Little Secrets Read online

  Somehow, he was holding her, rocking and stroking her back. She didn’t want to be in his arms, but didn’t have the energy to push him away. He comforted her, but it was his own comfort he sought, and Ginny was just too damned tired to stop him.

  “But I thought…” Sean murmured. “I mean, I saw some of your emails…”

  She didn’t have the strength to even confront him about his snooping; at any rate, she’d sent the emails and had been wrong to do it. She always knew she would own up to what she’d done, if she had to. But that was before she found out about Sean’s betrayal, which was somehow bigger than what she’d done. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it only felt that way to her and would be the opposite to him. It didn’t matter.

  “You didn’t sleep with him,” he said happily, as though that made everything okay. “Good. Oh good.”

  She pushed away from him and went on clumsy feet to the sink to splash some cold water on her face and the back of her neck.

  “I’m glad,” Sean said from behind her. “God, Ginny. You don’t know how glad I am.”

  “Well,” she said coldly without turning, “don’t be that fucking happy. I didn’t sleep with him, but I wanted to. And I was going to. He didn’t show. That’s the only reason I didn’t.”

  The lights went out again.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Instant darkness fell over them.

  Ginny heard the scrape of a chair on the linoleum and Sean’s muttered curse. The table bumped, the glass salt and pepper shakers in the center of it rattling. Sean cursed again.

  “Don’t move,” she said crossly. “You’re going to get hurt.”

  “Where’s the flashlight?”

  “I don’t know. It should have turned on when the power went out.”

  “Did you use it today?”

  She could sense where this argument was going and her answer came out clipped, “No. I didn’t have to. It was daylight when Peg came for me.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t use it and then not put it back?”

  That he could accuse of her this, of all things, while they stood together in the dark, after having the worst fight of their marriage…Ginny lost it. She started to laugh, at first low and then louder. Her laughter cycled up and up, becoming a series of hiccuping, frantic guffaws that hurt her throat.

  “Jesus, Ginny! Stop it!” His hand passed by her close enough to brush her sleeve, but he missed her.

  “I didn’t use it!” she shouted into the shadows. “You’re the one who used it last. Remember? You took it downstairs to check the fuse box the last time it blew. That’s the last time I saw it. You left it down there, probably.”

  “Well shit.” Sean sounded miserable.

  She didn’t want to take glee in it, but she did. If she’d been able to caper with it, she would’ve. She wasn’t proud of that, but it was the truth. The full and awful truth. She was glad he’d been the one to lose the flashlight, that his accusation had bounced back and hit him in the face.

  “You left it down there,” she crowed. More laughter, this time cut off with her hand over her mouth because the sound of it disturbed her. It would’ve been better to vomit than keep laughing that way.

  “I’d better go get it.”

  “How are you going to do that in the dark?” she said derisively. Disgusted by this, by everything. And so suddenly tired all she wanted to do was lie down and close her eyes and maybe not wake up.

  “Let me use your phone.”

  The baby moved inside her, a reminder of why Ginny couldn’t give in to selfishness. She sighed and fished in her pocket for her phone. When she thumbed the screen, the dull blue gleam provided at least a little illumination. A thought snagged her; she pulled her hand back before he could take the phone.

  “Where’s yours?” A beat of silence proved her right again. Ginny sighed, no longer gleeful. No longer glad to be proven right. “You lost it?”

  “I dropped it,” Sean said. “I think I did something to the battery. It won’t turn on.”

  “But there’s nothing wrong with your goddamned phone,” she quoted. “Wow.”

  “Just give me yours. I’ll go get the flashlight and we’ll figure out what to do next.” Sean took the phone from her limp fingers. “You stay here. Don’t move.”

  Ginny said nothing. She watched the blue light move out of the kitchen. She heard the basement door open, then the creak of Sean’s feet on the stairs.

  She sat in the darkness.

  She sat for a long time.

  She wasn’t sure when the tears began, only that they started in silence. They burned in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She tasted salt. She put her face in her hands and sobbed, shoulders heaving, body racking.

  In the darkness, Ginny broke.

  And in the darkness, a small hand touched her.

  She didn’t startle from it, because somehow she’d been expecting this to happen. Small fingers curled over her shoulder, then slipped down her arm. A small hand held hers. The fingers were cold and slender, the nails ragged when they pressed lightly into Ginny’s palm.

  “Carrie?” Ginny whispered, and got no answer but a squeeze.

  Then the hand withdrew as the sound of Sean’s feet came up the stairs. The cellar door opened with a familiar creak, and in the next moment the white glare of the flashlight cut through the dark and pierced her eyes. Shadows danced behind her.

  Something crashed.

  “Ginny?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “I told you to stay put.” Sean shone the light around the kitchen.

  Ginny put up a hand to block the glare, but not before she saw a glass of water she’d left on the edge of the counter had fallen and smashed on the floor. She twisted in her chair, but whatever had knocked it off the counter had disappeared. She closed her fingers over the residual feeling of that cold touch.

  “You could’ve cut yourself,” Sean said.

  “I didn’t do that.” Outside, the wind howled and a spatter of snow hit the windows over the sink.

  It startled Sean, who crunched glass under his feet. He muttered another invective and swept the light over her. “It just fell?”

  Ginny shrugged.

  “Don’t tell me it was a ghost.”

  She said nothing, told him nothing. His shoes crunched more glass and he swept the light around the room again. He grunted.

  The lights came on as all the appliances beeped. Sean clicked off the flashlight. Ginny didn’t move.

  “It’s broken,” Sean said unnecessarily, and she didn’t know if he meant the glass or everything else.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Mr. Miller?”

  The man getting ready to cross the street paused, brow furrowed as he tightened his scarf around his neck. “Yes?”

  Ginny had been good at her job, back when she did it. Good at getting people to talk to her without alarming them. Something in her face, she thought. Something pleasant and deceptively innocent. She wasn’t investigating Brendan Miller for insurance fraud, so, really, he had nothing to fear from her, but he looked at her warily anyway.

  “I’m Ginny Bohn.”

  It took him a second or two, but he figured it out. From his expression, Ginny thought he might bolt, and what would she do then? Waddle after him? The thought was laughable.

  His gaze fell to the bump of her belly beneath her puffy coat. “If there’s a problem with the house, you need to talk to the realtor about it. We signed papers; you took it as is…”

  “It’s not about the house. Well. It sort of is about the house.” She stepped to the side, in front of him, when he moved to go around her. She’d stopped working because she was pregnant, but now realized something—he might’ve shoved her aside if not for her belly. She held up the train case. “I have this.”