Free Little Secrets by Megan Hart

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.
    â€œShit.” 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.
    â€œIf 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.
    â€œBrat 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