Little Secrets Read online

  “It’s just a jump to the left,” she murmured and laughed again. “And then a step to the right.”

  She didn’t need a time warp. Two or three more steps in the direction would take her to the kitchen and the light switch, but for now she just blinked to let her eyes adjust again to the darkness. And then…she remembered. When they’d looked at this house, the alcove had been used to store the broom, a mop with its bucket and the vacuum cleaner. The basement door was there too.

  Just a leaning mop that had probably lost its precarious balance from her thundering weight as she walked. That was all. Nothing else.

  Still, that was twice in one night that Ginny’d let herself be scared into seeing things that weren’t there. Understandable, she guessed. New house, still so unfamiliar. Everything in her life had been turned upside down. Nothing was the same. She let her hand rest on the slight bump beneath her nightgown. Nothing would ever be the same.

  But this house was their new start, hers and Sean’s. This was where they’d raise a family. God willing, they’d grow old together, still interested in sitting on the fabulous front porch in rocking chairs, holding hands. They’d make every cliché and stereotype of a happy family come true, she thought with grim determination as she stared fiercely into the alcove, daring the shadows to shift in front of her again.

  Of course, nothing did.

  In the kitchen, Ginny shuffled across the linoleum to open the fridge, squinting again as she pulled out a carton of orange juice they’d picked up from the convenience store. She really wanted a cup of hot tea but had no clue where either the kettle or the mugs were. Or the tea bags, for that matter. She poured a paper cup of juice and sipped at it as she looked around the humped shapes of stacked boxes on counters and the floor. They had put their old dining room table in here. In the townhouse, the table had seemed immense, but here the kitchen dwarfed it. She ran a finger along the clean modern edge, thinking maybe she’d hunt for something antique for the new dining room. Or at least something that looked antique, not another sleek but flimsy thing Sean would have to put together using one of those little wrenches that came in the box.

  Sean had made some noise about turning at least one of the bedrooms into an office, but so far anything that might someday go into such a thing as a home office was still packed up in boxes that had been distributed to other rooms. However, her laptop was plugged in and charging on the table, she knew that for sure, because earlier she’d gone online to make sure the Internet was working and to check her email. She’d never had a desk. She’d always done all of her computer work at this very table in their minuscule dining room in the townhouse.

  Investigating insurance fraud was never as exciting as most people would imagine, but there had been some occasional physical stress to it. Sometimes a stakeout, watching the man who’d claimed his back hurt too much to stack boxes do the tango with his wife in a backyard they hadn’t secured from every line of sight. Or asking that seemingly innocent young woman to help her reach something on the top shelf of the grocery store, when the woman had claimed her injuries kept her from doing her job as a retail clerk. But most of Ginny’s job was spent writing reports and making sure her facts were straight, that she had proof of the fraud that couldn’t be disputed, that all her t’s were crossed and i’s dotted. She’d spent lots of late nights bathed in the glow of the laptop, a mug of hot tea and a plate of cheese and crackers next to her if she was being good, a piece of cake or some cookies or a bowl of ice cream if she wasn’t.

  Most of those late nights, she wasn’t being good. But that was all over now, and though she let her fingers drift across the laptop’s polished-metal lid, detecting the smoother outline of the sticker she’d applied—a zombie Snow White with her hands posed to hold the Apple logo—Ginny didn’t open the lid. She didn’t check her email or surf the gossip sites or buy things she wanted but didn’t need and couldn’t really afford. She didn’t log on to her Connex account, and she had no reason any longer to snoop around figuring out what other people tried to keep hidden. She was finished with that. This was their new start, and she wasn’t going to ruin it by old habits.

  Ginny climbed the stairs in the dark, one hand on the railing to ensure she didn’t trip or fall and plummet to her sprawling, awkward death. She moved through the upstairs hall, also in the dark, found her bedroom door and crept into her bed, all without turning on the lights, all without anything jumping out at her. By the time she wiggled under the blankets and curled onto her side, the first edges of morning light were beginning to peek through the windows. When Sean’s alarm went off, she sighed, dreaming, and snuggled back down beneath the comforter, finally able to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  The screams of children woke her. Ginny’s eyes flew open and she clawed out at the air, her fingertips not close enough to skim the curtains but moving them a bit in the breeze her startled motion left behind. She gasped.

  Kids playing outside, that was all. She could hear the shush-shush of feet rustling in leaves and the singsongy chant of some childhood rhyme she’d recognize when she woke up a little more, or it would drive her crazy until she could remember it. Like the night before, she was coated in sweat, her nightshirt sticking to her back. Her mouth tasted sour.

  She didn’t force herself to get up right away. She rolled onto her back for a minute or so, remembering with a bit of melancholy how once, not so long ago, she’d spent every night flat on her back with her hands crossed over her chest. Vampira, Sean sometimes called her, but that had been her favorite sleeping position since childhood. She missed it. Though her belly was barely bumped, her muscles and joints had already started going loose, and she needed a complicated arrangement of pillows and positions to keep her back from hurting. Her inevitable aches eased briefly when she switched positions, but in another few minutes they’d start up again and worse, if she didn’t move. For now, she let herself relax into the mattress as she stared up at the ceiling.

  Watermarks, faint beneath a coat of paint, but still there. Some cracks in the plaster. This wasn’t a new house, so she shouldn’t be surprised, but after the townhouse’s smooth, pristine and flawless ceiling, this view was far more interesting. Ginny thought again of her gran’s house. For all her eccentricities, Gran had loved having her grandchildren come to stay, and Ginny and her female cousins had always bunked up in the “rose room.” Floral-patterned wallpaper and sheets, two double beds along one wall and a twin tucked under the eaves. It had been Ginny’s aunt Patty’s room growing up and still bore the marks inside the closet door where she’d used a pen to keep track of how tall she and her siblings had grown. The ceiling in the rose room had been plastered in swirls that made faces if you looked just right, and Ginny’s cousin Dana had been the queen of telling stories about them.

  This ceiling didn’t have those swirls, but Ginny looked for faces anyway. One pattern of cracks and shadow made a man with a walrus mustache. Another a lady in a floppy hat. A smaller configuration looked more like letters, though she couldn’t quite make out what word they spelled. Staring, she started to doze before another series of childish shrieks slammed her awake again.

  “Brats,” she muttered, without real anger, just before a patter of something like gravel pinged the window over the bed. Then she scowled and rolled herself upright to pull back the curtain and stare down into the front yard.

  A little boy and a little girl, both blond and in matching red coats, stared up at the window. When the curtain twitched, the boy screamed again, backing away so fast he tripped himself up and landed on his butt. The girl’s mouth opened wide, her eyes wider, but she didn’t move. Frozen by fear, maybe, Ginny thought as she shook a finger at them. The glass had cracked, cold air seeping in, but remembering the chill from the night before, she wasn’t sure she could blame the kids for breaking it. It looked old, if it were possible to tell how old a window crack was, but the lines of it were dirty. Still, why