Maybe This Time Read online

  “Then I’ll stay forever,” Andie said, feeling a clutch of panic in her stomach. Forever.

  “What do I get if you don’t stay?”

  “What do you want?”

  Alice thought about it. “Ice cream.”

  “You’ll get that anyway, Alice. Think of something big.”

  Alice tilted her head again, thinking hard as her ice cream melted, the striped stocking on her topknot sliding to the side of her head. “That skirt,” she said finally, nodding at Andie.

  “My skirt?” Andie swished the blue-green chiffon, watching the turquoise sequins sparkle in the sunlight. Flo gets it right again, she thought, and said, “You’re on. What do I get? One of your necklaces?”

  Alice frowned, looking down.

  “Pearls?” Andie said, looking at the dingy lavender beads.

  “They were my mom’s.”

  “Oh,” Andie said, remembering that Alice’s mom had died giving birth to her. The pearls suddenly looked a lot more important. “The shells?”

  “My daddy gave me those.”

  “The locket?”

  “No, I found that. It’s a treasure.”

  “You’re going to need the Walkman.”

  “It was my mom’s,” Alice said, nodding.

  “So that leaves the bat,” Andie said, looking at the dubious piece of cheap metal and glittery stones.

  “Aunt May gave that to me.”

  “So we’ll think of something else.”

  Alice frowned in thought. “No,” she said after some length. “You can have the bat if you stay.” She licked up more ice cream. “But you won’t stay. Carter is never wrong.” She looked at Andie again, frowning. “Are you really going to give me that skirt when you leave?”

  “I’m not leaving,” Andie said. “Not without you anyway. But if something happens and I lose the bet, you get the skirt. Pinky swear.”

  Alice nodded and went back to her ice cream, still evidently a nonbeliever but now in line to get a sequined skirt, and Andie turned to see Carter regarding her over his own cone, his expression as flat as ever.

  “You want to bet?” she said.

  “You don’t have anything I want,” he said, and went back to his ice cream.

  “Fair enough,” Andie said.

  One day at a time, she thought, one day at a time.

  One day at a time may have been the plan, but it was the nights that were wearing Andie down. Alice was still having nightmares although not as often, and even when Alice slept through the night, Andie had her own dreams, carnal dreams about North that were so vivid that she woke up shaking, wanting him so much she ached. And she still heard whispers in her sleep asking, Who do you love? She’d told Mrs. Crumb she didn’t want her to bring a tray up to her bedroom anymore, sticking with the spiked tea she made herself, but the dreams persisted. Finally one night she bypassed the tea completely, so exhausted that she was half asleep already, and slid down under the covers to shut out the chill—it was always cold as hell in her room at night—and dozed off, only to sit up again to punch her pillow into shape, and see something at the foot of her bed.

  She froze as the vague shadow grew clearer and she could see a young woman, a girl, really, big-eyed and pretty with masses of curly hair, her form translucent and shifting in what looked like a party dress.

  Hello, the girl said, swishing her full skirt as she pirouetted, blue in the moonlight.

  “Who are you?” Andie said, and her voice seemed dreamlike, as if it were coming from very far away.

  Oh, I’m you. The girl laughed. I’m you when you were nineteen. She leaned forward, the illusion of her shadow shifting a few seconds behind her movement so that she disassembled and reassembled as she moved. Don’t we look alike?

  “Don’t do that,” Andie said, feeling nauseous now. She didn’t have dreams about past lives, that was entirely too twee, or maybe too Flo. Her mother would be all over this if it were happening to her. She struggled to wake up, but the girl only moved again and disoriented her, and another wave of cold nausea hit, so she stopped.

  What happens to me after nineteen? the girl said. Do I have wonderful adventures?

  “What?” Andie sank back on the pillows, sick to her stomach.

  I want to know what happens next, the girl said. I want to know the future. Do I fall in love? Is it wonderful?

  Andie thought of North, and then guiltily of Will. “Yes.”

  The girl drifted closer and the room grew colder and Andie shut her eyes to block out the sickening vertigo.

  Tell me about him.

  “He’s a writer.” Andie kept her eyes shut, picturing Will, laughing and warm.

  Is he exciting? Does he make me crazy for him? Do I want him all the time?

  “No.” Andie tried to roll over, away from her. “I’m thirty-four. I grew out of that.”

  Terrible. That’s terrible. You never get exciting?

  “The first one. Go away.”

  Tell me about him.

  “I’m freezing. Go away.”

  The girl moved back to the window, and the air around the bed grew marginally warmer.

  Tell me about the other one.

  “I want to sleep now.”

  Is he the one you dream about? The hot one?

  She thought of North, of the muscle hidden by his suits, the passion behind that calm beautiful face, all of it focused on her in the first months of her marriage, those memories on perpetual replay in her dreams every night. “Yes. But then his uncle Merrill dies, and he works sixteen-hour days at the family firm, and he forgets I . . . we . . . exist, and I leave.”

  You left that guy? You should have done something. You should have seduced him again. You should have—

  “Hey,” Andie said, struggling to sit up. “I had therapy for this. Sometimes things end. The bastard broke my heart, and I got over it and moved on.”

  The girl drew back, alarmed. All right. Andie lay back down, and the girl said, Tell me how you met. How do we meet him?

  Andie closed her eyes. It was weird to be harassed in a dream. But she remembered . . . “We’re twenty-four, after too much to drink, we look across the bar and see a man watching us.”

  What does he look like? He’s the blond guy in the dream?

  “Yes. Almost white hair, cropped short. Tall. Great shoulders.” She yawned again. “Wire-rimmed glasses.”

  This guy gave you the head-banging sex you’ve been dreaming about? The shadow sounded doubtful.

  “Bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. Classic nose. Beautiful mouth. Women stop to stare at him and he doesn’t notice because he’s looking at me. Us. Are you sure you’re me?”

  Yes, the girl said. Although I like guys who are built.

  “No you don’t,” Andie said, confused. “You go for musicians and art majors. And your mother tells you to stop chasing water signs and find an earth.”

  What?

  “Flo. Our mother. You’re not me.” She struggled to sit up again, and the girl moved, and the vertigo sent Andie back to her pillows. She squinted at the shifting shape. “I think my hair was bigger then. Who are you?”

  I’m you. You saw him. Then what happened? Did you smile at him?

  “I was already smiling,” Andie said, sinking deeper into the bed, trying to get from dream to sleep. “I stopped smiling when he walked toward me.”

  And you waited until he came to you. You made him come to you.

  “No, I met him halfway. The band was playing ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ It’s hard to stand still when you hear ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ ”

  The girl swished her skirt again. It would have been better to wait.

  “I don’t wait for anybody.” Andie pulled the covers up over her head, feeling like Alice.

  The girl was quiet for so long that Andie was almost asleep when she said, That’s better.

  Andie pulled the covers off her face. “What?”

  Not waiting for anybody. That’s better. Then what happens?