of it. “That’s a great idea, it really is. Carter will just want bookshelves and art stuff. He loves that computer, too. He’s a really quiet kid”-completely silent, actually-“so books and drawing supplies and the computer are probably all he needs.”

“What kind of books?”

“Comic books, drawing books, books on drawing comics…” Andie thought back to what he’d been reading, what he’d written about. “He likes… justice, so maybe some novels like that?”

“Justice?”

“He’s big on fairness, on lousy people getting what they deserve. His school papers are about that a lot. And his favorite TV is old Equalizer reruns. So any stories like that…”

“His dad was a lawyer. You think he’s interested in law?”

“As a career? Maybe. He’s twelve, he’s probably more interested in the hot cars and the cool spy gadgets.”

“And the cool babes,” North said, which was so out of character for him that Andie laughed.

“He’s twelve,” she said.

“Southie chased girls in kindergarten.”

“That’s Southie. When did you start?”

“I didn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“Girls were always around, but I wouldn’t have passed up hot cars and cool spy gadgets for them.”

“So they chased you based on your limitless charm and devastating good looks,” Andie said, only half kidding.

“Well, the money helped.”

“It wasn’t the money,” Andie said, remembering the first time she’d seen him, leaning against the bar talking to some blonde in a black dress and looking like something out of an old movie. Cary Grant. Paul Newman. “It definitely was not the money. But still, you never chased girls?”

“Just you,” he said.

“Oh.”

“And you met me halfway. It’s hard to chase somebody who’s coming right at you.”

“I couldn’t help myself,” Andie said. “I’d never seen anybody like you before. It was like meeting a giraffe.”

“Well, thanks for coming to the zoo,” North said. “Although I’d have gone after you, if you hadn’t.”

“Next time I’ll play hard to get,” Andie said, and then realized what she said. “You know, in the next life. Or whatever. So the drawing table for Carter would be great, and the butterfly garden for Alice, but I’m still not getting anywhere in convincing them to leave. And you’d think they’d want to. This place is creepy.” Please don’t ask me what I meant by “next time.” Because I have no idea.

“You still think the house is creepy?” North said, moving on, to her relief. “I figured you’d be past that by now.”

“No, North, I’m not past it because you can’t get past it, it’s creepy. And then there’s Mrs. Crumb. She has some very odd habits. Like she plays gin by herself.”

“What?”

“Gin rummy. She deals herself a hand and sticks another hand in a card rack across the table, and then she plays both hands. It makes no sense but she does it most nights with a cup of spiked tea beside her. Several cups.” I have tea, Andie thought, trying to separate herself from the crazy woman. But I don’t drink peppermint schnapps. I have standards. I hit the Amaretto. “I think the house has made her insane. I swear, sometimes she’s two different people. One of them is grumpy and dumb and hates me, and the other is a lot sharper and thinks I’m an idiot. It’s like her mind comes and goes. We’ll be talking and she’ll just… change.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“No. She’s not that proactive. Hell, she usually loses to the other hand. She’s just… cantankerous and strange. Like everything else here.”

“Well, your month is almost over,” North said briskly. “Congratulations for sticking it out for three weeks.”

“Thank you,” Andie said coldly, prepared to bitch if he said “bolter” again.

“If the place is getting to you and you want to leave early, you can. I’ve found another nanny. She seems very-”

“What?” Andie said, jerked out of her annoyance.

“The next nanny. She’s coming out the first of next week to meet the kids, so if you want to leave early, I’ll tell her that’s when she starts.”

He went on, explaining the nanny’s educational background, all her sterling qualifications, and Andie watched Alice and Carter talk over their hamburgers, and thought about telling them that there’d be somebody new moving in to teach them, that she’d be leaving them alone again in all that weirdness.

Get out, every instinct she had said. Get out now. You hate it here, and the kids don’t like you, and the new nanny is more qualified than you are anyway. She does math.

“So she’ll be there Monday afternoon-”

“I’m staying,” Andie said, and there was a long silence before North spoke.

“For how long?”

“Until I can figure out a way to get them to Columbus. I’ll stay until they move in with you, and then Will and I will be in Columbus, and I can still see them and… help with the butterfly garden. Or whatever.” The instinct in her that was saying Run away was still there, just not so loud. She’d only been there three weeks. It hadn’t been that bad. It wouldn’t take that long to figure out what was going on and get them to Columbus. She’d have them out by Thanksgiving. Christmas at the latest. “Lose the nanny. I’m staying.”

After a long minute, North said, “All right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Andie said, and then hung up, thinking, I’m sure Will won’t mind. Much. Especially if she never mentioned that she’d told North there might be a next time for them. Because there wasn’t going to be. She loved Will.

Then she called him to give him the news that she was staying, and he minded. A lot. “I’m coming down there,” he said when she told him she’d be there for at least another month. “I miss you, and I can write anywhere.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Oh, hell. “Because the people here think I’m still married to North. If you show up, I’m going to have some explaining to do.”

“Did he tell them that?”

“No, I did. He was as surprised as you are.”

“I don’t think ‘surprised’ really describes how I feel. What the hell, Andie?”

“Look, I’m starting to make progress with the kids, it’s just another month-”

“Is he there? Is he there pretending to be married, too?”

“No, of course not. He has a law practice, he’s not going to come down here and play house. Especially in this place. It’s creepy.”

“Can’t you bring the kids up here?”

“That’s what I’m working on. I’m hoping I can do it before Thanksgiving, definitely by Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

Andie felt a tug on her skirt and looked down to see Alice standing in front of her, ketchup on her chin. She pulled the chiffon out of Alice’s hands before any tomato got transferred and said, “What?”

“Can I have two ice creams?”

“No. That’s greedy. You can have one cone.”

“Andie,” Will said.

“Just a minute,” she told him as Alice said, “I want a big cone,” her usual calculating gleam in her eye.

“The last time you got a big cone, the top fell off. Wouldn’t you rather have a medium and keep the ice cream?”

“It won’t fall off this time. That one was a bad cone.”

“Okay, fine, big cone. You’ve got ketchup on your chin. Hold still.” Andie licked her thumb and wiped the ketchup smear off Alice. “I’ll be over in a minute to pay for your cone. Tell Carter he can have one, too.”

“Okay,” Alice said, and went back to Carter, yelling, “Andie says we can have cones. Big ones.”

“Okay, sorry about that,” Andie said to Will, licking the ketchup off her thumb.

“You sound just like a mother,” Will said, his voice softer now.

“More like a wrangler,” Andie said, looking after Alice’s straight little back.

“Ready to have some kids of our own?”

“What?” Andie looked at the phone. “I don’t want kids. Didn’t we have this conversation?”

“Yeah, but you’re a natural, Andie. I can hear it in your voice.”

“That’s exhaustion, which is probably about the only thing I have in common with real mothers. I’m not sleeping well here.”

“That’s because you’re sleeping alone. I’ll come down and-”

“And have sex with me? Somebody’s gonna notice that, Will. I will not be committing fake adultery. I’ll be back in a month. We’ll have an orgy then.”

Will sighed. “I don’t like any of this. You were supposed to be home next week. I miss you.”

Andie kept her eye on Alice, standing on tiptoe in front of the Dairy Queen window. “I have to go now.”

“I love you,” Will said.

“I love you, too,” Andie said, frowning as Alice took a towering cone from the counter girl. “I’ll-oh, for crying out loud.”

Alice began to scream.

“What?”

“Alice dropped her ice cream. I told her-”

Alice screamed louder.

“I’m coming, knock it off, Alice! Will, I have to go.”

“Call me-” Will began as she hung up the phone to go rescue Alice.

“Stop it,” she said to the little girl. “Stop crying and I will fix it. Keep crying and we’re going to the car. You cannot shriek every time something goes wrong, you have to fix it, Alice. Screaming doesn’t do any good.” Alice kept screaming, and Andie looked up at the counter girl. “Give us another large cone, please. And a cup.” When the girl handed the ice cream over, Andie paid her and took the cone, upended it into the cup, and stuck a spoon in it. “Here,” she said to Alice, “try not to wear most of it, please.”

Alice stopped screaming and took the cup. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Andie said, and Alice began to demolish her ice cream. “Alice, next time there’s a problem, just ask, okay? If you can’t fix it, I will.”

Alice licked her spoon, transferring chocolate ice cream to her nose, narrowly avoiding dragging the end of the stocking that drooped down from her topknot through the cup. Andie tied the stocking up higher as Alice said, “You’re not gonna be here.”

“Yes I am.” Andie gave the stocking a last tug. “You have chocolate on your nose.”

“Carter says you’re leaving on Halloween.”

Andie looked back at Carter who met her eyes without expression. “No, I’m staying with you. The only way I leave is if you leave.”

Alice licked up more ice cream from her cup. “How long are you staying?”

“As long as it takes,” Andie said.

“Uh-huh.” The little girl stabbed her ice cream with her spoon, looking mutinous again.

“Okay, how about this,” Andie said. “I will bet you one of your necklaces that I will stay with you until you don’t need me anymore.” That seemed safe; she was pretty sure that Alice thought she didn’t need her now.

Alice tilted her head. “What if that’s forever?”

“Then I’ll stay forever,” Andie said, feeling a clutch of panic in her stomach. Forever.

“What do I get if you don’t stay?”

“What do you want?”

Alice thought about it. “Ice cream.”

“You’ll get that anyway, Alice. Think of something big.”

Alice tilted her head again, thinking hard as her ice cream melted, the striped stocking on her topknot sliding to the side of her head. “That skirt,” she said finally, nodding at Andie.

“My skirt?” Andie swished the blue-green chiffon, watching the turquoise sequins sparkle in the sunlight. Flo gets it right again, she thought, and said, “You’re on. What do I get? One of your necklaces?”

Alice frowned, looking down.

“Pearls?” Andie said, looking at the dingy lavender beads.

“They were my mom’s.”

“Oh,” Andie said, remembering that Alice’s mom had died giving birth to her. The pearls suddenly looked a lot more important. “The shells?”

“My daddy gave me those.”

“The locket?”

“No, I found that. It’s a treasure.”

“You’re going to need the Walkman.”

“It was my mom’s,” Alice said, nodding.

“So that leaves the bat,” Andie said, looking at the dubious piece of cheap metal and glittery stones.

“Aunt May gave that to me.”

“So we’ll think of something else.”

Alice frowned in thought. “No,” she said after some length. “You can have the bat if you stay.” She licked up more ice cream. “But you won’t stay. Carter is never wrong.” She looked at Andie again, frowning. “Are you really going to give me that skirt when you leave?”

“I’m not leaving,” Andie said. “Not without you anyway. But if something happens and I lose the bet, you get the skirt. Pinky swear.”

Alice nodded and went back to her ice cream, still evidently a nonbeliever but now in line to get a sequined skirt, and Andie turned to see Carter regarding her over his own cone, his expression as flat as ever.

“You want to bet?” she said.

“You don’t have anything I want,” he said, and went back to his ice cream.

“Fair enough,” Andie said.

One day at a time, she thought, one day at a time.

One day at a time may have been the plan, but it was the nights that were wearing Andie down. Alice was still having nightmares although not as often, and even when Alice slept through the night, Andie had her own dreams, carnal dreams about North that were so vivid that she woke up shaking, wanting him so much she ached. And she still heard whispers in her sleep asking, Who do you love? She’d told Mrs. Crumb she didn’t want her to bring a tray up to her bedroom anymore, sticking with the spiked tea she made herself, but the dreams persisted. Finally one night she bypassed the tea completely, so exhausted that she was half asleep already, and slid down under the covers to shut out the chill-it was always cold as hell in her room at night-and dozed off, only to sit up again to punch her pillow into shape, and see something at the foot of her bed.

She froze as the vague shadow grew clearer and she could see a young woman, a girl, really, big-eyed and pretty with masses of curly hair, her form translucent and shifting in what looked like a party dress.

Hello, the girl said, swishing her full skirt as she pirouetted, blue in the moonlight.

“Who are you?” Andie said, and her voice seemed dreamlike, as if it were coming from very far away.

Oh, I’m you. The girl laughed. I’m you when you were nineteen. She leaned forward, the illusion of her shadow shifting a few seconds behind her movement so that she disassembled and reassembled as she moved. Don’t we look alike?

“Don’t do that,” Andie said, feeling nauseous now. She didn’t have dreams about past lives, that was entirely too twee, or maybe too Flo. Her mother would be all over this if it were happening to her. She struggled to wake up, but the girl only moved again and disoriented her, and another wave of cold nausea hit, so she stopped.

What happens to me after nineteen? the girl said. Do I have wonderful adventures?

“What?” Andie sank back on the pillows, sick to her stomach.

I want to know what happens next, the girl said. I want to know the future. Do I fall in love? Is it wonderful?

Andie thought of North, and then guiltily of Will. “Yes.”

The girl drifted closer and the room grew colder and Andie shut her eyes to block out the sickening vertigo.

Tell me about him.

“He’s a writer.” Andie kept her eyes shut, picturing Will, laughing and warm.

Is he exciting? Does he make me crazy for him? Do I want him all the time?

“No.” Andie tried to roll over, away from her. “I’m thirty-four. I grew out of that.”

Terrible. That’s terrible. You never get exciting?

“The first one. Go away.”

Tell me about him.

“I’m freezing. Go away.”

The girl moved back to the window, and the air around the bed grew marginally warmer.

Tell me about the other one.

“I want to sleep now.”

Is he the one you dream about? The hot one?

She thought of North, of the muscle hidden by his suits, the passion behind that calm beautiful face, all of it focused on her in the first months of her marriage, those memories on perpetual replay in her dreams every night. “Yes. But then his uncle Merrill dies, and he works sixteen-hour days at the family firm, and he forgets I… we… exist, and I leave.”

You left that guy? You should have done something. You should have seduced him again. You should have-

“Hey,” Andie said, struggling to sit up. “I had therapy for this. Sometimes things end. The bastard broke my heart, and I got over it and moved on.”

The girl drew back, alarmed. All right. Andie lay back down, and the girl said, Tell me how you met. How do we meet him?

Andie closed her eyes. It was weird to be harassed in a dream. But she remembered… “We’re twenty-four, after too much to drink, we look across the bar and see a man watching us.”

What does he look like? He’s the blond guy in the dream?

“Yes. Almost white hair, cropped short. Tall. Great shoulders.” She yawned again. “Wire-rimmed glasses.”

This guy gave you the head-banging sex you’ve been dreaming about? The shadow sounded doubtful.

“Bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. Classic nose. Beautiful mouth. Women stop to stare at him and he doesn’t notice because he’s looking at me. Us. Are you sure you’re me?”

Yes, the girl said. Although I like guys who are built.

“No you don’t,” Andie said, confused. “You go for musicians and art majors. And your mother tells you to stop chasing water signs and find an earth.”

What?

“Flo. Our mother. You’re not me.” She struggled to sit up again, and the girl moved, and the vertigo sent Andie back to her pillows. She squinted at the shifting shape. “I think my hair was bigger then. Who are you?”

I’m you. You saw him. Then what happened? Did you smile at him?

“I was already smiling,” Andie said, sinking deeper into the bed, trying to get from dream to sleep. “I stopped smiling when he walked toward me.”

And you waited until he came to you. You made him come to you.

“No, I met him halfway. The band was playing ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ It’s hard to stand still when you hear ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ ”

The girl swished her skirt again. It would have been better to wait.

“I don’t wait for anybody.” Andie pulled the covers up over her head, feeling like Alice.

The girl was quiet for so long that Andie was almost asleep when she said, That’s better.

Andie pulled the covers off her face. “What?”

Not waiting for anybody. That’s better. Then what happens?

Andie shifted against the pillows. “We dance, and I’m so turned on I can’t talk.”

Dancing is good.

“And he says, ‘Come with me,’ and I do, and he kisses me in the street and it’s the best kiss of my entire life. I want to go to sleep now.”

Then what happens?

“We go to his apartment and have head-banging sex, and twelve hours later, he proposes, and I think he’s crazy, but we go to Kentucky.” Talking about it brought it all back, how crazy happy she’d been, how crazy happy he’d been. Not like himself at all. “He remembered to put Jackson Browne in the tape player, but he forgot a ring and we stopped in an antiques store and got this old gold band that I loved.” Andie pulled her hand out of the covers and looked at it. “A week later, it turned my finger green, and he went crazy because he wanted to get a real one, but I said no.”

You’re wearing a green ring? the girl said, disapproval strong in her voice.

“I cleaned it up and painted and varnished it so the green didn’t happen again. I should get rid of it.” Andie closed her hand so the ring wouldn’t slip off and put her hand under the covers again.

Then what?

“Then we got married. Because I can’t say no to him. Couldn’t say no to him for a whole year. From the minute he said, ‘I’m North Archer and I think we should leave,’ I was done.”

The shadow shifted quickly, moving closer. You were married to North Archer?

Andie woke up at that.

The girl was much more solid now, still translucent but clearer, stronger, beautiful, big dark eyes and mad curling hair, and when she moved, all the parts of her moved together so the vertigo was almost gone. You were married to North Archer and you divorced him? WHY?

“Because the guy I married disappeared into his law office and came out a walking suit.” Andie sat up. “What kind of dream is this? You’re not me. I was never beautiful.”

The room was very clear now, the moonlight almost like sunlight, edges sharp and entirely non-dreamlike, and the place was freezing.

“This isn’t a dream,” Andie said. “You’re a ghost.”

Don’t be silly, the girl said. There’s no such things as ghosts.

She moved toward Andie again, but this time Andie stayed sitting up, staring into the eye sockets of a dead woman.

“No,” she said, and the girl flowed over her, freezing her to the bone, saying, You should get him here. You should bring him here. He should be here to kiss you goodnight, and the nausea swept over her again, a disorientation so fierce that she fell back onto the bed, spiraling down into the dark again.

When she woke up, her windows were full of sun and the room was perfectly normal.

The girl had been so real. I don’t believe in ghosts, Andie thought, especially ghosts in dreams. She shook her head and went to get dressed and deal with Alice and Carter, reminding herself that it was just a dream.