Maybe This Time (3 page)

“No, no, she's not interested in reporting on kids anymore, she's on to ghosts now. She found out that the house was originally a haunted house in England and she's very excited about it. Did you know they brought the house over here in pieces and rebuilt it? Kelly could be really grateful if I took her down there. Plus, I'd get to investigate a haunted house. I've talked to two highly regarded ghost experts and there's something behind this stuff. I told the experts that there's a haunted house in the family, and one of them would like to see it. Kelly would like to see it.
I'd
like to see it. We won't talk to the kids.”

“The children own the house, so it's not in our immediate family,” North said, picking up his pencil again. “And you're not going to disrupt their lives because you think you might like to be a Ghostbuster.”

“No, no, I told you, we won't bother the kids. My plan is that I take Kelly and Dennis, the expert, down there, we talk to people—not the kids, adults only—I see what's going on and report back to you, you get to know the kids are safe, Dennis gets more research, Kelly gets her video whatsis . . .” Sullivan shrugged. “We all win. Plus, I get away from Columbus before Mother gets back from Paris. She doesn't like Kelly. Says she's all teeth and hair.”

North looked at his little brother with an exasperation he hadn't felt in years.
Southie's permanently thirteen,
Andie had said.
Thirty-four hobbies and a hard-on.
But she'd been laughing when she'd said it . . . “Southie, when are you going to stand up to Mother?”

“Southie?” Sullivan said.

“What?”

“You called me ‘Southie.' You haven't called me that in years.”

“Well, grow up and I'll never call you that again. You're running down there because you don't want to face Mother with your latest career plan or girlfriend. It's not much of a rebellion if you keep running away.”

“I'm not rebelling. I don't have anything to rebel against. I have a great life. And to keep my life great, I'd like to avoid unpleasantness while learning about something that interests me and makes my girlfriend happy. Plus the last nanny quit last week so the kids are there alone. That's not—”

“The children are not alone.”

“You hired another nanny?” Sullivan shook his head. “She won't last. Better I should go—”

“This one will last.” North hesitated and then said, “I sent Andromeda.”

“Andie?”
Sullivan whistled and then grinned. “Ghosts versus Andie. The supernatural is going to get its ass kicked. I didn't even know she was back in town. When did you talk to her?”

“Today. She's going down there tomorrow.”

Sullivan smiled. “Called me ‘Southie,' did she?”

“What?”

“That's why you called me ‘Southie.' Andie did it first.”

“Yes,” North said, realizing it was true. Half an hour with Andie and ten years were yesterday. “She sent her regards.”

“She changed much?”

“Her hair's . . . different,” North said, remembering her sitting in that chair, bundled up in an awful suit jacket, all those crazy curls yanked back, her face scowling as she argued with him. And then that one lock of hair, sliding down her neck—

“Her
hair's
different?” Southie said. “You see your ex-wife for the first time in ten years and that's all you got?”

“She looked . . .” Serious. Tense. Her old smile gone. “. . . quiet. She looked tired.” He shook that thought out of his head. “She was only here for twenty minutes. I didn't pay that much attention.”

“Twenty minutes in the old days, and she'd have had you on your knees.”

“Southie,” North said repressively.

“I remember the first time I saw her,” Southie went on, ignoring
him. “I was supposed to talk you into an annulment, and her old clunker of a car pulled up, and you said, ‘There she is,' and she got out and came walking toward us, and I knew there wasn't going to be an annulment. I told you she looked like there was music playing in her head, and you said, ‘Yeah, it's—' ”

“ ‘Layla,' ” North said, seeing her again, moving across the lawn that bright summer day, the bounce in her step translating to the bounce in her hips, everything about her electric and alive and smiling at him . . .

“So does she still move to ‘Layla'?”

“Yes,” North said, remembering her walking across the carpet to him. “Except now it's the acoustic version.”

Southie grinned. “I can't wait to see her again. So we'll go down this weekend—”

North thought of Andie opening the door and finding Southie and his toothy, microphone-wielding girlfriend on the step with some charlatan ghost expert. “No.”

“Maybe she could use your help,” Southie said. “The two of you used to—”

“She's getting married again. Now if we're finished here . . .” North looked back to his notes as a hint, but when Southie didn't say anything, he looked up.

“I'm sorry,” Southie said, his face kind. “I really am.”

The twinge North had felt when she'd told him stabbed at him again and he put a lid on it again. “Why? We've been divorced for ten years. It's not as if I thought she was coming back.”

“Yeah, but it's still a shock. At least it is to me. Maybe I thought she was coming back.”

“Well, she's not,” North said, more sharply than he'd intended.

“So, who's the guy? What do we know about him?”

Southie looked serious now, which was always a bad sign.

“Will Spenser. The writer.”

“The true crime guy?” Southie said, raising his eyebrows.

“I think he writes mystery fiction, too.”

“Probably not much difference. What did the McKennas find out about him?”

North gathered his patience. “I did not put a private detective on my ex-wife's fiancé.”

“Right, she was just here, you haven't had time. Want me to call Gabe for you?”

“No.”

Southie shook his head. “You know, she used to be family. As far as I'm concerned she still is. We need to look out for her. This guy could have anything in his past. He's a writer, for Christ's sake.”

“No,” North said.

“And I should go down and check on her in that house,” Southie went on as if North hadn't spoken. “I can't believe you sent her down there without backup. God knows what's down there.”

“Two kids and a housekeeper. You're not going.”

Southie sighed. “Kelly's not going to be happy.”

“Such is life.”

Southie hesitated and the silence stretched out. “All right then,” he said, standing up. “You going to see Andie again?”

“No. You have a good evening.” North flipped the page back to where it had been as a signal for Southie to leave and saw the “Andiana” in the middle of the page again. “Damn.”

“What's wrong?” Southie said.

“I made a mistake.” North flipped the pad shut, annoyed with himself.

“Sending Andie down there?”

“What?” he said, looking up.

“You think you made a mistake sending Andie down there?”

“No,” North said, and then thought about Andie, down in the wilds of southern Ohio. She might like it. She'd been wandering around ever since they'd divorced, moving someplace new every year, teaching in some really godforsaken places. Maybe that had
been his mistake, keeping her in the city. Trying to keep her at all. He shook his head. “No, it wasn't a mistake. She'll handle things.”

“Yeah, she will,” Southie said, his voice odd, and when North looked up, he saw Southie regarding him sympathetically. “Maybe you should go down there. Get out of the office, check to make sure she's all right. Spend a night in the place so you know what it's like.”

“She's fine.”

Southie waited a moment and then said quietly, “You could have gone after her, you know.”

North looked at him blankly. “Why would I go after her? She'll be fine down there.”

“Not now.
Then
. When she left. You could have gone—”

“No.”

“You ever think maybe that divorce was a mistake?”

“No,”
North said, putting as much “you-should-leave-now” in his voice as possible.

“Because I always thought it was,” Southie said. “If you'd gone after her, you could have gotten her back. That's all she wanted, she was just lonely—”

“Was there anything else?” North said coldly. “Because unlike you, I have work to do.”

“Right. Well, you have a good time with your work,” Southie said, and left, shaking his head.

Damn it.
The divorce hadn't been a mistake. She'd been miserable. He'd been miserable because she was miserable. Going after her wouldn't have changed that. They were both happier now. He had work to do.

She'd looked so good, warm and round; sounded so good, the old huskiness of her voice brushing down his spine; moved so good, her step still in that old rocking rhythm—

And now she was getting married again. Good for her. Moving on . . .

He pulled his notebook back in front of him and then thought,
Maybe good for her.
Because Southie was right, he didn't know anything about this yahoo she was getting engaged to. She probably didn't, either. She'd married him after twelve hours of phenomenal sex, she could be lunging into another mistake. And she hadn't smiled. She'd smiled all the time when they were married. In the beginning.

He picked up the phone and called the detective agency the firm used and ordered a background check on Will Spenser.

Then he flipped open the notebook to go back to work and saw the “Andiana” blot.

No,
he thought, and ripped out the page and copied the whole thing over again. With no mistakes.

 

By late afternoon the next day, Andie had finished packing and tying off the loose ends of her life. There weren't many loose ends since she'd been moving around the country for ten years, which tended to limit most ends, loose or otherwise, but she did call Will in New York to tell him the good news. “Ten thousand dollars, Will. It'll pay off all my debts with some left over. I'm being practical and mature here.”

“I don't care about your debts,” he said, sounding exasperated, and she pictured his handsome boyish face, scowling at her for the two seconds he could hold a scowl before he started to grin again. “I'll pay your debts. What I'd really like to hear is that you're going to marry me.”

Of course,
Andie thought, and said, “Maybe.” She heard a thunking sound on the other end of the phone. “What's that?”

“That's me beating my head against the wall.”

Andie grinned. “That's you beating the phone against your mouse pad.”

“Same difference. Do you take this long to answer all your marriage proposals?”

It took me five seconds to say yes to North.
“Yes. I ponder them, and
the guys get bored and wander off. Will, I want to do this, it really is important to me to be free and clear financially before I start a new life. I've been spinning my wheels for ten years. I want a new start with nothing left over from before.”

“Okay,” he said in that easygoing voice she loved. He was so Not-North. “Call me often. Tell me you love working with kids and want to have twenty.”

“Twenty?” Andie said, alarmed. “I don't want any.”

“Well, maybe you'll change your mind.” Will hesitated and then he said, “You won't be seeing North, will you?”

Andie frowned at the phone. “Are you jealous? Because, trust me, he'd forgotten I existed until I showed up in his office. And no, I won't be seeing him.”

“Nobody has ever forgotten you,” Will said with feeling. “Just remember who you're potentially engaged to.”

“How could I forget?” Andie said, and moved on to the I-love-yous before North became a permanent part of their conversation. Then she picked up the last of her three suitcases and her CD player and went out to deal with her mother, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of her little brick German Village cottage in her jeans and faded Iron Maiden T-shirt, looking worried as she stared at Andie's ten-year-old bright yellow Mustang.

“I don't like this,” Flo said, for the fortieth time, her long, curly, graying hair bobbing as she shook her head. “I dreamed about you last night. You fell into a well.”

“Thank you, Flo.” Andie opened the hatchback. “That's encouraging.”

“It means your subconscious is calling to you. You've been repressing something. That's what the water means anyway. The falling part is probably about being out of control, or since it's you, maybe it's about running away. You know what a bolter you are.”

“I am not a bolter,” Andie said to her mother, not for the first time. “I go toward things, not away from them.”

“I think you got the bolting thing from your father,” Flo said. “You're very like him.”

“I wouldn't know,” Andie said coldly. “Except that I don't desert children, so no, I'm not like him.”

“Don't go,” Flo said.

“Because you had a dream? No.” Andie put the suitcase in the car next to the sewing machine she'd already stashed there.

“There was so much negative energy in your marriage,” Flo fretted.

That wasn't negative energy, that was raging lust.
“I'm not revisiting my marriage. I'm taking care of two orphaned kids for a month—”

“This is a terrible time astrologically,” Flo went on as if she hadn't spoken. “Your Venus is in North's Capricorn—”

Andie slammed the hatchback closed. “Flo, my Venus isn't anywhere near North. If his Capricorn was in my Venus, I could see your point, but it's staying here in Columbus while I go south.” She went around and opened the back door of the car and shoved over the boxes of school supplies that Kristin had given her to make room for her stereo while her mother obsessed about her life.