“Well,” sobbed Miz Sophie, as a tenacious tear finally escaped and snaked its way down her miserable face, “I wish you’d never come home! I wish you’d stayed away!”
Cain didn’t speak. He lowered his head and stared at the table. Without thinking, Ginger unclasped her hands in her lap, slid one of hers to one of his, took it gently from his thigh, and weaved their fingers together. She looked up at Miz Sophie, feeling profoundly sorry for her, and for Cain, and for all of them at that miserable table, suffering so terribly. Something dreadful has happened, buzzed her mind, but she took a deep breath and turned off the noise. She wasn’t on the stage. She was in the audience watching. Only watching.
“It. Should. Have. Been. You!” screamed Miz Sophie, banging her fists on the table to enunciate each word. “It should have been you! Not Josiah. You, Cain! Always up to no good. Not half the man my son was. You should have died in that fire. Not my baby.” She sobbed, her whole body shuddering as she collapsed into her chair and leaned forward to lay her cheek on the table, wailing with a sort of desperate, keening anguish that made tears slip down Ginger’s cheeks. “My baby. Oh God! Oh God, my baby. My boy . . .”
Ginger leaned to her left, her lips close to Cain’s ear. “Come on.”
She got to her feet and tugged his hand until he stood up beside her. Without looking at each other or anyone else, they quietly left the room, walked through the foyer, and stepped outside.
On the veranda that surrounded the funeral parlor, there were several chairs and settees, and Ginger chose one, pulling Cain down beside her before releasing his hand.
“She doesn’t mean it,” she said softly.
“Yeah, she does,” said Cain, who hadn’t raised his head since his aunt’s tirade.
“No,” said Ginger, reaching up to swipe away tears that rolled down her cheeks. Where had they come from? She didn’t feel them gather, barely felt them fall. “She’s out of her mind with grief.”
“She’s right,” he whispered.
“No, she’s not.”
“I didn’t save him.”
“But you tried.”
“Yes.” Cain nodded. “I was too late. He was . . . trapped. I didn’t even know he’d gone in.”
Her voice sounded faraway as she brushed the back of her hand over her slick cheeks again. “It’s not your fault.”
“He was twice the man I’ll ever be.” Cain rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “If one of us had to die—she’s right—it should have been me.”
No! screamed some primal part of her from the deepest depths of her soul, jarring her, for just a moment, from her comfortable numbness. No, no, no!
Her mind started racing, her voice—a desperate voice—narrating a story in her head: Once upon a time there were two cousins: one golden like the sun, one dark as midnight, both owning equal, but different, parts of a little girl’s heart . . .
“No,” she said, panting as her breathing got shallow and quick.
She pressed a hand against her aching chest. That little girl’s heart was broken all over again, shriveling in her chest, drying up, dying, changed beyond recognition from the whole, boundless place it had once been.
She stood up from the settee, placing her hands on the veranda railing and looking out at Main Street, which hustled and bustled like it was a regular Saturday, like the world hadn’t ended last night.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said aloud, a thought borrowing words.
“Gin,” he said softly.
His words stirred something within her, and she turned to see him raise his glistening iceberg-blue eyes to her. They were so full of pain, it made something ache inside her, but the ache was quickly quieted, blanketed in dull, comfortable apathy. Her shoulders lightly brushed her ears in a slow shrug, and her tears dried—she had nothing left to give.
“I can’t,” she murmured, her tears ceasing as mysteriously as they’d begun.
“Gin,” he said again, standing up, gesturing uselessly with his hands. “I’m . . . sorry he’s gone.”
I’m sorry he’s gone. A ball-peen hammer to her dried husk of a heart. Four words and it was pulverized to dust.
“He’s not,” she said softly, walking away from Cain, dazed and dull and numb all over. He’s just away.
PART FIVE
Chapter 23
She loves you.
Be good to her.
Care for her.
Love her.
Promise.
Please.
Promise.
Cain shot up in his cot, drenched in sweat and shaking as the dreamy echo of Woodman’s broken voice faded.
“God,” he gasped, scrubbing his hands over his face and blinking into the darkness before lowering his forehead to his bent knees.
Since losing Woodman, almost a month ago, he woke up like this every other night: seeing his cousin’s frightened, blank, green eyes staring straight up, into the void of forever, feeling the weight of Woodman’s head on his lap, seeing the blackish-red slickness pool at the corner of his mouth and slide over his slack and cooling cheek.