Little Secrets Read online

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.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The kettle screamed.

  Ginny got up from the kitchen table to bring it back so she could pour her mug full of hot water. Peg had already helped herself to a mug of Sean’s coffee and was setting out the platter of homemade cinnamon buns she’d brought. Ginny chose a tea bag from the box on the table and dunked it in the water, eyed the buns and ran a finger through the thick goo of icing on the bottom of the plate.

  “God,” she said as she sucked the sweetness, “so good. Why didn’t Gran ever teach me how to make these?”

  “I was the only lucky one, I guess.” Peg rolled her eyes, but fondly. “You know Dana asked her a hundred times for the recipe. Gran never let her have it.”

  “Has Dana asked you for it?”

  “Nope.” Peg grinned. “Should I give it to her?”

  “I guess if she asks you. I mean, there’s no real reason to keep it to yourself, right? Unless you like being the only one who can make them.” Ginny shrugged and stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea.

  “I don’t. It’s not that. It’s just that Gran gave it to me, only me, and I feel like it would maybe be dishonoring her or something. I mean, maybe she had a reason for not giving it to Dana, right?”

  Ginny snorted softly and blew on her tea. “Yeah, spite.”

  “Cold.” Peg shook her head but laughed softly. “Speaking of cold…why is it so freaking hot in here?”

  “I know. I know!” Ginny tossed up her hands. “The thermostat’s set to seventy. I don’t even want to imagine our next power bill.”

  “Seventy! Good heavens, Ginny. Why so hot?”

  “Because if I don’t set it that high,” Ginny said, “the rest of the house is freezing.”

  “Have you checked the vents? Maybe something’s blocking them.”

  Ginny gave her sister a look. “Have you seen my house? Of course stuff is blocking them. I hope once I get everything put away…”

  She trailed off with a sigh. They’d been in the house for a month and it still looked like they’d just moved in yesterday.

  “You know I told you I’d help you.” Peg cut one of the buns in half, then again, to put just a quarter of it on her plate.

  “I know. But you’re busy; you have your own stuff to do.” Ginny broke hers into smaller pieces but intended to eat them all. She watched her sister stir artificial sweetener in her coffee and add a splash of skim milk. “Diet?”

  Peg looked up, a little startled. “I can’t fit into my jeans. Unlike you, I’m not eating for two. It just looks like I’ve been.”

  Peg’s youngest, Luke, was eighteen. Her oldest, Jennifer, was twenty-eight. It had indeed been a long time since Peg was in Ginny’s condition, but she was far from overweight. Ginny watched her sister pluck at the pieces of cinnamon bun without actually eating them. She studied the lines around Peg’s eyes. The corners of her mouth. If she looked in a mirror, she’d see those same lines, just a little fainter but unmistakable. When had they started getting so old?

  “What’s going on?”

  Peg sighed. “I’m not supposed to say anything about it…”

  Ginny reached to put a hand on Peg’s to keep her from further worrying the bun into scraps. “About what? What’s going on? Is Dale okay? The kids?”

  “He’s fine. It’s Billy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ginny hadn’t spoken to her brother in a few weeks, her move and his work keeping them from connecting. This wasn’t unusual, since though she loved her brother, they didn’t keep in touch as often as she did with Peg. “Is he okay? Is he sick?”

  “No. It’s Jeannie.”

  Ginny frowned. “Spit it out, Peg, I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Jeannie’s going to leave him.”

  This set Ginny back in