Little Secrets

With a sigh, Ginny went out to confront them, but again found nothing but the remnants of childish games instead of the children themselves. The figures that had been lined up along the window well were still there, and she couldn’t tell if they were in the same order or not. Something had been added, though. A plastic baggie of Goldfish crackers and an unopened juice box. Kids’ snacks, but they didn’t look like they’d been lost. They looked like they’d been set there deliberately. Frowning, Ginny took them in the house and tossed them in the trash, thinking again of her gran.

  Gran had always been a woman of superstitions, even as at the same time she was utterly derisive of what she called “flights of fancy.” In her high phases Gran had left a bowl of milk out on the counter for the Brownies, who were something like leprechauns, from what Ginny remembered, and who’d make mischief in your house if you didn’t feed them. Sometimes that bowl of milk went sour and chunky in the bowl, but woe to anyone who touched it. Other times it stayed empty on the counter, a reminder that Gran could be as stingy as she was generous. Ginny’s mom had hated that tradition and the story that went along with it, but Ginny had a fondness for the memory.

  She had no milk and wouldn’t have left a bowl of it on the counter anyway, but something about the way the crackers and juice had been left reminded her of Gran’s offering to the Brownies. It seemed like the sort of thing Ginny would like to pass down to her child, one of those weird family things that outsiders might not understand but that meant a lot to the people who did it.

  The cat bumping around her ankles was a good reminder that whatever she left had to be more symbolic than nutritious, or at least not tempting to a cat on a diet, with a bad attitude. Ginny bent to scratch behind Noodles’s ears, then lifted her. She wasn’t any thinner. If anything, Noodles felt even heavier. Ginny rubbed the soft fur under the cat’s chin. Usually this jingled the bell collar, but today her fingers found nothing but fur.

  “Oh, you bad kitty, what did you do with it?” Ginny sighed and set her down. “Noodles, why are you so much trouble?”

  The cat meowed implacably, wound herself around Ginny’s ankles some more, and when it became obvious that no food was forthcoming, sauntered away with her tail in the air. Ginny shook her head. In the townhouse, Noodles had always been around, but this house was so much bigger the cat was forever disappearing and showing up again unexpectedly, usually under someone’s feet. The bell collar had kept her from getting stepped on more than a dozen times in the past few days alone. Without it, she was likely to get more than her feelings hurt.

  Adding a new collar to her ever-present mental shopping list, Ginny pulled a small crystal candy bowl from the cupboard. Also a wedding gift they’d never used, it of course had been one of the first things she pulled out from the packing boxes. Couldn’t have been something practical, she thought, like her measuring cups and spoons. Nope, she had to find all the gaudy, expensive things they should’ve sold at a yard sale instead of bringing along. Well, it had a use now.

  She filled it with peanuts, a snack Noodles would leave alone, for sure, and also wouldn’t spoil. She added some chocolate-covered raisins too after a moment’s thought, because although she was a sucker for most things chocolate, this particular treat was a present from Barb, probably purchased from a fundraising schoolkid. They had left a sour taste in Ginny’s mouth, and she had no intentions of finishing them. As a symbolic offering to a mythical group of tiny, sometimes-vengeful creatures, it seemed perfect.

  Upstairs in the library, she looked at the boxes shoved against the wall and at her easel propped next to them. Her paints were in those boxes. Brushes, palette, some of the smaller canvases she’d bought months and months ago. Carefully wrapped and packaged solvents and brush cleaners. The paints would surely be dried up by now. The canvases stained, maybe. She remembered packing these boxes months ago, not for the move. Just to put them away. She’d emphatically labeled them not “Studio” but “Art Supplies.” She didn’t need to open them to find out what was inside, and, really…she didn’t want to.

  Instead, Ginny threw them all away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The kettle screamed.

  Ginny got up from the kitchen table to bring it back so she could pour her mug full of hot water. Peg had already helped herself to a mug of Sean’s coffee and was setting out the platter of homemade cinnamon buns she’d brought. Ginny chose a tea bag from the box on the table and dunked it in the water, eyed the buns and ran a finger through the thick goo of icing on the bottom of the plate.

  “God,” she said as she sucked the sweetness, “so good. Why didn’t Gran ever teach me how to make these?”

  “I was the only lucky one, I guess.” Peg rolled her eyes, but fondly. “You know Dana asked her a hundred times for the recipe. Gran never let her have it.”

  “Has Dana asked you for it?”

  “Nope.” Peg grinned. “Should I give it to her?”

  “I guess if she asks you. I mean, there’s no real reason to keep it to yourself, right? Unless you like being the only one who can make them.” Ginny shrugged and stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea.

  “I don’t. It’s not that. It’s just that Gran gave it to me, only me, and I feel like it would maybe be dishonoring her or something. I mean, maybe she had a reason for not giving it to Dana, right?”

  Ginny snorted softly and blew on her tea. “Yeah, spite.”

  “Cold.” Peg shook her head but laughed softly. “Speaking of cold…why is it so freaking hot in here?”

  “I know. I know!” Ginny tossed up her hands. “The thermostat’s set to seventy. I don’t even want to imagine our next power bill.”

  “Seventy! Good heavens, Ginny. Why so hot?”

  “Because if I don’t set it that high,” Ginny said, “the rest of the house is freezing.”

  “Have you checked the vents? Maybe something’s blocking them.”

  Ginny gave her sister a look. “Have you seen my house? Of course stuff is blocking them. I hope once I get everything put away…”

  She trailed off with a sigh. They’d been in the house for a month and it still looked like they’d just moved in yesterday.

  “You know I told you I’d help you.” Peg cut one of the buns in half, then again, to put just a quarter of it on her plate.

  “I know. But you’re busy; you have your own stuff to do.” Ginny broke hers into smaller pieces but intended to eat them all. She watched her sister stir artificial sweetener in her coffee and add a splash of skim milk. “Diet?”

  Peg looked up, a little startled. “I can’t fit into my jeans. Unlike you, I’m not eating for two. It just looks like I’ve been.”

  Peg’s youngest, Luke, was eighteen. Her oldest, Jennifer, was twenty-eight. It had indeed been a long time since Peg was in Ginny’s condition, but she was far from overweight. Ginny watched her sister pluck at the pieces of cinnamon bun without actually eating them. She studied the lines around Peg’s eyes. The corners of her mouth. If she looked in a mirror, she’d see those same lines, just a little fainter but unmistakable. When had they started getting so old?

  “What’s going on?”

  Peg sighed. “I’m not supposed to say anything about it…”

  Ginny reached to put a hand on Peg’s to keep her from further worrying the bun into scraps. “About what? What’s going on? Is Dale okay? The kids?”

  “He’s fine. It’s Billy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ginny hadn’t spoken to her brother in a few weeks, her move and his work keeping them from connecting. This wasn’t unusual, since though she loved her brother, they didn’t keep in touch as often as she did with Peg. “Is he okay? Is he sick?”

  “No. It’s Jeannie.”

  Ginny frowned. “Spit it out, Peg, I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Jeannie’s going to leave him.”

  This set Ginny back in
her chair. She blinked rapidly, processing this. “What? Why?”

  Peg sighed and wiped her fingers with a paper napkin before cupping her mug. She lifted it to let the steam from the hot coffee bathe her face for a few seconds before answering, “She’s met someone else.”

  Ginny’s stomach lurched into her throat. She took a bit of bun, too big, and it lodged in her throat so she had to gulp too-hot tea to swallow it. The tea burned her tongue.

  “I asked how long it had been going on,” Peg went on. “I mean, my God, we just went to the beach with them this past summer, and things seemed fine. I mean, if anything, she was nicer than I’d ever seen her. And, you know, it’s not that I don’t like Jeannie,” Peg added hastily, like she had to explain to Ginny, who knew very well the sort of woman her sister-in-law was.

  Ginny stayed quiet for a moment. She and Sean hadn’t gone to the beach this summer because all their vacation time and resources had been taken up with buying the house. She hadn’t seen Jeannie since the spring, months and months ago. “What does Mom say about it?”

  “Oh…I don’t think she knows. Billy didn’t even want me to tell you, because of…you know.” Peg gestured vaguely at Ginny’s belly, hidden by the table.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I wish everyone would stop tiptoeing around me with stuff because I’m pregnant.” Ginny tore another bite of cinnamon bun. This one went down much easier.

  Peg nibbled at a bite of her own, more daintily. “Sorry. I think he was just being, you know. A good brother.”

  “Why’d he tell you, if not Mom? Or me?”

  “I…” Peg looked caught, eyes shining, glittery.

  “You what?”

  “I saw her. With him. The other guy.”

  Ginny paused with her mug halfway to her mouth, then set it down gently. “Oh. God. Peg…you’re the one who told him?”

  “Well, what would you have done?” Peg frowned. “I saw her out, bold as brass, with some other man. It was clear as anything what they were up to—”

  “Why? Were they holding hands or making out or what? Were they dry humping in the middle of the grocery store?” Ginny got up from the table on the unspoken pretense of washing her hands clean of sticky icing, but the real reason was so she could get her reaction under control. At the sink she turned on the hot water and ran it hard, letting it burn her hands while she drew in breath after shaky breath.

  “They were at the movies together, in a matinee. Sitting close. I could tell, Ginny. I mean, anyone could’ve.”

  Ginny turned from the sink to look at her sister. Peg, the oldest, had always been a little mother to her siblings. It had annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her and Billy when they were younger, and sometimes still did, even though Ginny had come to appreciate her sister’s concern, especially since their own mother so infrequently seemed to have any. Still…this…she shook her head slightly. She rubbed her burnt tongue on the roof of her mouth, the pain better than trying to find words. Safer.

  “Did you talk to her first?”

  “No.”

  Ginny rubbed at her mouth with the back of one hand. “You just went to Billy and told him.”

  “He’s my brother!”

  And Jeannie, as much as Peg might protest she liked their sister-in-law “just fine,” had always been a little standoffish. A little…not snotty, exactly, but she’d definitely never tried to ingratiate herself with Peg—or Ginny, who’d decided long ago she didn’t care. She didn’t need Jeannie for a bestie, or even a sister. However, Peg had always felt a little snubbed.

  “But it’s not your business.”

  “How can you say that?” Peg frowned again. “What would you have done?”

  Ginny took a cloth from the sink and feigned an intense interest in wiping down the countertops, though she’d done a complete kitchen tidy in anticipation of Peg coming over.

  “You’re telling me you’d have just let her go on with it? Not told Billy at all? I don’t believe you, Ginny.”

  “You don’t know what was really going on, that’s all I’m saying. And now, by telling him, Billy knows and Jeannie’s leaving him, and maybe if you’d just left it alone…” Ginny bit back her words. Her sore tongue ached as she rubbed it firmly against the back of her teeth. “Forget it. How’s Billy?”

  “How do you think he is? He’s devastated.”

  “Yeah. I bet he is.” Ginny sagged a little, then turned to say something placid, vapid, to turn her sister’s attention away from an argument, but found she had nothing to say. Instead, she took her now-cool mug and popped it into the microwave and hit the button to warm it for a minute.

  The overhead light flickered rapidly. The clocks on the microwave and stove beeped. The light went out. Came back on. Went out again while Peg looked up goggle-eyed and Ginny sighed a curse. At four thirty, there was just enough late afternoon sunshine to keep the kitchen from being totally dark, but in another ten minutes or so they’d be in complete shadow.

  Peg made a face. “What’s up with that?”

  “Circuit breaker.” Ginny glanced at the coffeemaker, still on. “There’s something funky with the wiring in the kitchen. Or something. I guess it’s the coffeemaker and the microwave together, I don’t know. It was blown the day we moved in and has happened a bunch of times since then; we haven’t been able to figure out exactly what trips it.”

  “You should have it looked at. And the furnace too.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Ginny said it with a roll of her eyes, a familiar tease.

  “Where’s the fuse box? Are you going to go take care of it?”

  “Well. Sure. Of course. It’s in the basement.” Ginny paused. “It will be dark down there.”

  “You have a flashlight?”

  “Oh sure. Somewhere.” Ginny laughed and waved a hand toward the dining room, the living room beyond, overflowing with boxes. “Probably ten of ’em.”

  “Candles?”

  “Sure, I have a candle.” Ginny opened the drawer but found nothing, no candles, not even the mostly melted stubs of the ones she’d used in the candelabra. “Here, I know. I have one of those lighter things. We’ll use that.” She found it in the drawer and went with her sister to the basement door.

  It opened with a spine-tingling creak. Ginny paused and flicked the light switch on and off a few times, just in case. Of course, nothing. She held the lighter high, but the light didn’t shine more than a few feet. The steps, she noticed, were dirty, the wood splintered on the sides. Rubber matting had been stapled to the center of each riser, presumably to keep people from slipping, and dust had collected in all the threads.

  Peg clutched at Ginny’s shirt. “You should let me go first.”

  “Because I’m heavy with child?”

  “Sarcasm suits you so nicely, sister dear. No. Because I’m older.” But Peg didn’t move, just peeked around Ginny’s shoulder.

  Even as kids, Ginny had always been the one who had to go first in the haunted houses at Halloween time. Everyone had always strung behind her while she felt her way in the dark, hands out, ready to be the first in line for the monster leaping out. If she could do that, she should be able to go into her own basement where there was no masked creature waiting to grab her.

  Probably.

  She had to let the lighter go out for a second to give her finger a rest from holding the trigger. Peg gasped when the alcove went dark. There was still light coming in from the hall behind her, but the stairs were pitch black.

  “No windows in the basement?”

  “A couple,” Ginny said. “Not near the stairs, though.”

  She lit the lighter again. The shadows withdrew. She put her free hand on the railing, her foot on the top stair. Peg shuffled along behind her until Ginny sighed and stopped three stairs down.

  “You’re going to knock me down the stairs if you’re not careful.
Jesus, Peg. It’s a basement. It’s not quite five o’clock in the afternoon. Serial killers don’t come out until at least five thirty.”

  “Funny.” Peg backed up a step. “It’s still dark. Be careful! Do you know where the fuse box is?”

  She didn’t, actually, since Sean had always been the one to go down and fix things. “How hard can it be to find?”

  They found out in the next few minutes when they got to the bottom of the stairs and the lighter’s glow didn’t extend more than a foot or so beyond them. The paintings were gone, Ginny saw that at once. Sean had moved them. She waved the lighter around and caught sight of some of the empty boxes he’d brought down. Too few of them, of course. She had to look away, or be annoyed.

  “It’s got to be along a wall.” Ginny moved toward the wall directly across from her.

  Concrete blocks, pale gray. One of the walls, the one on the side that had once been the garage, had been plastered over, probably after the fire. Otherwise, it was nothing special. The walls looked like any other basement she’d ever been in, long and bare and strung with cobwebs along the ceiling, which was open to the beams and hung with wires, tubes and ducts. She understood what Danny the exterminator had meant—the ducts went everywhere.

  No fuse box, though. Ginny, Peg shuffling behind, still clinging to her shirt, moved to the left. This wall, the one facing the backyard, also had no windows and no fuse box. The one to the left of that had two windows set deep into wells, through which only the faintest glimpse of failing daylight crept. One of them was the one where she’d found the figurines.

  By this time they’d gone around to the back of the stairs, which had been walled off to make a sort of closet beneath them. Another short wall jutted out a few feet, not long enough to reach the far wall. Beyond this, at last, Ginny spotted the fuse box.

  “Of course it’s on the wall farthest away from where we started. I have to let the light go out again, hold on a second.” Her finger had cramped from holding the trigger, and she let it go with a sigh of relief.

  Peg let out a squeak as the room went dark.