Jennifer Crusie - Maybe This Time

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.”

They’d filed into the entrance hall and then into the Great Hall-“This is amazing,” Kelly had said, beaming at Andie as she shook the rain off her coat; “Terrible light,” Bill groused, shaking his head at the mullioned windows in front; “Early seventeenth century,” the professor said, gazing at the gallery-and Andie led them into the dining room, directed them to chairs, called on a hostile Mrs. Crumb to leave her gin rummy game and bring paper plates and sodas. She put the professor at one end of the long dining room table and Kelly at the other end, while Kelly tried to give Andie forty reasons why it was her duty to invite the undead to dinner or at least to a séance the next day.

“Not now,” Andie said to her, and when Southie called the little blonde back down to the other end of the table, Andie sat the professor down on her right and Alice on her left, put pizza in front of both of them, made sure Alice’s was cut into smaller pieces, that her jewelry and the front of her already grubby black T-shirt were covered with a paper napkin, and that her stocking-tied hair wasn’t flopping in her face or her dinner, checked to make sure that Carter had pizza and wasn’t sitting next to Kelly-the-child-interviewer, and sat down beside her ticket to enlightenment.

“So, Dr. Graff,” she said. “You’re a parapsychologist.”