Maybe it was time to break it off with Will until she got her head back in the right place. He was a great guy and he deserved better. And she really wasn’t missing him, which wasn’t a good sign.

Later for that, she thought and went out to the university.

At the OSU library, she found a newspaper article on a panel discussion on ghosts. The big name there was the professor from Cincinnati named Boston Ulrich, the guy who’d written the book she’d found at the Grandville library, who’d evidently wowed the crowd with his assertions that ghosts did exist, although not in the ridiculous portrayals in movie and fiction. “They’re like us,” the article quoted him as saying, “except dead.” The buzzkill in the group was another professor, this one named Dennis Graff from Cleveland, who’d sourly asserted that there was no proof of actual hauntings. He was not popular. Andie wrote down his name and found his contact information by digging deeper. Boston Ulrich wasn’t the only writer on ghosts; Dennis Graff had written many dry papers on paranormal phenomena, two of which Andie found in the library, but evidently all of which had the same theme: No Such Thing As Ghosts. It took a lot to make the supernatural dry, but Dennis Graff had managed it. There were also a host of “ghost experts” that Andie was pretty sure would be of no use at all. The best of that bunch, a medium named Isolde Hammersmith, charged nosebleed prices, so somebody must have thought she was good, but the last thing Andie needed was somebody who thought she could talk to ghosts. What she needed was somebody who could explain why ghosts didn’t exist and how somebody was faking them or Andie was hallucinating them or whatever.

She left the library and drove slowly down High Street, trying to avoid hitting any jaywalking students while preoccupied with her options. Maybe a psychiatrist, maybe her mind was playing tricks. Or maybe a detective, the Archers had an agency right there in Columbus they used, so maybe somebody just needed to investigate and find out… Something. There had to be something…

She looked up and realized she’d automatically turned off High and onto Fifth Street, force of habit from when she’d been married to North and made that drive every day, so when she reached Neil Avenue, she turned left, heading south again. But when she neared the big blue Victorian that said ARCHER LEGAL GROUP on the tastefully painted sign out front, she slowed and then pulled over when the car behind her honked.

The light was on back in North’s office. It was almost six but he was in there, she could see the glow from his window. He’d be in there for hours yet probably. The second floor of the house was dark, Lydia must be out, and of course the attic apartment wasn’t lit up; North wasn’t there. I’m not there.

So he was working late behind that damn desk. She hadn’t always hated that desk. There’d been many an evening when she’d gone downstairs from their apartment at six and said, Hey, you have a wife, and shoved his papers on the floor, and he’d kissed her and they’d ended up on that desk, breathing hard. That was a sturdy piece of furniture, which had been a good thing, until the day she’d gone down to see him, and he’d snapped, Not now, I have to finish this…

The door to the house next door opened and Southie came out with the usual bounce in his step, off to have dinner with whatever woman he was chasing or drinks with some pal or something else that would make him happy. Maybe I should have married Southie, she thought, and then realized how awful that would have been. Southie was a sweetheart but she’d have killed him before the year was out just from sheer exasperation at his inability to focus on anything for longer than a month. And he didn’t work. It really was hard to respect a man who didn’t work seriously at something…

Wow, she thought. That came out of nowhere. Maybe that had been part of North’s pull, that he was such a hard worker. There was irony for you.

Southie got in his car and drove away.

She looked back at the light in North’s office. She could go in there and talk to him. She could tell him that they should look into art schools for Carter, she could tell him that Alice would love to meet a lepidopterist although she wouldn’t act like it, she could tell him she thought somebody was playing tricks on her, that she was having weird dreams…

No, she couldn’t tell him about the dreams. And she couldn’t go in there, either. He was working.

She looked at the clock and saw it was almost six-thirty and started the car. She was late, and there was no reason in the world for her to walk through that door again, walking through that door just made her angry.

She made two turns and got back on High Street, irrationally upset, and angry with herself for being irrationally upset.

She had bigger problems than being discarded ten years ago. Focus, she told herself, and turned the car down Frankfort and into German Village and her future husband.

Andie found a parking spot not far from Flo’s house and ran the block and a half to the restaurant. Will was sitting next to the window in the narrow side bay, and his face lit up when he saw her and he waved as she ran by, so when she kissed him and then sat down across from him, breathless, he said, “Easy there, kid.”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, leaning back to catch her breath.

“I’m just glad to see you,” he said, laid-back as ever, the soft overhead light shining on his blond hair, and she thought again what an extremely nice guy he was.

Oh, hell, she thought. I haven’t seen him for over three weeks. I should be thinking of something besides “nice guy.”

“What’s wrong?” he said, his smile fading.

“I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Did you see North? Did he upset you?”

“No, I didn’t see him.” I thought about him, though. She looked at Will and realized that she’d never once felt the same way about him that she felt now for North, even now when it was over and she was never going to be with him again, she’d still been parked outside his house thinking, I could go in there.

“Well, then, let me get you a beer,” Will began.

“No, I have to drive tonight,” Andie said, remembering that long trip home in the dark. “Diet Coke would be great, though.”

Will caught the waitress and asked for a Diet Coke, and Andie picked up the menu. The year they’d been married, North had just ordered a Diet Coke and ice water with whatever he ordered. So if she was late, the drinks were on the table when she got there. It wasn’t important, in fact, it was kind of controlling of him, really a black mark against him…

It had been nice. To have the little stuff like that just… handled.

“Andie?”

If she told Will that she’d like him to order the Diet Coke and water before she got there, he would. He wasn’t a mind reader, for Christ’s sake.

“Andie?”

“What? Oh, sorry. Distracted.” Andie looked at her menu without seeing it. Something was really, really wrong, and it wasn’t ghosts. She put the menu down again and looked at Will, really looked at him.

He was a good guy. Sweet, thoughtful, charming, smart, a really hard worker, she’d fallen for him because he was all those things and because he’d never break her heart the way North had because she didn’t love him that way, that hopeless, helpless, all-consuming passion for somebody that wrecked your life…

“Now I’m getting nervous,” Will said.

She didn’t want that kind of love again. But maybe Will did. Maybe he deserved somebody who loved him that way.

“Andie?”

“It’s just strange coming back here,” she told him.

“To Max and Erma’s?”

“To Columbus.”

“You’ve only been gone three weeks.”