by Megan Hart
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
ld get them from her.”
“Good luck with that.” Sean’s mom had lots of things tucked away in her cupboards, on shelves, stored in boxes. She wasn’t apt to give anything up, though she was fond of making lists about who was going to get what when she inevitably passed away. Which, according to his mother, could be at any moment.
Ignoring the sign that said Please Do NOT Sit, Ginny lowered herself onto the couch, testing the firmness. The legs didn’t wobble. A puff of dust came out, tickling her nose. She looked at him. “I want it.”
Sean’s mouth pursed. “That? Why?”
“It’s perfect,” Ginny said simply. There was no other answer. This couch was perfect, she wanted it. It didn’t matter the cost or how they were supposed to get it home.
Sean scratched his head and cupped the back of his neck with a hand while he gave her a squint-eyed look. “Where would you put it?”
“The library.” Already she could imagine just how she’d angle it in front of the bookshelves. The pendent lamp from the living room, an end table, a warm and cozy throw. She stroked a hand over the upholstery. “It’ll be my Christmas present.”
Her husband held out a hand to help her up. He pulled her into his arms, held her close and nuzzled her nose before kissing her lightly. “It’s old. Since when do you like old furniture?”
“Newsflash,” she said. “We live in an old house now. The kind that antiques look good in. And it’s good for the environment. You know. Reduce, reuse, recycle and all that.”
Sean looked dubious. “Okay. If you really want it.”
“I do. I want it. It’s so gorgeous, and it will be perfect in the library.” She ran a hand over the fabric again.
* * * * *
“I thought you were going to use it as a studio,” he said in the car after they’d made arrangements for the couch to be delivered.
Ginny’d been staring out the window, thinking about telling him she wanted to stop someplace for an early dinner even though she’d just blown their budget, and something in his tone of voice kept her looking through the glass instead of at his face. “I never said that.”
“I thought, when we looked at the house, you said what great light that room had, how it would make a great place to paint.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“I do,” Sean said.
Ginny looked at him. “It’s not like I couldn’t paint in a library, if I wanted to. What difference does it make what we call it? It’s got all those bookshelves, it seems like a library. There’s room for a desk in there for you, if you want to make it an office, which is what I thought you wanted it to be.”
“No. The little room is going to be the office.”
She distinctly remembered him calling the room with the bookshelves the office. She supposed it was too late to convince him to take her out for dinner too, since they were pulling up the street to the house. Sean parked, then peered upward through the windshield.
“Wish we had a garage.” He pointed, frowning. “Wonder why he never rebuilt it after the fire.”
Ginny also looked through the glass toward the empty space where Sean’s coveted garage had once stood. It was strange to see a house bare of a garage in a suburban neighborhood like this. Every other house on the block had one. Even their townhouse, tiny as it was, had had one. Here there was plenty of room in the driveway for at least four cars, but the trip from the car to the house wasn’t even sheltered by a breezeway. It was on the ten-year plan, along with landscaping and finishing the basement.
“Who knows. Money, probably. Isn’t everything always about money?”
“Not everything,” her husband said.
Ginny got out of the car. She went to the house and straight to the fridge to get a snack. She’d been looking forward to something ooey-gooey—cheese sticks or chili fries, something like that. Instead, she had a choice of organic yogurt and granola or a handful of almonds. Totally not satisfactory. She found some ice cream in the freezer, contemplated a bowl, decided to eat it straight from the carton. Because she was only going to have a bite or two…right?
Sean must’ve had the same idea, because the carton was almost empty. Ginny frowned but scraped the cardboard sides with her spoon. So, she’d have to finish all of it; that was no big deal. She had the spoon in her mouth when Sean came into the kitchen behind her.
“What’s for dinner?”
Ginny, metal still tucked against her tongue, looked at him for a long half a minute before she slowly removed the spoon. “I don’t know. What is for dinner?”
“I don’t know.” Sean opened the fridge. Looked inside. Looked at her. Closed the fridge. “Are you going to make something or…?”
“There’s plenty of lunchmeat and deli rolls in there. Macaroni salad.” Ginny scraped the last bit of ice cream and licked the spoon clean, then went to the trash to dump the carton. Through the back door, she caught a glimpse of two red coats. Blond hair. Those kids from next door were in her yard again.
“I thought you’d cook something.”
“Did you?” she said absently, trying to see exactly what the kids were doing.
Sean was quiet for another minute. “No.”
“Have a sandwich,” Ginny told him and went out the back door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to chase those kids out of our yard,” she told him and let the door close behind her.
In the side yard she found a soft-foam football on the grass and a battered wooden wagon half-hidden in the leaves. No kids, though. They must’ve ducked through the hedge. The yard itself was a mess even without the abandoned toys. Their yard had only the two big trees, but both had completely shed their leaves and none of them had blown away. The grass was also ankle high, brown and dead instead of lush and green, but overgrown just the same. Ginny scuffed through the piles made by the wind shoving the leaves against the hedge and the house, kicking her feet the way she had as a kid.
This was the side of the house with windows into the basement, and lined up along the window well, Ginny found a set of carved wooden figures. Like the lady in the fur stole, the figures wore clothes of past fashions, and their sizes ranged from the length of her pinky to match the rest of her fingers too. The weather had worn some of these harder than the ones she’d already found. How long had they been here? Ginny bent as best she could to peek into the window, but could see only dirty glass until she reached to rub a circle clean. Then, still nothing. She stood without moving the figures, wondering what sort of game the kids next door had been playing.
In the yard under the big tree, she tugged the rope that had once been a tire swing. It needed to come down. The tree itself needed a good pruning. And the leaves… Oh God. All the leaves.
Ginny looked toward the house. Sean had promised her he’d take care of the yard. Just like inside the house, he’d made her promise not to unpack the boxes, not to move the furniture, not to exert herself with all the tasks he was going to do. Yes, they’d had a lot of rain that made it hard to work outside. Yes, he worked long hours and had the responsibilities of school too. But he’d not only promised, he’d insisted that she promise him she wouldn’t rake or mow or put stuff away. And now what? They were living out of boxes, never able to find anything when they needed it. The yard was a trash heap.
She would not be angry.
She would not lose her temper.
She would not say things that could not be taken back.
Instead, she went to the shed and found a rake and the box of garbage bags she’d bought especially for the leaves. She took them into the yard and started raking. It would be dark soon, and her hands were cold, but so far Sean hadn’t bothered to come out and see what she was doing, so she was going to keep doing it. It wasn’t hard work, not even for a pregnant lady. Holding the bag open while she put the leaves inside and fought the
frigid wind that had sprung up proved to be a lot harder. Frustrated, she looked toward the house, the windows in the parlor glowing faintly golden. Upstairs, the light in the master bedroom was on, and also the one in the hall, which touched the windows in the library—it was a library, she thought fiercely.
Ginny’s nose had begun to run with clear snot she didn’t want to wipe with her bare hands. She dug in her pocket for a tissue and found only a few crumpled receipts. The dark had truly fallen by this time, and the temperature had dropped. She had no mittens or scarf, and the wind bit at her. This suddenly seemed a fool’s task. She’d half filled one bag.
Leaning on the rake, Ginny looked toward the house. Sean stood in the library, silhouetted in the window. How long had he been watching? Ginny waved, certain it was too dark now for him to see her, but after a moment he returned the gesture.
Screw this, she thought. Tomorrow she’d remind him again about the yard and insist he let her help him, even if was just to hold the bag open for him. They’d halve the job and would be spending time together. Two birds, one stone, all that.
She did want to put the rest of this small pile into the bag, though, if only so the wind wouldn’t scatter the leaves she’d already taken the time to gather. Ginny leaned the rake against a tree and bent to scoop the leaves, shoving them into the bag as fast as she could with numbed fingers. Her teeth chattered, more snot ran, and she was just about to give it up entirely when her fingers sank into something soft.
The leaves had been crunchy, rustling, brittle, but whatever this was clutched and clung to her fingers. Ginny yanked her hand back, shaking it, but it was coated in…something. She screamed and scraped her hand along the grass. When she turned, her shadow turned with her, no longer blocking the light. She didn’t have a clear view of what she’d just grabbed, but it was clear enough.
