Little Secrets Read online

  God dammit, the room was cold again. She’d had Sean set and reset the thermostat, even change the batteries. Now her face was like ice. Her toes too, way down at the bottom of the bed. Blinking, Ginny tried to see what time it was, but she’d turned the light completely off on her alarm clock. The clock had a design flaw that set the light from its brightest to dimmest levels, instead of the other way around, which meant hitting the button now would bathe the entire room in an eye-searing arc of blue-white light.

  Without the time, all she could do was convince her body to ignore the insistent need to urinate, or risk getting out of bed to pee and discover that the alarm would be going off in about five minutes. Ginny shifted again, pulling her knees up as far as she could to tuck her feet together and try to warm them. This didn’t help her bladder at all, and eventually with a small groan she flipped off the covers and eased herself out of bed.

  At least in the bathroom the night-light had a clock on it. Even though she felt like she’d been sleeping for hours, it was still only just past midnight. Another six hours before Sean would get up and she’d be up too, making his breakfast and pretending she had important things to occupy her time. She peed forever. The bathroom floor was, if it was possible, colder than the bedroom. Her teeth chattered.

  She heard the cries just as she pushed the handle to flush. They were lost immediately in the rush of water, which seemed to echo even more loudly in the dark. Ginny’s head went up, eyes wide. She imagined herself as a gazelle, nostrils flaring at the scent of a cheetah in the grass. Ridiculous, and yet she strained to hear as the noise eased.

  Nothing.

  But she had heard it, she was sure. The faint but audible and unmistakable sound of sobs. Now all that reached her were Sean’s snuffling snores and then the welcome rumble of the furnace kicking on…except that the air pushing up from the vent next to her wasn’t hot. It was far from cold, the way air-conditioning would be, but it was barely tepid.

  She was wide awake now. Even with the promise of a few more hours of sleep, even knowing she ought to relish this time before the baby came and interrupted nights would become her life for the next, oh, twenty years or something like that, there was no way she could get back to sleep. Only out in the hall did Ginny remember she hadn’t put on her slippers, and winced in advance of whatever it was that she would eventually step on.

  Ginny’s mom had been a huge fan of warm milk to aid sleep, usually with a liberal dose of cocoa and vanilla sugar added to it. Of course the sugar and caffeine negated any benefit of the milk itself, but that homemade sleep remedy had always been a treat. Ginny made hers the way her mom had, stirring it slowly on the stove so the milk didn’t burn or get a skin on the top. A perfect, creamy blend of sweetness and warmth. In her kitchen the light over the stove did little to chase away the dark, and she turned it off as soon as she’d finished making the cocoa.

  Maybe she ought to be scared in the dark, she thought with her hands wrapped around the mug as she let the heat from it bathe her face. It was still too hot to drink. She listened to the creaks and groans that were starting to become familiar. She listened for the faint sounds of sorrow, and convinced herself she’d imagined it. Maybe she should be afraid, but there was something comforting instead about standing with her back against the counter, sipping sweetness while the wind rustled the bushes outside.

  The brush of soft fur on her ankles made her jump a little, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor. Then, the jingle of Noodles’s collar. Sean must’ve found it, wherever the cat had lost it, and put it back on.

  “Hey, puss. C’mere.” Ginny reached to pet the cat but got only a waft of air as Noodles ducked out of reach. Her belly made bending under the table too awkward, and, besides, if she grabbed out in the dark, Noodles was just as likely to nip Ginny’s fingers as she was to accept the caress. “Fine. Be that way.”

  She took the mug upstairs with her, but instead of going into the master bedroom, she ducked into the library. Someday, after the garage and the landscaping and the dozens of other things they’d planned, she wanted to add bookshelves to the other two walls to match the built-ins already there. Get some comfy chairs with footstools that matched the Victorian sofa, and good lamps for reading. Maybe they could fix the fireplace in here. She imagined building a crackling fire, the smell of wood burning. Or even a gas insert, Ginny thought as she stood in the center of the room and made a slow circle. That would be cool too.

  Or hot, which would be even better, she thought with a shiver before realizing that this room, at least, was much warmer than the hall had been. Or her own room. She moved toward the window next to the fireplace and pressed her fingers to the glass. Definitely cold. But on the other side of the fireplace, the bookcase had warm air puffing out around the edges. Not just warm. Tropical. It felt so good she pressed her palm to the back of the bookcase and let the wood warm her.

  But why was it so warm? That was the question. This room didn’t face the street, but light from the streetlamps did cut across the side yard here, so with night-adjusted eyes she could make out the hardwood floor. It was also bare, with no rugs, and all the boxes had been stacked along the opposite wall. She found the floor vents easily enough, one on the left side of the fireplace beneath the window. And the other one…

  “Here,” she murmured and nudged the bookcase with her toe. The other one should be there, but they’d built the bookcase over top of it.

  She set her mug on the fireplace mantle to explore. Yep, there was a notch there in the molding along the bottom shelf. When she put her hand there, the air was so hot it almost burned her fingers. She wanted to get down on her hands and knees and bask in it. She wanted to put down a beach towel and pretend she was in the hot summer sunshine, wearing a bikini and tanning oil, frying herself on some beach someplace, instead of getting up to pee at midnight and standing in the dark, freezing, with her belly big and round and full of child.

  Instead, she contented herself with sticking one foot against the notch and warming her toes until it felt like they might start to sizzle like bacon. Then the other. Back and forth she shifted with her hands on the bookshelf to help support her weight, and her eyelids grew heavier. Like she was slow dancing, she thought sleepily. Slow dancing with the bookcase.

  Ridiculous…

  Ginny snapped awake, trying to remember if she’d heard another set of those sobbing cries or if something else had woken her. It took her a good half a minute to realize it was just her body’s way of protecting her from falling over, because she’d dozed on her feet, which were toasty warm at least. Stifling a yawn, she shuffled toward the doorway where her foot connected firmly with something furry and angry.

  “Noodles,” she scolded as the cat ran on silent feet down the hall, making shadows in front of the night-light. “Don’t you know better…”

  Ginny paused. She’d kicked Noodles because she was sitting, quiet. But when she ran, the telltale jingle of her collar had once again been silenced.

  Huh.

  Back in bed and coordinated around her multiple pillows, Ginny’s lovely sleepiness had vanished. Every time she thought she might actually be able to fall back to sleep, Sean let out another grunt or a snuffle, or he shifted in the bed and pulled the covers off her and made her cold again. He’d always been a restless sleeper, but it seemed to be worse now. Or maybe she was just more sensitive to it. At any rate, at last Ginny had to resort to her old trick of counting backwards from a hundred in order to see if she could trick her brain into shutting down.

  She got to eighteen before Sean coughed and her eyes flew open.

  Starting over, she got to thirty-seven before he let out a long, ripping fart that had her gritting her teeth.

  This time, she got to fifty before he rolled onto his back and started snoring in earnest. Ginny sat up. She leaned over and poked him. Hard.

  “Honey,” she said, her tone making the