she was suddenly so aware of the fact that he was growing into a man. Their mothers had practically planned a union between them since Ginger was born, but Ginger didn’t see Woodman like that. He was the big brother she’d never had, her most treasured friend, a safe place when her feelings about Cain felt so confusing.
Turning away from the fence, she ambled slowly back up to the main house, relieved to see her grandmother sitting alone on the front porch swing of her tiny cottage, located a stone’s throw from McHuid Manor.
“Gran!” she shouted, quickening her pace. She’d barely seen her grandmother—her father’s mother—all day, and, after Woodman, Gran was her very closest friend.
Kelleyanne McHuid had moved into the in-law cottage after Ginger’s parents were married, way before Ginger was born, which meant that she’d been a permanent fixture at McHuid’s throughout Ginger’s childhood. Though—she wrinkled her nose with worry—she didn’t know for how much longer. Recently, Ginger had heard her mother and father discussing Gran in hushed tones behind closed doors. Gran suffered from Parkinson’s, and Ginger’s mother seemed to feel that she needed “more care” than they could provide at home, while Ginger’s father refused to discuss putting his mother into a “damned home” yet. It worried Ginger near constantly to think of losing her Gran to the nursing home in town.
“Here’s the birthday girl!” said Gran, patting the seat cushion beside her with a trembling hand. Gran’s whole body trembled lately. More and more every day. Her eyes lowered to the bracelet around Ginger’s wrist, and she grinned. “Whatcha got there, doll baby?”
“Gift from Woodman,” said Ginger, feeling her cheeks flush.
“Awful pretty,” said Gran, reaching for the bracelet, her shaking fingers making it jingle as she looked at each one of the charms. “And awful thoughtful. Josiah’s a good boy.”
Just about everyone called Woodman Woodman except Gran and sometimes Cain. Gran insisted on calling him by his Christian name. Cain used Josiah and Woodman interchangeably, with no real rhyme or reason that Ginger could follow.
“Rumor is you’re gonna marry him someday,” said Kelleyanne to her granddaughter, her sixty-something blue eyes merry. “But what do you say?”
Ginger giggled self-consciously, thinking about her grandmother’s question, something clenching in her twelve-year-old heart as she thought about marrying sensible Woodman and abandoning her wild feelings for Cain.
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling her forehead crease in confusion.
“Or maybe you’re thinkin’ you want to marry . . . Cain,” said Gran softly.
Cain, with his jet-black hair and ice-blue eyes, appeared like a vision before her, and Ginger’s heart thumped faster. The way he’d run off to see Mary-Louise Walker this afternoon made her brown eyes spitting green with jealousy. The way he swaggered made her breath catch. Woodman was so predictable, so safe in comparison.
Then again, Woodman hadn’t exactly been predictable this afternoon, had he? He’d surprised her with the gift and even more with his words. His body had been hard and warm when he’d held her, the embrace awakening something new and foreign within her. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted. Something that didn’t feel safe and even scared her a little bit. She pulled her fingers away from the charm bracelet and faced her Gran.
“What do I do if I love them both?”
Her grandmother’s eyes, which had been mostly teasing, flinched, and her mouth tilted down in a sympathetic frown, which made her face seem so serious and sober.
“Choose, doll baby,” said Gran. “Someday you’ll have to choose.”
The same feeling that she’d had in the barn, when Cain yelled, “Jump to the one you love the most, darlin’!” flared up within her—a fierce refusal to love one cousin more than the other, to give up one in lieu of the other.
Choose? Her memories skated back through a dozen years on McHuid Farm that had always included Cain and Woodman. When they were little children, they played together, swimming buck naked in the creek and racing over the green hills and pastures in impromptu games of tag. As the boys grew up, they started working with Cain’s daddy, Klaus, who was her father’s right-hand man, mucking out the stables and grooming the horses. She’d run down to the barn every day after her lessons to see them, working right along beside them until they were all covered in hay, dust, and barn grime.
Though the Wolframs weren’t generally included in the McHuids’ active social life, the Woodmans were, which meant that, in addition to seeing Cain and Woodman on