Maybe This Time

Six

Andie spent a sleepless night expecting to see the blue girl at any moment and fighting the urge to call North-There are ghosts!-and when the sun came up, she wasn’t sure if she was grateful she’d spent the night without a visit from the girl or not. She was awake so the girl must have been a dream, but she hadn’t been asleep at the wheel so had that been a hallucination?

We have to get out of here, Andie thought, and went down to the kitchen to begin talking Carter and Alice into a move to Columbus, but they didn’t come down for breakfast, and when she looked in their rooms, they weren’t there, either. She finally tracked them down in the library.

“Hey,” she said. “Breakfast.”

Alice stared at Andie, an odd look on her face, something between anger and relief.

“We thought you left,” Carter said.

“I did, I went to the university library in Columbus.” Andie came into the room and sat down on a chair closer to them. “I was home by midnight last night.”

“Mrs. Crumb said you weren’t coming back,” Carter said.

“And you didn’t tuck me in,” Alice said, wounded. “Nobody tucked me in.”

“Well, that’s the last time Mrs. Crumb babysits,” Andie said, feeling the now-familiar urge to kick the old lady. “Of course I was coming back. I told you I was coming back when I left. Want some breakfast?”

Alice looked outraged. “And you didn’t leave me your skirt with the sequins and you promised.”

“I came back,” Andie said. “That was only if I left for good. What is it with you guys?”

Alice stood up and went for the door, but Carter hung back. “What were you looking up in the library?”

“Ghosts,” Andie said, watching for his reaction.

Carter nodded and headed for the kitchen, too.

“See, I thought you’d be more surprised,” Andie called after him, and went to fix them pancakes, which Alice smothered in butter and syrup and slurped down. Andie brought up moving to Columbus as artfully as possible, but Alice said, “No,” and went on eating and Carter ignored her, so she regrouped. When the kids were done and back in the library working, she called the two numbers in her notes. For Boston Ulrich in Cincinnati, the author of the not-much-use ghostbuster book, she got an answering machine and left a message. For Dennis Graff in Cleveland, the there’s-no-such-thing-as-ghosts guy, the phone just rang until she finally gave up. “Damn it,” she said to nobody, and checked that Carter and Alice were doing their morning work. “I should get a cookie for this,” Alice said. “Let’s see how it all works out,” Andie told her, and went upstairs to find Mrs. Crumb. The whole idea of ghosts seemed ludicrous in the daylight, but it was going to be night again and when it hit, she was going to be prepared.

Andie found the housekeeper in the upstairs hall, dumping Carter’s wastebasket into a trash bag. “I need to talk to you,” she said, and startled the old lady so that she dropped the basket, spilling papers to the floor.

Andie bent to pick them up. “Why did you tell the kids I wasn’t coming back?” she said, and then stopped to look at the drawings Carter had thrown out.

Mixed in with the copies of comic book characters were amazing rough portraits, capturing Alice laughing, something Andie had never seen, and Mrs. Crumb looking surly, and…

Andie straightened.

And the blue girl who’d visited her every night and danced on the lawn.

“Who is this?” she said, holding up the page for Mrs. Crumb to see, the blue girl with her wildly curling hair and big eyes and that generous laughing mouth…

“That’s nobody,” Mrs. Crumb said, and picked up the garbage bag and walked away, leaving the mess on the floor behind her.

“Right,” Andie said, and went downstairs to the library to find Carter, but the only one there was Alice, reading a butterfly book in the window seat. Andie held up the drawing. “Alice, who is this?”

“That’s Aunt May,” Alice said. “Carter is very good at drawing.”

“Yes, he is,” Andie said automatically, and looked at the drawing again, a little breathless. “This is the aunt who took care of you?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “She died.”

“Right.” Andie sat down next to the window seat.

The woman she’d been talking to in her dreams was a ghost, that’s all there was to it. Ghost. She’d never seen her before, never seen a picture of her before and yet…

“Are you okay?” Alice said. “You look weird.”

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Can I have that?” Alice said. “The picture of Aunt May. Can I have it?”

“Of course,” Andie said, and handed it over. “Alice, I’m sorry your aunt died.”

Alice nodded, not looking at her.

“Do you talk to her?”

“She’s dead, Andie,” Alice said, sounding very adult.

“Because she talks to me at night.”

Alice blinked at her. “Maybe you’re dreaming.”

“And I saw her on the lawn last night as I drove home.”

“You were very, very tired.” Alice looked back at her butterfly book. “I’d like to read now, please.”

Andie sat back, frustrated. Pushing Alice to admit there were ghosts was wrong, even if Alice was talking to her dead aunt every night. That’s who had to be sitting in that damn rocking chair. Alice didn’t have an imaginary friend, she had a dead aunt.

“She was really young,” Andie said, remembering how she’d danced. May. How May had danced.

Alice nodded but didn’t look up.

I need to know more, Andie thought, but not from Alice, not if she didn’t want to talk. “Is there a family photo album?”

“In the cabinet by the fireplace.” Alice dropped her butterfly book and picked up Carter’s drawing. “You don’t need to see a picture. This is what she looked like.”

“She was very pretty.”

“She was bee-you-tee-ful,” Alice said, looking sadly at the drawing. “And she laughed and she danced. She said when you stop dancing, you’re dead.” Alice touched the drawing.

“She must have been fun to live with.”

“Sometimes.” Alice put the drawing inside her butterfly book and closed it. “I did my work. Can I go to the kitchen and get a cookie?”

“Yes,” Andie said, not interested in fighting a sugar battle while her head was exploding and Alice was coping with death.

It took her a while to find the photo album, stuck in the back of a cabinet with books piled in front of it. But when she pulled it out and turned to the last filled pages, there was her ghost girl, vibrantly alive, laughing at the camera as she hugged Alice and Carter close, both of them smiling, which made Andie’s heart hurt, that they’d lost those smiles. She flipped to the earlier pages, Carter as a young boy standing next to his dad, leaning on his leg, Alice in her father’s arms. Their father looked kind and more than that, he looked like he loved them, cuddling Alice close, his arm draped comfortably across Carter’s shoulders. They’d gotten a good start before he’d died. And then Aunt May had done her best, too, because they’d smiled again.

She flipped back to another earlier page and found Alice’s baby pictures. Several other pages before that there was a photo of the kids’ dad with a pregnant blond woman who looked much like Andie thought Alice would look someday, attractive in an offbeat way, interesting beauty as opposed to classic. Another one of the woman, still very pregnant, holding a four-year-old Carter close. And then earlier than that, wedding pictures with Aunt May as a very young bridesmaid, about Alice’s age. She must have been a late baby to be that much younger than her sister. In fact, given her brunette curls in comparison to her older sister’s straight blond hair, she might have been from a second marriage. And then still earlier, sister pictures, and more family Andie couldn’t recognize, and she closed the album and thought, Their aunt May is still here for a reason. It was getting easier to believe in ghosts the more she thought about it, but it was still…

Maybe this was the reason the kids wouldn’t leave the house. They didn’t want to leave their aunt alone, haunting a cold stone house with only Mrs. Crumb for company. Maybe if she found a way to get Aunt May to… to go toward the light or something, maybe she could get the kids out of there, get them to Columbus and a normal life.

“Experts,” she said, and tried calling Ulrich and Graff again and got nothing.

Lunch and lessons and supper took up the rest of the afternoon, along with a sharp chat with Mrs. Crumb who was still denying that May was May and was defensive about telling the kids that Andie wasn’t coming back-“How was I to know?”-so it was almost six before Andie tried calling for a third time, starting with Boston Ulrich again.

This time, a man answered the phone, and Andie said, “Professor Ulrich?” and when he said, “Yes,” she said, “I’m Andie Miller, no,” looking around for Mrs. Crumb, “Andie Archer, I left you a message earlier. I have a ghost problem.” He didn’t laugh or hang up, so she said, “I see a dancing blue woman. I think I know who she is, and I need to know how to… send her on. Or whatever.”

“You say you’re at a house in southern Ohio,” he said.

“Yes. Archer House.”

“I see.”

“Is that significant?” Andie said, praying they weren’t on a list of the most haunted places in the Buckeye State.

“Someone else was asking about that house. It has quite a reputation, right?”

“Someone else? Is there something I should know?”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“This woman talks to me at night,” Andie said, and then remembered the woman at the pond and the man on the tower. “And there may be… others. I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs but I see… ghosts. I need help.”

“Of course,” he said, and then talked on for a good half hour, mostly about his research and the success he’d had, without giving her anything of use at all, much like his book.

“Who was it that asked about the house?” Andie said, interrupting him when she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I can’t tell you that, of course. However, I could come to you the first of November,” he finished. “Only for the day. My fee is five thousand dollars-”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Andie said, pretty sure that Boston Ulrich knew less about ghosts than she did. She hung up and tried the other expert, Professor Dennis Graff up in Cleveland, and still got no answer even though she let it ring for a long time.

That left her with only one expert to turn to.

“Flo, I need help,” she said when her mother answered the phone.

“Andie! What’s wrong?” Her voice dropped. “Is it North?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Andie said, realizing that she was crossing over into Flo territory with the conversation she was about to have.

“Of course not, dear. You have ghosts?”

“I could be losing my mind. Hallucinating. Brain tumor.”

“No, honey, lots of people see ghosts.”

“Yes, but they’re crazy.”

“Forty-eight percent of Americans believe in ghosts.”

Flo using statistics was almost as unsettling as the statistic itself. “Where do you get these numbers?” Andie said. “Who takes polls on this stuff?”

“CBS before Halloween. It was on the news. And really, Andie, if forty-eight percent believe, don’t you think that some of them must actually have seen one?”

“No.” Except I have. Maybe. “Let’s assume for the moment that there are ghosts. Tell me how to get one out of here.”

“Well, the surefire way is to dig up the body and burn it,” Flo said, as if she were saying, “Use soda water to get wine out of silk.”

“Okay,” Andie said, thinking, You had to call Flo, didn’t you? “And Plan B would be…”

“Well, there are all kinds of superstitions,” Flo said, dismissively. “You could hold a séance and ask them to leave, but I never think that works. Why would they go polite on you all of a sudden? But if you burn their bodies, there’s nothing holding them to this plane. Where is this ghost buried?”

“I don’t know,” Andie said. “Also, this is an insane plan. Plus, illegal. I’ll bet anything it’s illegal.”

“Andie, if you have ghosts, you’re going to have to think outside the box. Call North. He can get you anything.”

“Right.” Andie rubbed her forehead again at the thought of telling North to burn a body. Not that he couldn’t get it done, he could get anything done, it would just be explaining it to him that would be difficult. “Let me get back to you on this.”

“Do you want me to come down there?” Flo said. “I’m very sensitive. I might be able to help. For instance, water and fire bar ghosts, they can’t cross running water and they abhor fire.”

“Really,” Andie said, thinking, My mother is a nutjob. Except she was sitting in the only house in southern Ohio that had its own moat. And a fireplace in every room.

“I should come down there,” Flo said. “I can help.”

Andie thought of her mother, wandering through the house, trying to find ghosts so she could ask them where they were buried. And what their signs were. “Just wait. I’ll get back to you. I promise. Thank you.”

Then she hung up and called her very last resort.

Southie knocked and came into North’s office a little before seven that night. “Your secretary’s not out there,” he said, looking back into the empty anteroom. “You know, she’s a cute little thing.”

“You can’t have her,” North said automatically as he scanned down his neatly printed notes. “She’s intelligent and efficient and I don’t want her quitting because you seduced and abandoned her.”

“Not my type,” Southie said. “Which is what I came to talk to you about. Kelly wants to go down to that house. Somebody else is calling the experts and asking questions, and she’s afraid she’s going to get scooped. I don’t see why she shouldn’t go.”

“Because it’s private property and she’s not invited.”

“Yes, but she would like to be invited. She would like me to invite her. I would like me to invite her. There’s no reason for me not to invite her.”

Outside the office, a phone rang.

“Yes there is,” North said, ignoring the blinking light on his phone. “You’re not invited.”

“Shouldn’t I be able to go see my third cousins without your permission?”

“In a better world, possibly. In this one, no.”

Southie sat down. “Let’s discuss this rationally.”

“Let’s not,” North said, pointedly staring at the case notes he was working on.

The phone rang again.

“I have a parapsychologist, a pro at debunking fake ghosts. We could take him down there, he could find out how they’re faking the hauntings, clear everything up. That would be a big help to Andie.”

North looked up. “There are no ghosts.”

“I know that,” Southie said reasonably. “You know that. But a lot of people don’t know that. If Dennis can show how it’s being done-”

“Dennis.”

“Professor Graff. He’s the real deal, North. Teaches at the university.”

“Which one?” North said automatically.

“I don’t know, one of the ones in Cleveland. You should meet this guy.”

“No, thank you. I have work to do-”

The phone had not stopped ringing, Kristin had evidently forgot to send it to voice mail before she left, so when it rang again, he picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“I need help,” Andie said, and she sounded upset, which wasn’t like her.

“Go away, Southie,” North said to his brother, and then spoke into the phone. “What now? Bats in the belfry?”

Across the desk, Southie said, “Is that Andie? I should go down there. She might need help.”

North covered the receiver. “The help will not be you.” Then he went back to Andie. “What do you need?”

“Can you find out where the kids’ Aunt May is buried. And maybe who used to live in this house a long time ago? And where they’re buried? In England? And where the kids’ aunt is buried?”

“Where they’re buried?”

“Just for the hell of it,” Andie said, trying for breezy and missing. “Because we may have to dig up their bodies and burn them.”

Jesus, she’s lost it.

“Buried?” Southie said. “Does she need help with a body?”

“No,” North said to him.

“No on the finding the bodies or no on the burning them?” Andie asked.

“Not you,” North said. “The ‘no’ was for Southie. I’ll find out what you need. Why?”

“We may have a ghost,” Andie said. “Maybe more than one.”

Southie leaned toward the desk. “You know, North, I have all my research on the house. It probably has the information in it that she needs. Let me go down there and help.”

“Andie has enough on her hands.” North spoke into the phone. “That seems, uh, far-fetched.”

“I thought so, too, until I started seeing her. Is it illegal to burn a corpse? If it’s already been buried and everything?”

This is not good, North thought. “What’s going on?”

“Has she seen a ghost?” Southie said.

North glared at him. “Leave.”

“North, I can help,” Southie said.

“Leave.”

Southie sighed, clearly disappointed in his brother’s shortsightedness. “You let me know if she needs help. I’ll be right there. I’m staying in tonight, so if you want a nightcap, come on over.”

“She doesn’t need-” North began, but Southie was already heading for the door. “-your help,” he finished as the door closed behind his brother, and then he went back to the phone. “Yes, generally speaking, it’s illegal to burn a corpse. I’ll call a friend in England tomorrow, it’s after midnight there now.”

“He won’t think you’re crazy?” Andie said, and North thought, Well, at least she knows it’s crazy.

“Simon’s not a run-of-the-mill guy,” he told her. “He won’t bat an eye. I’ll put Kristin on finding May Younger’s grave tomorrow. Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you. Sorry to sound hysterical.”

“You don’t sound hysterical. The corpse burning is over the top, but otherwise you’re pretty calm.”

“Ignore that part. Because mostly we’re normal.” Her voice brightened, and he thought, Somebody else came into the room. “And thank you again for the computers. The kids love them.”

“Was it too much for Alice?”

“No. Alice uses it to play Frogger. What? No, you can’t play Frogger now, it’s almost bedtime. Go brush your teeth and then I’ll come up and tell you the story. Yes, now. It’s Bad Uncle.”

Who? North thought.

“Alice wants to talk to you,” Andie said.

“Okay,” North said cautiously.

“Hello?” Alice bellowed into the phone.

North held the phone farther from his ear. “Hello, Alice.”

“We’re not leaving here!”

“That’s fine,” North said.

He heard the phone clunk and then Andie came back on and said, “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” North said.

“No, you can’t tell him anything else. You’re just stalling. Go brush your teeth. He doesn’t want to talk to you again, you were rude. Yes, yelling at people is rude. Now go upstairs and brush your teeth. No. Upstairs now, Alice.”

He leaned back, listening to her argue with Alice, partly intrigued by this new bossy, maternal side of her and partly still dealing with the whole body-burning thing. She’d sounded as if she really believed there was a ghost. A nanny with a vivid imagination, he could dismiss. Andie saying it was different. If somebody was playing tricks, trying to drive outsiders away-

A wail rose up on the other side of the phone, and Andie said, “I have to go beat up a kid. The information would be gratefully appreciated.”

“Of course,” North said, and then the wail in the background was cut off by the dial tone. He put the phone back in the cradle and thought, Maybe I should go down there.

Except he was swamped with work. And Andie could take care of herself, the body-burning thing notwithstanding. She always had taken care of herself. She didn’t need him.

The memory of her turning to him with that glorious smile, opening her arms to him…

Don’t go down there.

That Andie was gone, she was marrying somebody else, she was having a really bad time and she did not need him down there, trying to get her into bed-

The memory of her rolling hot in his arms hit him again, one he’d been trying to forget for ten years. Andie, tangled in the sheets, clinging to him, shuddering under him, her mouth hot on him-

“Jesus!” he said, and got up from the desk and began to pace.

He needed to see her again. They had unfinished business. He wanted to finish it. Or start it again.

She was going to marry somebody else, so that was a problem. And she was still mad as hell about him neglecting her ten years ago. Neither of those were insurmountable obstacles unless she really loved this other guy. Plus there was the ghost thing.

He should go down there, see for himself what was going on. Find out about the ghost. Find out about Andie. If it was over, it was over. Of course it was over, it had been over for ten years.

But if it wasn’t…

Andie, hot in his arms again.

Oh, fuck, he thought, and went to get that drink from Southie.

Andie had gone up to the nursery after forcing Alice to brush her teeth-“Because they’ll rot out of your head if you don’t, and you’ll be ugly, and you won’t be able to eat cereal because you’ll have no teeth!”-her mind back on her own problems. If good old Aunt May showed up in her dreams that night, they were going to have a talk. In fact-

Alice came in to the nursery, her Bad Witch T-shirt-nightgown slipping down over one shoulder, her face washed and her teeth scrubbed. “I want my story.”

“Let’s try something new,” Andie said, determined to get more information before Aunt May showed up to play Three Questions again. “How about tonight you tell me a story about the dancing princess.”

“I would like to dance.” Alice went back in her bedroom and came out with her Walkman, popping it open in front of the boom box on the TV. “Put this in, please.”

Andie took the tape and read “Andie’s Music” on the label. “This is mine.”

“I know,” Alice said, sounding exasperated. “Put it in.”

Andie put the tape in the player and punched play, heard Cyndi Lauper start “She Bop,” and prayed that Alice wouldn’t ask what “She Bop” meant.

“I like this,” Alice said. “I dance to it.”

She began to bounce around the room singing while Andie thought about Aunt May.

The thing was, May didn’t seem malevolent. Young, pushy, a little spoiled, but not… horrible.

The song ended and Alice said, “Aren’t you going to dance?”

“What kind of music does the dancing princess dance to?” Andie said, and then “Somebody’s Baby” started, and Andie thought, Oh, hell.

“Did you used to dance to this?” Alice said, and Andie closed her eyes and remembered North walking across the floor of that dark bar to her the night they met, pulling her close, whispering in her ear as he moved against her, and all the nights they’d danced to it after that, in their attic bedroom.

“Yes,” she said. “I danced to this. I danced to this a lot.”

“Show me,” Alice said, holding out her arms, “show me a real dance,” and Andie was so surprised that Alice was reaching for her that she went.

Alice’s little hand was cool in hers, and there was a moment when Andie first took it that Alice went still, and then she said, “Show me!” and Andie showed her the basic box step, figuring that Alice would like the symmetry of that. Alice added a hip bounce which improved it tremendously, and then Andie showed her how to twirl under somebody’s arm which Alice loved, and then they just danced around the room while Alice sang, “Somebody’s baby,” over and over because she didn’t know the words yet.

“Play that again,” Alice said when it was done, and Andie thought, Jeez, twist the knife, kid, but she rewound the tape, and they danced again, Alice demanding many twirls, breaking off to bop by herself for a while but always coming back and holding up her arms for more, which charmed the hell out of Andie, singing, “Gonna shine tonight,” with fervor.

“Again,” Alice said, but Andie let it go to “I’ve Got a Rock ’n’ Roll Heart,” which had its own memories since North had been a huge Clapton fan. She and Alice danced wildly around the nursery, the box step and May forgotten for the moment, Alice singing like mad, completely happy since the first time Andie had met her.

She looks relaxed, Andie thought, holding on to Alice’s hand as she flailed happily, doing what was basically the Snoopy dance. She’d been so tense and unhappy at the beginning of the month, but now she was laughing. Maybe things were getting better, maybe-

Carter opened the door, and Alice said, “Come in. We’re dancing.” He shook his head and Andie said on impulse, “Someday there will be girls in your life and they like to dance. Get in here.”

He rolled his eyes, but before he could leave, Alice ran forward and grabbed his hand. “Come on, you need to dance.”

He let her pull him in, clearly in hell but also clearly unable to say no to Alice.

“It’s easy,” Andie said, hitting the pause button on the boom box as the song ended. “Look. This is the box step. You move in a square…”

She stood beside him and made him take the four steps-“Don’t move on the diagonal, trace the box”-and Alice did it with him, saying, “See? See?” He frowned, concentrating, clearly out of his element, but once Carter understood something, Andie had learned, he didn’t stop until he mastered it. Once he had it, she said, “Okay, now with a partner, and you lead.” She put his hand on her waist and he stiffened, and she realized that was the first time she’d ever touched him. Gotta spend more time with Carter, she thought, and took his other hand. “Lead with your left,” she said, and as he stepped forward, she stepped back, following him, and they walked through the step until Alice hit play and “Man in Love” came on, and Andie remembered North barreling down I-71, singing it at the top of his lungs. It seemed impossible now that he had ever done that, North Archer did not sing, but he had, and she’d just laughed and loved him. She’d been with him all that time, and she hadn’t even realized what it had meant back then, that he’d sing like that.

“This is too fast,” Carter said, and Andie shook herself out of the past and said, “No it isn’t. Just follow the beat,” and to her surprise, he did, finding the music almost immediately.

“That’s it,” she said, “that’s great!” She leaned into his arm, and he automatically led. “You’re a good dancer,” she told him, “you’re a natural,” and he shook his head, but she saw him start to smile, not broadly but a real smile. Alice danced around them, finally yelling, “Me! Me!” Carter let go as Andie twirled under his arm, and Alice grabbed Carter’s hand to finish out the song, and Andie watched them and remembered North singing, “I want the whole world to know,” at the top of his lungs. They’d danced to this in the attic, too. The man had hips, she remembered, closing her eyes and seeing him again with one hand on his longneck beer and the other on her ass, laughing off the workday…

I’d give anything to have that back, she thought, and then the song stopped and she kicked herself because it wasn’t coming back. Keep the good memories but let the past go, that was the key.

Maybe that was the key to May, too. If May could let the past go and move on-

Alice said, “Wait a minute,” and hit rewind on the boom box, and Jackson Browne began to sing again. Alice grabbed Carter’s hand and said, “I like this one,” and he smiled back, amazingly, he really smiled, and they started their own kind of box step, as Alice belted out, “Gonna shine tonight!”

And Andie leaned against the wall and replayed that first night again, how gorgeous North had been with his tie loosened, looking at her like she was the only woman in the room, sliding his arm around her waist when she met him halfway, rocking her to the music while he looked in her eyes, twirling her, then pulling her back to all his heat, and she’d laughed, completely free, warmed by the music and the movement and the light in his eyes even though she didn’t know who he was.

And when the music stopped, he’d said, “I’m North Archer, and I think we should leave,” and she’d thought if he didn’t kiss her right there, she’d die, and he’d pulled her out into the dark street-

“Are you okay?” Carter said, looking concerned.

“Yes,” Andie said, straightening, and thought, No, I haven’t been okay since I saw him again, and all the pent-up need for the only man she’d ever loved swept over her. She was in a haunted house with two lonely kids who needed her and she wanted him there with her, to help her save them and to hold her and to make love to her until they were themselves again, until they’d found everything they’d lost again. Maybe this time we could make it work, she thought, but even as she thought it, she knew she’d go crazy again when he forgot she existed. She was high maintenance, that’s all there was to it.

Move on, she thought. May and I have to move on.

She watched Alice boss Carter through the box step again, but when “Man in Love” came back on, they deserted the box step and just danced, and Andie went to join them because she couldn’t help it, they were so happy. It wouldn’t last, but for right now, they were dancing. At least I got this part right, she thought, and raised her arms above her head to do a hip bop, and Alice saw her and raised her arms, too, then “Layla” came on, the old hard-rock version, and Andie shut off the treacherous tape and said, “Bedtime,” over Alice’s wail, shutting off, too, all the memories that had come with it.

She had a ghost to talk to.

Andie sat up in her bed until past midnight waiting for May, but she never came. There were no voices on Alice’s baby monitor, either, so evidently the undead were taking the night off. Or she’d hallucinated everything. That theory appealed to her, and the next day was normal, too, or as normal as anything ever was at Archer House. It was spoiled only by a heaviness in the air and early darkness from thick cloud cover, a big storm brewing up, the radio said. Just what I need, Andie thought, a dark and stormy night. Still, the ghost was delightfully unpresent, so when the doorknocker sounded at close to five that evening, she made the trek down the long, dim stone entry hall without foreboding. Ghosts didn’t knock on doors.

Outside, thunder rolled, and she thought, Cut me a break here, and opened the door.

Southie’s handsome face beamed at her. “Andie! Wonderful to see you again.”

“Southie,” she said, glad to see him because he was Southie, but also suspicious because he was Southie. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come to help!”

“We?” Andie said, looking around for North, but there were strangers coming up the path instead: a bespectacled, worried-looking, middle-aged man in a green argyle cardigan, his basset-hound eyes darting to take in the bleak landscape as it began to rain; a much younger, surly guy in jeans striding past him with a long silver bag, and then pushing past the young guy as if she were speed-walking, a pixieish blonde with the eyes of a hawk, her face set in killer determination…

“Kelly O’Keefe?” Andie said to Southie.

“Yes,” Southie said, and then she was on them, talking over him.

“My God, this place is remote,” she said, stopping in front of Andie. She barely came up to Andie’s shoulder, which may have contributed to her hectic enthusiasm. “Tell me you have indoor plumbing.”

“We have indoor plumbing,” Andie told her. “Would you like to use it before you go back where you came from?”

“This is Andie,” Southie said to Kelly, and the little blonde blinked as if recalculating, and then smiled, all white teeth. Hundreds of them.

“Hello, Andie!”

“Hello.” Andie looked back at Southie. “Why?”

“I was with North when he got your phone call,” Southie said, “and I knew you were out here alone with two kids and could use some help-”

“North sent you?” Why didn’t he come?

“He didn’t exactly send me,” Southie said. “I just got the feeling you needed me.”

“So you brought me a TV reporter?”

“Broadcast journalist,” Kelly said crisply, and followed it up with another blinding smile. “It’s raining. Could we come in?”

Andie looked at the younger guy with the silver bag. “And you are?”

“Cameraman,” he said, bored by the conversation already. “Bill. I drove the truck.”

Andie craned her neck to see a red Miata that had to be Kelly O’Keefe’s parked just this side of the bridge beside a huge satellite truck that said NEWS4 on the side. She spared a moment to wonder how the hell they’d gotten that truck down the drive and how the hell they were going to get it back up again now that the rain was turning dirt to mud, and then she looked at Southie. “A TV reporter, a cameraman, and a…” She smiled at the baggy-eyed man, not sure what he was, but he was glancing around again, his face practically twitching with suspicion over his truly ugly argyle cardigan.

“Professor,” Southie said. “Professor Dennis Graff.”

Andie nodded at the professor and then turned back to Southie. “And again, why?”

“He’s bringing you… the chance of a lifetime,” Kelly said, practically singing the words.

“No, thank you.” Andie stared at Southie, still waiting for an explanation.

Southie tried another smile. “Let’s go inside and-”

“You are not filming anything here,” Andie told him. “Especially not my ki… these kids. Forget it.”

Dennis looked from Andie to Southie and back again. “Weren’t we invited? I thought we were expected.”

“Honestly, Sullivan,” Kelly said, giving him a playful little push. “You mean you didn’t call? You didn’t ask about the séance?”

“Séance?” Andie said.

“It’ll be wonderful,” Kelly enthused. “I’ve hired the best medium in Ohio-Isolde Hammersmith, she’s coming later-and Dennis is here to provide the counterpoint! Could we come in? It’s raining.”

“Counterpoint?” Andie said. “What counterpoint? What the hell, Southie?”

“We can talk about all that later,” Southie said hastily. “But now we should go inside because you want to hear everything Dennis has to say.” He clapped the professor on the back and made him stumble forward a little bit. “Sorry, Dennis.”

“Wait a minute-” Andie said.

“Who are they?” Alice said from behind her.

Andie sighed. “Hello, Alice. This is your uncle Southie.”

“Hi, Alice,” Southie said, with that smile that had charmed thousands of females. “What’s new?”

Alice considered it. “I like nuts now.”

“So do I,” Southie said, evidently willing to bond over damn near anything.

“Hey, there, honey.” Kelly crouched down in front of Alice in faux-equality. “I’m Kelly.”

“You have a lot of teeth,” Alice said.

“Aren’t you just precious?” Kelly said, her smile fixed in place.

“No,” Alice said, and looked past her. “Who are they?”

“This is Bill,” Kelly said, gesturing to the younger guy as she stood up again, still in that too bright voice. “He’s a cameraman!”

Alice and Bill looked at each other with an equal lack of enthusiasm.

“I’ll get the pizzas,” Bill said, and went back to the truck, ignoring the rain.

“Pizza?” Alice said, perking up.

“And this is Dennis. He knows about ghosts!”

Alice froze.

“Hello,” Dennis said to Alice, politely but with no enthusiasm.

Alice moved closer to Andie. “Why is he here?”

“I don’t know,” Andie said, looking at Southie, now really alert. “Why is he here?”

“Because he’s an expert,” Southie said, leaning on the last word so hard it almost broke. “Tell her, Dennis.”

“I’m a parapsychologist.” Dennis frowned as Bill came back up the walk with four pizzas. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Archer, I thought we were expected here.”

“Wait, you actually, academically, know about ghosts?” Andie said to him, and then the name finally registered. “You’re Dennis Graff? From Cleveland? Professor Dennis Graff?” The buzzkill from the panel who doesn’t believe in ghosts?

He nodded, taken aback.

Thunder rolled again and Andie opened the door wide.

“Come on in, Dennis,” she said. “We need to talk.”