Jennifer Crusie - Maybe This Time

“Thank you,” Andie said to him, looking in the rearview mirror to see his face.

He ignored her.

When they got to the mall in Grandville, he got out of the car and headed for the bookstore. Andie and a silent, glowering Alice went to a bedding store for a blue comforter for Alice and a red-striped one for Carter. When Alice objected to hers, saying, “It doesn’t have sparkles,” they went to a fabric store for some blue sequined chiffon and thread, and after that an office supply store where Alice picked out a sketchbook for Carter, and a set of markers, a big pad of quarter-inch grid paper, some pencils with skulls on them, and a pencil sharpener, all without interacting with Andie in any way until Andie offered her a set of Hello Kitty pencils. The scorn on Alice’s face was searing.

They moved on and bought T-shirts and black-and-white-striped leggings and a stretchy black jersey flounced skirt for Alice who made gagging sounds, but once they began on Carter’s clothes, the little girl got serious, meticulously choosing what he needed. Shopping therapy, Andie thought, and dragged her to a home store where she bought white paint to take the pink out of Alice’s room. “I want black, ” Alice said, the first thing she’d said since they’d left the car, and Andie said, “You can draw on the white with your markers,” and watched Alice almost smile. It was a little ghoulish. Then they went to the bookstore.

“Is that your kid?” the store clerk said, when she walked in. He was pointing at Carter, so she said, “Yes.” “And you’re going to buy all these books?” the clerk said, pointing to the stacks on the counter. Andie sorted through them and saw comics and books on drawing and books on drawing comics. “Yes, I’m going to buy all these books,” Andie said, flashing North’s plastic, and a few minutes later Alice came up with two books on butterflies, and Andie added them to the pile.

When they were done and had everything loaded into the car, Andie said, “Groceries,” and Alice started to scream, “No, no, no, NO, NO, NO,” until Carter said, “Chill. We have to eat.” Any illusion Andie had of them picking out meals together was dashed when Carter got in the car, and Alice followed him. Andie moved up and down the grocery aisles with speed and precision and was back in the car in half an hour.

“Now,” she said when she got in the car. “Home.”

She turned on the car and the tape player kicked in, startling her. She recognized the song and turned to the back seat as “Somebody’s Baby” bounced out of the speakers. “Did you put this tape in?”

Carter shrugged.

“There’s a whole thing of them,” Alice said, scowling. “Right here. Nobody was using them. I didn’t hurt anything. It’s your tape.”

Andie craned her neck and saw an old box under Alice’s feet, the tape case she’d shoved under the driver’s seat on a road trip a couple of years before and then forgotten about in favor of her CD player. Alice kicked it and then stared at her defiantly, and Andie hit eject and caught the tape as it slid into her hand. It had “Andie’s Music” written on it in North’s strong block caps.

Mix tapes. They really had been young. Then it came back to her, he hadn’t given it to her, just slid it into his car player one night. “You made me a mix tape?” she’d said, and he said, “No, this is just songs you like.” She shook her head but Alice said, “Put that back in,” so she did, and Jackson Browne sang about the guys on the corner as Andie pulled out of the parking lot. He’d been singing about the guys on the corner when she’d first met North. Our song, she thought, and almost ejected it again. Avoiding old memories warred with avoiding Alice’s screams, and Alice won.

“Why does he try to shut his eyes?” Alice asked.

“Who?” Andie said.

“Because she’s so pretty,” Carter said, deep in a book again, and Andie realized they were talking about Jackson Browne, singing his troubles on the tape.

“Why wouldn’t he want to look at her if she’s pretty?” Alice said.

“Because she’s going to make him feel like a dork and then dump him,” Carter said, still in his book.

Whoa, Andie thought. That was pretty cynical for twelve.

“She’s not nice,” Alice said.

“He doesn’t know that,” Andie said. “He hasn’t asked her yet. If he asks her, maybe she’ll dance with him.” And maybe go home with him and marry him the next day. It happens.

“He should ask her,” Alice said, and moved on to another topic.

Andie listened to them, Alice asking questions and Carter answering them even though he was trying to read, talking to each other as they ignored her completely. They were a family of two, screwed up maybe, but not screwed up in their relationship with each other. Maybe that’s why they were still moderately sane in that creepy house with that wack-job housekeeper. They must have been miserable when Carter was sent away to school. A school that immediately turfed him…

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.”