He smiled at her cheerfully: happy, uncomplicated Southie.

“Southie,” she began, and then Kelly came in looking hungover and said, “So, are we ready?”

“For what?” Andie said, looking at her with distaste.

Kelly frowned at the table. “We need candles,” she told Southie. “Go find a lot of them.”

He nodded and ambled off, and Kelly smiled brightly at Andie. “Now we’ll be filming this, and I think it would be really interesting if the children were here.”

“Over my dead body,” Andie said.

“Okay then,” Kelly said brightly. “I’ll just interview them before-”

“You will not go near my kids.”

“Your kids?” Kelly arched her eyebrows. “So you and North are adopting them?”

“Stay away from the children,” Andie said, and the note of dead seriousness must have soaked in through Kelly’s big hair because she lost her smile.

“Well, really, Andie, I’m just trying to give as unbiased a report on the ghosts as possible. The children have lived in this house longer than anyone except Mrs. Crumb. They’ll have many insights.” She flashed her toothy smile again. “So you see-”

“Suppose I give you a choice,” Andie said, watching her. “You can film the séance or you can interview the kids.”

“Oh.” Kelly brightened. “Well, I’d prefer both, of course, but if I had to choose, interviews are always better, human interest and all, and the kids are so bright that I’m sure my viewers will prefer that.” She patted Andie’s arm. “I’ll take the kids.”

Andie bit back the urge to snarl. “That’s what I thought. You don’t give a rat’s ass about ghosts, you’re here to get at those kids. I don’t know why, but trust me, if I find you anywhere near them, I’ll have your ass out on the driveway faster than Southie had you in bed last night.”

Kelly drew back, outraged, and Andie plunged on.

“You cannot talk to them, you cannot approach them, hell, I don’t want you waving to them across the Great Hall. They are forever off limits to you.”

Kelly stared at her for a long minute and then said, “I would have thought a woman would have more sympathy for me.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to rebuild my career,” Kelly said, stepping closer. “You make one mistake and it’s gone-”

“You made a woman throw up on television.”

“-but all I need is one great story and I could be back again. I just want to do a little ghost story, Andie, is that so much to ask?” She put her hand on Andie’s arm. “One woman to another?”

“You go near my kids and I promise you, you’ll throw up on TV.”

Kelly pulled her hand back. “So that offer of the kids or the séance wasn’t an offer at all. I took your offer as a contract, and a verbal contract is binding, you know.”

“So is my foot up your ass,” Andie said, as Southie came back into the Great Hall with a box of candles.

“Mrs. Crumb gave me these,” he said. “We’re all set.”

“Would you like to discuss legally binding verbal contracts with my lawyer?” Andie said to Kelly, gesturing to Southie. “Or would you like to quit now?”

Kelly glared at them both and left the room.

“You want to catch me up?” Southie said to Andie.

“I won’t let her near the kids,” Andie said.

“Of course not. She’d probably suck their souls out.” Southie started to take pillar candles out of the box.

“Isn’t this the woman you’re sleeping with?”

“Yes. She sucked my soul out last night.”

“That I didn’t need to know,” Andie said, feeling nauseated.

“Oh, no, I meant the weird, cold sex, not that she… although she did that, too.”

“Southie, I’m having a bad day-”

“Mother kept talking about her teeth but I never really thought about them until she was-”

“Southie!”

“Now I can’t stop thinking about them.”

“Southie, please stop.”

“I’m just saying, that’s a scary woman.” He pulled out a Precious Moments candle and looked at it, frowning, and then put it on the table.

“So you’re not going to sleep with her anymore,” Andie said, thinking, Good, I don’t have to tell him she was doing the cameraman, too. That’ll cool May’s jets.

“Of course I’ll sleep with her again,” Southie said. “I’ll keep the lights off. Can’t see her teeth then.”

Andie shook her head and helped him unload the last of the candle assortment onto the table, and when they were done, he hesitated, and then he said, “You know North still loves you, right?”

Andie stepped back. “What?”

“I’m not going to tell you there haven’t been other women because there have been. Quite a few, to tell you the truth.”

“Good for him,” Andie said, frowning at him while she ignored the little leap her heart had taken when he’d said “still loves you.” “Although not information I really wanted. I have other problems right now-”

“But it’s always going to be you for him,” Southie said, sounding mystified. “I do not understand this one-woman-for-life thing, but then we’re different, North and me.”

“Really? I never noticed.” Andie jerked her head toward the dining room, pretending she didn’t care. “I have to get the chairs. Want to help?”

“I’m trying to help,” Southie said, sounding exasperated. “If you and North would stop being so damn civilized and just have that knock-down-drag-out fight you’ve been spoiling for for ten years-”

“We’ve been fighting.”

“You’ve been bitching at each other. You need to just let it all out. And then everything will be fine.”

“You’re delusional,” Andie said, and went to get the chairs.

“The makeup sex would be phenomenal,” Southie called after her.

The sex was always phenomenal, Andie thought. But now there are ghosts, so no, thanks.

She picked up the first dining room chair and carried it into the Great Hall as Southie went in to get another one, trying really hard not to feel good about the idea that North still loved her. Southie was such a romantic, it was probably all in his head. Where it should have stayed.

When he came back, she said, “You annoy me.”

“Good. I’ll stop when you and North get back together.”

“Never gonna happen,” Andie said.

“Then why are you wearing his ring?”

Andie looked down at the ring she’d forgotten she was wearing. “Because I’m pretending to be married to him.”

“And why are you doing that?”

“Because…” She glared at Southie. “Hey, this is none of your business.” She didn’t have to explain anything to Southie, especially now, when she was trying to evict ghosts.

She went back to the dining room for more seating.

“Okay, fine, tell me about the ghosts,” Southie said, following her, and grateful for the change in subject, she told him everything as they set up the séance.

The medium arrived at six, just after Andie settled the kids in the library with Coke, cheese sandwiches, carrots and ranch dressing, potato chips, and strict instructions not to come into the Great Hall for any reason. Then she heard the doorknocker and went to get it, but Kelly beat her to it, letting in a lot of the storm along with her hired ghost wrangler.

“This is Isolde Hammersmith,” Kelly said, as if she’d just invented her and they should applaud.

Andie wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting a medium to look like-probably something between Madame Arcati and Miss Havisham. Kelly’s medium was somewhere between forty and death with a face like a hatchet: high forehead, high cheekbones, long nose, long chin, the verticality broken only by Cleopatra eyes, narrow green leopard-print glasses, and lips so huge and red they practically ran from ear to ear even though Isolde was not smiling. “Fucking Motel Six,” she said to Kelly, pulling a wildly patterned scarf from her explosion of black, teased Farrah hair and shaking the rain from it. “Fucking storm.”