Little Secrets (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

Ginny's gran might not always be completely locked in the present day, but she never looked anything less than her best. Compared to Ginny's mom, who wore a sweatshirt with a stain on it, her hair frowzy, her jeans out of style, Gran was the epitome of a classy lady. From her carefully coiffed perm to the shoes that matched her bag that matched her belt, Gran looked like she'd just stepped out of a salon run by fashion elves slaving to dress her. There was no such thing, of course. Ginny's mom had been the one to make sure Gran had everything she needed, and she wasn't afraid to make sure Ginny and everyone else knew it.

“Hours,” she said. “Hours it took us to get ready.”

“Well, Gertrude, if you took some care with your own appearance, perhaps mine might not be such an offense,” Gran said with a sniff and held her hand out for Sean to take as she hobbled through the front door.

He looked at it as though he wasn't sure if she meant for him to kiss it, and Ginny stifled a laugh. Gran had never approved of Sean, who'd shown up to his first family function wearing a black-leather jacket and a week's worth of beard scruff, riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. That he'd sold the bike and kept the jacket in the back of a closet now wouldn't make a difference. Gran could forget what she had for breakfast that morning, but she'd never forget that Ginny's “boy” was of the bad sort.

“Virginia. You're looking fat.”

“Thanks, Gran.” Ginny stepped aside so Sean and her mom could ease Gran into the living room and onto the couch, which stuck out awkwardly in the middle of the room because they'd stacked up all the still-unpacked boxes behind it.

“Mother, Ginny's not fat. She's pregnant,” Ginny's mom said too loudly. “Remember? We're here for Ginny's baby shower!”

“And I'm old, not deaf,” Gran retorted. She gave Sean an up-and-down look before turning back to Ginny. “Virginia, have your boy bring me something to drink. Two fingers of Scotch, no ice.”

“Mother,” Ginny's mom began, but Ginny waved her quiet.

Sean backed up a step. “I'll get it.”

He already knew to make the drink only half the alcohol Gran requested, the other half water. She complained it was too strong the other way and wouldn't finish more than a few sips.

Ginny gestured for her mom to sit in the armchair while she took the other. They both looked at Gran, who stared back.

“Are you going to give me food, or what?” Gran asked suddenly. “It's mashed-potatoes-and-meat-loaf night at home. What are you going to feed me?”

“There's plenty of food, Gran.” Ginny smoothed her shirt over her belly, feeling self-conscious though she wasn't any fatter now than she'd been this morning when she got dressed.

Gran snorted as Sean brought the drink and pressed it into her hand. She stared up at him. “You look much better clean-shaven.”

Sean passed a hand over his cheeks and chin, then gave Ginny a brow-raised glance and a quick smile. “Thanks.”

“I liked his scruff,” Ginny blurted. “I liked it when he looked a little ragged.”

Sean looked surprised. Then pleased. Gran, however, sniffed and daintily sipped from her glass before making a face and holding it out for him to take.

“This drink tastes like a ruffian made it.”

“Can I be a ruffian if I'm clean-shaven?” Sean said it with a straight face but a twinkle in his eyes.

Before Gran could reply, the doorbell rang and Sean went to answer it. Soon the living room overflowed with guests, and Ginny wished, hard, she'd been more demanding about unpacking the boxes Sean had insisted would be fine shoved up along the wall under the windows. She cringed as Billy's daughter Kristen, running after her brother, ran into a box that made a definite jingling sound when bumped.

That made her think of Noodles and the bell on her collar, and how the cat would've hated this crowd, and how they'd have had to lock her in a room to keep her from darting out the front door. How she'd probably have peed on something out of spite. Maybe, Ginny thought suddenly, with the door opening so often, Noodles would make her way back home, reappearing underfoot like the triumphant small queen the cat had always been.

She didn't, though, and playing hostess gave Ginny little time to think about it further. The present opening was an extravaganza of paper and ribbon, onesies and booties and diapers and plush toys. Such generosity moved Ginny to tears more than once, but it seemed quite acceptable for the expectant mother to cry when she opened a handmade and embroidered quilt it must've taken her mother more than a year to make. Ginny didn't point out what that meant, not when they were all there to celebrate. But she knew.

It was a big party, bigger than Ginny wanted, but her mom and Peg had insisted on inviting everyone who could possibly be invited, plus some people Ginny wasn't even sure she knew. Sean's mother hovered around making sure the food was all set up and drinks poured, which was nice but gave Ginny nothing to do but sit and hold court. Barb had also brought along all the paper products and baked a cake with plastic babies riding carrots on the top that looked like something out of a horror movie. Now she nursed a glass of white zinfandel and laughed too loudly at whatever Ginny's mom was saying to her.

Ginny had filled a plate with beef barbecue on a roll, macaroni salad, red beet eggs. The same food that had been served at every baby shower she'd ever been to. She'd been starving and ate too fast; now her stomach rumbled and ached, and she wondered if it would be bad form to ask everyone to leave so she could take a nap. She leaned in the parlor doorway, looking at the stacks of gifts she'd opened. Babies needed so many things.

“Look at all the loot.” Sean appeared beside her.

“Yeah, I know.” She leaned against him. “Don't be a ruffian and run off with all of it.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “That's me, hooligan to the core. Maybe I should grow my beard again, you think?”

“Beard. Ha. You never had a beard.” She turned to face him. “You only ever had that three days' worth of stubble. I could never figure out if you thought it made you look like a badass, or you were just too lazy to shave.”

“Now you know, huh?”

“Yeah. Too lazy,” she teased, and kissed his mouth.

He tasted of Scotch and, more faintly, of cigarettes, but that had to be her imagination because Sean had quit smoking a few years ago. The first time she got pregnant. She kissed him again and slid her hands, flat, up the soft corduroy of his jacket to cup his shoulders.

“Were you…smoking?”

He looked briefly guilty, then…not defiant. More like daring. “I was out back with your brother, showing him where I wanted to put the shed.”

Surely the size or expense of a shed wasn't that important or stressful that a discussion necessitated cigarettes. “Sean.”

“Yeah. We were smoking. Drinking a little too. It's a party, baby.” He nuzzled her, his mouth finding the sensitive spots on her neck and below her ear, making her shiver. “Can't a guy get a little happy at his wife's baby shower?”

Ginny had never been the one to tell Sean he had to quit smoking, he'd done that on his own. Of course she'd been glad he quit. Of course she had. But now, his kisses flavored with liquor and smoke, his hands sliding up her hips to cup her waist, Ginny had a flashback to the first night they'd fucked. You couldn't even have called it making love. No bed, no soft music or candles or slow, sweet undressing.

The first time she'd had him inside her, they'd been at a party thrown by someone she didn't know. A house she'd never been inside before. There'd been loud music, a table laden with food, the air thick with smoke and even the tang of marijuana. Sean had introduced her to all his friends as “his girl,” though they'd only been seeing each other for a week or so and Ginny wasn't even sure she meant to keep going out with him. His fingers had linked with hers, his other hand free to hold his cigarette, but he was so careful to never blow the smoke at her. Considerate that way, and also in how he made sure she always had a fresh drink, a plate full of goodies if that's what she wanted. He remembered that she liked pepperoni and not shrimp, that she preferred her drinks without ice. He'd paid attention to her back then.

The revelation had hit her, watching him laugh with a guy whose name she still didn't know. Sean's hand in hers, his focus on someone else, the sheen of colored lights from the Christmas tree making pretty patterns on his face and against the soft fringes of the hair he always, always, always wore in front of his ears. She'd tugged his hand and he'd turned to her at once, making her the most important person in the room to him.

They'd fucked in a tiny powder room, her ass slipping on cold porcelain, his jeans around his ankles. His hand over her mouth when she started to cry out. She could still taste his skin.

“Come with me,” she whispered now and took his hand, but when she tugged him toward their powder room, Sean hung back.

“Ginny. What are you doing?”

No,
she wanted to say.
Don't speak. Don't refuse me. Just come into the bathroom with me and shut the door, and put yourself inside me and put your hand over my mouth so nobody hears me cry out your name.

She laughed instead, shaky and self-conscious, her humor insincere. “Nothing. Just playing.”

“Later,” he told her. He kissed her temple.

But there would be no later, because it wouldn't be the same. And that was the problem, wasn't it, Ginny thought as she watched her husband walk away from her. Things changed. Nothing stayed the same.

“Time for caaaake,” Barb trilled, appearing in the arched doorway between the kitchen and dining room. “Everyone, come and have some cake!”

Ginny put on a smile. Sean's mom, for all her useless fluttering, did make a mean red velvet cake, with icing to die for, and Ginny fully intended to take advantage of her eating-for-two status. Despite the weird plastic babies—riding carrots, of all things—the cake was pretty, all white and red and presented on the special cake platter Barb used for every special occasion.

“You cut it,” Barb said. “I tried something new, a special recipe, because I know how much you like cherry pie, Ginny.”

They had a cake knife, but of course it was still in a box somewhere, so Ginny took the cleaver Sean handed her. Someone made a joke about never getting between a pregnant woman and cake. Everyone laughed. Ginny pressed the blade slowly through the white icing, the dense red cake…and into something else.

As she lifted the first piece of cake, the insides oozed and dripped with sticky red goo. Thick clots of it clung to the cleaver. One plopped onto the table. Ginny recoiled.

Blood.

So much blood.

“It's a cherrvelvet!” Barb clapped her hands. “A cherry pie inside a red velvet cake! I thought if it worked out, I'd make a cherrpumple for Thanksgiving. That's a cherry pie inside a pumpkin pie inside an apple pie.”

Ginny swallowed against a thin sting of bile. “It's…great.”

“Looks like something that got squashed on the road,” Gran said. “And why do those cherubs have such gigantic private bits?”

God bless Gran for distracting the crowd. Ginny handed the knife to Sean. She backed away from the oozing, dripping cake.

“We'll need some more plates,” she said faintly. “I'll get some.”

In the still-unorganized pantry, Ginny let the spring-loaded door close behind her. The small room was blisteringly hot, and the stench that had so plagued the rest of the house earlier still lingered here. She put a hand over her mouth and nose and gripped the shelving with the other as she sagged.

* * * * *

Blood.

There's so much blood.

She goes to the toilet, her back aching, her belly cramping. Ginny knows what this means. She's always known. She could tell from the beginning. Something didn't feel right, it never had. She never told Sean. She didn't want him to worry. He's been so excited.

When she goes to the toilet and puts her hand down between her legs, her fingers come away covered in blood. Dark, thick blood. Clots of it cling to her skin. Another rush of cramping squeezes her, and Ginny cries out. There's a woman in the next stall, so Ginny bites her lip against another cry.

The pain is worse than it was the other times. Like her insides are tearing. Shredding.
Which…they are,
she thinks as another wave of pain washes over her.

She is losing her baby.

Everything inside her goes tight, tangled, twisted; her belly tenses. Hard like a rock. She's not even in maternity clothes yet, just wearing a size larger, and she lifts the hem of her T-shirt to press her hands against her bare skin. The blood smears on her pale skin. There is so much of it, it's everywhere.

She needs to find her phone. She needs to call for help. She needs to have this not be happening, but it is. Even as she fumbles for the phone and presses the emergency number, another series of contractions push through her. She can't speak through gritted teeth. She can only groan.

“Are you…okay?” Someone outside the stall raps softly.

“No,” Ginny manages to say. “I'm losing my baby. Please call for help.”

The sound of running feet. The slamming of the restroom door. Oh, how she wishes she'd stayed home today instead of going to the grocery store. Then she would be at home, in her own bathroom. But she's not, she's here, and the blood keeps coming.

Something soft and loose happens between her legs. Something tries to slip out of her, and Ginny holds it back with one hand while she leans to unlock the stall door with the other. There are paramedics there on the other side, one young man, one older woman.

“We're here, hon,” says the woman and locks her gaze with Ginny's. “We're here now. You can let go.”