by Megan Hart
Ginny laughed softly. “Not physically, no. Mentally…”
“You’re a great painter.”
“Sure. Of walls.” She looked around the kitchen. “Speaking of which…”
“No,” Sean said. “No way. Don’t even think about it.”
“I could just stop at the paint store…look at colors.”
“I told you we could go this weekend.” Now he sounded as irritable as she felt, which in turn only made her all the more annoyed. “I don’t want you lifting heavy paint cans, and besides, Ginny, I know you. You’ll go to pick out colors and come back with all the stuff, and I’ll find you up on a ladder when I get home.”
She couldn’t really argue with him, since that was true. Still, it didn’t sit well with her to be lectured that way, even if he had good intentions. “You worry too much.”
More silence. Now she’d hurt his feelings for sure. He always clammed up when he was upset, and she stifled a sigh. She settled for a halfhearted apology instead. “I’m sorry.”
“I worry. Of course I do. Am I not allowed?”
She rubbed the space between her eyes with the tip of her finger. “Of course you are. But—“
“I’ll stop and pick up something for dinner on the way home,” he told her. “It’s Friday. We can just relax tonight, and tomorrow we’ll hit the grocery store, the mall, the paint store, whatever you want. Okay? I’ll be there to do the heavy lifting, and you can pick out the colors. I can paint Sunday, before anything gets unpacked. Easier that way, we won’t have to cover the furniture or anything.”
When he put it that way, made it sound so reasonable she couldn’t argue, there was no way for her to reply with anything but a murmured “fine.”
It was far from fine, but as usual, Sean didn’t appear to hear the frustration in her voice. “Good. What do you want for dinner?”
“If you’re going to pick it up,” Ginny said in a clipped tone, “you should just decide.”
“Okay, good idea. I’ll surprise you. I’ll be home a little later than usual, then. Are you good for now, though? Should I have my mom—”
“No. If I need anything, I’ll tell my sister to bring it over.” She couldn’t tell him enough times that she didn’t need his mother to help her do the things she could do on her own, or with the help of her own mother or siblings. Or friends. Sean’s mother meant well, but she was an easily flustered, flighty and sort of useless kind of woman with whom Ginny had never really connected. It was going to be bad enough that she had to tippy-toe around the mess in her house while she waited for her big, strong man to help her with tasks she could so easily accomplish twice as fast and perfectly well on her own. She didn’t need a hovering, cooing mother-in-law there to second-guess and wring her hands fretfully over every choice.
“I gotta go. Lunch meeting. Paul’s picking up Chinese.”
“Well,” Ginny said drily, because how could she stay angry in the face of Sean’s clear delight, “I guess I know what you won’t be bringing home for dinner then.”
He laughed, and after a moment she did too. They exchanged I-love-yous, his coming first but hers at least sincere, and she disconnected. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t angry anymore as it was that she was making a deliberate effort—a choice, if you will—to tuck that annoyance away and focus on the positives. She didn’t have to cook dinner. That was a plus. Her husband loved her. Another plus. They’d just bought a new house, and she could be a lady of leisure in it. No more job. Didn’t have to unpack. Bonus, bonus, bonus. Everything she listed eased her irritation into a smaller, tighter package, until she was able to get rid of it altogether.
That was until she wanted to drink some juice and it was all gone, and when her stomach growled because she still hadn’t eaten, and when she wanted to at least have a peanut butter sandwich and there was no bread, only saltines, and she had to use a spoon because she couldn’t find a knife to spread it with.
“Fuck this,” Ginny said aloud. Then again, just because she could, as loud as she wanted, no neighbors with their ears pressed against the walls to hear her. Or at least she presumed so, unless she screamed at the top of her lungs or those kids were hanging around on the porch, nobody would hear her. “Fuck this with something hard and sandpapery.”
It felt good to have let off just that little bit of steam, but when she had to resort to eating her saltine crackers over the sink because the table was too crowded to set down a plate, Ginny knew there was no way she could wait until the weekend to at least get some part of the kitchen unpacked and organized. She finished her lunch and dusted her hands free of crumbs, then lifted the lid of her laptop to turn the music on since, of course, she hadn’t yet found either her iPod or the speakers that went with it.
She’d learned to be fastidious about shutting down her browsers, cleaning her cache, signing out of her email and social media sites. Sean had his own computer, but that never stopped him from “just hopping” on to hers if it was more accessible or faster or just plain nicer than his older model desktop—and the laptop almost always was all of those things. No matter how many times she’d tried to explain that the entirety of her job was contained on that laptop, that not only was all the information she gathered confidential—legally—but that when he went in and tried to fiddle around, closing tabs she’d left open on purpose or signing her out of whatever she’d been doing, he was potentially screwing her investigations. She’d thought about setting up a user account for him, except she knew he’d never use it because he only ever intended to do something “real quick” and would see no point. And now, she supposed, since she was no longer working, it wouldn’t matter. He’d been on here this morning though; she could tell because though the laptop powered up to the login screen, the lid itself was slightly sticky. Like from juice. Frowning, she ran her fingers over the metal.
Sticky.
Not like someone had spilled juice right on it. More like someone with juice-coated fingers had touched it. She tried the keys, but they all seemed fine. The screen too, which was a good thing, because if Sean had not only spilled juice and left it for her to clean up, but also had gotten it all over her computer, paying hell would be less expensive than totaling up Ginny’s expense report.
Moments ago she’d been on fire to get something done, but the inertia of pregnancy settled her more firmly into her chair as she opened iTunes and clicked Shuffle to play through her entire music library. She didn’t have to check her email or anything else…but she was going to. Why not? Sean had said she was supposed to take it easy, and fooling around on the Internet, not even pretending it was for work, was as easy as it got.
She checked her messages, answered one from her mom, marked one from her brother as unread so she’d remember to answer it later, deleted a slew of fluffy kitten glitter angels and urban legend warning forwards from Sean’s mom, who obviously never visited Snopes.com. Ginny logged in to Connex and skimmed the updates, wished an old college friend a happy birthday and thought about resisting the allure of starting up a word challenge game with some random strangers, but didn’t. She loved and hated those games because despite her large and eclectic vocabulary, she sucked spectacularly at the sort of strategizing necessary to make the most of the double-word and letter tiles. This time, she started off with a seventy-six point word that made her whoop aloud with glee.
With half the day already gone, her stomach momentarily at least sated if not full and a house full of boxes silently cajoling her into opening them, Ginny moved to log out of everything but the music program. And then…the way it always happens, a song shuffled up. At the first note she froze, fingers on the trackpad twitching so the cursor flew around the screen.
This song.
Oh, this song.
She hadn’t let herself listen to it in months, though there’d been a time when she’d played it over and over again on Repeat, barely a break in be
tween. On her laptop, in the car, through her headphones as she exercised or shopped or sat on the beach and pretended to read. That song had been a punch in the gut every single time, and yet she’d done that to herself on purpose. She’d let it cut her open so she had to sew herself back up again, over and over and over, and gained some sort of sick satisfaction from it. Some measure of…relief, she guessed.
Some closure.
The problem with doing something you don’t want anyone to know about is that when it all goes wrong and you sit at your kitchen table and put your face in your hands and cry because you’re hurting even though you have no right to ache…you can’t talk to anyone about your pain.
This pain was hers to carry alone, and that was all right. She deserved it to be that way. Heavy, with nobody to help her carry it. Sharp enough to cut.
She ought to have deleted the song from her music library entirely instead of just taking it off her playlists, but the fact was that even now, months later, a year later, maybe a fucking lifetime later, this song would always have the ability to cut her open. She would always find a way to sew herself up; that was who she was. It was what she did. So now when it started and she sat at her old table in its new place and stared all around her at the unfamiliar patterns of light streaming through the windows, all Ginny could do was sit and listen.
And when the song ended, though she knew she needed to get up and get to work, Ginny hit Replay.
Chapter Four
“It’s cold in here.” Sean set the paper bags of takeout food on the table. “Has it been this cold all day?”
Ginny didn’t turn from the sink where she was washing her hands. She’d spent the rest of her day wiping out the cabinets and cleaning the counters and cupboards so that when Sean unpacked the dishes he could put them on clean shelves. She’d given the floor a good mopping too. For a house that hadn’t been lived in for a long time, there’d been a lot of dust. Now she ran the water as hot as it would go, scrubbing under her nails to get them clean of grime.
“I don’t know. I guess so.” She shrugged, still not looking at him, still a little tender from her earlier self-indulgent, emotional binge. “It wasn’t that cold out today, was it? Turn up the thermostat.”
Sean disappeared into the hall and came back a few minutes later. “It was already set at seventy. That’s warm enough. Doesn’t feel like seventy in here.”
Her hands clean, she crossed the kitchen to greet him with a kiss. Pushed all the residual emo down, way down, made it invisible. “Mmmm. Your nose is cold.”
He laughed, but his brow remained creased. “Aren’t you cold?”
“I was busy working today. Want a sweatshirt?”
“Yeah,” he said, finally focusing on her face. When she tried to pull away, he kept her close with his hands on her hips. “Hey, you. I thought you were going to take it easy.”
“Sean…”
His smile tipped the corners of his lips but left his eyes uncrinkled. “I just want you to be careful. That’s all.”
Ginny sighed but didn’t try to pull away from him. “I know. And I was. I took my time. I didn’t overdo anything. And look how nice the kitchen looks, you didn’t even notice.”
Sean didn’t look around. He kissed her instead. “You could’ve let me help.”
Enough. It was too much. With a sigh, Ginny pushed out of his embrace. “It was fine. Let’s eat.”
He didn’t move from behind her as she went to the cupboard to pull out a couple of plates. “I don’t like it when you walk away from me like that.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it when you lecture me.” She turned. “I couldn’t wait for you to get home to help me clean the kitchen, Sean. Okay? It had to be done, especially since there was juice all over the place. You think I should’ve just, what, walked over it all day? C’mon. That’s crazy.”
He tilted his head just a little. “What happened with the juice?”
“What do you mean, what happened with the juice?” She put the plates on the table, then went to the drawer for forks and knives. “You spilled it all over the floor.”
“I didn’t spill it.”
She paused, silverware in hand. She’d expected excuses, not outright denial. “Well, I sure didn’t.”
“I didn’t even come in here this morning, I was running late. Had to stop at the Green Bean for coffee.” He glanced at the fridge, then her. “What juice?”
“Certainly not the juice I bought at the grocery store today, since I was forbidden from going.” He gave her a blank look. Ginny sighed. She put the forks and knives on the table next to the plates, then her hands on her hips. “The orange juice we picked up from the convenience store. I woke up in the night and came downstairs and had some juice…”
Ginny trailed off, trying to remember if she’d put the juice back in the fridge. Sean smiled just a little. She frowned. “I didn’t spill it. I’d remember that.”
“Like you remembered leaving your purse on top of the car? Or when you put your phone in the fridge and the butter in your tote bag?”
“Totally different,” Ginny said crossly.
Sean said nothing, but this time his smile did crinkle the corners of his eyes in that way she loved so much. It made her want to trace his eyebrows, so finely arched she sometimes teased him that he had a secret waxing habit. It made her want to pull him close and open his mouth with hers and taste him, and if nothing else, she was grateful for that sudden, trip-trapping beat of her heart. There’d been a long, long period of time when she feared she’d forgotten what it was like to want him that way.
“Maybe I left the juice on the counter,” she conceded. “But I didn’t spill it.”
“It was probably Noodles.”
Ginny frowned. “She doesn’t jump up on the counters.”
“So you say,” Sean told her. “She just doesn’t do it when we’re around.”
“She’s locked in the bathroom,” Ginny pointed out just as a familiar, plaintive cry meeped out from under the door to the pantry.
Sean went to the door and turned the knob. Noodles slipped out nonchalantly, wound around his legs a few times and then sat to lick her paw. Sean looked at Ginny, who frowned.
“I didn’t let her out,” Ginny said. “And I sure didn’t lock her in there.”
“Maybe she snuck in there while you were cleaning, and you closed the door.” He opened it wider and looked inside.
The narrow space, about four feet wide but easily eight feet deep, had floor-to-ceiling wire shelving Ginny hadn’t even touched. She peered around his shoulder at the inside, but aside from a few dust balls matching the dirt caught in Noodles’s whiskers, she saw nothing. At least the cat hadn’t crapped or peed on the floor. Sean was talking, but Ginny ignored him to push into the small room. She looked up, down, side to side. At last, admitting defeat, she turned.
“…just tired,” Sean was saying. “You know she’s an escape artist. Remember when she got behind the furnace and wouldn’t come out?”
This was true. Since kittenhood, Noodles had found her way in and out of places where she wasn’t supposed to be. But this time, it didn’t feel right. Ginny had shut the bathroom door firmly behind her this morning, and she hadn’t gone into the pantry at all…had she? She looked again. It was dirty. She hadn’t cleaned it. But it was possible the door had been open, even the smallest amount, enough for a nimble and mischievous cat to slip inside and hide before Ginny pulled it shut during her kitchen makeover.
“Sure,” Ginny said and bent to lift Noodles. She stroked the soft fur as the cat butted her head against Ginny’s chin. She smelled musty, and the white patches of her calico coat were smudged with grime.
The cat let out a warning growl and struggled to get down, and Ginny let her go. Noodles ran out of the kitchen through the arched doorway into the dining room. Ginny thought about chasing her,
but sighed, figuring she’d just open up the hall bathroom door until she could get the litter box into the basement. And, of course, convince the cat to use it there.
“I’m going to set up the TV and stuff so we can watch something. I think we’re behind on a few episodes of Runner.” Sean pulled her close to kiss the top of her head, and before she could protest, followed the cat into the dining room.
Ginny looked around the mess in the kitchen—dirty dishes, rice and beans left over from the Mexican takeout spilled on the table. So much for not having to take care of everything around the house, she thought and went to the doorway to peek through to the living room, where Sean had started pulling open one of the boxes and had his hands full of wires. So much for not unpacking anything until they painted the walls.
So much, she thought, for all of that.
Chapter Five
Ginny runs.
One foot in front of the other, never faltering, she runs and runs, dodging and weaving through a landscape that looks like something out of The Terminator. Scorched earth. Dark skies.
Her heart pounds, her fists pump, but this feeling is not harsh or bad. It’s glorious, working her body this way, like she never does in her real life. Ginny runs. She jumps. She stretches her arms; she grows wings.
She flies.
And she falls.
* * * * *
Gasping, Ginny woke again coated in sweat, again with her throat burning from reflux. Mexican food. She’d stayed up too late trying to make sure she didn’t go to bed with her stomach too full, and she’d even managed a long, relaxing bath, which was a pleasant surprise considering the water heater’s sporadic offerings. Yet still her body rebelled against the spicy food and here she was, sitting straight up in bed with her eyes wide and the dream of all her bones breaking still vivid enough to keep her from wanting to go back to sleep.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?” Sean pressed the button on his clock radio and bathed the room in cold white light. “Shit. Late.”
