Maybe This Time Read online

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Crumb said, but it was all bluster now.

  “Is it lunch yet?” Alice said from behind them. “Because I would like a cheese sandwich. But no tomato soup.”

  “How about chicken noodle?” Andie asked her.

  “No. NO NO NO NO NO—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Alice, it’s soup, not poison.”

  Alice looked at her darkly. “Maybe.”

  “I’ll make it, you try it.”

  “No.”

  “I made cookies last night. Try the soup, you can have a cookie.”

  “No.”

  “I said try it. One spoonful.”

  “NO.”

  “Fine.” Andie turned back to Mrs. Crumb, who seemed distracted now, her eyes darting like a cornered rat’s, falling finally on Alice, slopping her cocoa onto the table.

  “You be careful,” she snapped at Alice, her eyes cold on the little girl. “You’re making a mess on my nice clean table.”

  “It’s not your table,” Alice said calmly. “It’s mine. Andie said so.”

  “We’ll clean it up later,” Andie said, taken aback by Alice’s use of her name.

  “This ain’t right,” Mrs. Crumb said, and Andie realized she was near tears. “I been here for sixty years. None of you was born yet but I was here. You don’t know this house. You’re stirring things up. You—”

  “Which brings us to my next point,” Andie said. “You will stop talking about ghosts. I have no idea why you thought that was a good idea, but from now on the official position in this house is that there are no ghosts.”

  Alice drained her cocoa cup. “I want my sandwich now.”

  Andie got out the whole wheat bread as Mrs. Crumb said, “I never said there were no ghosts.”

  “Yes you did,” Alice said, and Mrs. Crumb glared at her with absolutely no effect.

  “Even if there were,” Andie said, “I don’t see why a good housecleaning would upset them. They don’t live in the dust.”

  “Oh, they care,” Mrs. Crumb said to Andie, folding her arms over her orange-flowered apron. “You’ll see they care.”

  “For the last time, I do not believe in ghosts—” Andie began, and then Carter came into the kitchen with the box opened.

  “It’s computers,” he said, more confused than defiant, and Andie looked inside and saw two sleek Apple boxes holding Mac PowerBook 145s. She took the boxes out and put them on the table and found a note from Kristin that said, “Mr. Archer wanted to make sure the children had computers.”

  “Those are from your Uncle North,” Andie said, showing him the note, thinking, Thank you. North never missed on the details.

  “Who?” Alice said.

  “Bad Uncle,” Andie told her. “They come with a graphics program,” she told Carter.

  “What is it?” Alice said poking at her box. “Is it candy?”

  “Better,” Carter said, and left with his Mac, undoubtedly heading for the library.

  “You think you’re so smart, but you’re not,” Mrs. Crumb said. “All this change, all this stuff. It’s bad.”

  Andie gave up on the pity. “Mrs. Crumb, I do not want to have to fire you, but I will if you cause any more problems. You will keep the kitchen clean and you can supervise the Happy Whosis, but you will not tell any more stories about ghosts, and you will not make any more veiled threats, and you will either assist me with the cooking or get out of my way, and you will answer any questions I have without muttering. Is that clear?”

  Mrs. Crumb’s nostrils flared, but she said, “Yes.”

  “Good,” Andie said, and finished making Alice’s lunch.

  When she was done, she put the sandwich in front of Alice.

  “I think I’ll have cookies,” Alice said.

  “I think you won’t,” Andie said.

  Alice glared at her, and Andie glared back, and Alice put her headphones on and ate her sandwich, swathed in her pearls and her shells and her locket and her bat, pretending Andie didn’t exist.

  It’s only a month, Andie thought, and no matter what North thinks, I can make it a month easy.

  “It’s mean not to give me a cookie,” Alice said.

  Not that it mattered what North thought. He’d forgotten her already. He—

  The doorknocker thudded again.

  I’m going to get a scooter, she thought, as she race-walked across the Great Hall and opened the door.

  A deliveryman with a clipboard stood there. “We got a stove for a Mrs. Andromeda Archer.”

  “A stove,” Andie said.

  North had sent her a new stove.

  “This the place?” the guy said.

  “Yeah, this is the place,” she said, and silently apologized to North as they wheeled in her new stove, the latest model of the stove he’d bought her ten years ago. She hadn’t asked then, but he knew. She hadn’t asked now, but—

  So he’s good with stoves, she thought, trying to dismiss the whole thing.

  But he hadn’t forgotten her.

  “It means nothing,” she said to nobody, and went back to the kitchen to feed Carter.

  Four

  That afternoon, while the cleaning crew worked around them, Andie sat the kids down in the library and explained their educational goals to them: They had to be up to their grade levels by January, and the only way she’d know that was if they took the achievement tests. Carter looked at his PowerBook with longing, and Andie handed him the curriculum. “Here’s what you need to know. The notes from your last nanny said you had all your textbooks. I can go over this with you, or you can look it up and ask me for help when you hit a snag.” Unless it’s math; then we’re both screwed. She went over everything with him and then said, “Can you do this on your own?” He nodded. “Yell if you need me,” she told him, and turned to Alice.

  “I’m not gonna do it,” Alice said, folding her arms.

  “Too hard, huh?” Andie said. “Poor baby. Here, you can start with the kindergarten workbook.”

  “I’m not in kindergarten!” Alice said, outraged.

  “Oh, sorry.” Andie handed her the first-grade workbook.

  “I’m not in first grade, either!”

  “Prove it. Do the final test at the back of the book. I bet you can’t.”

  Alice grabbed the book and started working, bitching the entire time. Andie went to see how the cleaners were doing on the second floor—“You’re going to need new linens everywhere,” one of the women told her, “this stuff is rotted through”—and checked to make sure the cable guy hadn’t fallen in the moat—“You’re ready to go,” he told her, “but it wasn’t easy, all this stone, and some of it’s loose”—and gave a glowering Mrs. Crumb instructions for dinner, and then went back to Alice and Carter.

  “You’ve got cable TV,” she told Carter, who said, “Cool,” the first positive word she’d had from him, and then she turned to Alice.

  Alice was working on the fourth-grade final test. Andie went back and checked the first-, second-, and third-grade tests. Perfect scores on first and second and near perfect on the third.

  “How is this possible?” she asked Carter, showing him.

  “The nannies weren’t dumb and neither is Alice.” He held up the curriculum. “You got a test for this?”

  “I can make one up,” she said, just as Alice pushed the fourth-grade final across to her.

  “Can I have candy now?” she said.

  “Candy?” Andie said, and Carter said, “They bribed her to work.” Andie shook her head at Alice. “No, no candy. Here’s what you missed on the third-grade test.” She shoved the workbook back to Alice who looked outraged again. Alice was looking outraged a lot today. Suck it up, Alice. “We’ll go over the questions you missed in a minute.” She looked back at Carter. “I’ll make up the test for you to see if you’ve got the curriculum down, and then we’ll figure out independent studies for you. I’m telling you now, I’m terrible at math, so we’ll have to get you outside help there