Little Secrets (3 page)

From behind her, when she got to the doorway, came another sound of something clinking on the wood floor, so faint that though she turned her head toward it, she could easily convince herself that she'd imagined it. Or maybe that it had been her rings clicking on the wall as she gripped it to pause.

She listened.

Nothing. Only the sounds of an old house settling; sadly, still no huff and puff of hot air from the furnace vents. She felt a little warmer, though, under the blanket like a cape. Ginny's gran hadn't crocheted it. She wasn't the sort to spend her time in what she called “handicrafts.” But the blanket reminded Ginny of her. Gran had been a late-night wanderer, often with a blanket wrapped around her just like this. Checking the doors and windows to make sure they were locked. The stove to make certain all the burners were off. Gran had been one to bend over her sleeping children and grandchildren, holding her fingers under their nostrils to make sure they were still breathing. Ginny had woken many times in the night to see the shadowy figure looming over her, to hear the sharp pant of breath or Gran's grunt of approval when she figured out Ginny was still alive.

Ginny shivered at the memory, more from emotion than the chill. Gran's house had been similar to this one, full of nooks and crannies and delightful built-ins. A great place for kids to play hide and seek. A wonderful house for parties with neighbors, family and friends gathered around to eat, drink and be merry. Gran's Christmas Eve parties had been legendary, but only those closest to her knew how much effort and frustration she'd had in the planning and execution of even the simplest bits of the planning, how she'd worked herself into a frenzy with the preparations and how hard she'd crashed after. Those manic highs and lows had been the reason why Ginny's own mom had never thrown any parties, not even for birthdays. Maybe it was why her mom had never crept into her bedroom at night either, to make sure her children hadn't died in their sleep. Ginny couldn't say she minded that bit, but she had always loved helping Gran get ready for the Christmas Eve celebration.

Maybe she'd have her own Christmas Eve party, Ginny thought as she moved through the dark hall past the small parlor. It didn't matter that she and Sean had always celebrated the holiday with no more fuss than a tabletop tree, a few gifts and dinner at the Chinese buffet—unless they went to his mother's house. They'd get a real tree, floor to ceiling. Garland and tinsel and twinkling lights, with mistletoe in all the doorways. Gran's eggnog in the big crystal punch bowl she'd given Ginny when she moved into the nursing home and had distributed all of her “treasures.” It would be a lot of work, but Christmas was a couple months away and, besides, after that, the baby would be here. There'd be no time for parties after that, at least not for a while.

And as for the other…would she be the sort of mother to creep around at night on cat-soft feet, always afraid? Or the other sort, so determined to let her kids go she didn't cling to them fiercely enough? Only time would tell.

Ginny made a pit stop in the powder room, her five-months-pregnant bladder reminding her that even without heartburn, sleeping through the night had become a thing of the past. She had to squint from the bright-white glare of the single, hideous fluorescent fixture. A new bathroom light went on the list. She peed forever, the jingle of urine splashing in the bowl sounding extra loud in the tiny room.

From her spot in the light, the hall seemed extra dark, the shadows even thicker. There was an alcove beneath the rise of the stairs and in it, something moved. No flash of light to indicate eyes, no pale glimpse of a face, but nevertheless, the shape moved with a purpose. No random shift of light and dark, nor a mimic of her movements spilling into the hall and making the illusion of something else there.

In the dark, something moved.

Ginny froze, a crumpled wad of toilet paper in her fist, her bladder already loose and now looser with fear. She wouldn't have been able to stop the flow even if she wanted to, but the mortifying horror of being found dead on the toilet, with her faded and stretched-out panties around her ankles, forced a sudden startled laugh out of her. It also sounded extra loud. She cut off the noise by closing her mouth tight; in the next moment she finished peeing and that noise stopped too.

She waited, listening, trying to see what would loom up out of the shadows to get her. Of course, nothing did. She waited another thirty seconds before finishing on the toilet, pulling up her underpants and washing her hands while she stared hard into the mirror to make sure nothing came up behind her. And of course, nothing did.

In the doorway she put a hand out into the hall, searching for a light switch. None to the left. None to the right. There was one in the kitchen, she knew that. And one by the front door. But none here. She could stand here in the light forever, or she could venture out and face her fears.

It would be another box, she thought. A pile of something in the shape of a person, maybe a slowly toppling pile of curtains or tablecloths that had finally given in to gravity just when she happened to be looking at them. She stepped forward, into the hall, the alcove just a step or two in front of her and slightly to the left.

“It's just a jump to the left,” she murmured and laughed again. “And then a step to the right.”

She didn't need a time warp. Two or three more steps in the direction would take her to the kitchen and the light switch, but for now she just blinked to let her eyes adjust again to the darkness. And then…she remembered. When they'd looked at this house, the alcove had been used to store the broom, a mop with its bucket and the vacuum cleaner. The basement door was there too.

Just a leaning mop that had probably lost its precarious balance from her thundering weight as she walked. That was all. Nothing else.

Still, that was twice in one night that Ginny'd let herself be scared into seeing things that weren't there. Understandable, she guessed. New house, still so unfamiliar. Everything in her life had been turned upside down. Nothing was the same. She let her hand rest on the slight bump beneath her nightgown. Nothing would ever be the same.

But this house was their new start, hers and Sean's. This was where they'd raise a family. God willing, they'd grow old together, still interested in sitting on the fabulous front porch in rocking chairs, holding hands. They'd make every cliché and stereotype of a happy family come true, she thought with grim determination as she stared fiercely into the alcove, daring the shadows to shift in front of her again.

Of course, nothing did.

In the kitchen, Ginny shuffled across the linoleum to open the fridge, squinting again as she pulled out a carton of orange juice they'd picked up from the convenience store. She really wanted a cup of hot tea but had no clue where either the kettle or the mugs were. Or the tea bags, for that matter. She poured a paper cup of juice and sipped at it as she looked around the humped shapes of stacked boxes on counters and the floor. They had put their old dining room table in here. In the townhouse, the table had seemed immense, but here the kitchen dwarfed it. She ran a finger along the clean modern edge, thinking maybe she'd hunt for something antique for the new dining room. Or at least something that looked antique, not another sleek but flimsy thing Sean would have to put together using one of those little wrenches that came in the box.

Sean had made some noise about turning at least one of the bedrooms into an office, but so far anything that might someday go into such a thing as a home office was still packed up in boxes that had been distributed to other rooms. However, her laptop was plugged in and charging on the table, she knew that for sure, because earlier she'd gone online to make sure the Internet was working and to check her email. She'd never had a desk. She'd always done all of her computer work at this very table in their minuscule dining room in the townhouse.

Investigating insurance fraud was never as exciting as most people would imagine, but there had been some occasional physical stress to it. Sometimes a stakeout, watching the man who'd claimed his back hurt too much to stack boxes do the tango with his wife in a backyard they hadn't secured from every line of sight. Or asking that seemingly innocent young woman to help her reach something on the top shelf of the grocery store, when the woman had claimed her injuries kept her from doing her job as a retail clerk. But most of Ginny's job was spent writing reports and making sure her facts were straight, that she had proof of the fraud that couldn't be disputed, that all her t's were crossed and i's dotted. She'd spent lots of late nights bathed in the glow of the laptop, a mug of hot tea and a plate of cheese and crackers next to her if she was being good, a piece of cake or some cookies or a bowl of ice cream if she wasn't.

Most of those late nights, she wasn't being good. But that was all over now, and though she let her fingers drift across the laptop's polished-metal lid, detecting the smoother outline of the sticker she'd applied—a zombie Snow White with her hands posed to hold the Apple logo—Ginny didn't open the lid. She didn't check her email or surf the gossip sites or buy things she wanted but didn't need and couldn't really afford. She didn't log on to her Connex account, and she had no reason any longer to snoop around figuring out what other people tried to keep hidden. She was finished with that. This was their new start, and she wasn't going to ruin it by old habits.

Ginny climbed the stairs in the dark, one hand on the railing to ensure she didn't trip or fall and plummet to her sprawling, awkward death. She moved through the upstairs hall, also in the dark, found her bedroom door and crept into her bed, all without turning on the lights, all without anything jumping out at her. By the time she wiggled under the blankets and curled onto her side, the first edges of morning light were beginning to peek through the windows. When Sean's alarm went off, she sighed, dreaming, and snuggled back down beneath the comforter, finally able to sleep.

Chapter Three

The screams of children woke her. Ginny's eyes flew open and she clawed out at the air, her fingertips not close enough to skim the curtains but moving them a bit in the breeze her startled motion left behind. She gasped.

Kids playing outside, that was all. She could hear the shush-shush of feet rustling in leaves and the singsongy chant of some childhood rhyme she'd recognize when she woke up a little more, or it would drive her crazy until she could remember it. Like the night before, she was coated in sweat, her nightshirt sticking to her back. Her mouth tasted sour.

She didn't force herself to get up right away. She rolled onto her back for a minute or so, remembering with a bit of melancholy how once, not so long ago, she'd spent every night flat on her back with her hands crossed over her chest. Vampira, Sean sometimes called her, but that had been her favorite sleeping position since childhood. She missed it. Though her belly was barely bumped, her muscles and joints had already started going loose, and she needed a complicated arrangement of pillows and positions to keep her back from hurting. Her inevitable aches eased briefly when she switched positions, but in another few minutes they'd start up again and worse, if she didn't move. For now, she let herself relax into the mattress as she stared up at the ceiling.

Watermarks, faint beneath a coat of paint, but still there. Some cracks in the plaster. This wasn't a new house, so she shouldn't be surprised, but after the townhouse's smooth, pristine and flawless ceiling, this view was far more interesting. Ginny thought again of her gran's house. For all her eccentricities, Gran had loved having her grandchildren come to stay, and Ginny and her female cousins had always bunked up in the “rose room.” Floral-patterned wallpaper and sheets, two double beds along one wall and a twin tucked under the eaves. It had been Ginny's aunt Patty's room growing up and still bore the marks inside the closet door where she'd used a pen to keep track of how tall she and her siblings had grown. The ceiling in the rose room had been plastered in swirls that made faces if you looked just right, and Ginny's cousin Dana had been the queen of telling stories about them.

This ceiling didn't have those swirls, but Ginny looked for faces anyway. One pattern of cracks and shadow made a man with a walrus mustache. Another a lady in a floppy hat. A smaller configuration looked more like letters, though she couldn't quite make out what word they spelled. Staring, she started to doze before another series of childish shrieks slammed her awake again.

“Brats,” she muttered, without real anger, just before a patter of something like gravel pinged the window over the bed. Then she scowled and rolled herself upright to pull back the curtain and stare down into the front yard.

A little boy and a little girl, both blond and in matching red coats, stared up at the window. When the curtain twitched, the boy screamed again, backing away so fast he tripped himself up and landed on his butt. The girl's mouth opened wide, her eyes wider, but she didn't move. Frozen by fear, maybe, Ginny thought as she shook a finger at them. The glass had cracked, cold air seeping in, but remembering the chill from the night before, she wasn't sure she could blame the kids for breaking it. It looked old, if it were possible to tell how old a window crack was, but the lines of it were dirty. Still, why the hell were they tossing pebbles at her window in the first place? She shook her finger again, shooing them, and the girl reached down to pull the boy by the hand. The pair of them ran off across the yard and disappeared around the right-hand corner, leaving behind an assortment of toys. A wagon, some sort of trike. A ball.

Ginny sighed. “Great.”

She didn't exactly hate kids. She liked her nieces and nephews well enough, and her cousins' kids. And she'd love her own child, of course, she thought as she cradled her belly for a moment. More than love. She'd cherish her own child.

But random kids? Random, ill-behaved, screaming, rock-throwing and trespassing kids? Not a fan. Besides, what were they doing in
her
yard anyway? The house they'd run toward was bigger than this one, with a matching yard that looked manicured and maintained. She thought she remembered a swing set in the back too.

Her own childhood hadn't been so long ago that she couldn't remember how exciting it was to do the very things your parents didn't want you doing. The house next door might have a swing set and perfectly mown grass, but Ginny's backyard had a giant tree with a rope that probably had once been a tire swing hanging from it. It had a gentle slope in the back, just right for rolling down, and the creek that edged their property took a sharp bend away from that other house. Ginny's backyard had knee-high grass that would need to be mowed sooner rather than later and a big collection of leaves perfect for jumping in, if anyone bothered to rake them. The appeal of her backyard wasn't so strange after all. But they hadn't been in the back, they'd been in the front, and even so, she didn't want strange children carousing on her property, especially if they were prone to screaming and throwing stones at her house.

In the hall bath, she took some time to give Noodles more food and fresh water, though she didn't scoop the box. Sean had read an article about how cat poop could be toxic to fetuses, and while Ginny was more than happy to give up the chore to him, he had to be reminded to do it on a daily basis. It was already starting to stink, worse than usual since she was keeping the bathroom door closed.

The cat had calmed, at least a little, though she nipped at Ginny's fingertips when Ginny tried to scratch behind her ears. Not that Ginny blamed her, at least not too much. She'd be cranky too if she'd been locked up for two days. Then again, if Ginny peed all over everything, she wouldn't blame anyone who locked her in the bathroom.

“You stay,” she told the cat who tried to sneak out after her. “Just another day or so, boo-boo, so I can get everything set up for you. So you don't pee on stuff.”

The cat gave her a bland look that somehow also managed to convey how supremely insulting she found the insinuation that she ever voided her bladder inappropriately. Then she shook herself so the bell on her collar jingled. She turned and blatantly gave Ginny her back.

“Well,” Ginny said as she got up, joints creaking, “don't look at me like that. You know you do.”

In the kitchen, she found a surprise—a counter and floor sticky with juice dried into a gluey puddle. Her jaw clenched, and the giveaway throb in her temple told her that her blood pressure had spiked.

Ginny took a few calming breaths that did nothing to calm her. Muttering a few choice curse words made her feel better as she stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at the spill any reasonable adult would've cleaned up…but she knew what Sean would say if she confronted him about it. He was busy. Late for work. Didn't mean to do it.

“Whatever,” she said aloud.

Getting onto her hands and knees to scrub the spill was far easier than getting up. In fact, for a few strained minutes Ginny was sure she wasn't going to get up at all—she tried to stand too fast and the world began to spin. She had to crawl to the table and push herself up on one of the chairs, where she let her head drop onto her hands. She breathed slowly in, slowly out. The dizziness abated, but then her stomach lurched and she barely made it to the sink in time to heave out a mouthful of bitter bile. Ginny clung to the sink for a minute, with the water running to wash away the sick. When she felt a little better, she bent to take a long, slow drink, letting the water fill and overflow her mouth to rinse it before she swallowed.

She lifted her head at the sound of childish laughter, but could see nothing through the window over the sink. By the time she managed to get herself to the back door to look out into the yard, they were gone. Maybe they'd run around to the front of the house again to collect what they'd left behind. Maybe she should go out and give them a scare, be the mean old lady from next door who shouted “get off my lawn!” and shook a broom. The one who gave out pennies and apples for trick or treat, instead of candy.

She laughed aloud at that thought and settled for opening the back door to lean out a little farther. Unlike the front of the house with its gorgeous porch, the back had only a set of cracked and crumbling concrete stairs and a crooked metal railing. The flagstone patio had been long overgrown with weeds, the stones themselves sunken into the dirt and covered with moss, but Sean had already announced plans for a big deck that would take advantage of the sloping yard and view of the creek, what there was of it. She'd only looked at it the first time they saw the house, and the summer had been dry enough to make it rather unimpressive. Enough to dip your toes in, maybe, no more than that. All she'd cared about was how far the water was from the house, and if the basement had a sump pump—which it did. Also, according to the realtor, that creek hadn't flooded in over twenty years, and only then after an unusual inland hurricane.

“You'll never need to worry about water from that creek,” Bonnie had said. “But you have the sump pump downstairs in the basement, just in case.”

Ginny took one step onto the concrete stairs before deciding she wasn't about to go tumbling down into the yard just to chase after a few noisy kids. If it kept up, she'd have to go over and talk to their parents, and “bitchy” wouldn't be the best introduction to the neighborhood. She listened for the sound of rustling leaves and the screaming laughter, but all she caught was the scamper of a squirrel in the tree and the sound of a truck in the street out front.

She lifted her face to the fresh autumn air. Took a long, deep sniff. This was her favorite time of year. Sean always said he didn't like fall, when the days got shorter. He said there was never enough time to do everything you wanted to in a day when the winter came, but Ginny'd always liked the sorts of things you did in the dark anyway.

Her cell phone rang from her pocket, the ringtone telling her without even looking that it was Sean. She debated for half a second about not answering—the call reminded her of the juice spill, which annoyed her all over again. But if she didn't answer, he'd call back or send a text, and if she didn't answer those… Well, she didn't want to find out what her husband would do if he couldn't get in touch with her at once. If there was any worse introduction to the neighbors than bitching to them about their wayward spawn, a police car, fire truck and/or ambulance screeching up to the front of the house would be it.

She went back into the kitchen as she thumbed the screen to answer the call. “Hi.”

“Hey, it's me. What're you up to?”

“Nothing. What's up?”

She glanced at the clock. Nearly noon, and she hadn't yet eaten. That was no good, even if she had woken just past eleven. Typically, the nausea had passed and she was ravenous. The problem was, did they have any food? Pizza, after the heartburn of the night before, was completely unappealing. She tried to remember the few groceries she'd brought along and drew a blank. Baby brain, her sister had called it. The inability of a pregnant woman to retain information of current importance.

“…so do you need me to get you anything?” This was Sean, who'd been talking for a good few minutes while Ginny stared into the fridge and mentally checked off everything inside it as unappealing.

Her stomach rumbled. She reached for a string cheese and tore the plastic. Took a bite. “We're out of everything. As soon as I get something to eat and clean up the kitchen, I'll run to the store.”

“Don't work too hard,” Sean warned. “You should take it easy.”

Maybe if he hadn't spilled the juice and left it for her to clean, she wouldn't have been so immediately irritated by his admonition, but as it was, Ginny had to count to five before saying, “All this stuff won't unpack itself, Sean.”

“But, honey, you know you need to be careful.”

“I'm careful.”

“When we talked about you not going back to work, I didn't mean you had to take on everything at home, that's all.”

She heard the concern in his voice, knew he was being sincere and not trying to be overbearing or patronizing. Just like she knew that if she didn't organize the house, it would not only take him forever to even get started, but once he did, he'd put everything in all the wrong places.

Ginny tried to keep her voice light. “What am I supposed to do, Sean? Sit around all day eating bonbons and watching the soaps? Do they even have soaps on anymore?”

Silence ticked between them. She'd probably hurt his feelings. She tried again. “I have to do
something
, okay? I'll go slow; I won't lift anything heavy. But if nothing else, I need to be able to get the kitchen organized so I can go to the store and buy us some food. We can't survive on takeout.”

Well.
They
could. Their budget was another story. Even as she thought about the grocery store, she remembered the fast-food burger joint in the parking lot. She could just about murder a burger, fries and milkshake. The worst food always made her feel the best.

“You could get your studio set up,” Sean said after another half a minute. “That's not too strenuous.”

Ginny laughed softly. “Not physically, no. Mentally…”

“You're a great painter.”

“Sure. Of walls.” She looked around the kitchen. “Speaking of which…”

“No,” Sean said. “No way. Don't even think about it.”

“I could just stop at the paint store…look at colors.”

“I told you we could go this weekend.” Now he sounded as irritable as she felt, which in turn only made her all the more annoyed. “I don't want you lifting heavy paint cans, and besides, Ginny, I know you. You'll go to pick out colors and come back with all the stuff, and I'll find you up on a ladder when I get home.”