Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

front rooms and the back were staircases—the narrow servant’s flight behind a discreet door on the left and the massive formal stone staircase through an equally massive stone arch on the right. A long, white-paneled, red-carpeted entrance hall separated the rooms on the right from the Great Hall, but otherwise it was pretty much two rooms in front and four in back all the way up. Every room in the place was covered in dust, the paintings on the walls looking muddy and faded in the gloom and the bedrooms on the second floor doing a nice business in cobwebs and the occasional dead mouse. Jessica the ancient blue-faced doll would have fit right in there. Still, Andie was cheered by her ability to navigate the stone barn she was living in, so when she had the scope of the place, she went back to the library where Carter had folded his gangling body into a deep, red-cushioned window seat.
    Tauruses like things,
Flo had said, and even though astrology was a crock, Andie thought,
Books.
    â€œI’m going out to shop,” she told him. “Want to come along? There’s a bookstore.”
    â€œThere’s no bookstore in New Essex,” he said without looking up.
    â€œIs that the little town at the end of this road? There was a shopping center I passed on the highway about half an hour before I got to New Essex. It had a bookstore.”
    He stopped reading. “Grandville?”
    â€œYes.”
    He nodded and went back to his book, and Andie took that for assent and went upstairs to find Alice, wondering what sequined promise would lure a little Scorpio out of the house.
    Alice was in the nursery with her Walkman, dancing and singing “Gloria” at the top of her voice. She caught Andie watching and stopped, her colorless skin and straight white-blond hair making her look like a little ghost herself, almost translucent in the morning sun.
    â€œI’m going to town to shop,” Andie said. “If you come along, I’ll get you a new bedspread. With sequins.”
    â€œNo,” Alice said automatically.
    â€œCarter’s coming.”
    â€œNo he’s not. We don’t leave here.”
    Andie came into the nursery and sat down on the ancient rocker near the TV. “Why?”
    â€œWe belong here.”
    â€œAlice, it’s just for the day. We’ll be back for dinner.”
    â€œThat’s what
she
said,” Alice snapped, her stolid little face growing grimmer.
    â€œShe who?”
    â€œNanny Joy. She said we’d just go for the day and then she kept driving and driving and driving, and when Carter said where are we going, she said we were going to a new home.” Alice’s hands were curled into fists now, her face even whiter than before. “I’m not going.
I’m not going! I’m NOT GOING! NO NO NO NO NO NO
—”
    Andie said calmly, “Alice, all my stuff is here. I wouldn’t leave my stuff.”
    â€œNO NO NO NO NO NO—”
    â€œAll my clothes are in my room,” Andie went on. “Boxes of your school supplies. My sewing stuff. I didn’t bring all of that here yesterday to leave it today.”
    Alice closed her mouth and regarded Andie darkly.
    â€œDo you want to see the boxes?”
    Alice thought about it and nodded.
    â€œOkay then.” Andie stood up and held out her hand to the little girl who ignored it to march toward the door to Andie’s room. She wrenched open the door and stalked in, and Andie followed her in and opened the closet door. Alice came closer to stare inside, suspicion in every cell of her body. “I’m unpacked,” Andie told her. “Why would I do that if I was going to take you away?”
    Alice ignored her to kick the sewing box.
    â€œSo do you want to come with Carter and me to go shopping?”
    Alice set her lower teeth in her upper lip, thinking hard. Then she turned and marched back into the nursery.
    Andie grabbed her purse and keys and