Little Secrets (17 page)

It didn't pass with ease, this sudden burst of grief, this madness. It didn't fade or taper off into sniffles. It ended abruptly, like someone had slapped the hysteria out of her, and it didn't leave her feeling better, the way tears were supposed to. Everything about her face felt hot and swollen, and when she dared to face her reflection again, she looked how she felt.

Ugly.

With a determined shake of her head, Ginny gathered up the sorrow and the crazy, and she folded it like origami. She pushed it away, pushed it aside. Pushed it inside.

Deep inside.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“What the hell were you doing in the basement anyway?”

As predicted, Sean hadn't been amused by the story she spun as humorous so she could forget how it had ended. Ginny sighed and pushed her fork through the spaghetti noodles and sauce. It was a lackluster dinner, at best. Overcooked pasta and sauce from a jar, garlic bread she'd cobbled together from some leftover hamburger buns and garlic powder. She wasn't hungry anyway.

She looked at him across the dining room table. He seemed so far away, compared to their seats at the old table in the kitchen, but she figured if he was going to surprise her with this ugly table, she could insist they use it. “I told you. I was looking at the furnace.”

“If the furnace isn't working,” Sean said, “tell me about it, and I'll call the repair guy to come back. We paid him enough, he should make good.”

Ginny frowned. “I can call the repair guy. I'm not helpless.”

Sean said nothing, just dug his fork into the pile of noodles on his plate and slurped them up. Sauce splattered. He washed down the mouthful with a swig from his glass, then forked a bite of salad. He chewed. Loudly.

He'd always eaten that way, openmouthed, slurping and smacking and crunching. It suddenly repulsed her. Stomach twisting, Ginny broke off a piece of bread and forced herself to nibble it. She hadn't eaten all day.

“And you should've told me yesterday.” He pointed at her with his fork.

He had sauce around his mouth. Once upon a time, she'd have leaned to wipe it with the corner of her finger and tucked it in her own mouth. The thought of that, tasting something from his skin, suddenly repulsed her more. Ginny swallowed convulsively.

“You weren't home until late last night. I didn't think about it.”

He'd come home after she was already in bed. He'd smelled again of cigarettes and liquor. He'd wanted to make love. They'd done it in the dark, without words, his hands roaming over the changing mountains and valleys of her body. It had been like making love to a stranger, which was why she'd been able to come and why she'd gone to sleep with silent tears soaking into her pillow after.

“Did you turn the furnace back on?”

“I…” Ginny hesitated, “…I'm not sure. I don't know.”

“No wonder it's so frigging cold in here.” Sean frowned. “I'll take care of it after dinner.”

“Fine. Thank you.” The words sounded stiff and ungrateful, but what did she have to be grateful for, exactly? Making her feel like an idiot? Or that he might actually complete this chore, instead of merely promising to do it?

“So,” he said after a few minutes of nothing but the sound of silverware clinking on the plates, “how was your day?”

“Fine.”

He leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin; bits of paper clung to the scruff of his goatee. He didn't notice. Ginny had to look away.

“Just fine?”

“Just fine,” she told him. “How else would you expect it to be?”

“Did you paint today?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Why not?”

Said that way, it could be a genuinely curious inquiry. Or it could be a dig. Either way, she had no answer for it, no good answer that wouldn't lead to more questions.

“I didn't feel like it.”

Sean wiped at his mouth again, this time with his fingers. It was the gesture of a man trying to hold back words with his hand, but he didn't try hard enough. “Why not?”

“Christ, Sean. I don't know. I just didn't.” Irritated, Ginny stood to take her plate into the kitchen.

She'd baked cookies earlier today when she was not painting. She'd dusted the living room and changed out the towels in the bathroom She'd run a couple loads of laundry. She'd read half a book. She'd napped. She'd watched a couple hours of television. She'd paid some bills. She'd done a lot of things that were not-painting, so why was she letting him make her feel like she'd squandered her day, when he was the one who kept telling her to relax?

“I just thought, you know. With all your time you'd be getting back into it by now.”

She turned from the dishwasher. “All my time?”

“Yeah. All your time. I don't have all the time you have.”

Both her brows went up. “Everyone has the same amount of time, actually.”

“Not actually.” His half smile was supposed to charm her, but it didn't look genuine. “Some of us die before the rest. So technically—”

“I was busy,” she cut in. “And I didn't want to paint. Okay? I just didn't feel like it. You act like it's some kind of crime.”

“It's just that I wouldn't have bought all that stuff for you, if I'd known you weren't going to use it. I'd have spent the money on something else. In case you didn't notice,” he added in a tone more sarcastic than she'd ever heard from him, “we're not exactly floating in extra money.”

“I never asked you to buy it!”

Sean didn't say anything at first. They stared at each other across the kitchen until he dropped his gaze. Scuffed his toe on the floor she'd spent a good forty minutes sweeping today. Muttered something.

Her senses of touch, smell, taste had heightened in this pregnancy, but her hearing apparently hadn't. “What?”

He looked up at her, somehow defiant. “I said, ‘you used to like it'. You used to love it. But when I try to help you with it, all of a sudden, you don't want to have anything to do with it.”

Her jaw dropped. She turned to the sink to wash her hands so he wouldn't see them shaking. “Wow. What a selfish, self-absorbed thing to say.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She ran the water too hot, but refused to flinch as she rinsed away the soap. Her skin went red. She didn't turn to look at him. “Why would you think my painting has any goddamned thing to do with you at all?”

“That's the trouble,” Sean said. “It
doesn't
have any goddamned thing to do with me, and it never did.”

Time ticked past, one second at a time, the way it always did. An eternity passed in the span of one, two, three breaths. Ginny swallowed her words and refused to let his become bruises.

“I'm going to take these cookies over to the neighbors,” she said finally when it became apparent that Sean was neither going to speak nor leave the kitchen until she did. “It's about time we met them anyway, and I want to make sure the kids are okay.”

“Tell them to stay the hell out of our yard.”

The vehemence was so unlike him, it almost made her turn. Ginny kept herself still. She didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see his face. She was afraid of what he'd see on hers.

“I'm going to take care of the furnace.”

She waited for the sound of his footsteps moving away before she turned. Then she pressed her fists to her eyes until colored sparks danced. She drew in a few deep breaths. She didn't cry.

Ginny took the cookies out the back door, across the grass but not through the hole in the hedge. She walked all the way around to the sidewalk, then up the neighbors' driveway. She knocked on the front door, her knuckles stinging in the cold air.

The woman who opened the door looked surprised and a little suspicious, even when she saw the platter in Ginny's hand. She looked younger than Ginny by about five or six years, her hair in a messy topknot and faint lines of exhaustion around her eyes. She had a baby gnawing its fist on her hip, a spit rag tossed over her shoulder. “Can I help you?”

“Hi. I'm Ginny Bohn. From next door.” Ginny twisted to point.

The woman looked at her belly, obviously just noticing the bump. “Oh God. Yes, of course, come in, please! I'm Kendra. This is Carter.”

She waved the baby's fist in Ginny's direction. “Oh, cookies. Yum, thanks.”

Ginny followed her into the house and down a hall to the kitchen. This house was newer than theirs, laid out more like a raised ranch than an expanded bungalow. It was bright and airy, decorated with furniture from IKEA and plenty of childish artwork. Also, toys all over the place she discovered when her toe nudged a couple of matchbox cars.

“Oh God. Sorry. Sorry,” Kendra said as she settled Carter into a heavy plastic high chair and set a rubber hammer in front of him. “No matter how many times I tell him… CARSON!”

She turned to Ginny, who was still holding the cookies. “Oh, let me take them. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Oh no. You're probably off that for now. I had to quit it when I was pregnant, even decaf gave me heartburn, I couldn't stand it. I could make some hot tea?”

“That would be great, thanks.” Ginny slid into a chair at the table across from the baby.

Peg had been frazzled like this when her kids were smaller, and Ginny had no trouble imagining herself equally so. She put the cookies on the table and smiled at baby Carter, who gave her a solemn, somehow accusatory stare in return.

“You have three?” Ginny asked.

Kendra put a kettle on the stove, then turned. “Oh yeah. Three monsters. CARSOONNNNNN!”

There came the pounding of feet on the stairs. A minute later, Carson skidded into the kitchen on sock feet. Red cheeks, tousled blond hair—that was the face she'd seen in the window, all right. Close on his heels was his sister, hair in pigtails but otherwise a smaller version of her brother.

“You can't tell they're related at
all
,” Ginny said lightly.

Kendra laughed. “They take after their dad. I swear we had a third just so I'd get one that looked like he belonged to me.”

The baby in the high chair didn't seem excited by this. His face scrunched up in silent despair. His mother sighed and rubbed the top of his head, waiting a full five seconds before the first wail hit. She looked at Ginny with a faint smile of apology.

“He's…cranky.”

“He's a cutie. And these two,” Ginny said, still keeping it light, well aware of how protective her sister could be about her children, “I think I already know. Carter and…?”

“Kelly,” their mother offered with a curious look that became suspicious again, this time leveled at the children. “What did you guys do?”

Ginny shook her head. “Nothing bad. I don't want you to think that. They've been playing in the yard, but—”

“Carson James Wood! Kelly Madison Wood! What did I tell you about that?”

In his high-chair prison, Carter let out a longer, louder wail and pounded his fists until Kendra scooped him out with a sigh. Plunked on her hip, the baby stopped crying out loud, though the silent tears of outrage still coursed down his fat little cheeks. His mother kept her attention on the other two.

“But, Mama…”

“Don't you ‘but Mama' me. I told you both to stay in our yard… Oh God.” She turned to Ginny. “Were they down by the creek? They were down by the creek, weren't they?”

“I don't…know,” Ginny hedged, annoyed as she'd been by their repeated trespassing, but not willing to send the kids down the river, so to speak. Yet she also felt something like a mother's kinship with Kendra, like there was some sort of code she'd be breaking if she didn't take the mother's side. “And really, it's okay. I know the leaves can be tempting. And honestly, if my husband actually put them in bags instead of just raking them into piles, they probably wouldn't even be tempted to come over and jump in them. Right, guys?”

Kelly's eyes had gone wide, her lower lip atremble. She shook her head. “We were looking for the little girl. We were leaving her snacks because she's—”

Carson elbowed her. “Shhh!”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Kendra clapped a hand to her forehead. Behind her, the kettle started to whistle. “Both of you. To your rooms. I don't want to hear it,” she said before either of them could protest. “Go. Now!”

She turned off the burner with one hand, twisting her body expertly to keep the baby away from the heat. She took a couple of mugs from the cupboard and put them in front of Ginny, then a small box of loose tea bags. Finally, the kettle, which she also kept far away from the baby. She put the kettle on a trivet and took the seat across from Ginny.

“I'd pour,” she said, “but this guy here has grabby hands.”

“I can get it,” Ginny assured her. “What would you like?”

Kendra shook her head. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

An awkward silence fell as Ginny prepared the tea, but only for a couple seconds because Kendra snagged a cookie and bit into it. “Oh wow. Fantastic! No, baby boy, not for you.” She grinned at Ginny. “He's nursing, doesn't even have a tooth yet, but he keeps trying to get at our food. Monkey see, monkey do. I guess that's how it is for the youngest.”

“I guess so.” Ginny dunked a tea bag and let it steep, then took a cookie. The dinner she hadn't eaten seemed delicious now.

“How many do you have? I mean, is this your first?”

“Ah…” Ginny paused, caught off guard though she knew she shouldn't be. It was a complicated question with a simple answer. “Yes. Our first. But my sister has six, so I've got my auntie card.”

“Not the same as having your own, let me tell you that.” Kendra blew out a breath and looked tired again. “When you can't give 'em back…”

Another few seconds of strained silence. Ginny sipped her tea. Kendra bounced Carter on her knee.

“I am sorry about Kelly and Carson,” she said finally. “I've told them to stay out of your yard. I don't want them down by the creek. I know it's not deep or anything, but kids can drown in just a few inches of water, you know? And besides, they shouldn't be in your yard. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, really.” Hearing Kendra apologize over and over made it harder for Ginny to be irritated by the kids coming through the hedge. “Really, they mostly just jump in the leaves.”