Ginger's Heart (a modern fairytale) (22 page)

Three years later

~ Ginger ~

“What do you think, Gran?” asked Ginger, holding the paint chips closer to the light. “Sandy Beach or Ray of Sun?”

“D-doll b-baby,” Gran said slowly, shifting her troubled eyes from the almost-identical colors to her granddaughter’s face, “D-does it . . . m-matter?”

A nurse peeked her head into the room and smiled kindly at Ginger. “Afternoon visitin’ hours are over in ten minutes, Miss McHuid. You can come back this evenin’ after supper if you like.”

Ginger’s shoulders slumped. “Anna, please stop callin’ me Miss McHuid!”

“Nurse Ratch—I mean, Nurse Arklett prefers for us to address visitors properly.” Anna shrugged an apology and gave Ginger a polite smile before turning and leaving the room.

Ginger sighed deeply, pulling the pile of paint chips back into her hands and squaring them neatly like a deck of cards.

Nine months ago, after Woodman proposed, and under oppressive pressure from
her
parents,
his
parents, and
him
, she finally agreed to take a “leave of absence” from her job at SSCC in order to concentrate on wedding planning and festivities. Except she didn’t really feel needed—it seemed that every detail had been taken over by her mother, future mother-in-law, and their very expensive, very exclusive wedding planner, Charm Simpkins. Which basically left Ginger choosing paint colors for the little house that Woodman had purchased in town last year. Though she still kept all her clothes and personal things at her cottage, to maintain an expected propriety, and wouldn’t start decorating the house until they were officially married, on New Year’s Eve, sometimes it all felt like a silly charade since she slept over there two or three nights a week.

“I guess I better be goin’, Gran,” said Ginger, looking at her grandmother, who had been transferred to a private hospital-style room about a year ago, when her health had taken another bad turn. Since then, however, she’d leveled off again, and while she couldn’t get around without a wheelchair, her speech had somewhat stabilized, and her thoughts were still clear when she was able to express them. She tired easily, though, and after half an hour spent looking at paint chips, she was probably ready for her afternoon nap.

Gran’s trembling hand reached out to cover Ginger’s. “We s-still have . . . eight m-minutes.”

Her grandmother had been the only person in her life who didn’t support her decision to stop nursing. In fact, for a month or two it had actually created a divide between Ginger and her grandmother, which Ginger had mourned deeply. She also mourned the loss of a career she loved so much, but she kept telling Woodman that she planned to go back to work as soon as they were married, and he said, though she suspected he was humoring her, that he’d support her whatever she decided to do.

“How’s . . . J-Josiah?”

She looked away. “How is he? He’s real good, Gran. I told you he made lieutenant last month, right? Amazin’ because he doesn’t actually go to the calls, but he’s become indispensable down there at the firehouse. He’s basically in charge of all internal operations and—”

“
Y-you
. . . and J-Josiah,” her Gran clarified with slightly narrowed eyes.

Ginger raised her chin. “We’re real good.”

Without saying a word, Gran let her disapproval seep into the room, and Ginger blinked before looking away from her again.

“I never should have told you that, Gran. Never should have talked about it. Never.”

Her grandmother’s hand, which had been limp and trembling over Ginger’s, squeezed lightly, and Ginger looked up.

“T-tell . . . m-me how . . . you’re d-doin’. F-for real.”

Ginger had never made very close friends during her three years of high school—most of the girls had been friends since preschool, and besides, Ginger was sort of an oddity. Everyone knew who she was—the girl who’d had the heart trouble, the little princess from McHuid Farm—but no one seemed to want to get to know her for
real
, on a personal level. There’d been no slumber party invitations or midnight phone calls from girlfriends wanting to talk about boys. Just Ginger, quiet and shy, friendly to everyone but friends with no one.

She
had
made a couple of friends while in nursing school, but since she’d taken her leave of absence from SSCC, she felt an ever-widening social divide between them. And while she was making some friends in the ladies auxiliary group at the firehouse, she wasn’t on intimate terms with any of those women yet, which meant that Ginger didn’t really have anyone besides Woodman to talk to. Anyone, that is, except Gran.

A few weeks ago, after the first of her four bridal showers, during which she’d received a cache of sexy lingerie from her mother’s friends, she had visited Gran after two or three cups of spiked punch. Unfortunately, she’d been a touch too honest about things in the bedroom, and essentially Gran had gotten a drunken earful about Ginger’s mediocre sex life.

“Gran,
please
leave it alone and forget I said anything. It’s
fine
,” she said in a hushed voice, feeling her cheeks flush with heat.

“N-no . . . it . . . isn’t.”

Ginger pulled her hand away, feeling defensive, even protective, of her relationship with Woodman and wishing to God she’d never gotten drunk and mentioned anything to Gran. She cleared her throat, sitting primly in her sundress as she sorted and resorted the stacked paint chips in her hands, refusing to speak.

She’d known, of course, since the first time she slept with Woodman, that either the romance books she’d read were lying, or she and Woodman didn’t have the sort of special chemistry that made sparks fly. While he grunted his pleasure above her, his face a mask of rapture, she had, more or less,
endured
the act of lovemaking.

The mechanics hadn’t shocked her, nor had her lack of orgasm. She’d grown up on a horse farm, and she’d never yet seen a mare throw back her head in ecstasy as she was bred. What
did
surprise her was that it hadn’t hurt very much, but that was probably because riding horses had torn any thin wall of resistance long ago.

Woodman had been gentle with her, reverent and careful, and frankly there wasn’t much to like or dislike. In the end, the entire thing had lasted about five minutes.

Some women—maybe even
most
women—might have felt intense disappointment from such an inauspicious entrée into the world of sex. But brokenhearted from Cain’s rejection and confused out of her mind, what Ginger remembered now more than anything else was the comfort of Woodman’s arms around her after it was over. She liked the warmth of his bare skin pressed against hers, the sound of his strong heartbeat under her ear, the way he petted her hair and whispered tender things about the happy life ahead. She’d fallen asleep in her bed, in his arms, waking up hours later able to bear the pain of Cain’s rejection. Woodman’s love—his faith and tenderness and unfailing devotion—had made it possible for her to bear it.

She often reminded herself that she hadn’t been trapped into anything. She wasn’t a victim. She’d
chosen
Woodman, and in return for his kindness to her she would—no matter what—honor her choice.

Finally the strained silence between her and Gran became too much to bear and Ginger broke.

“There are all different kinds of marriages, Gran. Yes, there’s the passionate kind, but there’s also the kind where two friends decide to make a life together. That’s a marriage built on kindness and respect. On history and . . . and, yes, love. Real love. Just not the sort of true love that they maybe write about in fairy tales or those books at the grocery st—”

“Gin-ger . . .,” whispered her grandmother.

Ginger looked up.

“I w-wanted . . . that k-kind of . . . l-love for . . . you.
T-true
. . . l-love.”

Sudden tears pricked the back of her eyes.

In the weeks following her disastrous conversation with Cain and her sudden decision to sleep with Woodman, she’d been in a sort of daze. A haze, really, that Woodman must have believed was a mirror image of his own joy manifested like awe in Ginger. But really she’d felt like a character in a movie. Or like she was watching a movie of her life, her own part almost unrecognizable. Her heart had been broken beyond repair, and no airlift to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital could fix it this time. And Woodman’s love was the only oasis from her heartbreak.

They hadn’t actually slept together again for a while after that first night, choosing to backtrack in their relationship and start dating properly in the months leading up to Christmas. And during those long, lonesome nights after Woodman dropped her off at home, when the shards of her broken heart dug into the softest places inside her, she read poetry and songs and stories about lost love, and felt the almost unbearable cruelty of Cain’s rejection.

Unbearable because she knew—beyond any shadow of doubt—that the kind of true love Gran spoke of was the kind of love she could only find with Cain. On this earth, in this lifetime, Cain, and no one else, was the split-apart half of her soul. It was clear in the way her heart leaped in recognition of his whenever he had been near. In the way she longed for him like a ceaseless ache, dreamed of him nightly, desperately fought to forget him in her waking hours. Her body, her heart, her very soul would always yearn for Cain. But deprived of that soul-based, forever sort of love, she gratefully accepted what she had: Woodman.

Her tears receded, and she sniffled softly, mustering a smile for her grandmother.

“What I have is exactly what I need. I
want
Woodman, Gran. I
choose
him.”

“B-but you . . . l-love . . . Ca—”

“Woodman,” she said firmly, forbidding her grandmother to say
his
name. “I
love
Woodman.”

Her grandmother took a shaky breath and sighed, looking grieved but defeated. Unable to fight her fatigue any longer, her eyes drifted closed while Ginger stood up and kissed her grandmother on the forehead before leaving.

***

As she hurried down the sidewalk, with the early October sun beating down on her back, Ginger reviewed the rest of this week’s appointments in her head: today’s cake tasting at Southern Belle Confections, check. This evening’s dance lesson at the Winston Schultz School of Dance, check. Tomorrow she and her mother were meeting with the caterer again, and on Friday she was meeting Woodman and his groomsmen at Tanner’s Tuxedos to finalize their rentals before the monthly firehouse dinner, at which she and Woodman always lent a helping hand.

They were a pair now, she and Woodman—the de facto prince and princess of Apple Valley: junior members at the country club, volunteers at every firehouse social function, and regulars at the Valley View Presbyterian Church every Wednesday for bingo and every Sunday for services. It was the life that Ginger had always imagined for herself, and yet, inexplicably, Apple Valley had started to feel increasingly small to her since her engagement, and as her wedding approached rapidly, the town she’d always loved felt downright confining.

“Cold feet,” she muttered, checking her watch and scrunching up her nose when she realized she was running late.

After her heart surgery, her mother had hired a tutor who’d taught Ginger at home for the ensuing ten years, but from the time she was twelve, she’d begged and pleaded to attend public school. Her mother had always refused her wishes, reminding her that she was safest at home. Finally, a few weeks before her sixteenth birthday, Ginger had walked from the farm to Apple Valley High School, gotten the forms for enrollment, filled them out, and presented them to her parents. Only then had they relented, and she’d enrolled in tenth grade. Sadly it was too late. Cliques had been cast, relationships formed, and Ginger was an oddball whom no one really knew.

After high school, she had to fight tooth and nail to get her parents to agree to pay for her LPN and RN degrees. Her mother wanted her to go Asbury University in nearby Lexington, where she could have studied youth ministry or French, but Ginger had stayed firm in her desire to nurse, and her parents had finally acquiesced, under the condition that Ginger continue to live at McHuid Farm under their watchful eye. She, in turn, had moved out to her Gran’s empty cottage, which had made her mother fuming angry, though technically, Ginger reminded her, she was still living on the farm.

These would have been small victories in someone else’s life, but in Ginger’s, which had been under the oppressive eyes of her parents since her early childhood, they felt huge. They felt like proof that she was growing up and looking for a life of her own.

But now? Stopping work and getting married to her parents’ chosen mate at twenty-one? Suddenly she felt like the six-year-old girl with a broken heart all over again. Small and helpless, at the mercy of her parents’ decisions and control. Something about her life right now felt like giving up, felt aimless, and it scared her that when she got married, she’d just disappear a little more.

Of course, Woodman had an answer for that. He didn’t want her to disappear. Aside from being his wife, he had another job all laid out for her, and just last night they’d had another little tiff about it.