“So I was thinking of something a little more in my area and out of yours,” Sullivan said. “People. You’re not a people person, North. I am.”

“People.” North turned the top sheet on his legal pad over so he didn’t have to look at the blot. Andiana. What the hell?

“You remember those two kids that second cousin left you a while back?”

“Yes,” North said, fairly sure that had been a rhetorical question, although with Sullivan, you never knew.

“I thought I might drop in, check on things for you, see how they’re doing.”

North looked up at that. “You want to ‘drop in’ to the wilds of southern Ohio to visit two children you’ve never met.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sullivan grinned at him. “I want to see the house.”

“The house isn’t worth anything. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s haunted.”

“Sullivan, there are no such things as ghosts,” North said, and for a moment he was twelve again and Sullivan was six, staring wide-eyed into the room where their father was laid out in his coffin. He’s not going to sit up, Southie, North had said then. He’s dead. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

“I know that,” Sullivan said now. “But I want to see a house that everybody thinks is haunted.”

“ ‘Everybody’ being a nanny who got bored and wanted out.”

“Other people have thought so, lots of rumors. So I thought I’d go down there and talk to some of the people. See what’s going on.”

“And how did you find out about these rumors?”

“I did some research for a friend of mine. She’s interested in hauntings, and she looked me up at a party and talked to me about the house and, you know, it is interesting.”

“She,” North said, Sullivan’s motives becoming much clearer now. The combination of a shiny new hobby and a shiny new girlfriend must have been irresistible.

“Kelly O’Keefe. The ghost thing is fascinating. I’ve talked to-”

“Kelly O’Keefe?” North thought of the tiny, sharp-faced, sharp-tongued newscaster he’d avoided after one viewing. “The little blonde with the teeth on Channel Twelve?”

“They’re very good teeth,” Sullivan said, going for indignant and missing.

“They look like they were very expensive,” North said, and remembered Andie the first time he’d seen her, her big eyes dancing, her curly hair wild, her wide smile flashing her overlapped front teeth. She’d never had her teeth fixed.

“Well, you need good teeth for TV.”

“True.” That had been the first thing his mother had said about her. For God’s sake, North, get her teeth fixed.

“The close-ups are murder,” Sullivan said.

And he’d said, I like her teeth. I like everything about her. And now you do, too, Mother.

Sullivan was looking at him oddly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” North said.

“Okay. Well, then, I’d like to take Kelly down there and look into the ghosts. I can check on the kids for you while I’m there.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” North said bluntly. “I don’t see Kelly O’Keefe being a good experience for them.”

“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.