The phone buzzed in his hand again.
KW: Cain, it’s urgent. Call me.
Sighing, he reached down for the bottle of vodka when the phone buzzed a third time.
KW: It’s Ginger.
Sucking in a swift breath, Cain Holden Wolfram, who’d thought just two seconds before that he was three-quarters dead, trapped in an aimless existence, suddenly realized that he was actually very much alive. His heart raced with fear—no, not fear, with terror. Had something happened to Ginger? Christ! While he’d been riding all over Kentucky and drinking himself into a stupor, had something fucking happened to her?
Promise.
I fuckin’ promise! Josiah, I promise.
Fuck. Fuck, please no. No. No, no, no. Please, God. Please let Ginger be okay.
His hands shook and sweated as he dialed his father’s number, as he heard the phone ring once, twice—
“Cain? Bist du—?”
“Papa, sag es mir!” Tell me!
“Gott sei Dank, Cain. Du lebst.” Thank God. You’re alive.
“Pop,” he said, sitting down on his cot, his body taut and wired. “What happened to Ginger? Is she okay? Is she all right? What happened to her?”
“She is . . . sehr traurig.”
Cain exhaled a long breath, his body relaxing. If something was seriously and immediately wrong, his father would have told him.
“Of course she’s sad,” he said, running his hand through his stubbly hair as he rested his elbows on his knees, shaking in relief just as he’d shaken with fear.
“I hear from Ranger. She don’t eat. She don’t talk. She don’t leave the cottage.”
Cain took a deep breath and held it until it burned his lungs.
“Cain? You are there?”
His breath came out in an exhausted sigh. “I’m here.”
“You have known the princess for . . . your lifetime.”
A tear snaked its way down Cain’s cheek, and he reached up to wipe it away. “Yep.”
“She is hurting, mein Sohn.”
His knees bounced from the adrenaline rush he’d gotten from his father’s texts.. “We’re all hurtin’, Pop. She ain’t the only one.”
His father was silent for a few seconds, then said, “She is hurting . . . more.”
Cain looked down at the half-finished bottle of vodka at his feet and picked it up. He unscrewed the top and raised it to his lips, but his mind flashed back to her glazed face at the funeral. He lowered the bottle and walked across the small office to the bathroom, where he tipped the bottle into the sink and watched the clear liquid swish down the drain. When it was empty, he dropped it under the sink on top of an overflowing garbage can and looked up at the mirror.
He barely recognized himself.
His last buzz cut from right before leaving Virginia had grown out almost an inch, and he had a full beard that covered his jaw, cheeks, and neck with bristly, black, ungroomed hair. He’d lost weight, which made his cheeks gaunt, and his complexion had yellowed from so much drinking. Bloodshot eyes stared back him with heavy bags beneath, and his lips were chapped and cracked. He licked them tentatively.
“Cain?”
He swallowed over the lump in his throat, remembering the morning he walked into Woodman’s hospital room at Walter Reed.
You look . . . rough.
Don’t lie to me, huh?
I’m not a good bullshitter.
Since when?
He chuckled softly as his eyes filled with more tears, his heart aching from how much he missed Woodman. “Yeah, Pop. I’m here.”
“You come home, Cain? You must come to her.”
Be good to her. Care for her. Promise.
“Yeah, Pop,” he said softly. “Yeah, I’ll come home.” He took another look at his reflection and winced. “Give me a few days, huh?”
“Don’t wait too long,” said his father.
Please. Promise.
“I won’t. It’s, uh, what’s today?”
“Tuesday.”
“I’ll be there on Friday, okay?”
“Ja. Gut. And you stay? Stay for two week? For the Thanksgiving, ja?”
Cain nodded. “I’ll stay a little while, Pop.” He was hanging up the phone when he heard his father say something else. “Huh?”
“She need you, Cain. Verstehst du mich?”
He nodded. “I understand. I’ll be there soon.”
He pressed the End button on his phone and placed it on the shelf over the sink. Then he opened the cabinet, took out his shaving cream and razor, and turned on some warm water.
***
Some days—most days—Ginger pretended that he was just away. Like, on a business trip or out of town, on a fishing trip. Men did that, didn’t they? It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a businessman and didn’t especially like fishing. It was easier to imagine him alive somewhere than forcing her mind to accept the fact that Woodman was gone for good. And while some part of her acknowledged that it probably wasn’t healthy, she really didn’t give a shit. About much. About anything.
She picked up the remote, changed the channel from Lifetime to Hallmark, and stared at the screen. A woman was yelling at a child whose eyes were filling with tears. Yelling mother. Distraught child. Mother shaking the child’s shoulders. Child’s face crumbling.
And Ginger stared, unmoved, glazed over.