Maybe This Time Read online

That was my turn. Yes, this was my prom dress. Your turn. And tell me something besides what he bought you. Unless it was diamonds.

  “Okay. The one birthday I had during the year we were together, he forgot. No gift at all.”

  Not even later?

  “Yes, but later doesn’t count.” Now she sounded like Alice.

  What did he get you later?

  “Diamond earrings. Very tasteful.” She was pretty sure his secretary had picked them out, which made it so much worse. He’d never have bought those for her; if there was one thing she knew about North, it was that he knew her. Until he forgot her.

  See, that’s better, diamonds.

  “No. Better was his brother Southie who remembered and showed up on the day with a cake and these big green hoop earrings with bluebirds sitting in them. I still have those earrings.” She smiled to herself, remember Southie handing her the box and saying, “Bluebirds of happiness, Andie. They called your name.” Maybe he’d bought them because he’d known she wasn’t happy.

  Well, you still have the diamonds, too.

  “No.” Andie folded her arms over her chest. “I left them behind when I left. Your turn. Something about you.”

  I would never leave behind diamonds, the girl said, and pirouetted once and was gone.

  “Hello?” Andie said to the empty room, and waited a minute but the girl didn’t come back. “Damn.”

  She lay back on her pillows and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

  You could have hallucinations about things you didn’t know about. Maybe the girl was a hallucination.

  I’m hallucinating, Andie thought. I have a brain tumor or something.

  No she didn’t. She just needed an explanation.

  It’s a ghost.

  No, that wasn’t it, either. It was probably her subconscious.

  If it was, her subconscious had a thing for her ex-husband.

  “That’s not it, either,” she said out loud. She was completely over North. Done.

  And now she was hallucinating ghosts.

  I need help, she thought, and was making plans when she fell asleep.

  The next morning, Andie told Mrs. Crumb to watch the kids and went to Columbus to the Ohio State library, calling Will when she got into town to tell him she was there and could have dinner with him if he was available.

  “If I’m available?” he said, laughing. “I haven’t seen you in three weeks. I’ll meet you at Max and Erma’s whenever you say.”

  Max and Erma’s in German Village. That was two blocks from Flo’s place. She should stop and see Flo. Or not.

  “Andie?”

  “How about six? That’ll give me all afternoon at the library.” And put me on the road in time to get back to the kids. If they ate at six and she left at seven, she could be home by ten-thirty, too late to put them to bed, but—

  “Can’t wait to see you, babe,” Will said.

  “Me, too.” But it would be early enough she could get some sleep before Alice started demanding cereal—

  “So are you going to see North?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to see North while you’re in town?”

  “No. Why would I see North?”

  “Well, you’re in Columbus. So is North.”

  “So is Flo, two blocks from Max and Erma’s, but I have to get back to the kids. I have time to see one person. You.”

  “You’re not staying the night?”

  “No. I have to get back to the kids.”

  “Andie, it’s been almost a month,” Will said.

  “What’s been . . . oh.”

  “I’m a patient man, but—”

  “Yes, you are, and I appreciate it,” Andie said. But I have to get back to the kids.

  “—my patience is running out here. You won’t let me come down to see you and you won’t stay up here—”

  “I know, I know. Look, we should talk about this because for a while here, the kids are going to come first. I know that’s not fair to you—”

  “I haven’t even met the kids yet, give me a chance.”

  “Honey, I’ll give you all the chances you want once I get them back to Columbus and settled in.”

  “How much longer do you think it’ll be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping to get some help at the library. Can we talk about this at dinner? Because I really have to go.”

  “Sure,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy, which was understandable. It had been almost a month for her, too.

  Except it hadn’t. She hadn’t even thought about sleeping with Will. Maybe it was age. Except women were supposed to hit their peaks in their thirties.

  Or maybe it was because she’d dreamt of making love with North almost every night since she’d gone south, that it was North she wanted even though she knew that the North she wanted was a fantasy.

  Maybe it was time to break it off with Will until she got her head back in the right place. He was a great guy and he deserved better. And she really wasn’t missing him, which wasn’t a good sign.

  Later for that, she thought and went out to the university.

  At the OSU library, she found a newspaper article on a panel discussion on ghosts. The big name there was the professor from Cincinnati named Boston Ulrich, the guy who’d written the book she’d found at the Grandville library, who’d evidently wowed the crowd with his assertions that ghosts did exist, although not in the ridiculous portrayals in movie and fiction. “They’re like us,” the article quoted him as saying, “except dead.” The buzzkill in the group was another professor, this one named Dennis Graff from Cleveland, who’d sourly asserted that there was no proof of actual hauntings. He was not popular. Andie wrote down his name and found his contact information by digging deeper. Boston Ulrich wasn’t the only writer on ghosts; Dennis Graff had written many dry papers on paranormal phenomena, two of which Andie found in the library, but evidently all of which had the same theme: No Such Thing As Ghosts. It took a lot to make the supernatural dry, but Dennis Graff had managed it. There were also a host of “ghost experts” that Andie was pretty sure would be of no use at all. The best of that bunch, a medium named Isolde Hammersmith, charged nosebleed prices, so somebody must have thought she was good, but the last thing Andie needed was somebody who thought she could talk to ghosts. What she needed was somebody who could explain why ghosts didn’t exist and how somebody was faking them or Andie was hallucinating them or whatever.

  She left the library and drove slowly down High Street, trying to avoid hitting any jaywalking students while preoccupied with her options. Maybe a psychiatrist, maybe her mind was playing tricks. Or maybe a detective, the Archers had an agency right there in Columbus they used, so maybe somebody just needed to investigate and find out . . . Something. There had to be something . . .

  She looked up and realized she’d automatically turned off High and onto Fifth Street, force of habit from when she’d been married to North and made that drive every day, so when she reached Neil Avenue, she turned left, heading south again. But when she neared the big blue Victorian that said ARCHER LEGAL GROUP on the tastefully painted sign out front, she slowed and then pulled over when the car behind her honked.

  The light was on back in North’s office. It was almost six but he was in there, she could see the glow from his window. He’d be in there for hours yet probably. The second floor of the house was dark, Lydia must be out, and of course the attic apartment wasn’t lit up; North wasn’t there. I’m not there.

  So he was working late behind that damn desk. She hadn’t always hated that desk. There’d been many an evening when she’d gone downstairs from their apartment at six and said, Hey, you have a wife, and shoved his papers on the floor, and he’d kissed her and they’d ended up on that desk, breathing hard. That was a sturdy piece of furniture, which had been a good thing, until the day she’d gone down to see him, and he’d snapped, Not now, I have to finish this . . .

  The door to the hous