Little Secrets (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

Ginny didn't tell Sean about the bones in the closet, but that didn't mean she'd forgotten them. For the first week after her discovery, as she puttered around the house and barely managed to accomplish anything, since her husband still insisted she wait for him to “help” her, Ginny kept imagining opening another closet, a drawer, a cupboard, and finding another pile of dead-rodent remains. As she worked slowly, cleaning each cupboard with wet cloths and the baking soda and vinegar mixture that never seemed to clean as well as bleach, she never let her fingers trace the deep places, full of shadow, without thoroughly checking them first with a flashlight.

She hadn't forgotten the case or the diary within. Long ago, before she met Sean, Ginny'd had a college boyfriend. They'd met at a party in the first few months of their sophomore year, and it had been instant love. Well, lust. With the maturity of time behind her, she was willing to amend it to that. At any rate, she'd fallen hard and deep, her feelings for Joseph an abyss with walls so high she could barely see the sky. And with this love came the ever-present knowledge that she loved him more than he loved her. That she wanted him more than he wanted her. That somewhere, someday there would be something that would take him from her, whether it was a sports game, a drunken night out with his buddies…a girl.

Ginny'd become adept at sifting through his drawers without Joseph knowing. In the days before email and texting or even Connex, all she had was the shoebox full of love letters she found on his top closet shelf. The ones from Ginny, and the ones from someone else. Her discovery had led to an argument, the vehemence of which seemed to surprise him, and though it broke her heart to do it, Ginny was the one to end the relationship.

Now, in the life she'd come to after leaving Joseph, Ginny didn't regret the breakup. She never wanted to feel that way about anyone, ever again, that lost and sinking feeling, that drowning. She never wanted love to be a prison. But some part of her did regret, for a very long time, the fact that she'd snooped.

That was probably what had led her to her job of investigating people who lied. Her work had confirmed how easily caught most people are, how little they suspect their secrets will ever see the light of day. It had taught her an unforgettable lesson about the importance of keeping secrets.

Ginny didn't know the owner of the suitcase or the diary or the pictures within it. There was no reason to think that reading the diary would affect her life in any way beyond satisfying her curiosity. Yet even though she'd put the case on one of the built-in bookcases in the dining room and passed it several times a day as she wove through the maze of boxes she wasn't allowed to lift, and though she stopped sometimes to look at it, to touch it with one fingertip, Ginny didn't open the case again.

Sean seemed to have forgotten it, at any rate. He got up in the morning and was off to work just as the light was hitting the sky. In their old place, their morning interaction had been limited to a mumbled “morning” as she stumbled past him on the way to the shower. Here, without a job to force her to wake up, she should've lounged in bed at least until the sun rose, but guilt forced her to head downstairs while her husband shaved and dressed. She made coffee. She made eggs. She made toast and bacon, even waffles, sometimes with a slightly curled slice of orange on the side he never ate and she rescued before the plate hit the trash, tucked away into a plastic storage container and saved in the fridge for the next morning. He never noticed if it started looking a little wilted. Frankly, she doubted Sean noticed much of anything that early in the morning, even with the mug of strong coffee she didn't drink herself yet had perfected the art of brewing.

He noticed her, though. His gaze followed her as she served him his food, sometimes at a place at the table, sometimes pressed into his hand along with a packed lunch as he rushed toward the door. He always took the time to kiss her in the morning, no matter how late he was running.

“How do you do it?” Sean asked, his hands on her hips pulling her closer to press her belly between them.

“A little vanilla in the batter.”

He shook his head. “No. Not the waffles, well, I mean, not just the waffles. How do you know what I want to eat, or if I'll have time? You always have it ready just in time.”

Ginny smiled and kissed him lightly, pushing up on her toes. The truth was, she had no idea what her husband wanted for breakfast, any more than she had a clue what she should make him for lunch. She guessed, that was all, and figured if it wasn't right he'd tell her. But then Sean had never been the one to press for decisions, happy to go along with whatever pushed him. If she made waffles, he'd eat waffles. If she made an egg sandwich, he'd eat that just as happily.

“I pay attention,” she said.

“To what?”

“To everything,” Ginny said, and saw this wasn't an answer Sean totally understood. “To what time you get out of bed, and how long you spend in the shower. I can tell if you're on time or not.”

“I can barely tell if I'm on time.” Sean kissed her again, slower this time, though it was one of the days when he'd lingered with his pillow through at least two snooze cycles. He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closed for a second before he looked at her. “You're amazing, you know that?”

“Ah. But am I awesomazing? That's the question.” She could taste the hint of coffee on his lips. The cream and sugar. Coffee had never appealed to her, ever, but now the flavor sent a tingle through her taste buds. Pregnancy made her crave strange things.

“You are awesomazing,” he agreed. “My awesomazing wife.”

“You'd better go, or you'll be awesomazingly late.”

Sean made a face, but backed away from her. “Remember, I have class tonight.”

She'd forgotten, but nodded as though she hadn't. “Oh. Right.”

“Need me to pick anything up on the way home?”

“No. I need to get out today anyway. Do you want anything special from the grocery store?”

She could see by the way his brows started to knit that he was going to protest, so she shut him up with another kiss. “There'll be plenty of time for me to be stuck at home, Sean. I can still drive. I can still push a cart.”

“Have someone load the groceries for you.”

She sighed, but nodded again. “Yes. Yes, I'll go to the fancy-pants grocery store that's twenty extra minutes away, so I can have a bag boy carry my shit for me. Oh, and spend twice as much money.”

He laughed, but just a little. “They'll all be fighting over who gets to carry your bags.”

“Riiiiight. 'Cuz this is some hot piece of action going on here.” She rolled her eyes and stepped back to show him the growing expanse of her abdomen.

Her foot came down on something that would've dug hard into her sole had she not learned her lesson and started wearing hard-bottomed slippers. Instead, her foot slipped forward as her ungainly balance tipped her back, hands flailing. She'd have fallen if he hadn't grabbed her.

Heart pounding, blinking fast as the slight red haze filtered around her vision, Ginny gripped Sean tight as he set her upright. Then the counter, thankfully, was solid under her touch. She shifted her feet cautiously, making sure the floor was solid too.

“Be careful,” Sean said like a lecture. “Christ, Ginny!”

As if she'd done it on purpose. Frowning, she looked to see what she'd stepped on. Something metal gleamed. Small and round. She bent to get it before he could stop her, though regretted when she stood too fast and had to again grip the counter to keep herself from wobbling.

“What is it?”

She opened her palm to show him. “It's a button.”

“Not one of mine.”

As if she'd accused him of dropping it, she thought with a slight curl of her lip. “Not unless you've started wearing things with flowers on them.”

Of course he hadn't. This was a girl's button. It looked vintage, tarnished metal with a raised flower design and a small hasp in the back where the thread attached it to the garment. Too small for a coat. A sweater maybe, or a blouse.

She closed her fingers around it. “I'm fine, Sean. I wish you'd go. You're going to be late.”

“You should stay home today, take it easy.”

“All I've done since we moved in is take it easy,” she reminded him with a gesture at the kitchen, still a mess with various boxes full of things he didn't want her to put away but hadn't done himself.

“I have to go.”

“Have a good day,” she called out after him from the doorway, with a wave he returned from the rolled-down car window.

She thought he was going to say he loved her, but instead he shouted, “Buy organic!”

She watched until the car pulled out of the drive and had disappeared down the street before she shut the front door on a swirl of cold wind. The hall had turned chilly, even through the bulky knit of the sweater she wore over her nightgown, but there'd be little sense in turning up the thermostat since she was going to leave for the store soon anyway.

Upstairs, she stopped in the library and settled the button next to the tiny wooden lady in the fur stole on the otherwise empty bookshelf. In her bathroom, she ran the water hot until steam filled the room, thicker than she expected.

Naked, she stood in front of the mirror and cupped her breasts. Ginny's sister Peg had taken after their mother and been blessed with what she called “an abundancy of bosoms,” but Ginny'd drawn the tiny-titty card. At least until now. She'd gone up two cup sizes. Her areolas, always a pale and almost-translucent pink, had darkened to a deep rose that still startled her when she saw it.

Her belly too was a constant surprise. Rounded and firm, still hidable under baggy shirts but straining at the waistband of her “fat” jeans, crosshatched with the first faint silvering of stretch marks she rubbed faithfully with expensive cream but had no hope of avoiding entirely. Her body was changing, and there was nothing she could do about it. No way to stop it. And it would never be the same.

Chapter Twelve

“Ginny?”

Ginny turned with an out-of-season cantaloupe in her hands. She'd been feeling for soft spots and debating if she should put the melon in her basket; she hated the smell of them and always had, but even more so now that she was pregnant. Sean liked them, though, and sometimes that seemed what marriage was all about. Buying things you didn't like for the sake of someone who did.

“Louisa. Hi.” Ginny's smile felt a little forced, though it shouldn't. Louisa'd never been anything but kind. “How are you?”

“I'm grand, just grand, doll. But you…look at you.” Louisa tilted her head to look her up and down. “My goodness, I guess it's been a long time, hasn't it?”

Ginny could count how long it had been since she'd seen Louisa, down to the day. She let the melon fall gently back amongst its brothers, and her hands went automatically to the mound of her stomach. “Yeah. I guess it has.”

“We've missed you. But I see you've been busy.”

Ginny's fingers twitched on the front of her coat, thinking she must look gargantuan for Louisa to have noticed. Unless she hadn't, of course, and had meant nothing by her comment. Making small talk. Or she thought Ginny had just gained some weight, maybe, though it wasn't like she'd been skinny before.

“I'm pregnant.”

Louisa laughed. “Yes, doll, I see that.”

Ginny let out a slow breath that ended in a rueful chuckle as she shook her head. There was no reason for her to avoid Louisa's eyes, but she found herself cutting her gaze anyway. “So. Yeah. I have been busy.”

“You know, I still have a few of your pieces left from the show. I've been storing the ones that didn't sell, along with some others, but I'll be happy to get them back to you. They're lovely work. You could think about putting them in the next show, if you want.” Louisa looked again at Ginny's belly, then her face. “Though of course it might not be that easy for you, huh?”

Ginny smiled faintly. “No. It wouldn't be. You could just get rid of them, I guess.”

“You don't want them?” Louisa looked shocked, like Ginny'd talked about giving away a baby instead of a couple of self-indulgent oil paintings.

“Not really. I could always paint more. If I wanted to, I mean.”

Louisa chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “Well…I hope you do. You made lovely pieces, Ginny. You had a real gift for quirky, fun things. And such great color choices.”

“Yeah. Well…” Ginny shrugged, trying to remember what it had been like back in those days when she'd stand in front of a blank canvas and imagine it into a picture, “…it was only ever a hobby.”

“We all need hobbies, and if yours is making something beautiful…” Louisa shrugged carelessly and let her fingers flutter in the air. “Nobody said you had to try to make a living at it—”

“Good thing, since I doubt I'd be able to.”

“—but you can make beauty, Ginny,” Louisa continued. “I hate to see you give it up. You should stop by the shop sometime, pick them up. Or I could bring them to your house. You're over by the high school, right? In that darling little townhouse community. It looks like a European village.”

“We've moved.” The words sounded too sharp. Biting. Ginny softened them with a smile. “And sure, I'll stop by the shop sometime after we get settled in. Okay?”

She had no intention of doing that. She didn't want the paintings Sean had stashed in the basement; she sure didn't want those other ones back. She didn't care about the pieces she'd spent so much time on. They'd only remind her of disappointment.

“That would be great. Come take a few classes again, if you want. On the house. Before your life changes forever,” Louisa advised, with another knowing look and a grin that said she knew just how it would be. “After that baby comes, you won't have much time for hobbies.”

“No,” Ginny told her. “But I will have created something beautiful.”

Louisa looked faintly surprised before she nodded again, more solemnly this time. “Yes. Amen to that. Well, listen, doll, you take care, okay? Stop by the shop. Like I said, we've missed you.”

Ginny didn't doubt that was true. The people who hung around the Inkpot were mostly the sort to drink fancy coffee and wear sandals with socks and necklaces of beads they'd made themselves. Ren Faire types, Sean had called them. In to clean living and role-playing games, that sort, though of course there were a few like her, who were totally different. It didn't matter. The only rule in Louisa's classes was that every effort be praised. She encouraged the more talented members to help those less blessed, and even the people who couldn't learn to throw a pot that didn't collapse on the wheel, or sketch anything that looked like what it was supposed to be, discovered they were able to make something by the end of the four-week sessions. People came back to Louisa's classes for more than the instruction—it was a social affair, with everyone often stopping by the coffee shop next door after class to spend another hour hanging out.

Ginny hadn't missed them at all.

Suddenly, she felt worse about that than anything else. Impulsively, she reached for Louisa's hand and squeezed the cold fingers. “I will. Okay? I will.”

Louisa squeezed back. “I hope so, doll.”

After a few more minutes of chitchat, Louisa pushed off with her cart and Ginny checked her watch. She was in no rush. Sean would be late from class. But it would be getting dark soon, and she didn't want to carry groceries into the house in the dark.

* * * * *

By the time she got home, the sun had dipped low enough that her driveway was cloaked in shadows when she pulled in. In the too-cold house she checked the thermostat, which was, as it had been every other time she checked, set to the right temperature. She bumped it up a few degrees anyway. Scarlett O'Hara refused to be hungry? Well, Ginny Bohn had a bug up her ass about being cold.

She hadn't bought much at the store, but, thinking of Sean's command she not carry her own bags, she'd asked the bagger to parcel out her items into all six of her reusable totes, when three would've sufficed. Unloading the car took twice as long as normal that way but left her only a little winded, so grudgingly she had to admit that maybe he'd been at least a little right.

By the time she got everything inside, the house had warmed up, but only a little, and only in weird places. The front hall was cold but the kitchen stifling, and so was the powder room. The living room had a few warm spots but the other rooms were still chilly—probably because there were still boxes and junk heaped over the floor vents, she discovered. Instead of actually unpacking things, they'd been taking what they needed out of the boxes and shifting them around.

There was definitely something wrong with their “almost brand-new” heating system, and it was pissing her off. Not that her moods were the best anyway. Up and down, up and down. Seeing Louisa hadn't helped that much; now Ginny was thinking of things she'd rather have pushed aside.

Tea might help, both with the chill and the mood swings, but as she leaned over the sink to fill the kettle, Ginny caught a flash of motion out in the yard. Something white fluttered just below the edge of the window, or so she thought. With the light inside reflecting, all she could really see was her own face. It caught her attention for a second or two, her eyes wide and looking like dark hollows in her skull, her dark hair loosing from the pony tail and falling around her face. The pale slash of her lips.

She looked like a ghost.

Disturbed, she turned off the faucet and set the kettle on the stove, but didn't turn on the burner. The high-pitched giggling screams of children wafted to her ears, along with the rattle and rustle of something alongside the house. She looked again out the window and saw nothing, but, dammit, those kids were messing around in the yard again, and it was getting dark. What in the hell were they doing anyway?

She went to the back door and strained to see them, but the only thing within eyesight was that wagon, overturned in the grass. When she opened the door, she meant only to ask them what the heck they thought they were doing—in a nice way, though, not trying to be mean. However, at the first creak of the hinges, they took off in a rustle of leaves and a few dozen whispered giggles and shrieks.

“Hey…!” She let her cry trail off, defeated.

Kids.

She thought of her nieces and nephews, those delightful little hellions who'd turned Peg's hair gray and were going to send Billy, according to him, to the poor house. She put her hands on her belly and rubbed in slow circles against the kick of tiny feet and punch of little fists. She let her fingers press a little harder against the lumps and bumps of her body. She imagined a little bum, the curve of a head or an elbow.

With a sigh, Ginny went out to confront them, but again found nothing but the remnants of childish games instead of the children themselves. The figures that had been lined up along the window well were still there, and she couldn't tell if they were in the same order or not. Something had been added, though. A plastic baggie of Goldfish crackers and an unopened juice box. Kids' snacks, but they didn't look like they'd been lost. They looked like they'd been set there deliberately. Frowning, Ginny took them in the house and tossed them in the trash, thinking again of her gran.

Gran had always been a woman of superstitions, even as at the same time she was utterly derisive of what she called “flights of fancy.” In her high phases Gran had left a bowl of milk out on the counter for the Brownies, who were something like leprechauns, from what Ginny remembered, and who'd make mischief in your house if you didn't feed them. Sometimes that bowl of milk went sour and chunky in the bowl, but woe to anyone who touched it. Other times it stayed empty on the counter, a reminder that Gran could be as stingy as she was generous. Ginny's mom had hated that tradition and the story that went along with it, but Ginny had a fondness for the memory.

She had no milk and wouldn't have left a bowl of it on the counter anyway, but something about the way the crackers and juice had been left reminded her of Gran's offering to the Brownies. It seemed like the sort of thing Ginny would like to pass down to her child, one of those weird family things that outsiders might not understand but that meant a lot to the people who did it.

The cat bumping around her ankles was a good reminder that whatever she left had to be more symbolic than nutritious, or at least not tempting to a cat on a diet, with a bad attitude. Ginny bent to scratch behind Noodles's ears, then lifted her. She wasn't any thinner. If anything, Noodles felt even heavier. Ginny rubbed the soft fur under the cat's chin. Usually this jingled the bell collar, but today her fingers found nothing but fur.

“Oh, you bad kitty, what did you do with it?” Ginny sighed and set her down. “Noodles, why are you so much trouble?”

The cat meowed implacably, wound herself around Ginny's ankles some more, and when it became obvious that no food was forthcoming, sauntered away with her tail in the air. Ginny shook her head. In the townhouse, Noodles had always been around, but this house was so much bigger the cat was forever disappearing and showing up again unexpectedly, usually under someone's feet. The bell collar had kept her from getting stepped on more than a dozen times in the past few days alone. Without it, she was likely to get more than her feelings hurt.

Adding a new collar to her ever-present mental shopping list, Ginny pulled a small crystal candy bowl from the cupboard. Also a wedding gift they'd never used, it of course had been one of the first things she pulled out from the packing boxes. Couldn't have been something practical, she thought, like her measuring cups and spoons. Nope, she had to find all the gaudy, expensive things they should've sold at a yard sale instead of bringing along. Well, it had a use now.

She filled it with peanuts, a snack Noodles would leave alone, for sure, and also wouldn't spoil. She added some chocolate-covered raisins too after a moment's thought, because although she was a sucker for most things chocolate, this particular treat was a present from Barb, probably purchased from a fundraising schoolkid. They had left a sour taste in Ginny's mouth, and she had no intentions of finishing them. As a symbolic offering to a mythical group of tiny, sometimes-vengeful creatures, it seemed perfect.

Upstairs in the library, she looked at the boxes shoved against the wall and at her easel propped next to them. Her paints were in those boxes. Brushes, palette, some of the smaller canvases she'd bought months and months ago. Carefully wrapped and packaged solvents and brush cleaners. The paints would surely be dried up by now. The canvases stained, maybe. She remembered packing these boxes months ago, not for the move. Just to put them away. She'd emphatically labeled them not “Studio” but “Art Supplies.” She didn't need to open them to find out what was inside, and, really…she didn't want to.

Instead, Ginny threw them all away.