Little Secrets Read online

  “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 scho