Jennifer Crusie - Maybe This Time

“Good to know,” North said, and went out to the hall phone and checked for a dial tone. The line was working again, so he got out his address book and dialed Gabe McKenna’s private number. When the answering machine picked up, he said, “I need you down here first thing tomorrow,” and gave directions to the house. Whoever was playing games with Andie and the kids, Gabe would find out. And after that, he’d pack up Andie and the kids and take them home. Lydia and Southie could deal with Kelly O’Keefe and Isolde Hammersmith.

Then he picked up his overnight bag from where he’d left it by the door and went back upstairs to the nursery.

When he walked in, Andie looked up from where she was sitting on the floor beside Alice’s bed, looking exhausted. “She’s okay.”

He sat down in the rocker. “How are you?”

Her chin went up. “I want them forever. Alice and Carter. I’m staying with them forever.” She met his eyes, as if she thought he was going to argue.

“That’s good.”

“Who are you?” Alice mumbled, rousing a little from her sleep to blink at him.

“This is Bad Uncle, remember?” Andie said softly.

“Oh, thanks,” North said.

Andie leaned closer. “But he’s not taking you away. Nanny Joy got that all wrong. He won’t come get you until you want to leave. He promises.”

Alice turned accusing Archer blue eyes back to him, so he said, “As long as you’re not in danger, you can stay here until you say, ‘I want to go.’ When you want to go, I will take you home to Columbus.”

Alice pushed herself up on her elbows then, her face still blotchy with tears, an ugly doll tumbled beside her. “I’m not in danger.”

“We’ll see,” North said.

Alice scowled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not going.”

“As long as you’re safe here, you don’t have to,” North said.

“Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear,” he said, having only a vague idea of what that meant until she held out her hand, her little finger crooked. He linked his little finger with hers, hoping there wasn’t some kind of ritual that he was going to screw up, and she shook his hand once and let go.

“Okay,” she said. “If you break a pinky swear, you have to cut your finger off.”

“That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to tell me before you make me do it,” North said.

“Then you shouldn’t have done it without asking,” Alice said, and since that was an argument he’d often used in court, he nodded.

“You’re right. Pinky swear.”

Alice lay back down again, frankly surveying him now. “You were here before. When Daddy died. When Aunt May was here.”

North nodded.

“You never came back.”

“I know.” All the rationales he’d used-they were in good hands with their aunt, he didn’t know anything about kids, somebody had to run the practice-looked pretty stupid in the light of Alice’s direct gaze. “I was wrong. I was a Bad Uncle.”

“Whoa,” Andie said, and Alice looked at her. “Bad Uncle doesn’t say he’s wrong very often. Well, ever.”

“I’ve said that.”

Andie looked at him, exasperated. “When?”

Right offhand, he couldn’t think of an example, so he said to Alice, “I brought you something.”

“Books,” Alice said, and yawned again.

“No.” He opened his overnight bag and pulled out the soft, furry, long-eared, pear-shaped little bunny that had felt squashy in his hands when he’d picked it up after seeing it in a store window. He’d put it on her bed in Columbus so she’d have it when she moved in and then grabbed it on his way out the door with a vague idea that there should be gifts when he arrived. Kids liked gifts. “I thought since your name was Alice that you should have a white rabbit.”

“Huh?” Alice said, and then looked at the rabbit as he held it out to her.

“Alice in Wonderland?” he said and looked at Andie, who shook her head.

“She doesn’t know it,” she told him and then said to Alice, “There’s an Alice in a book who chases a white rabbit and has adventures.”

Alice looked at the rabbit, and North could tell she wanted it, but something kept her from reaching out.

Andie took it instead. “My God, this is a great rabbit.” She squeezed it, her strong hands holding it up in front of the little girl. “Alice, it’s squooshy. And really soft. And it’s smiling underneath its fur.”

Alice stuck her chin out, clearly trying to resist but watching the bunny anyway.

“And the tag says ‘Jellycat.’ Do you think that’s its name?”

“No. Its name is…” Alice frowned and then held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Andie gave the bunny back to North. “It’s from your uncle North.”

Alice looked exasperated. North held out the bunny to her, and she took it, knocking Jessica off onto the floor as she reached for it, her eyes widening as she held it up in front of her and felt how soft it was.

“What do you say for the nice gift?” Andie said.

“Thank you, Bad,” Alice said automatically, still staring at her bunny.

“You’re welcome,” North said, ignoring the “Bad” to watch her stare at the toy. Nobody he’d ever given a gift to had ever looked like that, all that unashamed naked wonder. Then Alice hugged the rabbit to her, and he felt his throat close in, completely blindsided by the little girl and her vulnerability. And he’d left her alone down here with a bunch of idiot nannies and some asshole who was faking ghosts to keep her there. “Bad Uncle” was exactly what he deserved.

“Good present,” Andie whispered beside him, and he remembered she was there, too.

He looked back at Alice, rocking the bunny, her cheek on its head, and cleared his throat. “What’s his name, Alice?”

“Her,” Alice said, frowning.

“Sorry. What’s her name?”

Alice pulled back to look at the bunny. “She has a pink nose. Her name is Rose Bunny.”

“Not Pinky?” Andie said.

“Pinky is not a real name,” Alice said sternly, and lay back down in her bed, Rose Bunny jammed under her chin.

“Good point,” North said. “Rose is a fine name.”

“Did you get Carter one?” Alice said, around a yawn.

“No, I got Carter something else.”

“What?”

“Colored pencils. In a case. Will he like that?”

Alice’s eyes closed as her lips curved in a smile that could break a heart. “Yes, he will.” She snuggled deeper in her bed, looking normal now, no trace of her hysterics left except for the smudges of her tears, now mostly rubbed off on her pillow.

“Good night, Alice,” Andie whispered. “Good night, Rose.”

“Good night, Andie,” Alice murmured back. “Good night, Bad.”

“Good night, Alice,” North said, and then when Andie nudged him, he added, “Good night, Rose,” and watched Alice smile, half asleep.

“You did good, Bad,” Andie whispered.

That’s a start, North thought. “You coming downstairs?”

“I need to stay with her,” Andie said, looking back at the sleeping little girl. “She’s not deep asleep yet. I don’t want her to wake up and be alone so soon after everything else. And there are… things that show up sometimes. I don’t want her alone.”

“Ghosts.”

She stuck her chin out. “Yes.”

He got up and went over and turned on the gas fireplace, checking to make sure it was safe before he turned back to her. “Your medium-”

“Isolde.”

“-Isolde said that ghosts don’t like fire. She said if you kept the fire going, the ghost wouldn’t come in the room.”

Andie shook her head. “Don’t gaslight me. You don’t believe in ghosts.”

“No, but you do, and your expert says that this fire will keep Alice safe.”

“And you think we’re nuts.”

“No,” North said, surprised to find that he didn’t. “I think something’s going on here. I called Gabe and left a message for him to come down tomorrow. We’re going to go over this place until we find out what’s really happening.”

“There really are ghosts.”

“Then we’ll find those, too. And when we’ve gotten rid of whatever the problem is, the kids will come back with us.”

“With us,” Andie said, doubt on her face.

“I’m not leaving without you,” he told her, surprising himself and her.

Andie blinked. “Wow. You’re serious. You realize that could be weeks?”

“Yes,” North said, thinking, Christ, I hope not. “I’m going downstairs to see what fresh hell has broken loose, but I’ll come back soon and check on you.”

Andie turned her face up to his and smiled, and he thought, Oh, hell, and fought the urge to bend down and kiss her.

He turned to go and then remembered. “Will wants to talk to you.”

“The hell with him,” Andie said. “I told him not to come down here, he pulls this crap with Alice, and now he wants to talk to me. I don’t think so.”

“I’ll let him know,” North said, and went downstairs feeling more cheerful than he’d thought possible since he’d heard Andie say, “There are ghosts.”

The party in the living room was in full swing when North walked in, although “full seethe” might have been the better term. Flo and Lydia had their heads together over in the corner, probably planning on killing Kelly O’Keefe and dumping her body in the moat. Lydia was generally sane but her sons were being threatened, and nothing North had learned about Flo in the year he’d been married to her daughter gave him any hope that she’d be a voice of reason.

Over on the couch, Southie was sitting between Isolde and an annoyed-looking middle-aged man with a jowly face. “Well, I think both ways of looking at this are good,” he said, and both the jowly guy and Isolde looked at him with contempt.

Meanwhile Kelly O’Keefe had her head bent close to Will, listening to every word he said. Her cameraman lurked behind her, looking equal parts angry and fed up.

It wasn’t a question of if something was going to go wrong, it was a question of which one of the time bombs gathered there was going to detonate first.

“North!” Southie called, desperation under his voice, and North went over to the couch. “You have to meet Dennis, the ghost expert I told you about.”

“Right,” North said, and shook Dennis’s hand. “So there are ghosts.”

“Of course there aren’t ghosts,” Dennis said, evidently pushed beyond the limits of politeness. “There is no such thing as ghosts, at least not the kind that are supposed to be here.”

Isolde shrugged. “You can’t see them because you don’t believe.”

“That’s convenient,” North said.

“No, she’s right,” Dennis said morosely. “Disbelief suppresses sensitivity.”

“So you think there are ghosts,” North said.

“No,” Dennis said. “But if there were, I couldn’t see them because I don’t believe in them.”

“I could use a drink,” North said to Southie, and Southie reached over the back of the couch and picked up a decanter.

“You have to taste this brandy,” he said, reaching for a glass, too.

“It’s good?”

“No, it’s odd.” Southie splashed some liquor into the glass and handed it to him. “I think it’s local. There’s good stuff, too, I went out in the storm and stocked the bar, but that demented housekeeper decanted everything”-he jerked his head to an assortment of glass decanters on the table behind the couch-“so we’re guessing what’s what. But I’m positive this is the house brandy. It has quite a kick.”

“Local brandy,” North said, taking the glass, and then caught sight of his mother leaving the room. “Now where is she going?” he said, and put the glass down to follow her, only to be met at the door by Flo.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, and he thought, This night will never end, and followed her into the hall.

Andie leaned against Alice’s bed after North had gone, trying to be practical and failing miserably. She’d pretty much wanted him back the minute he’d come through the door, and then he’d turfed everybody out of the nursery for her, and brought Alice a rabbit, and told her he wasn’t leaving until they went home with him, and if she hadn’t been so tired, she’d have jumped him in the nursery except that was out of the question. Although, when she thought about it, jumping him for one night might be a good idea. Well, no it wasn’t, but it felt like a great idea, to have his arms around her again, to let him make her crazy and forget everything for a while. What could it hurt? He was sleeping in her old bedroom next to the nursery, Isolde said that ghosts didn’t like fire, she’d be right there if Alice needed her.

And God knew she needed him.

Bad idea, she thought, bad, bad idea.

But ten minutes of hot memories later, when the nursery door opened again, Andie looked up smiling, thinking, Maybe, and got Lydia instead.

“You’re an idiot,” Lydia said, and sat down in the rocking chair.