“Alice met her uncle?” Andie said, taken aback, and then remembered that North had said he’d gone to see the kids right after his cousin had died.
Alice nodded. “Nanny Joy said that Bad Uncle said they had to go away.”
“Nanny Joy, huh?” Rotten bitch of a nanny. Although it was possible North had said that. He wouldn’t have known how upset they’d be since he’d have kept his distance.
“Nanny Joy was a bad fairy,” Alice was saying, warming now to her story. “She wasn’t like the other princess.”
“There was another princess?”
“Yes. A blue princess. And she would dance all the time. Like this.” Alice pushed the Jessica doll away and slipped out of bed before Andie could stop her, her feet hitting the floor with a thunk, and began to dance, a kind of hoochie-coochie Kabuki glide that involved twitching hips and swaying hands, stopping for moments of tai chi. She hummed something as she moved, completely absorbed in herself, and then finished with a twirl, spreading her arms as she turned in a moment of absolute grace. “She was a very good dancer,” Alice said as she climbed back into bed. “Then what happened?”
“Uh,” Andie said, trying to figure out where Bad Uncle and the dancing princess fit with Alice in the castle. “Well. Alice lived in the castle with her brother and the cook and the, uh, dancing princess, and she was very happy except for one thing.”
Alice folded her arms, but it seemed to be more of a concentration thing than resistance.
“She was very lonely,” Andie ventured.
Alice frowned.
“She had her brother and the cook and the dancing princess,” Andie went on hastily, “but she wanted somebody her own age to… dance with.”
Alice frowned harder.
“So she decided to go on a quest.”
“What’s a quest?”
“A trip to find something. Like to school, to find other children to play with. She went out to look for a school-”
“No she didn’t.”
“Okay, what did she do?”
“I don’t know,” Alice said, exasperated. “You’re telling the story.”
“If I’m telling the story, why doesn’t Princess Alice eat her hot breakfast and go on a quest for a school?”
“Because that’s wrong.”
“Okay.” Andie gave up. “I have to think about this story for a while and then tell you more tomorrow.”
Alice sighed. “All right. But there should be more dancing.”
“More dancing. Got it. Anything else?”
Alice grew still, and her eyes seemed sadder suddenly, the shadows underneath them growing darker. “No,” she said, and rolled over, away from Andie, scooting down under the covers as she turned.
“Okay.” Andie got up, picked up the Jessica doll from where it had fallen to the floor, tucked it in beside Alice, and turned off her bedside light. “I’ll be right across the nursery if you need me.”
“I won’t,” Alice said, her voice muffled by the covers.
“Right.” Andie hesitated and then bent and kissed the top of Alice’s head, and Alice batted her away. “Sleep tight, baby,” Andie said, and went across the hall to check on Carter.
He said, “Come in,” when she knocked, which she considered progress, and when she said, “Don’t stay up too late, we have to start schoolwork tomorrow,” he nodded without looking up from his book. Since saying “Stop reading so you can learn something tomorrow” seemed contradictory, Andie picked up his empty tray, said, “Good night,” and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Dancing princess, she thought, and wondered which one of the nannies that had been.
Andie put the dishes in the sink and then used the phone in the kitchen, now complete with dial tone, to call the Happy Housekeepers number she’d found at the Dairy Queen to set up a cleaning crew. Surprisingly, they said they’d come the next day. Something moved behind her as she hung up, and she turned around expecting to see Mrs. Crumb, but she was alone. Weird, she thought, but that was the least of her problems. She was making a difference with the kids, a small difference, but a start, but there was something just out of her reach, something about the place that she couldn’t put her finger on yet. Mrs. Crumb might be up to something, the kids were probably always up to something, but there was something else.
Frustrated because she couldn’t puzzle it out, she got out a bowl and cookie sheets and the baking supplies she’d stocked up on and made chocolate chip cookies. The oven was ancient, but chocolate chip cookies were hard to screw up. She hesitated before adding the almonds and cashews, pretty sure Alice would turn her nose up at nuts, and then decided that if Alice wanted cookies, she could damn well eat nuts. The measuring and the mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes-nothing was as calming as creaming butter-and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating and the smell of baking chocolate, she took final stock of where she’d been and where she was going. Everything was fine. There was no reason to be uneasy. She was in a transition phase and so were the kids. In a month, the kids would go to Columbus together, where they’d start their life with North and she’d start hers with Will…
She went on planning, keeping a close eye on the cookies and turning down the heat as they browned too fast. She pulled out the first tray of cookies and slid in the next unbaked tray, and by the time the whole batch was done-the oven really was a sadistic bastard, doing its damnedest to scorch everything she put in it-she was back to normal. Everything was fine. The former nannies had been idiots. It was going to be okay.
She left the cookies to cool and went back upstairs and got ready for bed. Then she climbed into the big four-poster with the third-and seventh-grade curriculums, along with a box of workbooks for grades one through ten since the nannies hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly where the kids were in their education. At ten, she heard somebody outside her door, but by the time she opened it, the only thing in the hall was a tray with a pot of liquor-laced tea and a striped cup, with two of her cookies on a plate beside it.
She crawled back into bed and sipped her tea-Mrs. Crumb still with the heavy hand with the schnapps-and ate her cookies, which were exceptional, as always. God, I’m good at this, she thought, and then put her mind back on the trouble at hand: Mrs. Crumb. They were going to talk about housekeeping and when that was over they were going to talk about ghosts. It was one thing for the housekeeper to have a few screws loose after living in the House of Usher for sixty years, another thing entirely to drive nannies away with ghost stories, especially when there were two kids who so desperately needed their help. Not that the kids looked like they wanted any help. In fact, they were downright hostile. Maybe I shouldn’t have come, she thought, feeling the old urge to break and run to someplace better, but Alice and Carter needed her, North had been right about that, and she could last the month, get them back to Columbus where North could get them professional help. It was only a month.
She put her empty cup back on the bedside table, punched her pillow, slid down into bed, and turned out the light, her thoughts still racing even though the tea had made her groggy. She was going to have to tell Mrs. Crumb to knock it off with the tea, she was going to have to tell Mrs. Crumb a lot of things. Mrs. Crumb was…
Who do you love? She heard the whisper as the night grew chill and she drifted off. Who do you want?
Not Mrs. Crumb, she thought, but the whisper was insistent. Who do you love? And then North was there in her dreams again, turning toward her with his rare, slow smile-
Who is HE?
Andie roused and looked around, disoriented. That had been a real whisper, not a dream, and the room was cold, much colder than it had been when she’d turned out the light, it was always cold in her dreams-
The window across from her bed rattled, and she thought, That’s what I heard, the window’s got a leak and it’s letting in the cold air, and got up to stick a piece of paper into it to stop the noise and pull the drapes against the cold. There were too many noises at night in this house, walls sighing and floors creaking and now this damn window…