thoughts of him, for the heat of his lips recently slanted across hers, but the warmth she found was fleeting, unsubstantial.
“But Gran . . .”
“I ain’t sayin’ . . . he’s bad. But . . . I am sayin’ . . . if there’s a . . . good man . . . hidin’ in there, I’ve yet to . . . see him. And I’d surely . . . like to see him . . . before I tell my . . . only granddaughter that . . . she’s bettin’ on . . . the right horse.”
“I love him,” Ginger murmured, feeling forlorn, turning back into the kitchen to see if the rollers were hot.
“I know you . . . think so. But do you . . . really know him? Are you . . . really seein’ him . . . clearly, doll baby?” he grandmother called, her voice weaker, which made Ginger feel bad. She was tiring out Gran.
Taking out her cream velvet scrunchie, Ginger used her fingers to part her hair in the middle, then took a handful of the light strands at her crown and rolled them around the hot roller before securing it with a U pin. She rolled up two more, thinking about Gran’s question.
Do you really know him?
Certainly, when she was a child, she knew Cain well.
Since she had been homeschooled until high school, with year-round tutoring every morning, Ginger had had every afternoon of her childhood free to spend with Cain, and she was an encyclopedia of knowledge about him. She knew his favorite baseball team (the Cincinnati Reds), his favorite food (ribs, lots of sauce), the girl he’d wanted to take to his freshman homecoming (Kim something-or-other, a rich and pretty girl who ended up going with Woodman), the motorcycle make and model he dreamed of rebuilding one day (a BMW R 60/2), and the fact that, although he often played dumb with his father, he was completely fluent in German and knew just as much about horses as Klaus.
But beyond mere facts, she also knew the nuances of his voice, the way emotions played across the sharp angles of his face, the innocent touch of his rough fingers against her skin, the vulnerable way his eyes softened and dimples deepened when he smiled at her. She knew it all. She felt it all. And even if she never saw Cain Holden Wolfram’s face after today, on the day she died, Ginger felt certain she would still recognize Cain’s soul in its purest form.
Are you really seein’ him clearly?
The problem was that Cain’s soul dwelled in the most profound depths of Cain’s heart, where it was carefully obscured. And since their shared and happy childhood, he’d matured on the uneven ground of his family’s modest means and his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage. And little by little, the vulnerability in his light blue eyes had chilled to glacial ice, and the rough touch of his fingers had become decidedly less innocent.
And no discussion of Cain, internal or otherwise, would be complete without acknowledging that her grandmother was right: his name was mud. Well known as the county punk, he was known for sneaking around, raising hell at the old distillery, and he’d been arrested not once, but twice, for disturbing the peace. Luckily no charges had been pressed so his record had remained clean, but he’d also pulled the fire alarm at the Apple Valley High School several times (and been suspended for it), and everyone knew he tore around the county on his motorcycle at all hours of the day and night.
From eavesdropping on her father and Klaus, Ginger knew his grades were just above passing and his teachers wouldn’t write him recommendations for college. Didn’t matter. He didn’t end up applying anyway.
More than once, some floozy or other had shown up at McHuid Farm looking for Cain, a fact that would have definitely gotten him fired had Ranger not relied heavily on Klaus’s expertise and advice. And though Cain showed up surprisingly faithfully for work, he was surly and distant, even, on occasion, to Ginger.
A hellion and a troublemaker, Cain was not considered a nice or appropriate young man, which just made him ten times more fascinating and somehow Ginger’s besotted heart clung to the notion that the Cain she’d known as a child was still alive, shrouded under the debris of disappointment and pain. He was just a troubled teenager who’d eventually straighten out. In her heart