Little Secrets Read online

  “Look at me!” Ginny demanded. “Should I be out here going after your kids? No! What the hell is wrong with you? Get your ass down there and look for them!”

  Kendra stepped back, and Ginny wavered in the squishy muck. More rippling water washed over her legs, splashing the hem of her nightgown. She looked to where the creek had once burbled and chuckled along over smoothly polished stones, as cheerful and dangerous as a fluffy kitten. It rushed and roared now.

  Just across it, in a pond like the one in which Ginny and Kendra stood, was a figure in a red hooded coat. It turned at the sound of Ginny’s shouts, and Kendra let out a wail of relief.

  “Kelly! Kelly! Where’s Carson?”

  He was there too, a little farther on. Both children waved at their mother, who set off at a run through the overflowing creek toward them. She went down in a minute as her foot plunged into a hole or something. Kendra face-planted into the water and flailed.

  Ginny wanted to laugh in that horrid way she always wanted to chuckle when someone fell, not because she really thought it was funny, but because there was no helping it. She cut it off into a strangled yelp and moved a step or two forward. She stopped herself from going farther.

  She was pregnant, for God’s sake, and already this was a bad idea. Kendra had fallen into the water, and Ginny didn’t want to do the same. She’d never get up. She’d drown in her own backyard.

  Besides, Kendra had made it to her feet, soaked and muddy, but seemingly unscathed. Until she started to scream, that was. She screamed and flailed some more, backpedaling and falling again. She rolled, desperate to get up and out, while the kids stared at her with goggle eyes. Kelly got too close to the edge, where the water was rushing instead of just rippling, and her feet got taken out from under her.

  Ginny watched in horror as Kelly went under, nothing but the red hood showing. In seconds she was downstream a few feet and sputtering up out of the water, but she couldn’t get to her feet. Kendra screamed. Carson had put his hands over his face.

  Ginny was moving without thinking, one hand on her belly and the other held out to balance herself like a tightrope walker with a pole. She slipped in the soggy grass but made it to water up to her knees before Kelly went under again. The girl had snagged on a tree branch that had fallen into the water, and it was the only thing keeping her from being pushed farther downstream. It was also pressing her under the water.

  “OHMYGODMYBABY!” Kendra shrieked.

  Ginny was actually closer to the girl. Her slippers had come off. Her toes dug into the mud and grass, which gave her a better grip. Just a foot or so in front of her was where the creek normally ran, and she had no idea how deep it was. Just that it was fast. Beside her was a part of another branch that had fallen during one of the snowstorms, thick and heavy enough that she had to strain to lift it.

  “Help me!” she ordered Kendra.

  Miraculously, the other woman moved without fuss. She grabbed the end of the branch and lifted it as Ginny guided it toward Kelly. The girl grabbed at it. Missed. Grabbed again.

  This time, she caught it. Her mother yanked it, moving Kelly just a few feet closer so she could grab the red coat.

  It was over in minutes. Ginny found herself clutching a sobbing and shaking Kelly, both of them higher up on the lawn and away from the creek, while Kendra waded across using the branches and grabbed up Carson. By the time she got back to Ginny’s yard, all of them had blue lips.

  But they were alive.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” Kendra clutched at both kids. “What were you doing! What were you thinking?”

  “We…we…we wanted to see the…” Carson could barely speak through his chattering teeth.

  Whatever it was he’d wanted to see, his mother wasn’t interested. She shook him, then grabbed at his sister and started hauling them away from the water.

  Ginny, exhausted and shivering, followed. Every part of her ached, and all she wanted was a hot shower, clean clothes and the comfort of her bed. Instead, she slipped on the sopping grass and went to her knees. Her fingers dug into the soft mud.

  Ahead of her Kendra wasn’t even looking back as she bustled her kids home. The three of them were sobbing and screaming. Ginny thought she should be offended her neighbor wasn’t even bothering to look back and check on her, but that would mean she had to deal with Kendra and her two spawn. And didn’t she understand, anyway, the force that moved a mother to forget everything else but her children?

  The baby moved inside her, protesting the position and kicking out so hard the little feet stole Ginny’s breath. She gasped, then coughed as she pushed herself along the muddy slope and struggled to get herself upright. Her fingers dug again into the soil and grass and slipped, scraping along a tree branch. Or something. Not a tree branch.

  Ginny dug a little deeper and came up with something shorter than the length of her forearm. Knobbed on the end. It must once have been white, but time in the earth had turned it dark. She cradled it against her for a moment and looked behind her at the rushing water that had eroded so much of her yard. Then at the thing in her hand. She knew what had so captivated Kelly’s and Carson’s attentions, what they’d been looking at.

  It was a bone.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  She’d showered and changed her clothes and tied her wet hair up on top of her head, but that only left the back of her neck exposed and vulnerable. Sean’s fingers squeezed, squeezed her there. He meant the touch to be gentle and soothing, but every press against her sent a ripple of irritation down her spine, until finally she shrugged her shoulders to squirm away.

  The officer who’d come to the house was young and fresh scrubbed. His uniform had been crisp and polished when he came to the door, but now shoes were spattered with mud and his trouser legs, sodden. He’d gone down to the creek, but in the dark and with the rain coming down more heavily than before, he’d come back in the house.

  “How long will it take?” Ginny asked. “Until you know if it’s human?”

  The officer looked uncomfortable. “I’m not really sure. I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. It could be a…week? Maybe?”

  “A week?” Ginny sounded as outraged as she felt and turned away to keep him from seeing her face.

  “Well…forgive me, but it’s not like it’s an emergency,” the officer said quietly. “We’ll do the best we can and let you know, okay? In the meantime, if you find anything else, you let us know.”

  “We’re not going to find anything else.” Sean said this to soothe her, not the cop. He rubbed her shoulders again. “Thanks for coming out, Officer.”

  When he’d gone, and they were in bed, trying to sleep, Sean kissed her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Ginny. All of this will be okay. I promise you.”

  She knew about his promises, and wanted to believe him. Or at least that he meant it. But how could he promise her something like that?

  “Maybe now you can just forget about all this stuff.” Sean’s voice rose beside her in the dark. He sounded sleepy.

  Ginny was anything but tired. She breathed in the scent of lavender, faint now but still lovely. She needed to buy some more before the baby came. She had to do a lot of things before the baby came.

  “It’s over,” Sean said. “You have to know that, right?”

  Sean loved horror movies as much as she did, maybe more. He had to know that finding the source didn’t make the ghosts go away. Not if you hadn’t yet figured out what they wanted. Ginny breathed. She breathed.

  The bed dipped as he rolled toward her. His hand rested on her hip, then slipped around to caress her belly. His heat covered her back as he nuzzled at her shoulder.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said. “Even after what we found.”

  “We don’t know yet what you found.”

  “Bones, Sean.”

  “Th