Maybe This Time Read online

  “You’re an idiot,” Lydia said, and then took a deep breath. “Look, you’re very protective of that little girl.” She nodded toward the sleeping Alice. “But girls are strong. We’re built to withstand anything. Boys are the vulnerable ones. Alice will make it, she’s got Archer steel in her spine. But Carter’s bleeding inside, just the way North was bleeding when you left, and you can’t see it. You don’t look.”

  Andie took a breath to say that Carter was fine, and Lydia cut her off.

  “I raised two boys. They feel everything and have no way to express it. They die inside, and if you’re a mother, you die, too.”

  “Lydia—”

  “If you find out what’s wrong with Carter and fix it, if you bring these children to Columbus, you’ll have the full force of the Archer family behind you.”

  “Okay,” Andie said, taken aback.

  “But you break my son’s heart again, I’ll rip out your liver and fry it for breakfast.” Lydia stood up, looking down at Andie. “Don’t blow it this time, Andromeda,” she said, and swept from the room.

  “Hey, I didn’t blow it the last time,” Andie said, but she was gone, and Andie was left alone in the firelight, Alice asleep behind her, Carter down in his room in terrible trouble if Lydia was right, and North downstairs as desirable as ever except that his mother was going to tear her liver out if she went for a one-night stand.

  “Jesus,” Andie said, and went back to thinking about the ghosts.

  It was simpler.

  “It’s about my daughter,” Flo said when North was alone with her in the Great Hall.

  “She’s doing a wonderful job with the children,” North said politely.

  Flo narrowed her eyes, so tense that every gray curl on her head bounced. “I know what you’re up to, you bastard. You’re trying to get her back. Or at least into bed.”

  Flo was crazy, North remembered, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “Don’t even try it,” Flo said. “I ran the cards. You’re the Emperor.”

  “No I’m not,” North said, confused. “I’m the King of Coins.”

  Flo stopped, evidently equally confused. “What?”

  “Andie brought me to your house and told you we’d gotten married and you ran the cards,” North said, remembering it like it was yesterday. It’d been his first clue that life with Andie was going to be seriously different.

  “Oh. Yes, I did. Well, that was ten years ago.”

  “You told me it was forever, and that Andie I were doomed because she was the Moon. Or something.”

  “The Star,” Flo said. “And I was right, wasn’t I? It didn’t last.”

  “You weren’t right if I’m an Emperor now,” North said. “Maybe you’d better run the cards again. Come back in the sitting room and I’ll get you a drink—”

  “Well, if you’re not the Emperor, who is?” Flo said.

  North started to say something soothing, and then thought, Why am I patronizing this woman? “Flo, I don’t believe in the tarot.”

  “I know you don’t,” she said, frowning as she thought.

  “Then why are you asking me about some Emperor?”

  “You’re a lawyer. You don’t have to believe in something to argue about it.” She looked up at him, still frowning. “Somebody passionate and powerful. Somebody moving all the pieces in the game. Who else would that be besides you?”

  “You’ve got a houseful of wingnuts here,” North said. “Plus ghosts. Pick one.”

  Flo’s eyebrows went up. “The ghosts. Isolde said one of them is a man who thinks he owns the house.”

  “Isolde is a font of information,” North said, not happy about that.

  “But of course, that’s it.” Flo folded her arms, as if she were chilled. “That’s so much worse. You’d never hurt Andie on purpose, but some awful spirit—”

  “I’ll keep Andie close and safe.”

  Flo looked up at him, scowling again. “Sea goat.”

  “What?”

  “Sex. That’s all you think about.”

  North looked down at her, exasperated.

  Flo looked back, defiant. “Tell me you haven’t been thinking about it ever since you saw Andie.”

  “I saw Andie for about five minutes before Alice started to scream.”

  “Not tonight. Since she came to your office a month ago.”

  She had him there. “This is the first I’ve seen her since then.”

  “You’ve been thinking about it,” Flo said, an edge to her voice. “You’re going to break her heart again. It’s not fair, North, you have everything, can’t you just let her go?”

  “No,” he said, surprising himself but not Flo, who nodded.

  “It’s in your stars,” she said.

  “I thought it was in the cards.”

  “There, too.”

  Lydia came down the stairs and into the hall. “Now what’s going on?”

  “Your son’s going to try to seduce my daughter,” Flo said. “He’s a Capricorn. They do that.”

  “Don’t you think their private lives should be private?” Lydia said, sounding virtuous.

  Flo looked at her for a moment and then laughed.

  “I’m going upstairs now,” North said to both of them. “Not to seduce my ex-wife but to get some sleep. Tomorrow a private detective will be here to find out what the hell is going on, and then we’ll establish that there are no ghosts, throw Kelly O’Keefe out into the storm, and take everybody back to Columbus where the two of you can continue your feud.”

  “We’re not feuding,” Flo said, glaring at Lydia.

  “It’s not like you to be dramatic,” Lydia said to him, ignoring Flo.

  “Good night,” North said, and went back into the sitting room to get what he needed to seduce his ex-wife.

  Andie was sitting beside Alice’s bed almost asleep when North came back upstairs, carrying an ice bucket and two glasses. He put it all down on the floor next to Andie, took off his suit coat and threw it on the rocker, loosened his tie, opened his overnight bag, took out a bottle of Glenlivet, and opened it.

  “Oh, good.” Andie straightened to rub her back. “My present.”

  “No, I got you something else, but I’ll share.” North poured two generous slugs into the glasses, handed one to her. “Here’s to going home to Columbus with everybody. Soon.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Andie said and did, the smooth liquor going down like silk. “God, I needed that.”

  “Plenty more here.” North put the bottle down beside her and sat down beside it, his back against Alice’s bed, too. “Should we go into another room? Will we wake her up talking?”

  “No, when she finally goes out, she’s out,” Andie said. “So what’s my present?”

  North reached over and dug into his overnight bag again. He pulled out a CD and handed it to her.

  “Clapton Unplugged,” she read with delight. “Thank you!”

  “It’s been out since August. I took a chance you didn’t have it yet.”

  “No, I didn’t even realize they’d recorded it. I saw it on TV . . .” She’d seen it on TV and thought of North all the way through. She smiled up at him. “Thank you. You give good gifts.”

  “I try. I have something else, too. Not a gifts.”

  He dug in the bag and pulled out a box, and she recognized her old shell box from junior high, the one she’d made from a cigar box she’d found that her mother told her had been her father’s. She was pretty sure that had been a lie, but still, it was her shell box.

  “Wow,” she said, taking it from him. “Thank you for keeping it.”

  “You left some other stuff behind.” He leaned back against the bed, too. “It’s all in there.”

  “Anything important?”

  “I don’t know,” North said. “I don’t know what’s important to you now. You’ve changed.”

  “In ten years? Hell, yes, I’ve changed.” She opened the box and saw old photos and ticket stubs and, in the middle,