Little Secrets (23 page)

“In the…” Stunned, Ginny looked toward the small door set into the wall. There was another identical door in the nursery, but she hadn't known the storage space connected the rooms.

It made sense, of course, but another surge of irritation rose. The one peek she'd taken had shown her a slanted, narrow space with nails sticking through the roof and a gap in the floorboards under the eaves, stuffed with insulation. Not the place to be running and playing.

“Where is she now, Kelly?”

“I don't know, I told you, she ran through…”

The girl kept talking for a minute or so, but Ginny was looking past her to the easel and paints she'd set up weeks ago and had been ignoring ever since. The painting on the easel had only been a few strokes, just a couple blobs of color and some light pencil sketching. She hadn't touched it since then, or even looked at it. But one thing Ginny knew for sure—she most definitely had not been finger-painting.

Anger, real anger now, instead of just annoyance, bubbled out of her. Stalking past the sniffling child, Ginny looked at the painting. Jaw set, she glared at Kelly.

“What did you do?”

“I didn't…I mean, me and Carson…and the little girl…”

“Why would you touch this? What made you think this would be okay, to go into someone else's house and touch their stuff?” Ginny snapped a hand toward the mess on her canvas.

Someone had streaked it with color in broad, thick lines. There was a pattern to it, but no shape, no form. It wasn't a painting that meant to look like anything specific, not a dog or horse or person. Not even a rainbow. If anything, it resembled some of the most offbeat pieces of modern art she'd ever studied, and Ginny loathed modern art.

“Answer me!” She took a step toward Kelly, who must've rightly assumed it was threatening though Ginny hadn't so much as raised a hand.

“I t-t-told you, it wasn't me or Carson. It was the little girl, she painted it!”

“Let me see your hands.”

Kelly tucked them at once behind her.

Ginny's mouth twisted, but she kept herself from shouting. She took another step toward Kelly. “Kelly, I don't want to have to tell your mommy you've been naughty.”

Reluctantly, Kelly held out a hand.

Ginny snagged her wrist to study the girl's palm for telltale signs of paint. That was how Kendra found them.

“Kelly? What's going on?”

“Mommy!” Kelly screamed and ran into her mother's arms, burying her face against Kendra's stomach. Her shoulders shook with sobs.

Kendra gave Ginny a narrow-eyed, frowning glare. Peg had once revealed to her younger sister that no matter how terrible her children had behaved, if another adult was the one disciplining them, something protective and feral reared its head. Ginny saw it in Kendra's gaze now, the sharp glance at Ginny's hands and then how she took up her daughter's to go over the wrist. Checking for bruises, maybe.

Ginny didn't care. She'd seen the evidence on Kendra's hands. She kept her voice sickly sweet, though. Concerned, not accusatory. She felt more than able and happily willing to take on Mama Bear, but the tiny, still-rational part of her held her tongue.

“She got into my paints. Be careful she doesn't get it on your pretty blouse.”

Kendra yanked Kelly's grasping hands away from her at that news, peering harder at her daughter's palms. She sagged, then looked at Ginny, embarrassed. “Oh God. Kelly. What on earth?”

“You should take her home,” Ginny said firmly enough that Kendra blinked. “Now.”

“Right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Ginny.” Kendra paused. “I cleaned your bathroom for you, though. Carson's okay now, but…yeah, I took care of it.”

As though Ginny should be, what, grateful? She smiled thinly but kept her voice as sweet as sugar cookies. “Thanks for coming to the party.”

Kendra nudged Kelly forward; the girl went as reluctantly as she'd offered Ginny her hand. “Say thank you to Mrs. Bohn.”

Kelly hesitated.

Ginny smiled at her. She couldn't really get down on her knees to be eye to eye, but she bent forward so the girl had no choice but to stare her in the face.

“Merry Christmas, Kelly.”

“Thankyouforhavingus.” Kelly'd rushed the words and ducked back behind her mother, who gave Ginny another apologetic look.

“Merry Christmas. Thanks for the party, it was really lovely. Umm…yeah.” Kendra fumbled when Ginny didn't return the smile. “We'll just…okay. Good night.”

In the doorway, Kelly looked over her shoulder at Ginny. “Merry Christmas, Carrie!”

Kendra shushed her, shoving her along, but Ginny turned to look behind her. The cubby door was cracked open, just a little, and she couldn't remember if it had been that way before or if that squeak of Kelly's patent-leather shoes had masked the creak of it opening.

Ginny stared at it for a long time as the sounds of merriment drifted up from downstairs. It wouldn't take much for her to cross the room and open that door. At the very least, she should shut it tightly to prevent drafts.

She opened the door the whole way, her fingers reaching for the pull chain on the light she remembered was inside. It, like the light in the hall, didn't come on. Ginny muttered a curse for ancient light bulbs. She looked along the low space, into the darkness, forcing herself not to be uneasy. There was nothing in there but dust and the nose-tickling smell of pink insulation, and maybe a mouse or two that had been smart enough to avoid the bait left by Danny, the exterminator.

Except there
was
something back there, in the deep and shifting shadows. Something small and crouched. And something on the floor too—spots of green, the same color that had been on Kelly's palms and splashed across Ginny's canvas. She looked hard into the darkness and willed her eyes to find a face, hands, toes, but the figure remained solid and lifeless, without a glimmer of eyes or teeth. It remained a nothing.

She leaned in just a little to take another look at the floor, the small curved imprint of a bare foot. Unmistakable as anything else, just this one, the others more spattered and uneven. She was reaching to touch the paint and check to see if it was wet, when someone called her name. Startled, she jumped and smacked her head on the inside of the doorframe. With a muffled curse, she backed out of the cubby.

“Your friends are getting ready to leave. I thought you'd want to say goodbye.” Sean leaned in the library doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Oh. That little heathen from next door was messing with my stuff. She was inside here, running from room to room.”

“In the crawl space?” Sean came up behind her to look over her shoulder. “In the dark?”

“Apparently.”

He snorted soft laughter. “Brave kid.”

“Stupid kid. She could've fallen through, broken a leg. Or worse. Not to mention that she got into my paints and…” Ginny broke off with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Never mind. Just remind me, next year, when I say I want to have a party…that I don't.”

His laugh sounded a little more like his usual, this time. “Right. You say that now, but…”

“Next year we'll have a little one of our own. I probably won't even have time to plan a party.”

He gave her a curious look and put a hand on her belly, rubbing. A tiny foot, a little hand, pressed against his touch. He put his other hand next to it, his strong fingers curling against her flesh. “You'll want to see everyone.”

Ginny put her hands over his. “Honestly? The only people I need to see will be the ones I already see all the time. I don't need to host a big shindig and invite all kinds of people over and feed them and stuff.”

Sean said nothing for a moment or two. Then he leaned to kiss her. “Your friends,” he reminded. “They said they were leaving. I thought you'd want to say goodbye.”

Ginny knew then whom he meant, and why exactly he'd gone to such lengths to invite them. It was a relief, in a way, not to wonder anymore if he knew. She said nothing at first, letting the sounds from downstairs drift up to them…but not come between them.

Finally, she pushed away just enough to look at him. “They can find their own way out.”

After a moment he nodded. Then he hugged her again, his hands moving in small circles over her back as her belly made a bridge between them.

It wasn't until later in bed, when she'd woken once again in the night with wide eyes and the idea that someone had spoken her name, that Ginny recognized what had been so odd about the paint in the crawl space. It had looked like the print of a bare foot, a child's foot. But not Kelly's she remembered, because Kelly had been wearing patent-leather shoes.

Chapter Thirty-Three

More snow. Inches of it on top of the mountains they already had. Sean had made it to work, even though the radio stations were all warning motorists to stay off the road. His class would be cancelled, or so she thought, but he'd told her he had to make it in or forfeit some of the paid time off he wanted to take after the baby came. She had to weigh the anxiety of imagining him swerving into a ditch against knowing how much help it would be having him home, and in the end Ginny'd had no choice anyway. If her husband said he was going to work, he was going to work. It was stupid to make them all come in when they could just close the offices. It served no purpose to have people risk their lives to come in and pound away on keyboards, entering data.

“Not all of us have the benefit of working for ourselves,” he'd reminded her this morning, early, when she'd rolled over in bed with a groan at the sound of his alarm.

He hadn't pointed out that Ginny wasn't working and hadn't been for months. She said nothing about it either, just got up and made him breakfast while he showered and the lights flickered, and she hoped the power wouldn't go out again.

It did, of course, blipping on and off a few times before finally cutting out altogether. Ginny sighed, frustrated and thinking of the three loads of laundry she had yet to do, the full dishwasher. Her rumbling stomach and the soup she'd intended to heat up for her lunch.

Her cell phone rang, Peg on the other end inviting her over for lunch and to watch movies. Peg's house had power. Peg had a four-wheel-drive vehicle and wasn't afraid of driving in the snow, because, as Peg said, she'd survived teaching six teenagers how to drive.

“I'll come pick you up. We'll hang out. I'll bring you home when Sean gets home, or he can stop here on his way home from work. I'll make goulash. It'll be good.” Peg paused. “I never see you anymore.”

That wasn't true—Peg had stopped by on her way to what she called the “fancy” grocery store on Ginny's side of town just two weeks ago.

“You're just not used to having all your kids out of the house, that's all. Makes you feel like you're missing stuff you aren't.”

“Not true,” Peg said. “What, I can't miss my baby sister? And besides, you know…I worry about you, a little bit. In that big house alone.”

Ginny was silent for a second or two. “You don't have to worry about me.”

“But I do.”

Above her, the lights flickered, but immediately dimmed and went dark. Ginny sighed. “Yes. Please come get me. I can't stand it here without power; it's so gray today I can't even get any decent light to read.”

“I'll be there in half an hour.”

It took forty minutes, actually, the roads worse than Peg would admit at first. Her SUV handled everything okay, but it was eerie riding the snow-covered streets, the wind so bad the traffic lights swung. Not many other people were on the road.

“The smart ones,” Ginny teased.

“Yeah, yeah. I can take you home, let you sit in the dark eating cold cereal.”

But Ginny knew Peg wouldn't do anything like that, even if they'd been closer to Ginny's house and it would've made sense for Peg to turn around. As it was, by the time they got into Peg's driveway, the wind had kicked up further and the snow had become so thick it turned the afternoon to dusk. Peg pulled into the garage and shook her head.

“I hope
we
don't lose electricity.”

Ginny made a face. “You'd better not. The only reason I came with you was for the food and the warmth.”

“And the entertainment,” Peg pointed out. “C'mon. Let's get inside.”

It hadn't been as long Peg seemed to think, but it had been long enough that nostalgia crept over Ginny as she sat at her sister's kitchen table with a mug of Peg's homemade cocoa in front of her, along with a plate of shortbread. Instead of watching movies, they played cards and laughed about old stories. They filled themselves with cocoa and cookies, and Peg never did get around to making the goulash, which was okay since every time Ginny called Sean's number she got a message saying his number was unavailable.

She called her house four or five times as the afternoon wore on, becoming night, but each time the phone rang and rang without the answering machine picking up. That meant the power was off. The sixth time, she was able to leave a message for Sean, saying she was on her way home and would be there soon.

“The power's back on. Can you give me a ride home?”

Peg looked at the clock. “You're not staying for dinner?”

“Couldn't get ahold of Sean,” Ginny said, already gathering her coat. Her back ached from sitting in the hard kitchen chair, but she wasn't going to tell her sister that. “He should be almost home by now. At least the lights will be on for him.”

* * * * *

All the lights were on, blazing forth from every window, when Ginny got home. She waved as Peg backed out of the driveway. The snow had tapered off drastically an hour or so before stopping, so the roads were passable.

Humming, pleased with the afternoon despite how it had begun, Ginny let herself in the front door. Sean, who seemed to come from nowhere, his face a strained mask and his hair askew, swooped down on her immediately.

“Where the hell were you?”

Taken aback, Ginny shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the coatrack by the front door before looking at him. “I was with Peg. I left you a message.”

“I didn't get any messages!”

“I tried your phone,” she said patiently, biting back her own instant anger that had been jerked upright by his tone. “I kept getting an error message. But I left one on the answering machine.”

She saw at once by his expression that he hadn't even checked, but before she could point that out or make an explanation, he'd launched into her again.

“God dammit, Ginny! You pissed and moaned about me going in to work today because you said the roads were too bad, then I come home to find you gone, every freaking light in the house on…your car still in the driveway. What the hell was I supposed to think? You couldn't leave me a goddamned note?”

Oh, how tempted she was to snap back at him, to curl her lip. Instead, she pushed past him and down the hall to the kitchen, keeping her pace steady. Not running, not giving him that effort. In the kitchen, she looked at the answering machine, blinking merrily with one message. Hers, it had to be.

She turned as he came in after her. “I did leave you a message. It's not my fault you didn't listen to it. And I told you, your cell phone—”

“There's nothing wrong with my fucking phone.”

Ginny blinked, slowly. She took a step back from him. “Are you calling me a liar?”

His shoulders heaved and his fists clenched, lightly, but clenched just the same. He said nothing. Her gut twisted. Her heart became stone. She had a thousand words to say to him, perhaps many more than that, but she bit them all back, chewed and swallowed them. Ginny shoved them deep inside her to join everything else she'd pushed down.

Sean scowled. “I came home and you were gone. All the lights were on, and you weren't here. No note, nothing.”

Her chin lifted, just a little. “So…what? You thought I just ran off and left you? With all the lights on? Without my car?”

“Someone could have come for you.”

“Someone
did
come for me,” she told him. “My sister.”

Sean shook his head, just barely.

Ginny sighed and shifted to ease the ache in her back. Her belly rippled with Braxton Hicks and the baby's kicking. She winced as she tucked her hands beneath it, wishing she could lift it in a sling and somehow relieve at least some of the weight.

She pointed at the blinking answering machine. She sounded weary, because that was how she felt. “I left you a message. I'm sorry you were worried.”

“I thought you'd gone off with him.”

She'd had a hard-enough time catching her breath lately, but at this every molecule of oxygen left her. She sagged, fingers clutching at the countertop. Her tongue had gone thick, her lips numb. “Oh, Sean. No.”

“I thought, well, this is it. She's gone. She finally did it. But the least…” his voice broke, and she saw with growing alarm that her stoic husband was close to tears, “…the least she could fucking do is leave a note!”

“I went to Peg's, that's it!” Her own voice rose, razor-edged with hysteria. “I didn't go off anywhere. I wouldn't. Sean, I—”

He turned from her when she tried to touch him, and Ginny let her hand fall to her side. She had no right to force him to let her soothe him. She had no right to anything, really, and she would take none.

“Just tell me something, because it's been driving me crazy thinking about it.”

She swallowed hard, prepared to give him all the details, the few there were. “What?”

Sean scraped at his eyes with the fingertips of one hand, the other's fingers tucked into his belt loop on his hip like he was afraid what it would do if he didn't keep it tethered. “Did you love him?”

It wasn't the question she'd expected, but as soon as he asked, she knew she'd been foolish to think he'd ask anything else. “No.”

He looked at her, his expression horridly naked. “Then why?”

“Because you wouldn't touch me,” she told him simply. She spread her fingers and gave a half shrug, her words the truth, with nothing to redeem them but that. “You stopped hugging me, kissing me, touching me. You stopped all of it, Sean. It was like living with my brother…no, worse than that, because I've never doubted, even when he was being mean to me, that my brother loved me. And for a long time, with you, I wasn't sure.”

“I never stopped loving you,” he said hoarsely.

She hated the sound of tears in his voice. She hated that she'd done this, broken him somehow. Tearing off the scab was supposed to help an infected wound leak its poison, but this…she'd never wanted this.

“I wanted my husband there for me. I needed you. And you just…went away.” She wanted to touch him, but mindful of his last reaction, kept her hands at her sides. “I know you were grieving. But you wouldn't talk to me.”

“I was. I couldn't bear it, how much you'd gone through. How I almost lost you too.” He shook his head and began to pace. “Seeing you in the hospital, knowing I'd done it to you…”

“You didn't do anything to me.” She wanted to empathize with him, or at the very least find an edge of sympathy for his agony, but all she heard was him burdening himself with what had been her pain. Making what happened to her, somehow…his, not even theirs. But just his.

Typical, she thought. Turning the loss of their baby somehow, into his private torture. That he'd somehow been responsible, or that he could've done anything differently. It was typical of his need to fix things, regardless of what had broken them or how much worse his efforts at tinkering made them.

“I got pregnant. We both wanted kids. Something was wrong. We lost the baby.” She took a deep breath, hating that she had to be the one, once again, to walk him through this. “It happens to a lot of people. We're far from the only ones. And it was a blessing, I think, because we weren't prepared to have a child with special needs, or even to lose a child after it was born.”

He shuddered, still pacing. Every so often his hand crept up to tug through his hair. “I couldn't stand to think about it happening again.”

“So…you just stopped…” she shook her head, trying to piece this together, to make sense of it, “…you stopped touching me.”

“I had to.”

“Despite what the nuns might've told you in the third grade, Sean, hugging doesn't lead to pregnancy.”

He stopped his pacing, thank God. He looked at her. “You just…you were at me. All the time.”

This was not how she remembered it, not at all. Ginny remembered needing to hold him and be held. To grieve together. And later, when her body had healed enough for it, to make love to him again and find that closeness that had always been so much a part of their marriage.

“I was at
you
?” She tried hard to think on it, to recall if she'd been some sort of vamping siren, skimping around in lingerie or accosting him in dark corners. “You think wanting to have sex with my husband is…what…wrong? Weird? Abnormal?”

“You were at me about having another baby.”

With the counter behind her, Ginny couldn't move backwards. Her fingers slipped and gripped on the laminate. One nail bent and broke. Wincing, she held it in front of her to watch a small bead of blood form beneath the nail she pulled off and tossed into the sink drain. She sucked at the blood, and it was only half as bitter as all the things she wanted to say.

“And I couldn't do it,” Sean said. “I just…couldn't.”

Again, Ginny racked her brain to think if she'd been the one pushing for another child. All she could think of was telling him, at the time, it would all be okay. They could try again. They could always try again. She remembered saying it from the hospital bed. She remembered saying it in the shower with the hot water pounding over her aching body as the blood leaked down her legs and into the drain. She'd said it to comfort him.

“I thought you wanted a baby,” she told him and reeled with the idea that all this time she'd been trying for something he didn't even want.

“Not enough to risk losing you.”

She'd been wrong to think Sean had never feared losing anyone, she saw that now. But, try as she might, she couldn't make herself sympathize with his choices.

He started pacing again.

This time, she reached out and grabbed his sleeve, hard enough to stop him. “Stand still. Look at me.”

She waited until he did, his gaze naked and horrid and hard to face, but she forced herself to do it. “I am fine. This baby is fine. Nothing is going to happen to this baby, or to me. You're not going to lose me.”