Little Secrets (14 page)

And Ginny does.

She lets her daughter go, and there is more blood. Always more blood. And they take her away to the hospital, where Sean doesn't show up for hours and hours. When he does, his face is pale, his hair is mussed, he stinks of cigarettes and alcohol, maybe even the faintest hint of perfume. Ginny doesn't even care. She can't look at him when he's there at last, because he'd been so convinced it would all be okay, and she'd known it wouldn't, but she'd let him believe it.

* * * * *

Hours have passed in her memory, but only minutes in the pantry. She needed to hurry before someone who meant well came in here after her and she had to blow off her tears as more sentimentality. Ginny scanned the shelves for paper plates and napkins and found a plastic bag she remembered buying at the store. The paper goods were inside.

As she moved to pull the bag from the shelf, her toe nudged against a bulk bag of rice she'd brought from the townhouse and dropped in the pantry without using once since they'd moved. The bag shifted, revealing the vent it had been covering, and fell on its side with the contents spilling. With a curse, Ginny bent to sweep up the grains with her fingers, too aware of the party noises from outside and expecting Sean's mom to poke her head inside at any minute.

Some of the rice skittered across the floor and into the vent pulsing hot air. More spilled as she tried to lift the bag and close it. Ginny grabbed a handful, debating about just tossing it back in the bag and throwing the whole thing away—the chances of them ever eating any of it seemed pretty slim at this point.

Something moved in her hand.

Startled, Ginny looked down at her palm. Some of the white grains of rice were…moving. Wiggling. Too stunned to even drop it at first, the low, angry buzz of something else distracted her. As she watched, a fly forced its way out of the vent. Bobbing on the currents of hot air, it tumbled drunkenly toward her.

Ginny dropped the rice and maggots to swat at it, but the fly dive-bombed her. Disgusted, she backed up, still crouching. More flies came out of the vent, at first one by one, then in twos and threes. Twenty flies circled her. Then more.

Ginny scrambled backwards and hit the door, which opened inward and made it impossible for anyone to open, though by now she'd started screaming. Covering her face against the flies' assault, she tried to find the doorknob with her other hand, but her fingers skidded on the wood and missed the metal handle. She heard muffled shouts. The door bumped behind her, moving her toward the flies. She had to move forward into the thick of the buzzing swarm still pouring out of the vent so the door could open, but in her terror found it almost impossible to do it.

“Ginny!” Sean hollered, pounding then shoving on the door hard enough to force her forward a few steps.

The flies swept past her and into the kitchen, where the much larger space dispersed them from a thick black cloud to a more widespread swarm. Party guests screamed and ducked, running. Someone ran into the table, shaking it hard enough to topple the cake stand onto its side, spattering red velvet cake and cherry pie all over. Billy, always a quick thinker, grabbed a swatter from the hook on the side of the cabinet, and started flailing.

“You okay?” Sean looked into her eyes, holding her upright.

Ginny nodded, swallowing her disgust. “Yes. Gross. What the hell?”

He looked past her into the pantry. “They must've been breeding in that bag of rice or something. You sure you're okay?”

Ginny nodded again, straightening. “Yes. Go help my brother. Get rid of them.”

Ginny's mom opened the back door, letting in a swirl of icy wind, but allowing the men to shoo the flies toward it. Some fell dead under Billy's swatter and the rolled-up catalog Sean grabbed from the counter. Others flew off into the house, God only knows where, the thought of finding them later making her shudder.

In just a few minutes, everything had calmed down, except for Sean's mom, who sobbed over the broken cake like she'd given birth to it instead of her son. Peg and Dale made their goodbyes, while Billy wrangled his kids into the powder room to get them clean from eating the cake with their bare hands. Ginny's mom took Barb to the living room so she could get herself under control. Sean went to the alcove to find the mop and bucket, leaving Ginny and her gran standing in the middle of the now-empty, but at least flyless, kitchen.

Gran still clutched her glass of Scotch. Her lipstick had smudged, her carefully styled hair a little rumpled. She looked smaller than she ever had, her shoulders and back hunched. She lifted her glass in Ginny's direction, and Ginny waited for the scolding or the accusation that Ginny had a filthy house.

“That girl did it,” Gran said.

“What girl? Kristen?”

“Who's Kristen?”

Ginny sighed. “Billy's daughter, Gran. You know Kristen. She's ten? Blonde?”

“Looks like her mother, oh that one.” Gran nodded. “Same sour face.”

“Oh, Gran.” Ginny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Not that one. The other girl. The one with the dark hair. Like yours when you were small. I saw her upstairs.” Gran sipped from her glass with a grimace and shuffled to the sink to pour away the liquid. “Nobody knows how to make a decent drink anymore.”

All of Billy's kids were as blond as Kristen, all taking after their mother, as Gran had pointed out. Peg's daughter Maria had dark hair, but she was away at college, not at the party. Ginny moved to take the empty glass before Gran could drop it.

“You saw a picture of Maria? Upstairs?”

Gran looked contemptuous. “Not a picture, Virginia. Listen to me. That girl. Upstairs.”

Gran stabbed a gnarled finger, the nail painted bright red, at Ginny. “That girl looked like a hobo. Hair a mess. Wearing rags. Shameful, really. A girl like that would bring filth with her.”

“I don't understand.” Unease dried Ginny's throat, so she filled Gran's glass with water from the tap and drank it, tasting a hint of Scotch. “There was no girl, Gran.”

Gran sighed. “I saw her, just like I'm seeing you right now. You mark my words, Virginia. She's trouble.”

“Who's trouble, Mother?” Ginny's mom came into the kitchen and gave Ginny a sympathetic glance. “I came to get Barb a cold compress.”

“Oh. God.” Ginny grimaced and moved aside so her mom could pull a clean dishcloth from the drawer. “She's that bad, huh?”

Ginny's mom lowered her voice. “I swear she almost passed out.”

Again, Ginny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing as Sean reappeared with the cleaning supplies. He held them aloft triumphantly, then caught sight of her. His brows raised.

“What? They weren't where I thought they'd be.” He looked from Ginny to Gran, to her mom. “Where's my mom?”

“She's calming down in the living room,” Ginny's mom said.

Sean sighed, shoulders slumping, and set the mop and bucket down. “Right. Okay. I'll be back to take care of this.”

“You never mind,” Gran said firmly. “The day a man can clean a kitchen floor better than a woman can is the day we all get taken up to heaven on the back of a unicorn farting rainbows.”

“Mom.” Ginny's mom sighed and shook her head. “For God's sake.”

“No, Gran. You're not cleaning my floor. It's time for Mom to take you home anyway. You go.” Ginny shooed her. “I'll take care of this.”

At first, Gran didn't move, but then she nodded and allowed Ginny's mom to shuffle her toward the front door. There she hung back to look askance into the living room and mutter something about “ridiculous biddies,” before Ginny's mom helped her into her coat and tied the scarf around her throat.

In the doorway, the cold air making Ginny shiver, Gran paused and wouldn't be moved along, even by her daughter's arm-tugging. “You listen to me, Virginia. Get yourself a priest.”

“Mom. What does Ginny want a priest for?”

“That girl is trouble, Virginia. You get yourself a priest and get her out of your house.”

Then Ginny's mom was moving Gran off the porch and along the sidewalk toward the car, Sean's mom was up and in the kitchen, insisting on getting on her hands and knees to take care of the mess, and Sean was pouring himself a full glass of Scotch.

“What the hell was your grandmother talking about?” he said in an aside as Ginny tried her best to just stay the hell out of Barb's way.

“I have no idea. Can you get rid of that rice?”

“Sure.” He drained the glass and set it in the sink. Then he took Ginny in his arms. “Hey. You okay? You look pale.”

“I feel a little woozy,” Ginny told him. “I'm going upstairs to lie down, okay?”

* * * * *

The nursery was still bare, though soon enough all the gifts they'd received today would be brought up to fill it. Ginny stood in the empty room, remembering how she'd imagined what it would look like when it was finished. When they had a baby cooing and crying in the crib Sean had not yet put together. When she would rock her child in the chair they'd not yet bought. She put her hands on her belly.

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

Ginny closed her eyes and whispered, “Baby, are you here?”

But when she opened them, the room was still as empty as it had always been.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Have you seen my mug?”

Sean didn't even look up from his iPhone, where he was busy tapping away at some zombie game he'd become obsessed with. “No.”

Ginny looked again into the cupboard. She ran her fingers along the collection of mugs. None of them matched, which had never bothered her before but suddenly irritated her. Their plates matched. Their silverware matched. Their glasses even matched, a full set of tumblers, drinking glasses and wineglasses in a pattern she'd picked out for their wedding registry and sometimes regretted because it had been the most expensive one. They'd had to spend a fortune to finish the set after getting only a few pieces, and the cost to replace any that broke was ridiculous.

Ginny started pulling out the motley collection of freebies from banks and charities, lining them up on the counter until Sean finally bothered to look up and ask what she was doing. “I'm looking for my mug. I told you. Have you seen it?” A sudden uncharitable thought made her eyes narrow. “Did you take it to work and leave it there?”

“No.”

“Think hard.” She kept her tone as pleasant as she could, as nonconfrontational, but she couldn't keep it entirely sweet. “Did you take my mug?”

“I don't even know which mug you're talking about.” Sean stood. “I gotta run.”

And run he tried, without bothering to put his dish in the dishwasher. Or even the sink, which would still have been an affront, but would've at least been something of an effort. Ginny stared at the plate, the fork still soaking in the mess of fried eggs and last bit of jelly toast he hadn't eaten.

She'd be damned if she cleaned it up. She'd cooked him that breakfast when the very smell of frying eggs still made her want to heave. She'd even spread that toast with jelly, grape, which she also loathed, because he'd been running late in the shower and she didn't want him to have to rush. And now he not only got up without bothering to pretend he intended to clean up after himself, like any adult would, but to add another insult, he was ducking away from her inquiries about her mug.

“Hey!” she cried, stopping him at the front door. The cold swirled in, but she didn't care just then. The house was going to be too damned cold anyway. A few minutes of wintery air pummeling her hardly mattered. “My mug.”

Sean sighed and turned. “Which one?”

“The one with the pink skull and crossbones on it. The one my sister bought for my birthday.” She eyed him, still suspicious. “You know, the tall, skinny one?”

She saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. It made her frown. She liked that mug because her sister had picked it out for her on a weekend trip away a few years ago. They'd gone to a bed-and-breakfast and done some outlet shopping, eaten in nice restaurants that weren't kid friendly. It had been the last time they'd done anything like that—life had gotten in the way. Ginny had spent her next birthday in the hospital, miscarrying.

She liked it because it reminded her of good times. Sean liked it because the tapered bottom fit neatly into his cup holder. She'd bought him a travel mug, but he still took hers. He didn't see the problem, after all. There were plenty of mugs for her to use, and of course her insistence that he leave “hers” alone made her out as some unreasonable shrew.

“I didn't leave it at work.”

“Did you use it?” The accusation rang out, too loud, too harsh for this early in the morning and the enormity of the offense. Or lack of.

His gaze skittered from hers. “I…if I did, I put it in the dishwasher. Look, I have to go. I'm going to be late.”

“Fine. Go.” She flapped a hand at him, already turning to swallow her anger, to shove it down deep so it couldn't come out in another outburst.

“Maybe you left it somewhere,” he said from the doorway, but was gone before she could reply.

Left it somewhere?

It could've been a dig. At least, in the mood she was in, Ginny wanted to take it that way. It was true; she was more apt to be the one leaving her belongings strewn about. Her shoes, car keys, a sweater draped over the railing instead of hung in the closet. It was a flaw, she knew it, but because she knew how it irritated him to find her stuff all over the place, she'd been trying harder to make sure she was better about it.

Because she listened to him, she thought bitterly as she yanked open the dishwasher. The mug wasn't in there, and she wasn't surprised. She hadn't used the fucking thing. Yesterday she hadn't made tea because even the decaf seemed to be wreaking havoc with her sleep. She'd been up every night for the past three. Counting backwards from one hundred did nothing. Neither did lavender on her pillow, though it did give her varied vivid and intriguing dreams during the few hours she did manage to sleep.

Ginny closed the dishwasher and moved again to the cupboards to search them all in case someone had put it away in the wrong place. Nothing. Anger simmering, she drew in a slow breath and let it out, reminding herself to keep her blood pressure from rising. She could drink her herbal, decaf tea from a different mug. No big deal.

Except that it was, and she wanted to cry when she filled another mug with hot water and let the tea bag steep. Even as she swiped her tears with the back of her hand, Ginny knew she was being ridiculous. But that was the deal with pregnancy and lack of sleep, wasn't it? Emotions running high and close to the surface, ready to spill over.

Tonight if she didn't sleep she'd think about making an appointment with the doctor, she decided when she took her tea into the living room to look through the old issues of her magazine subscriptions that had finally caught up to the address change and arrived in bulk. She'd suffered this before. Not quite insomnia. She had no trouble getting to sleep when she went up to bed. Hell, there were some nights that if she hadn't had to wait for Sean to get home from class so they could have dinner and spend some time together, she'd have put her pj's on and hit the sheets by eight. No, her trouble wasn't falling asleep, but staying asleep, then getting back to sleep once she woke up. Every night between midnight and 2:00 a.m. She told herself her body was preparing for the baby. It didn't make the mornings come any later.

In the living room, the slick pile of magazines slipped from her fingers and the tea scalded her when she tried to keep from dropping them. She stubbed her toe on a box that had been nudged out of place, even though she'd specifically shoved it up against the wall, hard, last night. Ginny let out a muttered curse and set her mug down on the end table that should've been an inch or so to the left but instead had also been shifted so the mug toppled to the floor and soaked the magazines. It didn't break, at least there was that.

“God damn it,” she said, then louder, “son of a bitch.”

She yanked a roll of paper towels from the cupboard and got on her hands and knees to blot up the mess. Her magazines were salvageable. She could make more tea. But, damn it, Ginny thought as she looked around the chaos of her living room, when the hell was Sean going to finish unpacking all these boxes the way he'd promised he would weeks ago? Months, now. It had been more like a couple of months.

“Screw this,” Ginny muttered as she got to her feet. Her knees hurt, and so did her hand from the hot tea. For the first time in weeks, she'd been planning on just sitting with her feet up, the way her husband insisted, now that she had something to do while she sat, since everything else she might've occupied her time with was mostly still packed away in boxes. All she'd wanted was to read through the accumulated weeks of gossip from the celebrity magazines and maybe check out a few new recipes. Hell, learn a few things from
Popular Science
or the news magazines she'd ordered from her nephew's school fundraiser.

But nope. Instead, she looked around at the mess and could no longer ignore it. Couldn't avoid it. She was done waiting for him to “get around to it.”

By lunchtime, Ginny'd managed to unpack every box in the living room and move the ones that still needed to go upstairs into the hall. She'd been ruthless. If she took something out of the box, it either found a place in the living room or was designated for some other specific place in the house…or put into the trash. She'd hauled two full trash bags out to the curb and half filled another.

She even moved the furniture. Slowly, a little bit at a time, but she did it. It helped that they didn't have much. The furniture that had filled the living room in the townhouse left plenty of space when divided between the living room and dining room, and she wasn't quite sure that everything was placed exactly where she wanted it, but it would do. At least they could freaking
use
the room, she thought as she took a few minutes' breather by settling on the couch, her feet on the ottoman, the now-dry magazines on her lap and a fresh mug of tea on the end table.

Yes. This. She looked around the room with satisfaction, ignoring for the moment the boxes in the hall that would need to be carried upstairs and her rumbling stomach, which would be soothed only for so long by the liquid. For now, she was going to sit and enjoy the results of her hard work.

She woke up an hour later, her neck stiff, the magazine article only three-quarters read and the tea long cold. Blinking, wincing, Ginny stretched and rubbed her furry tongue on the roof of her mouth. She looked outside, where the skies had gone gray enough to make it seem later than it was.

She'd needed the rest, that was for sure, but it would've been nicer to take a nap in her bed. Or at the very least, lying down on the couch instead of sitting up. Now everything ached, joints popped, and she didn't feel very rested at all. She was hungry, though. Starving, in fact, which was a nice change from the intermittent nausea that had plagued her with enough frequency that even when she didn't feel sick to her stomach, she worried enough about feeling sick that she kept herself from eating too much.

Now she felt like she could down an entire twelve-inch hoagie, a whole pizza, a couple of cheeseburgers with an order of fries and a thick, creamy milkshake. Chocolate, she thought as moved through her now completely uncluttered living and dining rooms toward the kitchen. No, mint chocolate chip. Yes. Maybe there was some ice cream in the freezer, and she'd treat herself to a scoop. Or two.

She hadn't felt this good, aside from the creaking joints, in ages. Even the nagging loss of Noodles wasn't weighing on her. She actually hummed under her breath as she pulled out the makings for a sandwich and lined it up on the kitchen table. Bread, turkey, roast beef, lettuce, pickles, mayo. She sliced some tomatoes and added them to the growing tower of lunchy goodness. No true Dagwood sandwich would be complete without some good spicy mustard—her mouth watered at the thought—and a few slices of Swiss cheese.

Except that when she looked for the mustard, the spot where it should be on the fridge door was ostentatiously empty.

Huh.

Ginny looked again. Then at the other shelves. Then at last she found it, shoved way to the back behind the bottle of lemon juice and an expired carton of half-and-half she took out to toss in the trash. She pulled out the deli package of cheese too, frowning. Sean didn't use mustard. He liked mayo or, shudder, margarine on his sandwiches. She'd even known him to spread white bread with ketchup before adding bologna, a combination that had made her gorge rise even when she wasn't fighting the pregnancy nausea. He didn't use mustard, so she couldn't blame him for putting it away in the wrong place, because how hard was it, exactly, to put things back in the place where they'd been found. Right? Even Ginny, who admittedly sometimes left her shoes by the front door until she had more pairs there than in her bedroom closet, knew enough to replace the mustard in its slot on the door. Next to the ketchup and mayo and salad dressings, that's where the mustard went, and since it wasn't there, she had to assume she'd been the one who hadn't put it back.

Uneasily, thinking of her lost mug, Ginny opened the mustard jar and found it so empty she could barely scrape enough out of it to spread on her bread. This was annoying, but not tragic. What she found when she pulled the cheese out of the package, though, was enough to make her throw it down on the table with a low cry of outrage.

It was bitten.

Someone, and it could only have been Sean, because who else would've done it? Someone had taken a bite out of the entire block of sliced Swiss cheese and put it back in the package. The tooth marks were clear, rippled around the edge of one of the larger natural holes in the cheese. The entire package was ruined, and why? To what freaking purpose?

“He doesn't even
like
Swiss cheese!” Ginny cried aloud.

Which probably explained why he'd taken only one bite, though it didn't come close to making sense of why he'd bitten it in the first place. Grumbling, Ginny threw the cheese and the half-and-half into the garbage, then finished her sandwich. Sans cheese it was still good, but her appetite had been cut in half. She finished only part of the sandwich and wrapped up the rest for later, tucking it back into the deeper realms of the fridge so Sean wouldn't accidentally take it for his lunch tomorrow.

“He'd take it and complain about how it had mustard on it,” she groused to her sister when she called a few minutes later while Ginny was cleaning her mess. “Gah. Peg, I'm so annoyed.”

“I hear that.” Peg's sigh filled up the phone. “It's like a war zone in my house right now. Between indoor lacrosse, Dale's triathlon training and work, oh yeah. Work, 'cuz everything else we do is ‘leisure.' We barely have time to breathe.”

Ginny's hands drifted over the mound of her belly. “It was different when I worked. I didn't notice the mess or care about it as much, I guess. Or maybe he was just more in to helping out, we both pitched in. But now that I'm home full time…”