Maybe This Time Read online

  “We’d have found a way,” Andie said. “She wasn’t just up against us, she was up against Fate. We’re supposed to be together. Will you marry me again?”

  His hand tightened on her hip, and when she went up on one elbow to meet his eyes without blinking, saying, “I’m sure, I really am,” he said, “Yes.”

  “Good,” Andie said, snuggling down into the covers he’d made warm for her. “We should have the wedding here. Small ceremony, just family. That way Merrill and Dennis can come, too.”

  “Wonderful,” North said, and turned out the light.

  “You going to sleep?” Andie said, putting her hand on his chest.

  “You had a rough night,” he said and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Not that rough,” Andie said, and pulled his mouth down to hers, kissing him hard.

  “Now we’re back to normal,” North said, and Andie wrapped herself around him and thought, Now I’m home, and made love with her husband in the attic, while her family slept below.

  It was close to midnight, the clock ticking loudly in the dark kitchen, the game of solitaire on the big table lit only by one steadily burning candle, when Mrs. Crumb lifted her head to listen.

  “You’re back, are you?” She gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them.

  How the hell did I get back here?

  Mrs. Crumb stopped shuffling long enough to hold up the old church envelope that had been on the bulletin board by the phone. “I cut an extra lock of hair from your head that night you fell through the railing. You died bad. I thought I might need it if you walked.”

  Jesus Christ—

  “You know I don’t like that kind of language.”

  Fuck you. You don’t even belong here. They threw you out.

  Mrs. Crumb shrugged. “They’re never coming back. They’ll never see this place again. I got my social security to live on.”

  So now I’m trapped with you? Goddammit!

  Mrs. Crumb pushed the envelope toward the other side of the table. “You don’t like it, take me and make me burn it.”

  The silence stretched out.

  “That’s what I thought. From now on, you just remember, any time I want to, I can snuff you out like a candle.”

  After a moment, the candle on the table flickered as if somebody had passed behind it.

  Mrs. Crumb nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She leaned back and got the card rack from the drawer behind her and put it in front of the chair across from her.

  “It’s my deal,” she said, and began to pass out the cards.

  A Reading Group Guide

  1. Andie in 1982 was headstrong and impulsive; after all, she married North after knowing him for only a day. But as the book opens ten years later, she’s changed; as North says, when he fell in love with her in ’82, he heard the original “Layla;” when he sees her in ’92, he hears the acoustic version. How has she changed, and do you think a month in the country changes her ever more that the previous ten years? If so, how?

  2. North is extremely laid back, so far back he’s almost in the shadows. Did he work for you as a romantic hero or was he just too detached? Did you find the romance believable? Satisfying?

  3. Did you feel sympathy for May? Did you feel she was a fully developed character, something beyond just a ghost that goes bump in the night?

  4. Alice lost her mother at birth, her father and her grandfather at six, and her aunt at seven. That’s a lot of death and a lot of abandonment. Do you feel she was portrayed realistically given her circumstances? What about her relationship with Miss J? May?

  5. Alice’s relationship with Andie is arguably the most important relationship in the story. Did you find it realistic? Compelling? What impact did it have on Andie? On Alice?

  6. Carter is so withdrawn because he thinks he’s doomed and he expects people to leave him. As a result, he gets a short shrift for much of the novel. Does it bother you that Andie took so long to recognize that he was in trouble, too?

  7. Does Carter’s relationship with Andie and then later with North change him and them? Did you find those relationships believable? What about his relationship with Alice?

  8. Andie ends up with two ghost experts on her hands: Isolde, a medium who knows there are ghosts, and Dennis, a parapsychologist who doesn’t believe. What do their opposing points of view add to the story? What did you think of where they ended in their relationship to the Archers and to each other?

  10. This book was written as an homage to Henry James’s Turn of the Screw. What similarities and differences do you see between the two?

  11. This book takes place over one month, but in the course of that month the lives of almost everyone in the story are irrevocably changed. Did you find that believable? Chaotic? Transformative for you, as a reader?

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