Little Secrets Read online

  “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 h