by Megan Hart
“What the hell is this? I thought maybe you were going to show me something you painted.”
“It’s my library,” Ginny said calmly. “I know you said you wanted it to be a studio, but I can paint in here just as well this way…”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She crossed her arms, aware of how they rested now on the shelf of her belly in a way they hadn’t even a few weeks ago. “What did you mean, then?”
He gestured. “This. The books. Where are the boxes? How did you get them all up here?”
“I carried them.” The flavor of sarcasm was bittersweet. She didn’t tell him that she’d done it a few at a time rather than lifting each heavy box. It had been easier to make many trips with lighter loads. It had taken her most of the rest of the day and left her sweaty, but satisfied.
“Christ, Ginny. I told you I’d do this.”
Frustration boiled out of her. About the books and the boxes, the unkept promises. The mug. The mustard. The cheese. And other things, months and years of things that had eaten away at her and been shoved down or pushed aside because it was always easier that way, because she owed him something greater than her anger.
“But you didn’t, did you, Sean? You didn’t do it! You promised and promised and promised, but every night you come home and you eat dinner, and then you disappear conveniently into the bathroom for your nightly dump while I take care of the cleanup, and then you have to read the mail, and watch some TV or do your homework, and by then it’s time for bed, so you never get around to it.”
“I’m tired when I get home! What do you think, I work all day and then can just come home and have all this energy left over to do your projects for you?”
She seethed, her fists clenched. “They’re not my projects, Sean. They’re part of living in this house, together, which I could easily do by myself, as you can see, because I did. And the only reason I didn’t before was because you insisted that you’d do it. But you didn’t. So I did. Why are we even fighting about this?”
Before he could answer, she turned on her heel to leave the room, relentless in her desire to get away from him before she said something she regretted. She’d done it before, used her tongue to cut him, and he didn’t forget. Sean might forgive, but he never, ever forgot.
She thought he wouldn’t follow her. He didn’t like confrontation, which was why they hardly ever fought, why whenever they did argue it was because of something she said, she did, her choice. She was the one who fought, never Sean.
So when he reached out to tap her shoulder, she whirled, startled. “What?”
“Don’t walk away from me,” he said.
Her back stiffened. “I’m tired, Sean. I want to take a hot shower and go to bed.”
For another second or two, she thought he was really going to keep up with it, but he just shook his head.
When she came out of the shower, though, he’d already turned down the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed. He looked up at her when she came in, her skin still damp and flushed from the heat, her hair pulled on top of her head.
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, Ginny. That’s all.”
She sat beside him and thought about taking his hand, but the effort at that moment was too great. She couldn’t tell what was raw between them, just that something was, and she didn’t have the energy to deal with it.
“I can’t sit around here doing nothing all day long.”
“You could paint.”
She sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “It’s not that easy, you know. Besides, painting was just a hobby.”
Painting had only ever been an excuse, something she’d taken up to fill in the long and lonely hours she’d wanted to spend with a husband consumed with work and school and things he wouldn’t talk to her about. That she’d discovered she loved it was a bonus, something unexpected but lovely. But it hadn’t started out that way. It hadn’t been something she’d dreamed of doing as a kid. To see that she had some small talent for it had never pushed it beyond anything but a hobby. It had never quite become a passion.
“You could work on the baby’s room.”
Ginny said nothing.
“We could get a kitten,” he said suddenly.
Ginny flinched. “What? No? The last thing I want is another kitten, right before…I mean…you can’t just replace Noodles! You can’t just get another one because the one we had ran away.”
Silence, this time from him. Her words hung in the air between them, uncomfortable. Awkward. Bad memories threatened, of similar but more horrible conversations, and she pushed them away.
Sean looked at his hands, clasped lightly in his lap. “You should take advantage of this time to rest and relax. Because you won’t have this free time in a few months. If we’re lucky.”
Bile scratched at her throat and a burning pressed in her chest. Heartburn. Stress. The taste of long-simmering anger.
“If we’re lucky,” she repeated in a low voice. Then, louder, “Lucky? Don’t you think we’ll be lucky? You think I’m going to lose this baby.”
“Don’t you think…” he hushed himself, then turned to look at her, “…don’t you think I have a right to worry? Even the doctor said—”
“The doctor said there was no way to know if anything I did would’ve made a difference. She said that the body knows what’s necessary, even if the mind and heart don’t agree, do you remember that?”
He huffed. “Yes. She was a jerk.”
“She was maybe a little brusque.” Ginny had appreciated the obstetrician’s assessment of her miscarriage, better than if she’d joined them in the hand wringing and breast beating. “She also said that there’s no reason to think this time is the same, or that we’ll have any problems. We haven’t, Sean. This baby is healthy. I’m healthy. I’m seven months along, and there are no signs of any problems like the last time.”
There’d been genetic abnormalities. Ginny’d had every test possible this time through and been given the all clear for Down’s, spina bifida, everything else. She and Sean had been poked and pinched and prodded, their DNA scanned, the probabilities of their conceiving a child with abnormalities factored, and the results had all come up the same, just like the doctor had said.
“Is that why you won’t decorate the nursery, then?” he challenged her suddenly. “Because you’re so convinced there’s nothing wrong, that it will all be all right? Is that why you’ve left every single thing we got in the wrapping with the receipts attached…just in case?”
Ginny got up, looked with longing at her pillow and the warm blankets, then at her husband. She lifted her chin. “I’m going to read,” she shot at him before he could say a word. “With my feet up. I’m not tired now.”
Which was a lie. She was exhausted. She was melting with it, the desire to sink into her bed and pull the blankets up, to lose herself in vivid dreams of old flames and movie actors. She wanted to sleep and end this fight, erase the knowledge that her husband did not believe in this child. That he didn’t believe in her.
“Ginny. Wait.”
In the doorway, Ginny paused. “We have no reason to think there will be any problems, Sean.”
“We have every reason,” he said in a hard, low voice totally unlike his normal tone. “Don’t you get that? We have every reason.”
The terrible thing was, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew he was right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She was cold again.
The house had been warm when she went to sleep, and with her flannel pajamas, the pregnancy hormones and the knitted afghan, Ginny’d fallen asleep toasty warm. Now she woke, cold and disoriented. The blanket had bunched beneath her, pressing her flesh into an ache.
She was on the Victorian couch. She put a hand down to touch her book on the
floor beside her. The lights were out, she realized as her fingertips brushed the smooth hardcover. She’d found an old favorite, Clive Barker’s Imajica, in one of the boxes, and the dust cover had raised letters she could trace.
The lights were out.
She hadn’t turned them out before falling asleep, she knew that much. She’d been reading by the light of the pendent lamp, which was too dim to make any dent in the shadows but cast a perfect pool of brightness for reading. She’d been on her side, the book propped on a pillow and the couch’s firm, upholstered back providing a delightful pressure against her back. She remembered letting the book close, even recalled setting it gently on the floor. But she had not turned out the lights.
Sean must have come to check on her, seen her sleeping and turned off the lamp to leave her in peace. Ginny smiled at this thought of domestic kindness, until she remembered they’d been fighting. And at any rate, it wouldn’t have been like him to leave her sleeping on the couch. He’d have insisted she come to bed to be more comfortable.
But if it wasn’t Sean, who was it? The boogeyman, she thought with a small laugh. A cool gust of air swirled from beneath the couch and tickled her fingers, and suddenly the idea of the boogeyman didn’t seem so laughable. She didn’t quite snatch her hand up and out of the dark…but almost.
Ginny sat, pushing at the tangle of the afghan in frustration and not quite able to get herself free. She had no idea what time it was, but it felt like her normal midnight or 1:00 a.m. rising. Her bladder was telling her that anyway.
Something scratched and rustled inside the wall behind the bookshelves.
Ginny paused, thinking it was her own shuffling, but a second later the noise came again. The distinctive scritch-scratch of claws or nails against the inside of the drywall. She held her breath. Faintly, faintly, came the far-off jingle of a bell.
“Noodles?” It came out as a whisper; she couldn’t force her voice any louder than that. “Noodles, sweetie…”
Through the darkness came the sound of breathing, soft and fast and faint. Ginny froze, unable to move, incapable of closing her eyes though she was straining them so hard into the blackness that small, bright flowers had begun blooming around the edges of her vision. She’d put one foot on the floor a minute or so ago and now drew it up under the blanket she clutched to her neck. She had to pee so bad she could taste it, as her gran would’ve said.
Ginny swallowed, then again, her throat so dry she thought she might choke. What had shifted in the walls, what was now breathing so close to her? Or maybe not what. Maybe…who.
“A girl…with dark hair…like yours when you were small.”
“Maeve,” she whispered, because that was the name she’d wanted to give her daughter, the one she’d lost. “Maeve, honey? Is it you?”
Ginny tensed, waiting for something to touch her. Weeping, she reached into the darkness and found nothing but the night. She listened in the dark, but the bell didn’t jingle again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“A blank canvas is only intimidating if you don’t let yourself imagine what you might paint on it.”
Louisa had been fond of saying that as she walked around the room, looking at what they were working on. Ginny knew she was trying to be helpful, but it was never that she’d found the blankness intimidating. If anything, she always had too many ideas about what to paint and never enough skill to re-create what was in her mind’s eye. Not intimidating, frustrating.
The canvas in front of her was now frustratingly and intimidatingly blank. She’d dutifully kept it set it up on the easel near the window, where the light was best. She’d sketched out on a notepad the shapes of what she thought to paint, her pencil making a scritch-scratch noise that was uncomfortably like the noises she’d heard in the walls.
She looked around the room, waiting for inspiration to strike. And it did, but not to create anything. The fainting couch called to her. That, and a mug of tea and the rest of her book. That was a much better prospect.
There was nothing that said she had to paint. It should never have become something forced upon her, the way she felt forced now. But Ginny didn’t feel like painting.
The truth was, Ginny was sure she’d never really feel like painting again.
Children’s laughter caught her attention, and she looked out the window to search for them. As she watched, the boy pushed through the hedge and bent to pick up what looked like a badminton birdie. It must’ve flown over the bushes, though why those kids would be outside playing badminton at this time of year… Ginny shrugged. Not her kids, not her problem. Well, except for the fact they were in her yard again. The boy ran through the pile of leaves just down the hill, his sister following, and she lost sight of them.
The sky had gone gray again. Ginny shifted her weight from foot to foot and dabbed her paintbrush without enthusiasm into a blob of a color called Azure Sky, which was nothing like the color she could see through her window. Despite the chill in this room, it wasn’t cold enough outside for snow, which meant the clouds covering the sun meant rain. Cold November rain, just like in that Guns N’ Roses song. The faint rumble of thunder proved her right a minute or so later.
Autumn thunder always felt strange, not like summer storms that sprang up after a hellish day and broke the heat. Storms in the fall were creepy, not sexy. The rain would be cold, not warm.
* * * * *
Warm rain. The sound of thunder. Ginny closed her eyes, remembering how the sky had opened, how everything had come down. Steady, unyielding rain, hard enough to sting her bare arms as she ducked between the tents, wishing she’d thought to bring a sweater or an extra outfit. She would be soaked by the end of the day, her carefully styled hair flattened, her makeup smeared, her pretty shoes bloated with wet.
Her paintings hadn’t looked the same in the glare of strung light bulbs instead of sunshine; nobody’s had. They’d strung some on wires in the tent. Others leaned on unsteady easels, posts sinking into the rain-softened ground.
The crowds came, despite the rain. They splashed in the puddles and trekked through the mud. They carried shopping bags of crafts and paintings carefully wrapped in plastic to shield them from the ceaseless downpour. They waved giant tubs of French fries and apple dumplings and ignored the ice-cream truck and cotton-candy vendors—cotton candy dissolves in the rain before it can be eaten. It leaves behind a sticky film as the only reminder of its sweetness. Ginny knew this because she’d watched a young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller, unaware of his tears as his treat washed away before he could get it to his little mouth.
Lots of people had come to the art show, and it had seemed to Ginny that at least most of them took a turn through the tent she shared with the rest of Louisa’s students. Lots of strangers took the time to ask about her work, some even complimenting it. A couple even bought a piece. Lots of faces, lots of smiles, but no matter how often she looked up hopefully to the tent entrance, waiting, none of them had been his.
* * * * *
Blinking at the next rumble of thunder, farther away now, Ginny came back to herself. Her back ached, and so did her fingers from clutching at her paintbrush so hard. She’d been standing there so long the small dabs of paint she’d put on her palette had started to dry, a thin sheen of darker color covering the brightness beneath. She took a deep breath and put everything down.
She didn’t want to paint today, or maybe never any other day, but she left her supplies where they were so that perhaps when she returned they might taunt her into feeling creative.
Ginny went downstairs to make some tea. As she filled the kettle at the sink, the first fat drops of rain splattered the glass. She leaned to crane her neck, trying to get a glimpse of the sky but couldn’t quite make it.
The kids from next door ran across the yard, kicking at the leaves and shrieking with laughter. The wind picked up strands of the girl’s blonde ha
ir as she twirled and fell down into a pile, her arms and legs moving like she was making a snow angel. Her brother tossed the birdie at her, hitting her in the forehead. She sat up, indignant, and shouted something at him Ginny couldn’t make out. Then she got up to chase him, and they ran out of sight again, down toward the creek.
The kitchen was broiling hot again, even as the library had been chilly. Her memories had left her flushed, but the temperature in here was unbearable, too hot for hot tea. She settled the kettle on the stove but didn’t turn on the burner, and instead went to the fridge for a cold glass of orange juice.
The carton was empty, not even a swig left. Fuming, she tossed it in the trash and wrote “orange juice” on the list clinging beneath a magnet, advertising window treatments, on the fridge. She drank some water instead, then wet a paper towel and used it to dab at her face and the back of her neck, the swell of her cleavage.
It was too damned hot here. Too cold in other rooms. The damned furnace, Ginny thought, needed a kick. She didn’t care what the guy said about it, there was something wrong.
Determined, she pulled the rechargeable flashlight from the wall dock. Sean would be happy to know she’d found a use for it, even if she didn’t want to admit that it had been an eminently practical present.
The basement door creaked as she opened it. Behind it was the set of spindly, creaking and open wooden stairs with a splintery railing she gripped firmly. The floor below was concrete and unforgiving of a tumble. For a moment she considered taking off her slippers, but she wasn’t wearing socks with them and the thought of going in bare feet into the filthy cellar was as unappealing as taking the time to go upstairs and put on socks. Instead, Ginny just made sure to settle each foot firmly on the stairs before she took another step.
The bulb swayed a little when she pulled the chain, and the pool of light at the bottom of the stairs shuddered. Just beyond it was another pull chain, though, and a few feet more, another. They were hung all over the basement, none connected by a light switch but all close enough that you never needed to pass through any darkness to get to the next…unless, as she discovered now, several of the bulbs had burned out.