Little Secrets Read online

  This detail drove home the horror of this girl’s…no, she was a woman now…this woman’s life more than anything else could have. Ginny remembered that smile, flashing bright with metal. The curly permed hair, the fashionable clothes. Caroline had been smart and bright and beautiful once. All of that had been stolen from her, replaced with…this.

  “When the pains get worse, one on top of each other, it will be almost time. You’ll feel like you have to push the baby out. Like you have to use the toilet. You won’t be able to help it. But until then, you should rest and try to get through each pain as it comes.” Caroline said this calmly, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to be giving birth in a flooding basement, in the dark. “Linna and I will be here to help you.”

  Ginny waited for the next pain, but her body seemed to have gone quiet. “I can’t feel it moving.”

  Caroline said nothing at first. Then, softly, she put her good hand on Ginny’s belly. “It doesn’t matter. Your body will push it out, no matter what.”

  More tears came, but Ginny forced them back. She clutched at Caroline’s hand. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry I didn’t figure this out sooner. I didn’t put the pieces together, they were all right there. I should’ve known. I should’ve…”

  “How could you have known anything?” Caroline looked surprised, then sad. “My mother didn’t know. My brother didn’t know. Nobody ever did. But you’re here now. And this will all be okay. But first, your baby—babies don’t wait for anything.”

  More contractions came and went, some longer than others. Ginny waited for them to form some sort of pattern, but they refused. Some were short, others long. She tried counting the minutes between them and lost track with their irregularity.

  Ginny had no idea how much time had passed and asked to see her phone. Only half an hour since she’d come into this room. An hour, maybe a little longer since she’d last spoken to Sean. Not soon enough for him to worry. Not soon enough.

  “Mama. Water,” the girl a little bigger than Carrie said.

  “Yes, Trixie. I see it.” Caroline never lost her calm, flat tone. She sat on the bed next to Ginny and took her hand. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Until the baby comes?”

  “Or the water.” She’d proven her ability to laugh, but there was nothing like humor in Caroline’s voice now.

  Ginny tried to think, to focus, to fixate on something her brain wanted to tell her was important. Something about…Carrie. Something about…the water.

  And then she couldn’t think of anything but the agony. It tore at her. It consumed her. As though from far away, she heard Caroline murmuring to Linna, something about blankets. Something about a basin. But then the all-encompassing urge to bear down took over, and all Ginny could think about was pushing.

  Hands moved her again, lifting her hips, in the almost nonexistent break between contractions, to slide something beneath her. Hands pressed on her knees, parting and pushing them back toward her hips. Hands cradled her feet, bare, the slippers lost.

  It had never been like this. The pain had been a familiar echo, vaster but still not entirely foreign. But this grinding, desperate need to strain and push and expel…Ginny was helpless against it. She couldn’t stop it. Her body did what it was meant to do. If she died, she thought, her body would continue to birth this child.

  She felt the baby move down the birth canal, inch by agonizing inch. Too slow, and too fast at the same time. A bright, red-hot center of pain burned between her legs as she screamed. The sound spiraled up and up until her voice broke.

  “The head. I see the head,” Caroline told her. “The baby’s almost here.”

  Ginny looked down between her legs to see Caroline and Linna both poised there, hands ready. The light from her phone had no delicacy. It made everything harsh. Ginny saw the flash of the other children’s faces, but Deke was solid and steady; he held the light focused firmly between Ginny’s thighs.

  The inexorable need to push cycled back, and Ginny rode it. Her fingers clutched the bare mattress, digging into the now-sodden material. She growled with her efforts, her teeth gritting so tightly she thought a tooth cracked.

  The baby was born.

  For a breathless, eternal moment, the emptiness inside confused her and Ginny sagged against the pillows. There was no cry, no wail. She struggled upright, desperate, and croaked out a wordless plea.

  Caroline bent over the child, then lifted it. The baby hung limply in her hands. Then it moved. Then it screamed.

  Ginny had never been so happy to hear anything in her life.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Ginny dozed with her baby tucked up close to her naked skin, both of them covered in a blanket and Noodles purring by her side. She was too exhausted to care how dirty it was. Caroline and Linna pressed on her belly, eliciting a fresh burst of pain and another hot slosh of something from inside her. They talked to each other in that mumbled, mangled language, ignoring her, while the other children were dispatched on errands Ginny didn’t understand.

  She didn’t care.

  For now, her son was safe. They were warm, though anything but dry. And Ginny was tired…so tired…

  She didn’t want to, but forced her eyes open. Her vagina burned and ached. Someone had pushed a folded bundle of material between her legs. The baby snuffled against her, then went quiet. Ginny was bleary, but awake. Her mouth tasted sour, dry. She’d have given almost anything for a drink of cold water.

  Ginny smoothed her hand over her baby’s soft head and marveled at the hair there. It was pale, not dark like hers. He took after Sean. Ginny wanted to know the color of his eyes, but didn’t want to shine the bright light directly on him. “You have electricity down here.”

  “Yes. Sometimes. But it was better to use a flashlight with batteries, when we could. It’s so good to have light.” Caroline’s low voice drifted through the darkness. “We have two lamps, but the outlets down here are bad. When we try to use the stove, sometimes it blows the bulbs.”

  Ginny thought of all the times the power had gone out. “It blew our fuses too.”

  “He said he’d fix it. That and the heat, he got that directed in to us because it was so cold. But it never worked as well as he wanted. He said he could build things just fine, but he didn’t understand electricity. We have a couple candles, but the matches got wet. They were your candles…” Caroline paused and sounded almost shy. “He stopped letting us have them, and no matches, either. Because we might start another fire. And that would’ve been very, very bad.”

  “Caroline, why did you wait so long before you sent Carrie to get me?”

  There was a long, long silence.

  “We had to know,” Caroline said quietly, “if we could trust you.”

  The simple way she said it broke Ginny’s heart. She found the other woman’s hand, the one weighed down by the chain and shackle. “You can trust me.”

  “He didn’t know we were saving food. He didn’t know we’d eat only half of what he brought us, eat the things that would go bad. I made us put the rest away, in case. He was getting old, you see. He said he’d be around forever, that no matter what happened he’d be there, but I knew better. So I made us put the food away. Batteries. The light bulbs, though he’d yell about how careless we were to break so many.” Caroline coughed again. The noise was rattling and thick. She spit to the side, into the water. “He always threatened not to bring more. To let us starve, or sit in the dark. But I always knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t want us to die, you know. He didn’t want us dead.”

  Ginny shivered. “But…I don’t understand, Caroline. Why would you stay here? If Carrie could get out through the ducts to get food, to find me, why wouldn’t you send her earlier? I would’ve helped you sooner.”

  The bed dipped as the children gathered around. Their mother looked around at them, then at Ginny