Little Secrets (11 page)

“You're a jerk!”

Still laughing, Ginny squeezed the lighter's trigger and headed for the fuse box. Inside, a flash of orange showed her exactly which switch had been tripped. She clicked it over to the right position.

Three things happened at the same time.

One, the furnace kicked on with a whoosh and a flash of blue light. Two, a hulking figure loomed up from around the wall at the bottom of the stairs. And three, Ginny dropped the lighter and plunged them into blackness.

Chapter Fourteen

Peg shrieked; Ginny did too, more in response to her sister's scream than her own fear. In the dark, something shuffled in front of them. The shadows shifted. Ginny reacted instantly, hands fisting, then pistoning out as the dark shape got within reach.

She connected with something soft and felt the familiar skid of corduroy against her hand, but too late—her other fist was striking like she thought she was some sort of Muhammad Ali. Only the sting like a bee part, though, no floating like a butterfly. She'd punched her husband in the face, and he went down to the concrete floor with a muffled shout.

She knew it was Sean because of the jacket and the sound of his muffled grunt, and because, who else would have come down the stairs to find her? With Peg still hollering and Sean letting out a few choice words of his own, Ginny tried to think about how far she was from the dangling light cord and if she dared risk trying to find it.

“Shut up, everyone!” she shouted. “Peg, it's Sean. Sean, honey, are you okay?”

“You busted me in the eye!”

“I'm sorry.” She bit back a laugh, her hands still out, still blind, though now she could make out things a little better in the faint blue light from the furnace pilot light. “Baby, I'm so sorry.”

Sean got to his feet, more of a felt presence than seen. “What happened to the light?”

“I dropped it. Can you find the cord?” Ginny didn't dare move.

Peg had stopped screaming but her breath was shuddery and she was clutching Ginny's arm so hard she was going to leave a bruise. Peg was lucky Ginny hadn't punched her in the face with that roundhouse strike, and the thought of it made Ginny laugh all the harder. It was terrible, and her laughter definitely had a sobbing edge to it, but there it was.

“Hold on. Don't move,” Sean said.

In the next minute, the light from the bare bulb blinded them. Ginny winced. Peg let out a mutter of gratitude. Sean put his hands on his hips and glared at them both.

“The fuck were you doing down here?”

“The circuit breaker popped again,” Ginny said.

“You should've waited for me to fix it.”

“Uh…look, I really need to get going,” Peg said.

Silence. Ginny's sister hugged her and patted Sean's shoulder. She gave Ginny a sympathetic look but ducked away, up the stairs, leaving her alone. Ginny couldn't blame her, really. The temperature in the basement had dropped by about fifty degrees at Sean's statement, and it had nothing to do with the furnace.

He waited until the sound of Peg's footsteps upstairs went out the front door. “You can't be coming down here in the dark, Ginny.”

“What was I supposed to do, sit and wait for you to get home? I thought you had class tonight anyway.”

“It was cancelled.”

She made a face. “And…you told me that? I was supposed to just somehow intuit it? I should've just waited upstairs in the dark and the cold for you to get home?”

“You could've sent Peg down here—”

Ginny pushed past him, heading for the stairs. “It's my house, not hers. I wasn't going to ask my sister to fix my circuit breaker. Besides, it's not like I'm stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid,” he told her in the kitchen when he caught up to her. “Hey. Stop. Look at me.”

She did, glaring.

“I was worried when I got home and you weren't here. That's all. I worry.”

She softened a little toward him. Just a little. “I was fine. If you hadn't come down just then, it would've been even better.”

His smile quirked. “I really scared the shit out of Peg, huh?”

“No kidding. I'm surprised she didn't pee herself.” Ginny smiled too.

“Why didn't you use a flashlight, at least?”

“Why didn't you?” she pointed out and waited for him to get it.

“I didn't have… Ah.”

Ginny lifted a brow and made a show of peering around the arched doorway into the dining room. “Yeah. We have one, huh? Right?”

“I think so.” Sean sighed. “You want me to unpack those boxes.”

“It would be nice. C'mon, we can do it together. You can lift all the heavy things. I'll tell you where they go.” She smiled again, watching his face work as he tried to think of a way to get out of the task.

“Fine.” He sighed again. “Fine, fine, fine.”

But though they unpacked four or five boxes and even managed to shift the furniture around at least sort of the way she wanted it to stay permanently, they found no flashlights. She did convince Sean he needed to run the vacuum cleaner, though, to get up all the bits and pieces of packing paper and dust that had been inevitably kicked up.

“It's way too strenuous,” she told him with a very wicked grin as she plopped onto the couch with a book in her hand. “You really should do it.”

Grumbling, Sean looked like he meant to argue, but wisely thought better of it. He plugged in the vacuum, a pricey model he'd given her as a gift one year for her birthday—her birthday, for the love of all things holy! Which she'd never really let him live down.

The instant he toed the On switch, the lights went out.

“Shit,” Sean said.

In the dark, Ginny laughed.

Chapter Fifteen

“Let me go first. You're gonna love it, I know it. Happy anniversary.” Sean pressed a square package into Ginny's hands and stepped back with a grin. “Go on. Open it.”

She studied the wrapping carefully. She loved surprises. Loved getting presents. And though they'd both agreed that this year they wouldn't spend any money on each other for their anniversary since they'd just moved into the house, she'd been unable to help herself from buying him something she knew, absolutely knew he wanted. This package in her hands was just the right size for an iPad, which she'd been none too subtly hinting she wanted since her last birthday, when he'd presented her with a vacuum cleaner instead.

Ginny smoothed her fingers over the paper, enjoying the anticipation but feigning concern. “I thought we said we weren't going to do anything for each other.”

“I know, I know, but I saw this and knew you had to have it. Go on,” Sean said. “Open it up. Let's see.”

So she did, sliding her fingers beneath the tape and pretending she meant to fold back the paper in one piece, the way she knew drove him crazy, because Sean liked to tear into gifts and leave the wrapping strewn all over in shreds. She laughed when he danced forward to take it from her, holding it back and away.

“Mine,” she told him, and ripped the paper while holding her breath with excitement.

She had to stare at what was inside for a full minute before she remembered to let out the breath. Then another, her eyes not quite connecting with her brain. The paper slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and drifted to the floor where Sean crunched it under his feet as he shifted to lean over her shoulder.

“See? You plug it in and it charges up automatically. You can set it to act like a night-light or just when the power goes out, it will come on. And it's a two-pack, so we can put one down here and one upstairs.”

He looked so proud, so gleeful all she could do was nod and smile like this two-pack of flashlights from the warehouse club was indeed the very best anniversary gift she'd ever received. “Wow. Yeah. It's…wow.”

Sean, clearly pleased with himself, took the package from her to open it, demonstrating how she could plug it into any outlet, how the light-sensitive function worked. How the flashlight itself fit neatly into the holder in any direction, not needing to be lined up any special way.

“It's great,” Ginny said around her disappointment. She reminded herself they
had
said they weren't going to buy each other gifts. And that would've been better, she thought. To get nothing because they'd said they were doing nothing, than to get…

“I just want to make sure you're never left in the dark again,” Sean said.

Only a selfish shrew could be angry or disappointed when he said something like that. And only a vindictive bitch could take pleasure in seeing his face when she took him down the hall and pulled the sheet off the present she'd had to be so careful to keep a surprise. Ginny guessed she must be both, because she was still a little bitter when she gave Sean his gift.

“What the…” He stared at it. Then her. Jaw dropped. Then he grinned and went to his knees in front of it like a little kid. “Holy shit. How did you do this?”

“I had it delivered. Do you like it?”

He put a hand on the 42-inch flat screen's box and looked down with a marveling shake of his head. “Like it? I fucking love it.”

Of course she'd known he'd love it—he'd talked with longing about replacing their ancient television for at least a few years. Sort of the way she'd been talking about wanting an iPad. But hearing the joy in his voice, Ginny could no longer be upset that she'd made such an effort when he hadn't made one of equal size…or expense, she admitted to herself, thinking of his reasons for choosing the flashlights. And when it came right down to it, money should be no measure of someone's affection.

“I'm glad,” she said, and meant it. “Let's get it set up, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked up at her, eyes alight, then got to his feet to hug her hard. “You're the best.”

She was far from that, and nobody knew that better than she did. “I'll go clean up in the kitchen. Then we can watch a movie or something?”

“Yeah.” Sean was already turning to the TV stand, unhooking all the cords and wires from the old set. “That would be great.”

The best. She was the best. Ginny cleaned off the table and loaded the dishwasher. She refilled the Brownies' bowl with wrapped mini candy bars this time, since Sean had seen fit to eat the peanuts and chocolate-covered raisins. She took the fine-linen cloth off the cheap card table and tossed it in the washer, and she set the candelabra back on the old dresser she used as a buffet. She put away the leftovers, making sure to package them in lunch-sized portions for Sean to take to work, because she was the best wife.

The best wife.

Chapter Sixteen

There's a lot of music at this party. Steady thumping. Lots of bass. Someone's strung up colored lights, orange and purple and green. Some are hung with pumpkins or ghosts. Some blink, though not in time with the music.

Ginny knows this place. This party. If she catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she'll see she's wearing a Little Red Riding Hood outfit. Blue-checkered dress, short, with a flouncy skirt and petticoat. White anklet socks. Red cape with a hood. She wore it because her roommate, Tina, convinced her that dressing slutty was the only way to attend a college Halloween party. Ginny'd planned to go dressed as a baseball player, in her brother's old uniform.

“Not cool,” Tina says when Ginny tells her. “Baseball players are only fuckable by gay dudes.”

Ginny sees the logic in this, although the truth is she's not necessarily looking to get laid. She dated Roy, her last boyfriend, from her senior year in high school and all through her freshman year of college, but they broke up over the summer. She slept with another guy after that, just once or twice, to get over Roy, but the truth was that sex had always been something messy, kind of awkward, never the big deal it was all cracked up to be.

Still, it's always better to be fuckable and have the choice of turning a guy down than be the girl at the party, standing alone by the punch bowl. Not that a party like this would have a punch bowl, necessarily, more like a keg, along with various bottles of cheap liquor that are mostly used for shots instead of fancy mixed cocktails, although there are a couple jugs of orange juice and cola on the makeshift bar.

So there she stands in her short, slutty dress and shoes that are pinching her toes. She has an empty basket over one arm, and it keeps getting in the way. Before the night's over she'll lose the basket and never see it again, which is terrible because she borrowed it from Tina, whose grandmother had bought it for her. Tina will always say she doesn't care, but some part of Ginny understands that Tina really does.

“Let me guess,” says the frat boy. He's dressed like a baseball player, and now Ginny totally gets why Tina was right. Baseball player as a Halloween costume? Not fuckable. Or maybe it's the guy's beer belly or the rash of pimples across his forehead or the drunken, bleary way he's stroking his gaze all over her cleavage. “Dorothy? There's no place home, right? If I get you wet, are you gonna melt?”

“I'm Little Red Riding Hood, and that was the wicked witch, you asshole,” this Ginny says, because this one is dreaming about that long-ago night when she wasn't quick enough with the comeback and had to fend off this loser's pawing grasp for another twenty minutes.

That's the beauty of dreams. If you know what you're doing, you can control them. Ginny's in charge of this dream now, so she can walk away from the horny baseball player and make her way right into the best part of things.

She sees him across the room, like the crowd parted just for her. Just so she can get to him without having to elbow her way past the plethora of tits and ass on display. Instead, she glides. Her shoes don't pinch because her feet don't touch the ground. She floats or maybe swims through the air, thick as water; she pushes it out of the way, scooping it with her hands.

He's the most beautiful man she's ever seen.

He wears a dark suit, a blue- and white-striped shirt, a red tie. He wears a clear-plastic raincoat, and his hair's slicked back. He carries an ax.

“Who's that guy?” Tina says. “Some huntsman.”

“It's Patrick Bateman.”

Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale in the movie version that Ginny's seen, oh, about a dozen times. He's a serial killer, murderer of whores and vapid trust-fund bitches and dudes who get more expensive haircuts than his. He's dangerous.

He's perfect.

He's leaning against the wall with his ax at his side. As she gets closer, Ginny sees it's a real one, though with some sort of shiny metal tape over the edges, presumably to keep it from actually chopping anyone apart. He has no drink in his hand, and his fingers just barely tap his thigh in time to the music. He scans the room like he's looking for someone.

Then, he finds her.

“Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?” Patrick Bateman asks Ginny when she walks up to him in her suddenly ridiculous costume.

The real-world Ginny sputtered an answer to him, trying to be coy, trying to get him to laugh. And he had, the flash of interest in his eyes clear when she bent to set down her basket.

But this is a dream, this is different. Though in the real world his name had turned out to be Joseph and he was nowhere near as smooth…or rich…as the fictional Patrick Bateman, in the dream he stares at her assessingly before he gives her a faint, supercilious smile that widens into a broad, smarmy grin when she says, “Their early work was a little too New Wave for my tastes, but when
Sports
came out in eighty-three…”

He takes her, the way he did then, away from the party. They walk down dark alleys, past stumbling revelers. Drunken, groping couples. One or two sour-faced townies with the bad luck to be out and about in a college town on Halloween night. And then, back to his place. It's nicer in the dream than it had been in real life. Modern. Expensive. He feeds her frozen yogurt from the carton and when she moves to put the spoon on the table, he chastises her quickly.

The dream is jumbled now between real life and
American Psycho
and her own psyche. Patrick Bateman kisses her hard enough to bruise her mouth. She tastes blood. He strips her out of the costume and leaves it on the floor, then takes her up against the white wall in front of a mirror big enough to show the entire room. She can see over his shoulder, his firm ass pumping as he thrusts inside her, the skin of his back marked with swirling lines of black and green. A tattoo. Definitely a product of the dream.

He bites her shoulder.

Ginny stiffens with pleasure, her eyes closing as the room tips and spins. Climax bursts through her. Then again when he pulls away to show his mouth, teeth and lips dripping red with her blood and when he holds up a hand to show off the still-beating heart clutched in his fingers. Her heart.

* * * * *

Ginny woke, panting, the aftermath of her orgasm still rippling through her. She lay on her side with her body pillow tucked between her legs, and though her mind still whirled from the strange, disturbing turn the dream had taken and from her climax, the only evidence of her reaction was the fast beat of her heart. She sipped in some air, slowly, letting her heartbeat slow.

Wow.

Yes, it was weird at the end. Definitely gross and a little scary. But also incredibly sexy. She hadn't been turned on like that since…well. A long time. She shifted under the blankets, suddenly more aware of Sean's light snores. Suddenly aware of the pressure in her bladder and how cold her nose was, how the faint ticking of the air from the vent that had soothed her to sleep was no longer there.

God dammit, the room was cold again. She'd had Sean set and reset the thermostat, even change the batteries. Now her face was like ice. Her toes too, way down at the bottom of the bed. Blinking, Ginny tried to see what time it was, but she'd turned the light completely off on her alarm clock. The clock had a design flaw that set the light from its brightest to dimmest levels, instead of the other way around, which meant hitting the button now would bathe the entire room in an eye-searing arc of blue-white light.

Without the time, all she could do was convince her body to ignore the insistent need to urinate, or risk getting out of bed to pee and discover that the alarm would be going off in about five minutes. Ginny shifted again, pulling her knees up as far as she could to tuck her feet together and try to warm them. This didn't help her bladder at all, and eventually with a small groan she flipped off the covers and eased herself out of bed.

At least in the bathroom the night-light had a clock on it. Even though she felt like she'd been sleeping for hours, it was still only just past midnight. Another six hours before Sean would get up and she'd be up too, making his breakfast and pretending she had important things to occupy her time. She peed forever. The bathroom floor was, if it was possible, colder than the bedroom. Her teeth chattered.

She heard the cries just as she pushed the handle to flush. They were lost immediately in the rush of water, which seemed to echo even more loudly in the dark. Ginny's head went up, eyes wide. She imagined herself as a gazelle, nostrils flaring at the scent of a cheetah in the grass. Ridiculous, and yet she strained to hear as the noise eased.

Nothing.

But she
had
heard it, she was sure. The faint but audible and unmistakable sound of sobs. Now all that reached her were Sean's snuffling snores and then the welcome rumble of the furnace kicking on…except that the air pushing up from the vent next to her wasn't hot. It was far from cold, the way air-conditioning would be, but it was barely tepid.

She was wide awake now. Even with the promise of a few more hours of sleep, even knowing she ought to relish this time before the baby came and interrupted nights would become her life for the next, oh, twenty years or something like that, there was no way she could get back to sleep. Only out in the hall did Ginny remember she hadn't put on her slippers, and winced in advance of whatever it was that she would eventually step on.

Ginny's mom had been a huge fan of warm milk to aid sleep, usually with a liberal dose of cocoa and vanilla sugar added to it. Of course the sugar and caffeine negated any benefit of the milk itself, but that homemade sleep remedy had always been a treat. Ginny made hers the way her mom had, stirring it slowly on the stove so the milk didn't burn or get a skin on the top. A perfect, creamy blend of sweetness and warmth. In her kitchen the light over the stove did little to chase away the dark, and she turned it off as soon as she'd finished making the cocoa.

Maybe she ought to be scared in the dark, she thought with her hands wrapped around the mug as she let the heat from it bathe her face. It was still too hot to drink. She listened to the creaks and groans that were starting to become familiar. She listened for the faint sounds of sorrow, and convinced herself she'd imagined it. Maybe she should be afraid, but there was something comforting instead about standing with her back against the counter, sipping sweetness while the wind rustled the bushes outside.

The brush of soft fur on her ankles made her jump a little, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor. Then, the jingle of Noodles's collar. Sean must've found it, wherever the cat had lost it, and put it back on.

“Hey, puss. C'mere.” Ginny reached to pet the cat but got only a waft of air as Noodles ducked out of reach. Her belly made bending under the table too awkward, and, besides, if she grabbed out in the dark, Noodles was just as likely to nip Ginny's fingers as she was to accept the caress. “Fine. Be that way.”

She took the mug upstairs with her, but instead of going into the master bedroom, she ducked into the library. Someday, after the garage and the landscaping and the dozens of other things they'd planned, she wanted to add bookshelves to the other two walls to match the built-ins already there. Get some comfy chairs with footstools that matched the Victorian sofa, and good lamps for reading. Maybe they could fix the fireplace in here. She imagined building a crackling fire, the smell of wood burning. Or even a gas insert, Ginny thought as she stood in the center of the room and made a slow circle. That would be cool too.

Or hot, which would be even better, she thought with a shiver before realizing that this room, at least, was much warmer than the hall had been. Or her own room. She moved toward the window next to the fireplace and pressed her fingers to the glass. Definitely cold. But on the other side of the fireplace, the bookcase had warm air puffing out around the edges. Not just warm. Tropical. It felt so good she pressed her palm to the back of the bookcase and let the wood warm her.

But why was it so warm? That was the question. This room didn't face the street, but light from the streetlamps did cut across the side yard here, so with night-adjusted eyes she could make out the hardwood floor. It was also bare, with no rugs, and all the boxes had been stacked along the opposite wall. She found the floor vents easily enough, one on the left side of the fireplace beneath the window. And the other one…

“Here,” she murmured and nudged the bookcase with her toe. The other one should be there, but they'd built the bookcase over top of it.

She set her mug on the fireplace mantle to explore. Yep, there was a notch there in the molding along the bottom shelf. When she put her hand there, the air was so hot it almost burned her fingers. She wanted to get down on her hands and knees and bask in it. She wanted to put down a beach towel and pretend she was in the hot summer sunshine, wearing a bikini and tanning oil, frying herself on some beach someplace, instead of getting up to pee at midnight and standing in the dark, freezing, with her belly big and round and full of child.

Instead, she contented herself with sticking one foot against the notch and warming her toes until it felt like they might start to sizzle like bacon. Then the other. Back and forth she shifted with her hands on the bookshelf to help support her weight, and her eyelids grew heavier. Like she was slow dancing, she thought sleepily. Slow dancing with the bookcase.

Ridiculous…

Ginny snapped awake, trying to remember if she'd heard another set of those sobbing cries or if something else had woken her. It took her a good half a minute to realize it was just her body's way of protecting her from falling over, because she'd dozed on her feet, which were toasty warm at least. Stifling a yawn, she shuffled toward the doorway where her foot connected firmly with something furry and angry.

“Noodles,” she scolded as the cat ran on silent feet down the hall, making shadows in front of the night-light. “Don't you know better…”