“Southie?” Sullivan said.
“What?”
“You called me ‘Southie.’ You haven’t called me that in years.”
“Well, grow up and I’ll never call you that again. You’re running down there because you don’t want to face Mother with your latest career plan or girlfriend. It’s not much of a rebellion if you keep running away.”
“I’m not rebelling. I don’t have anything to rebel against. I have a great life. And to keep my life great, I’d like to avoid unpleasantness while learning about something that interests me and makes my girlfriend happy. Plus the last nanny quit last week so the kids are there alone. That’s not-”
“The children are not alone.”
“You hired another nanny?” Sullivan shook his head. “She won’t last. Better I should go-”
“This one will last.” North hesitated and then said, “I sent Andromeda.”
“Andie?” Sullivan whistled and then grinned. “Ghosts versus Andie. The supernatural is going to get its ass kicked. I didn’t even know she was back in town. When did you talk to her?”
“Today. She’s going down there tomorrow.”
Sullivan smiled. “Called me ‘Southie,’ did she?”
“What?”
“That’s why you called me ‘Southie.’ Andie did it first.”
“Yes,” North said, realizing it was true. Half an hour with Andie and ten years were yesterday. “She sent her regards.”
“She changed much?”
“Her hair’s… different,” North said, remembering her sitting in that chair, bundled up in an awful suit jacket, all those crazy curls yanked back, her face scowling as she argued with him. And then that one lock of hair, sliding down her neck-
“Her hair’s different?” Southie said. “You see your ex-wife for the first time in ten years and that’s all you got?”
“She looked…” Serious. Tense. Her old smile gone. “… quiet. She looked tired.” He shook that thought out of his head. “She was only here for twenty minutes. I didn’t pay that much attention.”
“Twenty minutes in the old days, and she’d have had you on your knees.”
“Southie,” North said repressively.
“I remember the first time I saw her,” Southie went on, ignoring him. “I was supposed to talk you into an annulment, and her old clunker of a car pulled up, and you said, ‘There she is,’ and she got out and came walking toward us, and I knew there wasn’t going to be an annulment. I told you she looked like there was music playing in her head, and you said, ‘Yeah, it’s-’ ”
“ ‘Layla,’ ” North said, seeing her again, moving across the lawn that bright summer day, the bounce in her step translating to the bounce in her hips, everything about her electric and alive and smiling at him…
“So does she still move to ‘Layla’?”
“Yes,” North said, remembering her walking across the carpet to him. “Except now it’s the acoustic version.”
Southie grinned. “I can’t wait to see her again. So we’ll go down this weekend-”
North thought of Andie opening the door and finding Southie and his toothy, microphone-wielding girlfriend on the step with some charlatan ghost expert. “No.”
“Maybe she could use your help,” Southie said. “The two of you used to-”
“She’s getting married again. Now if we’re finished here…” North looked back to his notes as a hint, but when Southie didn’t say anything, he looked up.
“I’m sorry,” Southie said, his face kind. “I really am.”
The twinge North had felt when she’d told him stabbed at him again and he put a lid on it again. “Why? We’ve been divorced for ten years. It’s not as if I thought she was coming back.”
“Yeah, but it’s still a shock. At least it is to me. Maybe I thought she was coming back.”
“Well, she’s not,” North said, more sharply than he’d intended.
“So, who’s the guy? What do we know about him?”
Southie looked serious now, which was always a bad sign.
“Will Spenser. The writer.”
“The true crime guy?” Southie said, raising his eyebrows.
“I think he writes mystery fiction, too.”
“Probably not much difference. What did the McKennas find out about him?”
North gathered his patience. “I did not put a private detective on my ex-wife’s fiancé.”
“Right, she was just here, you haven’t had time. Want me to call Gabe for you?”
“No.”
Southie shook his head. “You know, she used to be family. As far as I’m concerned she still is. We need to look out for her. This guy could have anything in his past. He’s a writer, for Christ’s sake.”
“No,” North said.
“And I should go down and check on her in that house,” Southie went on as if North hadn’t spoken. “I can’t believe you sent her down there without backup. God knows what’s down there.”
“Two kids and a housekeeper. You’re not going.”
Southie sighed. “Kelly’s not going to be happy.”
“Such is life.”
Southie hesitated and the silence stretched out. “All right then,” he said, standing up. “You going to see Andie again?”
“No. You have a good evening.” North flipped the page back to where it had been as a signal for Southie to leave and saw the “Andiana” in the middle of the page again. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Southie said.
“I made a mistake.” North flipped the pad shut, annoyed with himself.
“Sending Andie down there?”
“What?” he said, looking up.
“You think you made a mistake sending Andie down there?”
“No,” North said, and then thought about Andie, down in the wilds of southern Ohio. She might like it. She’d been wandering around ever since they’d divorced, moving someplace new every year, teaching in some really godforsaken places. Maybe that had been his mistake, keeping her in the city. Trying to keep her at all. He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t a mistake. She’ll handle things.”
“Yeah, she will,” Southie said, his voice odd, and when North looked up, he saw Southie regarding him sympathetically. “Maybe you should go down there. Get out of the office, check to make sure she’s all right. Spend a night in the place so you know what it’s like.”
“She’s fine.”
Southie waited a moment and then said quietly, “You could have gone after her, you know.”
North looked at him blankly. “Why would I go after her? She’ll be fine down there.”
“Not now. Then. When she left. You could have gone-”
“No.”
“You ever think maybe that divorce was a mistake?”
“No,” North said, putting as much “you-should-leave-now” in his voice as possible.
“Because I always thought it was,” Southie said. “If you’d gone after her, you could have gotten her back. That’s all she wanted, she was just lonely-”
“Was there anything else?” North said coldly. “Because unlike you, I have work to do.”
“Right. Well, you have a good time with your work,” Southie said, and left, shaking his head.
Damn it. The divorce hadn’t been a mistake. She’d been miserable. He’d been miserable because she was miserable. Going after her wouldn’t have changed that. They were both happier now. He had work to do.
She’d looked so good, warm and round; sounded so good, the old huskiness of her voice brushing down his spine; moved so good, her step still in that old rocking rhythm-
And now she was getting married again. Good for her. Moving on…
He pulled his notebook back in front of him and then thought, Maybe good for her. Because Southie was right, he didn’t know anything about this yahoo she was getting engaged to. She probably didn’t, either. She’d married him after twelve hours of phenomenal sex, she could be lunging into another mistake. And she hadn’t smiled. She’d smiled all the time when they were married. In the beginning.
He picked up the phone and called the detective agency the firm used and ordered a background check on Will Spenser.
Then he flipped open the notebook to go back to work and saw the “Andiana” blot.