Little Secrets (15 page)

Peg snorted a chuckle. “Oh, just wait until the sprout arrives. You'll look back on this time as your glory days.”

“You're not helping.”

“Sorry.” Peg sounded anything but contrite, but she did try again. “I guess my best big-sister advice to you is to take it easy. Let Sean do the unpacking, like he wants to.”

“Like he says he wants to. But then never does. I understand he's tired when he gets home from work, and school's been harder than he thought it would be. I get that too. But, Jesus Christ, I'm the one who has to maneuver around everything in boxes, try to find stuff…” She trailed off.

“You need to take care of yourself. Should I have Dale talk to him?”

“No,” Ginny said, thinking of how little Sean would appreciate a lecture from his brother-in-law. “You guys are busy enough. Anyway, I did it all down here, and he won't be home for a few more hours. I'll do some more and it won't even be an issue.”

“It sounds like it is an issue, though. And, Gin, you need to be careful…”

Irritation flared. “Sean says the same thing. You're supposed to be on my side.”

More silence.

Ginny sighed. “I had an appointment just last week. The doctor said everything was fine. I'm not on any restrictions. I'm not high risk. There's absolutely no indication of any problems. At. All. I'm not running a marathon or lifting barbells, for crying out loud, Peg. I'm just putting away books and knickknacks.”

She didn't mention the huffing and puffing of pushing the couch and chairs into place, or the boxes of books that were meant to be taken upstairs. Her sister's pregnancies, all six of them, had gone off without a hitch. By the last one, she gave birth at home in her bed, with all the kids around her, cheering on the birth of their new baby brother, and it was over before the midwife even arrived.

Her sister didn't have any real idea what it was like to know that the life inside her had died and was decaying, or what it was like to crouch in a public restroom, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop her body from rejecting it. Her sister understood grief and could probably understand the loss of a child more fully than Ginny could yet grasp, but she couldn't really understand what it was like to lose one in the womb.

Peg also couldn't understand how important it was to Ginny that her loss did not define her. Not her life, and not this pregnancy. This child was still clinging to life inside her and had not yet shown any indication of giving up, and Ginny refused to surround herself and this baby with fear.

“I'm not overdoing it,” she told her sister. “Trust me.”

“I just worry for you. That's all. I remember how devastated you were—”

“I'm fine.” Ginny cut her sister off. “Really. But I have to go. I've got to defrost some things for dinner and stuff.”

“I guess you won't be serving any Swiss cheese,” Peg said, and Ginny found some laughter at what just a short time ago had made her so angry.

“I should serve only Swiss cheese,” she said. “And mustard.”

They said their goodbyes the way sisters do, without a lot of mush and gush, but a lot of love nevertheless.

Then Ginny went back to the task she'd set herself.

Chapter Twenty-Two

By the time Sean got home that night, bringing flowers for no reason he'd admit to but which Ginny suspected had something to do with her missing mug, she'd carried all the books upstairs and put them away in the bookcases. She'd cleaned them all first, of course, and swept the floors. Dusted the mantel, that sort of thing. But what had transformed the room was the addition of her collection of hardcovers and paperbacks, many she'd owned since childhood, all arranged and displayed. Those books adorned the shelves like they'd been meant for them.

She took him by the hand after feeding him a slow-cooker beef bourguignon and homemade biscuits. When she led him upstairs, his confusion was obvious. And when she pushed him gently forward, inside, to show off her efforts, his face first fell. Then he scowled.

“What the hell is this? I thought maybe you were going to show me something you painted.”

“It's my library,” Ginny said calmly. “I know you said you wanted it to be a studio, but I can paint in here just as well this way…”

“That's not what I meant.”

She crossed her arms, aware of how they rested now on the shelf of her belly in a way they hadn't even a few weeks ago. “What did you mean, then?”

He gestured. “This. The books. Where are the boxes? How did you get them all up here?”

“I carried them.” The flavor of sarcasm was bittersweet. She didn't tell him that she'd done it a few at a time rather than lifting each heavy box. It had been easier to make many trips with lighter loads. It had taken her most of the rest of the day and left her sweaty, but satisfied.

“Christ, Ginny. I told you I'd do this.”

Frustration boiled out of her. About the books and the boxes, the unkept promises. The mug. The mustard. The cheese. And other things, months and years of things that had eaten away at her and been shoved down or pushed aside because it was always easier that way, because she owed him something greater than her anger.

“But you didn't, did you, Sean? You didn't do it! You promised and promised and promised, but every night you come home and you eat dinner, and then you disappear conveniently into the bathroom for your nightly dump while I take care of the cleanup, and then you have to read the mail, and watch some TV or do your homework, and by then it's time for bed, so you never get around to it.”

“I'm tired when I get home! What do you think, I work all day and then can just come home and have all this energy left over to do your projects for you?”

She seethed, her fists clenched. “They're not
my
projects, Sean. They're part of living in this house, together, which I could easily do by myself, as you can see, because I did. And the only reason I didn't before was because you insisted that you'd do it. But you didn't. So I did. Why are we even fighting about this?”

Before he could answer, she turned on her heel to leave the room, relentless in her desire to get away from him before she said something she regretted. She'd done it before, used her tongue to cut him, and he didn't forget. Sean might forgive, but he never, ever forgot.

She thought he wouldn't follow her. He didn't like confrontation, which was why they hardly ever fought, why whenever they did argue it was because of something she said, she did, her choice. She was the one who fought, never Sean.

So when he reached out to tap her shoulder, she whirled, startled. “What?”

“Don't walk away from me,” he said.

Her back stiffened. “I'm tired, Sean. I want to take a hot shower and go to bed.”

For another second or two, she thought he was really going to keep up with it, but he just shook his head.

When she came out of the shower, though, he'd already turned down the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed. He looked up at her when she came in, her skin still damp and flushed from the heat, her hair pulled on top of her head.

“I just don't want anything to happen to you, Ginny. That's all.”

She sat beside him and thought about taking his hand, but the effort at that moment was too great. She couldn't tell what was raw between them, just that something was, and she didn't have the energy to deal with it.

“I can't sit around here doing nothing all day long.”

“You could paint.”

She sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “It's not that easy, you know. Besides, painting was just a hobby.”

Painting had only ever been an excuse, something she'd taken up to fill in the long and lonely hours she'd wanted to spend with a husband consumed with work and school and things he wouldn't talk to her about. That she'd discovered she loved it was a bonus, something unexpected but lovely. But it hadn't started out that way. It hadn't been something she'd dreamed of doing as a kid. To see that she had some small talent for it had never pushed it beyond anything but a hobby. It had never quite become a passion.

“You could work on the baby's room.”

Ginny said nothing.

“We could get a kitten,” he said suddenly.

Ginny flinched. “What? No? The last thing I want is another kitten, right before…I mean…you can't just replace Noodles! You can't just get another one because the one we had ran away.”

Silence, this time from him. Her words hung in the air between them, uncomfortable. Awkward. Bad memories threatened, of similar but more horrible conversations, and she pushed them away.

Sean looked at his hands, clasped lightly in his lap. “You should take advantage of this time to rest and relax. Because you won't have this free time in a few months. If we're lucky.”

Bile scratched at her throat and a burning pressed in her chest. Heartburn. Stress. The taste of long-simmering anger.

“If we're lucky,” she repeated in a low voice. Then, louder, “Lucky? Don't you think we'll be lucky? You think I'm going to lose this baby.”

“Don't you think…” he hushed himself, then turned to look at her, “…don't you think I have a right to worry? Even the doctor said—”

“The doctor said there was no way to know if anything I did would've made a difference. She said that the body knows what's necessary, even if the mind and heart don't agree, do you remember that?”

He huffed. “Yes. She was a jerk.”

“She was maybe a little brusque.” Ginny had appreciated the obstetrician's assessment of her miscarriage, better than if she'd joined them in the hand wringing and breast beating. “She also said that there's no reason to think this time is the same, or that we'll have any problems. We haven't, Sean. This baby is healthy. I'm healthy. I'm seven months along, and there are no signs of any problems like the last time.”

There'd been genetic abnormalities. Ginny'd had every test possible this time through and been given the all clear for Down's, spina bifida, everything else. She and Sean had been poked and pinched and prodded, their DNA scanned, the probabilities of their conceiving a child with abnormalities factored, and the results had all come up the same, just like the doctor had said.

“Is that why you won't decorate the nursery, then?” he challenged her suddenly. “Because you're so convinced there's nothing wrong, that it will all be all right? Is that why you've left every single thing we got in the wrapping with the receipts attached…just in case?”

Ginny got up, looked with longing at her pillow and the warm blankets, then at her husband. She lifted her chin. “I'm going to read,” she shot at him before he could say a word. “With my feet up. I'm not tired now.”

Which was a lie. She was exhausted. She was melting with it, the desire to sink into her bed and pull the blankets up, to lose herself in vivid dreams of old flames and movie actors. She wanted to sleep and end this fight, erase the knowledge that her husband did not believe in this child. That he didn't believe in her.

“Ginny. Wait.”

In the doorway, Ginny paused. “We have no reason to think there will be any problems, Sean.”

“We have every reason,” he said in a hard, low voice totally unlike his normal tone. “Don't you get that? We have every reason.”

The terrible thing was, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew he was right.

Chapter Twenty-Three

She was cold again.

The house had been warm when she went to sleep, and with her flannel pajamas, the pregnancy hormones and the knitted afghan, Ginny'd fallen asleep toasty warm. Now she woke, cold and disoriented. The blanket had bunched beneath her, pressing her flesh into an ache.

She was on the Victorian couch. She put a hand down to touch her book on the floor beside her. The lights were out, she realized as her fingertips brushed the smooth hardcover. She'd found an old favorite, Clive Barker's
Imajica
, in one of the boxes, and the dust cover had raised letters she could trace.

The lights were out.

She hadn't turned them out before falling asleep, she knew that much. She'd been reading by the light of the pendent lamp, which was too dim to make any dent in the shadows but cast a perfect pool of brightness for reading. She'd been on her side, the book propped on a pillow and the couch's firm, upholstered back providing a delightful pressure against her back. She remembered letting the book close, even recalled setting it gently on the floor. But she had not turned out the lights.

Sean must have come to check on her, seen her sleeping and turned off the lamp to leave her in peace. Ginny smiled at this thought of domestic kindness, until she remembered they'd been fighting. And at any rate, it wouldn't have been like him to leave her sleeping on the couch. He'd have insisted she come to bed to be more comfortable.

But if it wasn't Sean, who was it? The boogeyman, she thought with a small laugh. A cool gust of air swirled from beneath the couch and tickled her fingers, and suddenly the idea of the boogeyman didn't seem so laughable. She didn't quite snatch her hand up and out of the dark…but almost.

Ginny sat, pushing at the tangle of the afghan in frustration and not quite able to get herself free. She had no idea what time it was, but it felt like her normal midnight or 1:00 a.m. rising. Her bladder was telling her that anyway.

Something scratched and rustled inside the wall behind the bookshelves.

Ginny paused, thinking it was her own shuffling, but a second later the noise came again. The distinctive scritch-scratch of claws or nails against the inside of the drywall. She held her breath. Faintly, faintly, came the far-off jingle of a bell.

“Noodles?” It came out as a whisper; she couldn't force her voice any louder than that. “Noodles, sweetie…”

Through the darkness came the sound of breathing, soft and fast and faint. Ginny froze, unable to move, incapable of closing her eyes though she was straining them so hard into the blackness that small, bright flowers had begun blooming around the edges of her vision. She'd put one foot on the floor a minute or so ago and now drew it up under the blanket she clutched to her neck. She had to pee so bad she could taste it, as her gran would've said.

Ginny swallowed, then again, her throat so dry she thought she might choke. What had shifted in the walls, what was now breathing so close to her? Or maybe not what. Maybe…who.

“A girl…with dark hair…like yours when you were small.”

“Maeve,” she whispered, because that was the name she'd wanted to give her daughter, the one she'd lost. “Maeve, honey? Is it you?”

Ginny tensed, waiting for something to touch her. Weeping, she reached into the darkness and found nothing but the night. She listened in the dark, but the bell didn't jingle again.