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.
She didn’t feel much of anything lately.
She didn’t leave the cottage very much either. Not even to see Gran, whom she hadn’t visited in a month, since the day before Woodman’s funeral, when she’d cried so long and so hard at Gran’s bedside, she’d eventually fallen asleep. The nurses hadn’t had the heart to wake her, so she slept there, waking hours later in the dark with her head on Gran’s bed, disoriented and frightened. She gathered her purse and walked in a daze to her car, driving back to the cottage at two o’clock in the morning and falling into bed still clothed.
Her mother periodically left bags of groceries and fashion magazines on the back stoop of the cottage. A lone cupcake appeared on Ginger’s birthday, but otherwise her mother let her be.
Her father occasionally knocked on the door, looking disappointed when she answered it wearing pajamas with limp, greasy hair framing her thin face. She would stare at his mouth, watching his lips move as he gave her a back porch speech. Some of his words registered—“fresh air,” “talk to someone,” “can’t go on like this”—though they meant nothing, flying over her head like the autumn leaves that had started falling, blown away by chillier and chillier breezes. She would nod at the right place, he would kiss her forehead, and she’d close the door as he walked back to the manor house.
When Cain told her about Woodman’s death, she’d felt her chest crack open in agony, the feelings so potent and painful, part of her wanted to die. But it was later, at the funeral home, when she’d looked into Cain’s eyes, that she realized how very alone she was. Woodman, for all that she hadn’t loved him the way he wanted her to, had been her very best friend, her foundation, her safe harbor, her comfortable future. She’d already lost Cain some years before, but as long as Woodman was by her side, she wasn’t alone.