Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie. 342 p.
Ten years after their divorce, Andie visits her ex-husband North to return all of his unpaid alimony checks. She's moving on with her life, getting engaged to another man and starting over. But North asks for a favor first: could Andie spend a month downstate with North's wards, two orphaned children who refuse to leave their house and who've frightened off their last few nannies...one of whom swears the house is haunted. Andie, a sensible woman who does not believe in ghosts, plans to get the kids out of there and then move on to her new life with Will. But the house, and the kids, are weirder than she expected. And then one of the ghosts starts talking to her....Fast-moving, funny, and warm, featuring a classic Crusie heroine intent on fixing what's wrong with her family--not her birth family, but the family she has constructed for herself.
Crusie was inspired by Turn of the Screw--here's what she says about it: It was Henry James’s fault. I loved The Turn of the Screw, taught it over and over again, but I always wanted to give his governess a name and a second chance. So in the back of my mind, there was this nagging idea that I should do my version of the story, not because James’s version isn’t wonderful, but because I wanted a crack at it. I was fixated on the governess, but you get the ghosts as a package deal so about a quarter of the way through, I thought, Oh, damn, now I have to write ghosts, and went for it.
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