She bit her lip and nodded, and he got up and went around the table to her, and she rose up out of her chair to meet him.
“It’s going to be all right,” he told her, and she put her arms around him, and he thought, Because this time I am not going to fuck this up.
Then Alice came through the kitchen door and said, “I’m hungry now, I’m starving, what are you doing?” and Andie let go of him to make dinner.
“Were you hugging Andie?” Alice demanded.
“Yes,” North said. “I’m going to be doing it a lot, so get used to it.”
“We’ll see,” Alice said darkly, and he left her to help Andie with dinner-“No broccoli!”-so he could sort out the rest of the wingnuts in the house.
Andie walked her way through cooking and serving dinner like an automaton, trying to find her way through the I-was-drugged and There-are-ghosts paradox. She believed North, North would never lie to her, but she believed May, too.
Except that everything that May had said about wanting North, that was her, too. She’d been isolated and sexually frustrated and she had wanted North, she was pretty sure she’d taken the job so she could stay in touch with him, and that was May all over. That girl with the curly hair like hers had been in love with North the way she’d been in love ten years before. May danced all the time the way she had danced ten years ago, the way she’d started dancing with Alice in the kitchen again. Maybe the hallucinations were just her way of getting back to the reality that she loved North. Maybe seeing May was seeing herself, the way she was supposed to be, carefree and dancing and unashamedly in love with North Archer.
If that was true, everything was good. May hadn’t possessed her, she’d just been so drugged on brandy that her subconscious had tried to drag her into that bedroom while her conscious mind fought it because it was such a bad idea, like a nightmare while she was awake.
Maybe Kelly hadn’t been possessed, maybe she’d just made the rounds to solidify her career and then lied about it.
Maybe everything was all right. Maybe all she had to do was get her grip on reality again. Common sense told her there were no ghosts. The salvia had convinced her otherwise, but that was over. There were no ghosts.
“Are you okay?” Flo said to her anxiously in the sitting room when dinner was over. “You haven’t said a word.”
“Yeah,” Andie said, trying a smile. “I think everything’s okay.”
“Well, I could use a drink,” Kelly said. “Where’s the brandy?”
“Gone,” Southie said. “But there’s a case of beer in the car. Every bottle sealed with its own little cap.”
“Aren’t they always that way?” Kelly said, confused, and Andie left them all and went into the kitchen to think.
She turned on the radio, pulled out her baking stuff, and began on the six bananas she had that were sufficiently brown to make bread.
North had to be right. It had all been a hallucination. Because, rationally, ghosts did not exist.
She let out her breath. It was okay. Everything was okay. Reality was back.
Once she accepted it, the relief was overwhelming. So was the anger-if North hadn’t turfed Crumb, she’d have strangled her with her apron-but there weren’t ghosts, she’d just been drugged, everything was fine…
The radio blared, “And now here’s Kathy Troccoli, going out to Steve from Jen… ‘Everything Changes’!”
“Yes,” Andie said to herself, and picked up her bowl full of bananas and bopped around the kitchen, mashing as she went.
May had been right. No, she had been right. Dancing made you know you were alive. Life was good. Life was normal. If she hadn’t lost her grip on reality, if she hadn’t lost her common sense, she wouldn’t have been so crazy the past month. And now she wasn’t crazy anymore. Thanks to North, she wasn’t crazy at all.
“I’ll never be the same,” she sang, as she dumped in egg and vanilla and butter and then mixed them as she danced. Fifteen minutes and four song dedications later, two loaves of banana bread were in the oven, and when the DJ said, “And here’s an oldie, going out from Joe to Brenda…” Andie belted out “Hurt So Good” using her pepper mill as a microphone as she danced around the kitchen because that’s what normal people did when they sang to the radio.
Then she looked up and saw North, leaning in the doorway, holding a longneck beer bottle and grinning at her, and she thought, That’s normal, too, and kept dancing and singing, happier than she’d been in years.
Ten years.
The music stopped, and North said, “Southie sent me in here. He didn’t tell me it was a concert,” but he was smiling at her in that old way that said, I don’t care what you do, I just want to be next to you when you do it.
“I’m happy,” Andie said, smiling back as she put down the pepper mill. “I’ve decided you’re right, it was all just a hallucination because I was here all alone, and from now on I’m not going to be crazy, I’m not going to lose my grip on reality, I am going to be smart and sensible.”
“Okay,” North said, looking not sure about it. “You got all of that from finding out there aren’t ghosts?”
“I really believed there were. I talked to the kids as if there really were ghosts. They must have thought I was nuts. And then you saved me.” She beamed at him. “Plus, you saved Alice and Carter from Crazy Andie, which means extra points for you.”
“What do I get for extra points?” North said, his eyes steady on her, and she felt her blood heat from relief and happiness, but mostly from looking at him, strong and tall and beautiful in the doorway, feeling the way she’d used to before everything had gone wrong.
Which didn’t mean it would go wrong again.
“Listen,” she said sensibly. “We can’t go back to where we were. We’ve changed too much, there’s too much at stake with the kids-”
“I don’t want to go back to where we were,” he said, and she thought, Oh, and felt depressed. Then he said, “I want to start something new,” and she said, “Oh,” and thought, Don’t lose your grip here.
“Well,” she began, trying to be rational about the whole thing, and then the DJ on the radio said, “This one goes out to Andie, from North. North of what, I don’t know. Okay, then, here you go, Andie…” and the first bars of Clapton’s acoustic “Layla” began.
North looked as surprised as she did. “Not me.”
“Southie sent you in here, right? Southie called that in.” Clapton’s guitar distracted her with that low, swinging rhythm, and she took a deep breath. Sexiest song ever. “Why ‘Layla’?” she asked him, trying to get her mind back to reality.
He grinned, and she said, “Tell me,” and he shook his head and crooked two of his fingers at her.
Like I’d just come because you called, she thought, but he was moving toward her, and she met him halfway without even thinking about it.
It’s just dancing, she thought as he reached for her. Nothing crazy about this.
“I’ve missed you,” he said as he slid his arm around her waist, and she shivered and said, “I’ve missed you, too,” and he pulled her close and rocked her to that perfect rhythm, pulling her hips to his as her blood heated, and she didn’t miss a beat. Ten years went away and they were dancing in the attic again, everything was the way it was…
No it’s not, she thought, but he was there, and she was glad, she never wanted to stop dancing with him, never wanted to lose his hands sliding over her, never wanted to leave him…
“Andie,” he whispered, and she knew the question without him asking.
“No,” she whispered back. “The place is full of people, we’d get caught.”
He smiled down at her, rocking her to the beat, and she thought, If it wouldn’t be so insane, I’d say yes, I would, I would.
“Andie,” he said, and she put her forehead on his chest.
“No,” she said, “we’re in the real world now, we have to think about the consequences,” but his breath was warm on her neck as he kissed her there, his hands hot on her as he pulled her hips against his, and she thought, Don’t lose your grip on reality, that never works for you.