Little Secrets Read online

  “There we go,” she murmured to the screen. She brought up his profile and found an email address but no phone number.

  One thing she’d learned in her business was that even people who should know better often didn’t appropriately privacy-protect their online information. A quick further search discovered Miller’s address, which was current and confirmed by the most recently updated white pages database. In under ten minutes, she had everything she needed to know to get in touch with him. It was one of the easiest searches she’d done in a long time, but now Ginny sat back in her seat and wondered what she would do with that information.

  He had a right to know. He obviously didn’t care about the furniture or other things in his father’s house, but surely he’d have wanted something personal of his sister’s. Even if he hadn’t wanted anything to do with his dad when he was still alive, he at least deserved the chance to have what his sister had left behind.

  She dialed the number as she went upstairs. A woman answered just as Ginny entered the library to look at Caroline’s box.

  “Hi, can I speak to Brendan Miller, please?”

  The beat of silence lasted way too long. “Who’s calling?”

  “This is Ginny Bohn, I—”

  “Who?”

  Ginny paused. Brendan Miller hadn’t come to the settlement. She had no idea if he was married, but this woman sounded like a suspicious wife. She tried again. “My name is Ginny Bohn. I bought his father’s house?”

  Another long pause. “Yes? What about it?”

  “Is he there?”

  “No. He’s not. Can I help you?” The woman’s clipped tone didn’t sound the least bit helpful.

  Ginny tried anyway. “I’ve found something in the house.”

  “He doesn’t want anything from there, he told me.” Another pause, then a resentful sniff. “I told him there were a lot of lovely things in that house that we could use, but he refused to have any of it. I said that even if he didn’t want it, maybe the kids would, someday. I mean, it was family heirloom stuff.”

  “Oh, honestly…I don’t know anything about that, really. There were only a few things we asked remain in the house anyway.” She thought suddenly of the ugly table she didn’t like, but the thought of offering it to this unhelpful and snide-sounding stranger was suddenly unpalatable. “But I’m not talking about—”

  “Whatever. It was his father’s stuff. I guess if he didn’t want it, who am I to say a word?”

  Ginny had been on this ride before, the up-and-down roller coaster of marital resentments. She understood how it felt to feel marginalized, she totally did. Yet nothing in this woman’s attitude made Ginny sympathetic.

  “It’s not furniture,” she said quickly before the woman could continue complaining. “It’s something personal.”

  The pause this time was longer. “Like what?”

  “I’d really like to talk to him about it, if you don’t mind.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. An audible, choking gasp poked Ginny’s eardrum. The woman spat her words like bullets, “I do mind, as a matter of fact. What did you say your name was again? What sort of personal business do you have with my husband?”

  “It’s his sister’s suitcase,” Ginny said before the woman could go off on her some more. “I thought he’d want it.”

  “My husband doesn’t have a sister.”

  “No, well…um, so far as I know, she’s…gone.”

  “Who did you say this was again?”

  Irritated, Ginny sighed. “Is there a better time I can reach him?”

  “No. Don’t call here again. My husband didn’t have a sister.”

  With that, Mrs. Brendan Miller hung up and left Ginny’s jaw hanging open.

  What a bitch.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Ouija board had been spectacularly easy to get. Ginny simply ordered it online, and it arrived within a couple days. It was different than the one she remembered from slumber parties as a kid. This one was smaller, with glow-in-the-dark letters and planchette. Still, it had the same setup with YES, NO, GOODBYE and the alphabet curving across it.

  Peg, on the other hand, could not be convinced to use it. “No. No way.”

  “Peggy, c’mon. We used to do it all the time as kids. Remember?”

  “I remember. But I’m not doing it now.” Peg shook her head and then her finger. “And you shouldn’t, either. What are you thinking, bringing that into your house? Don’t you know that you could attract…something?”

  “There’s already something.” Ginny put the box aside and set the board in the middle of the dining room table.

  Peg huffed. “Oh, Ginny. Come on.”

  Ginny paused to look at her sister. “I’m serious.”

  “You have mice or squirrels in your attic, that’s all—”

  “Mice and squirrels might get into the food in the pantry,” Ginny said. “But they wouldn’t use a mug and then put it back in the cupboard.”

  “Well, neither would a ghost, for crying out loud.”

  Ginny raised a brow. “How do you know?”

  “Ghosts are spiritual entities or whatever. They don’t need to use a mug.” Peg waved at the Ouija board. “And this is just asking for trouble.”

  “You used to love this game!”

  “It’s not a game,” Peg said seriously. “I mean it, Ginny. Father Simon spoke about it a few months ago, because of the kids getting in to stuff like that for Halloween. It’s a bad tool. It invites bad things.”

  Ginny sighed and pulled the board toward her. She put her fingertips on the plastic planchette and moved it experimentally around the board. “Father Simon is kind of hysterical.”

  Peg made a snuffling noise of protest, but her expression said she knew Ginny was right. “Don’t be disrespectful.”

  “Didn’t he also give a sermon about how couples should watch more television together because it prevented arguments?”

  Peg’s mouth worked on tamping back a smile. “Yes. He did.”

  “And how’s that working for you and Dale?”

  Peg didn’t answer for a moment, then said reluctantly, “We fought over the remote.”

  Ginny slapped the table in triumph. The planchette bounced and slid, skewed toward the board’s grinning sun. “See?”

  Peg shook her finger at Ginny again. “He’s the authority on spiritual matters, and if Father Simon says Ouija boards are dangerous and bad, I believe him. Besides, didn’t you see The Exorcist?”

  “It’s a movie, not real life.”

  “Paranormal Activity?” Peg asked, as though that somehow was less fictional.

  “Did they even use a Ouija in that?” Ginny scoffed. “Also, just a movie.”

  Peg frowned, her expression shadowed. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “What, the movie? Not much. I fell asleep, except for the last couple of minutes. Which were some of horror cinema’s finest,” Ginny admitted. “But no, I don’t remember the rest.”

  “Not the movie. The Ouija board. The one at Gran’s house.”

  “I do remember it. That’s why I got this one.”

  Peg sighed. “But you don’t remember what happened with it. Obviously, you don’t. Or else you wouldn’t be sitting there with that thing in front of you.”

  This had the flavor of a story. Ginny perked, leaning closer to her sister. “What happened?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  Ginny tossed a ball of the plastic wrapping that had been on the box at her. “Bitch!”

  Peg laughed, though it trailed into an uneasy sigh. “It was some creepy, scary stuff, Gin. You were maybe…ten? Eleven?”

  Which would’ve made Peg seventeen. Ginny remembered being ten, vaguely. It was the year of the short haircut. Being mistaken for a boy wa