Little Secrets Read online

  Pasta with roasted red peppers, hearts of palm and a sprinkling of olive oil and grated parmesan cheese. That was her dinner, along with a couple of crusty French rolls. Her craving for a nice glass of red wine was like a physical punch, but Ginny didn’t even give the bottle a longing glance. Her previous doctor had told her a glass of wine a day was perfectly fine; this time around, she hadn’t asked the ob-gyn’s opinion. Better to just avoid it, the way she avoided caffeine and secondhand smoke, and baths that were too hot or showers that were too cold, artificial sweeteners and caustic chemicals. She cleaned with organic products or old home remedies like vinegar and baking soda. She looked both ways at least twice before crossing the street.

  “Because I’m not taking any chances,” Ginny told the cat, who couldn’t be bothered to even glance her way. “Nope. Not a single one.”

  Her eyes had been bigger than her stomach, no small feat these days. With only half her dinner finished, Ginny took her plate to the kitchen and set it on the counter, intending to scrape it before putting it in the dishwasher, but discovering instead that once again, Sean had taken out the trash without replacing the garbage bag.

  A quick search of the cupboard beneath the sink turned up no box of trash bags, and she’d already learned from sad experience that this older-model dishwasher couldn’t handle dishes that weren’t already mostly clean. But Ginny, mindful that anger raised her blood pressure, didn’t fume. Instead, she took her daily dose of vitamins, minerals, anti-nausea remedies and a potent cocktail of homeopathic tinctures that were supposed to guarantee her optimum health and that of her unborn child. Some went down easier than others, no doubt about that, but she forced herself to take each pill or liquid slowly.

  She wasn’t taking any chances.

  Noodles’s bell collar jingled, and Ginny turned to greet that cat. “What do you think, Noodles? Should I have that…chocolate cake… Noodles?”

  Ginny scanned the doorway to the hall, then the arched one leading to the dining room, expecting to see the cat sitting there, giving her the normal bored look. She’d heard the collar, the jingle of bells she suspected Noodles, should she ever find a voice, would disdain in favor of a collar with spikes. Yet…no cat.

  “Noodles?”

  Slowly, Ginny moved toward the hall, ears cocked for any sound of the bell. There it was, but far away and faint now. Upstairs. Ginny heard the sound of something rattling against the still-bare wooden floors up there, and the soft patter of paws. She climbed the stairs, one at a time, her hand there to pull her along like she was eighty years old and a hundred pounds overweight, which was sort of how she felt most of the time. At the top, she psh-pshed for the cat and listened again for the sound of the bell.

  Nothing.

  She called the cat’s name again, but unlike a dog or even a cat with a pleasant personality, Noodles had never come when called. The sound of a can of food opening would bring her running as fast as her legs could carry her too-tubby body, but to the sound of her own name she was deliberately deaf.

  From the room Sean liked to call the office but Ginny thought of as the library came another faint jingle and the rattle of something on the wood floor. Ginny peeked in the doorway, but the cat was gone. The room was warm, though—that was a bonus. Inside it on the floor, she found what the cat had been playing with. Bending to pick it up made her head spin a little, dammit, so she made sure to stand very, very carefully.

  It was a small wooden figure. A lady. The paint had worn off, but her carved features were pretty. She wore forties fashion, an animal stole and peplum jacket. She was the size of Ginny’s pinky and matched the ones she’d found that first day in the telephone table drawer. Ginny looked her over. The wood was warm in her palm.

  This room had a fireplace that matched the one in the parlor below it, though like the one in the dining room, it had been blocked off, unusable. It also had a set of beautiful, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases that went from the fireplace to the opposite wall and around the corner. Gorgeous crown molding. On the other side of the fireplace was a dormer window like the one in her bedroom, but much larger. Inside the dormer area, one of those crawl-space doors.

  Her easel leaned against the wall in that dormer, surrounded by the boxes of her painting supplies. She hadn’t put it there. Like the paintings in the basement, Ginny hadn’t even packed any of this stuff. The last she’d seen it all was in their garage in the townhouse after not even looking at it for months before that.

  Ginny rolled the figure in her palms, back and forth. Whoever had carved it was an artist, of sorts. How long had it taken him to create this tiny figure? To carve the details in the fox stole, the dress, the expression on the woman’s face that, the longer Ginny looked at it, seemed to be a smirk? Had he loved this work, or had he spent the time on it because it was better than facing something else?

  Ginny put the figure on one of the shelves. “Noodles?”

  Stricken by the thought that the cat had somehow wormed her way into the crawl space and found the bait Ginny had promised exterminator Danny she’d keep her away from, Ginny moved toward the small door. It was a little ajar, cold air blowing in around the edges. Ginny swore she heard Noodles’s bell jingling. With a low cry, she tugged the door open to find…

  Nothing.

  Well, not totally nothing. She found some mouse turds and a few of those glue traps, along with a black bait box. Tattered pink insulation. Some weathered cardboard boxes she didn’t recognize and refused to open. Oh, and a shit ton of frigid air wafting up from the open spaces under the eaves.

  “Shit.” If the cat got in there, she could easily get hurt. Ginny shoved the door closed extra tight and made a mental note to ask Sean about weather stripping around the door. Maybe even putting a lock on it to make sure it didn’t blow open again.

  In the kitchen, she found a smug-looking Noodles on top of the kitchen table and shooed her off, then thought better of it and picked up the protesting cat to give her a snuggle. Noodles might be a bit of a bitch, but they’d had her since she was a kitten.

  “If something happened to you…” Ginny kissed the cat’s head, ignoring for a minute the way Noodles squirmed. At least until the cat made that low, warning growl that meant she was going to bite. Then Ginny put her down fast.

  Affection turned to annoyance quickly enough when she went to put her plate in the dishwasher, though. The cat had helped herself to all of Ginny’s leftovers, even licking the plate clean in wide stripes. Great. Now she not only would pee on stuff they left lying around, she’d probably puke too. And in just the right spot for Ginny to find it with her bare feet in the middle of the night.

  “Brat cat,” Ginny said aloud, but Noodles had once more disappeared.

  Chapter Eight

  Ginny had fallen in love three and a half times in her life. Well, two half times, so maybe that counted as one whole time? So. Four times. She’d fallen in love four times, with five different men, one of whom she’d married.

  As soon as she saw the crimson-upholstered fainting couch with carved wooden legs and accents of gold thread, she knew she had to have it. She’d never wanted anything so much at first glance, not ever.

  Well. Maybe once before, but that had been a man and not a piece of furniture.

  This was the first time an inanimate object had moved her to such instant, almost-feral desire. She touched it with reverent fingers, testing the upholstery. It was old, not in the best shape. It didn’t even look comfortable, really, unless maybe you were a Victorian lady used to corsets and sitting stiffly upright. It was definitely not the sort of couch you were supposed to loll upon.

  “I want it,” she said.

  Sean turned from where he’d been looking at a display of old Looney Tunes glasses in a locked cabinet. “Hey, look. Like the ones we found in the house. Jesus, they’re like five bucks apiece. My mom had the whole set of these. I bet we cou