Little Secrets Read Online Free PDF

position since childhood. She missed it. Though her belly was barely bumped, her muscles and joints had already started going loose, and she needed a complicated arrangement of pillows and positions to keep her back from hurting. Her inevitable aches eased briefly when she switched positions, but in another few minutes they’d start up again and worse, if she didn’t move. For now, she let herself relax into the mattress as she stared up at the ceiling.
    Watermarks, faint beneath a coat of paint, but still there. Some cracks in the plaster. This wasn’t a new house, so she shouldn’t be surprised, but after the townhouse’s smooth, pristine and flawless ceiling, this view was far more interesting. Ginny thought again of her gran’s house. For all her eccentricities, Gran had loved having her grandchildren come to stay, and Ginny and her female cousins had always bunked up in the “rose room.” Floral-patterned wallpaper and sheets, two double beds along one wall and a twin tucked under the eaves. It had been Ginny’s aunt Patty’s room growing up and still bore the marks inside the closet door where she’d used a pen to keep track of how tall she and her siblings had grown. The ceiling in the rose room had been plastered in swirls that made faces if you looked just right, and Ginny’s cousin Dana had been the queen of telling stories about them.
    This ceiling didn’t have those swirls, but Ginny looked for faces anyway. One pattern of cracks and shadow made a man with a walrus mustache. Another a lady in a floppy hat. A smaller configuration looked more like letters, though she couldn’t quite make out what word they spelled. Staring, she started to doze before another series of childish shrieks slammed her awake again.
    â€œBrats,” she muttered, without real anger, just before a patter of something like gravel pinged the window over the bed. Then she scowled and rolled herself upright to pull back the curtain and stare down into the front yard.
    A little boy and a little girl, both blond and in matching red coats, stared up at the window. When the curtain twitched, the boy screamed again, backing away so fast he tripped himself up and landed on his butt. The girl’s mouth opened wide, her eyes wider, but she didn’t move. Frozen by fear, maybe, Ginny thought as she shook a finger at them. The glass had cracked, cold air seeping in, but remembering the chill from the night before, she wasn’t sure she could blame the kids for breaking it. It looked old, if it were possible to tell how old a window crack was, but the lines of it were dirty. Still, why the hell were they tossing pebbles at her window in the first place? She shook her finger again, shooing them, and the girl reached down to pull the boy by the hand. The pair of them ran off across the yard and disappeared around the right-hand corner, leaving behind an assortment of toys. A wagon, some sort of trike. A ball.
    Ginny sighed. “Great.”
    She didn’t exactly hate kids. She liked her nieces and nephews well enough, and her cousins’ kids. And she’d love her own child, of course, she thought as she cradled her belly for a moment. More than love. She’d cherish her own child.
    But random kids? Random, ill-behaved, screaming, rock-throwing and trespassing kids? Not a fan. Besides, what were they doing in her yard anyway? The house they’d run toward was bigger than this one, with a matching yard that looked manicured and maintained. She thought she remembered a swing set in the back too.
    Her own childhood hadn’t been so long ago that she couldn’t remember how exciting it was to do the very things your parents didn’t want you doing. The house next door might have a swing set and perfectly mown grass, but Ginny’s backyard had a giant tree with a rope that probably had once been a tire swing hanging from it. It had a gentle slope in the back, just