Alice’s blue princess who danced.

Andie drove on slowly, trying to see better, but as she rounded the curve, the headlights hit the dancing girl for a second and she wasn’t there anymore, and when Andie drove on, the lawn was empty, even after the headlights had passed.

“I’m not asleep,” Andie said out loud, her heart pounding, “and that was a ghost.”

More than that, it was a ghost Alice knew. Just like Alice knew the woman across the pond and the man on the tower. If she was hallucinating, she was hallucinating with Alice.

“This can’t be happening,” Andie said, trying to jar herself back to reality with the sound of her own voice. It was late, she was tired, she was upset, she was…

That was a ghost.

She drove on around the house automatically, thinking furiously. Tomorrow she was calling the experts. And talking to Alice. And…

“Oh, Christ,” Andie said, and parked the car, looking for ghosts everywhere before she bolted for the house.

Six

Andie spent a sleepless night expecting to see the blue girl at any moment and fighting the urge to call North-There are ghosts!-and when the sun came up, she wasn’t sure if she was grateful she’d spent the night without a visit from the girl or not. She was awake so the girl must have been a dream, but she hadn’t been asleep at the wheel so had that been a hallucination?

We have to get out of here, Andie thought, and went down to the kitchen to begin talking Carter and Alice into a move to Columbus, but they didn’t come down for breakfast, and when she looked in their rooms, they weren’t there, either. She finally tracked them down in the library.

“Hey,” she said. “Breakfast.”

Alice stared at Andie, an odd look on her face, something between anger and relief.

“We thought you left,” Carter said.

“I did, I went to the university library in Columbus.” Andie came into the room and sat down on a chair closer to them. “I was home by midnight last night.”

“Mrs. Crumb said you weren’t coming back,” Carter said.

“And you didn’t tuck me in,” Alice said, wounded. “Nobody tucked me in.”

“Well, that’s the last time Mrs. Crumb babysits,” Andie said, feeling the now-familiar urge to kick the old lady. “Of course I was coming back. I told you I was coming back when I left. Want some breakfast?”

Alice looked outraged. “And you didn’t leave me your skirt with the sequins and you promised.”

“I came back,” Andie said. “That was only if I left for good. What is it with you guys?”

Alice stood up and went for the door, but Carter hung back. “What were you looking up in the library?”

“Ghosts,” Andie said, watching for his reaction.

Carter nodded and headed for the kitchen, too.

“See, I thought you’d be more surprised,” Andie called after him, and went to fix them pancakes, which Alice smothered in butter and syrup and slurped down. Andie brought up moving to Columbus as artfully as possible, but Alice said, “No,” and went on eating and Carter ignored her, so she regrouped. When the kids were done and back in the library working, she called the two numbers in her notes. For Boston Ulrich in Cincinnati, the author of the not-much-use ghostbuster book, she got an answering machine and left a message. For Dennis Graff in Cleveland, the there’s-no-such-thing-as-ghosts guy, the phone just rang until she finally gave up. “Damn it,” she said to nobody, and checked that Carter and Alice were doing their morning work. “I should get a cookie for this,” Alice said. “Let’s see how it all works out,” Andie told her, and went upstairs to find Mrs. Crumb. The whole idea of ghosts seemed ludicrous in the daylight, but it was going to be night again and when it hit, she was going to be prepared.

Andie found the housekeeper in the upstairs hall, dumping Carter’s wastebasket into a trash bag. “I need to talk to you,” she said, and startled the old lady so that she dropped the basket, spilling papers to the floor.

Andie bent to pick them up. “Why did you tell the kids I wasn’t coming back?” she said, and then stopped to look at the drawings Carter had thrown out.

Mixed in with the copies of comic book characters were amazing rough portraits, capturing Alice laughing, something Andie had never seen, and Mrs. Crumb looking surly, and…

Andie straightened.

And the blue girl who’d visited her every night and danced on the lawn.

“Who is this?” she said, holding up the page for Mrs. Crumb to see, the blue girl with her wildly curling hair and big eyes and that generous laughing mouth…

“That’s nobody,” Mrs. Crumb said, and picked up the garbage bag and walked away, leaving the mess on the floor behind her.

“Right,” Andie said, and went downstairs to the library to find Carter, but the only one there was Alice, reading a butterfly book in the window seat. Andie held up the drawing. “Alice, who is this?”

“That’s Aunt May,” Alice said. “Carter is very good at drawing.”

“Yes, he is,” Andie said automatically, and looked at the drawing again, a little breathless. “This is the aunt who took care of you?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “She died.”

“Right.” Andie sat down next to the window seat.

The woman she’d been talking to in her dreams was a ghost, that’s all there was to it. Ghost. She’d never seen her before, never seen a picture of her before and yet…

“Are you okay?” Alice said. “You look weird.”

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Can I have that?” Alice said. “The picture of Aunt May. Can I have it?”

“Of course,” Andie said, and handed it over. “Alice, I’m sorry your aunt died.”

Alice nodded, not looking at her.

“Do you talk to her?”

“She’s dead, Andie,” Alice said, sounding very adult.

“Because she talks to me at night.”

Alice blinked at her. “Maybe you’re dreaming.”

“And I saw her on the lawn last night as I drove home.”

“You were very, very tired.” Alice looked back at her butterfly book. “I’d like to read now, please.”

Andie sat back, frustrated. Pushing Alice to admit there were ghosts was wrong, even if Alice was talking to her dead aunt every night. That’s who had to be sitting in that damn rocking chair. Alice didn’t have an imaginary friend, she had a dead aunt.

“She was really young,” Andie said, remembering how she’d danced. May. How May had danced.

Alice nodded but didn’t look up.

I need to know more, Andie thought, but not from Alice, not if she didn’t want to talk. “Is there a family photo album?”

“In the cabinet by the fireplace.” Alice dropped her butterfly book and picked up Carter’s drawing. “You don’t need to see a picture. This is what she looked like.”

“She was very pretty.”

“She was bee-you-tee-ful,” Alice said, looking sadly at the drawing. “And she laughed and she danced. She said when you stop dancing, you’re dead.” Alice touched the drawing.

“She must have been fun to live with.”

“Sometimes.” Alice put the drawing inside her butterfly book and closed it. “I did my work. Can I go to the kitchen and get a cookie?”

“Yes,” Andie said, not interested in fighting a sugar battle while her head was exploding and Alice was coping with death.

It took her a while to find the photo album, stuck in the back of a cabinet with books piled in front of it. But when she pulled it out and turned to the last filled pages, there was her ghost girl, vibrantly alive, laughing at the camera as she hugged Alice and Carter close, both of them smiling, which made Andie’s heart hurt, that they’d lost those smiles. She flipped to the earlier pages, Carter as a young boy standing next to his dad, leaning on his leg, Alice in her father’s arms. Their father looked kind and more than that, he looked like he loved them, cuddling Alice close, his arm draped comfortably across Carter’s shoulders. They’d gotten a good start before he’d died. And then Aunt May had done her best, too, because they’d smiled again.