She looked at Carter in the rearview mirror. Carter was quiet but not quiescent. If the only way he could get back to Alice was to set fires… “Carter,” she said, and waited until he looked up, his brown hair flopping in his eyes. “I’ll make sure you’re not sent away from Alice again.”
His blue eyes stayed as flat as ever, and then he went back to his book.
Maybe she didn’t need them to like her. Maybe she just needed them to trust her for the next month. If she got them books and clothing and whatever else they needed, maybe they’d trust her enough to let her take them away from the hellhole they were living in. One step at a time.
When they got to New Essex, she pulled into the Dairy Queen. “Hamburgers and ice cream for lunch,” she said, and when they were surrounded by food, she went to the pay phone and dialed.
If she got Carter cable, he might even speak to her.
North looked up as Kristin came into the office. “I’ll see Mrs. Nash now.”
Kristin closed the door. “Miss Miller is on the phone. I know she’s supposed to talk to me, but she insists on speaking with you.”
Andie. Well, if he was going to act on stupid impulses, he was going to pay the price. “I’ll take the call. You stall Mrs. Nash.”
Kristin nodded and faded out the door, and North thought, Make it quick and hang up fast, and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“You weren’t kidding about rural,” Andie said, her voice low, the laugh that was always there underneath making it richer. “I had to leave the house to make a phone call.”
“Where are you?” North said, trying not to be seduced into prolonging things just to listen to her.
“The Dairy Queen in New Essex. The kids are inhaling food at a picnic table over by the car, so I can talk. Have you been to that house? It’s like something out of Dickens.”
“Because you had to leave to make this call?”
“Because it’s bleak as hell. We need cable TV, North. I can’t believe Carter is surviving without it.”
“Fine. Call the cable company.” Get off the phone, he told himself.
“I just called them and they were unhelpful. The house is too far out. I need somebody with clout.”
“I don’t know anybody at a cable company.” Get off the phone.
“Well, you undoubtedly know somebody who does know somebody at a cable company. Put Kristin on it. She looks like she’d enjoy a challenge.”
“I will do that,” North said. For Christ’s sake, get off the phone.
“Also, have you been here lately?”
“No. Is there a problem?”
“The place is falling apart. The stone’s crumbling, there are weeds everywhere, anything that’s metal has rusted and run down the outside of the house, and the drive is a real hazard.”
“Damn it,” North said. “I sent funds to fix all of that two years ago.”
“To Mrs. Crumb?”
North pictured the housekeeper. Elderly. Dyed red hair. Smelled like peppermint and rubbing alcohol. “Yes, I sent a check to Mrs. Crumb.”
“Well, the funds stayed with Mrs. Crumb. I suggest you hire people directly this time.”
“I’ll have a contractor come out and look at the place.”
“Tell him to talk to me, not Mrs. Crumb. And to look at the inside, too. The kitchen is awful. I can’t even bake here.”
He closed his eyes and remembered late afternoons, Andie home from teaching and doing the Four O’Clock Bake, the smell of banana bread or chocolate chip cookies or cinnamon rolls, dozens of different smells telling him the day was almost done-
“North?”
“Right,” North said. “Contractor. I’ll put Kristin on it.”
“Also, if anybody calls from this end of the world, we’re still married.”
North stopped looking at his watch. “What?”
“It’s the only thing that gives me clout. They’re very impressed with you here. I figured, what could it hurt? You’re never coming down here. Will’s never coming down here. Nobody in Columbus will ever know. So I took back my married name.”
“You didn’t take my name when we were married,” North said, trying to find his footing again.
“I was going through an independent phase. Now I’m going through a practical phase. It’s a good thing to be an Archer down here. Come to think of it, it was probably a good thing to be an Archer up there. I should have taken your name just for the power. As your mother so often told me, I was an idiot.”
So was I, North thought, and then shook his head before regret could set in. The past was gone and the present had Mrs. Nash in the waiting room. “I’ll get Kristin on the cable-”
“That’ll be a help,” Andie said over him. “Because frankly I could use a bargaining chip with the kids, too. I made a hot breakfast this morning and Alice refused to eat it and went for the damn cereal anyway. Mrs. Crumb thinks she’s winning. According to her, the two of you are very close. You think of her as a mother.”
“Is she delusional?”
“Everybody here is delusional, including your nannies. Carter didn’t set fires because he’s crazy, he set them so he’d get kicked out of school and could come home to take care of Alice. He needs to be in a good public school where he can make friends and then see Alice every night. They’re really close, North. If you don’t separate them, I think he’d go to school without a fight.”
“Damn.” North leaned back. “I knew boarding school was a bad idea. My mother tried to send me away when Southie was six, and I wouldn’t go. Kids need each other. But the last nanny kept telling me he needed discipline, so-”
“He has discipline. He’s so self-disciplined he’s barely breathing. Alice, on the other hand, has no discipline at all. If something’s going on that she doesn’t like, she screams. But it’s not like a normal temper tantrum, there’s something else going on there. Carter I can eventually reach, I think. Alice… I don’t know.”
She sounded worried, and North tried to think of a way to make her feel better and then realized that was ridiculous. She was doing a job for him, she hadn’t called for comfort, they weren’t married anymore no matter what lies she was telling down there, he had Mrs. Nash waiting, and there was nothing he could do anyway… “Do you need me to come down there?”
“No, I can handle this,” she said, her voice as confident as ever. “It’s the kids I’m worried about. I don’t know if I can make things normal for them. I think I can make things better.”
“You always make things better.”
The silence stretched out at the other end of the phone as he thought, Dumb thing to say, and then she said, “Thank you.” Her voice was softer than it had been, and it brought the past rushing back again.
“You’re welcome,” he said, thinking, Get off the damn phone. “I’ll get you your cable and your contractor and somebody to fix the phones.”
“I know you will. You always come through.”
Jesus. “Call me if there’s anything else,” he said briskly, trying to find his way back to normal.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to each other.”
“I was going through an independent phase,” North said, and then closed his eyes as her laugh bubbled through the phone.
“That was a helluva long phase. I’ll call if there’s anything else. You have a good day.”
She hung up, and he sat there with the phone in his hand for a minute, trying to find his way back to normal, until Kristin came in.
“She needs cable down there,” he told her, hanging up the phone. “Get it for her, please.”
“That’s going to cost you,” Kristin said.
It’s the only thing she’s asked for in the entire time I’ve known her. “Get it for her. Also find a good contractor down there and have him go out to talk to her, not to Mrs. Crumb. And call the phone company and find out why they lose service and if there’s anything we can do about it. Bills to come here.”
Kristin nodded. “And Mrs. Nash in the waiting room?”