Ginger's Heart (A Modern Fairytale, #3)(142)
CW: My pop always talks about the Lipizzaners. How do you feel about Vienna, baby?
The Princess: I wish you could see my face right now.
CW: Tell me how it looks.
The Princess: It looks happy because you are so right for me. It looks sad because it wishes you were here. It doesn’t know how to love someone this much, this hard, quite yet. My face doesn’t know what to do when you say the perfect thing. Yes, I want to go to Vienna with you.
CW: Then we’ll go to Vienna.
The Princess: Just like that?
CW: Just like that. We’ll go to the Spanish Riding School and see my pop’s horses, and then we’ll ride my bike all over Austria, all over Germany, wherever you want.
The Princess: And I’ll hold on to you.
CW: Fuck, yeah.
The Princess: And you’ll speak German.
CW: Scheisse, ja.
The Princess: I’m home now. And I’m not as sad. Thanks for cheering me up.
CW: I’d do anything for you, princess.
The Princess: Then come home to me on Saturday safe and sound. That’s all I want.
CW: See you then.
The Princess: I love you.
CW: I love you too.
Cain sighed as he placed his phone on the bedside table, dreaming of Ginger and motorcycles and white stallions and making love all over Europe.
When his alarm sounded, at 0600, the little red text icon was red and waiting, and he swiped it urgently, wondering if he’d missed one last sweet PS to last night’s conversation. He grinned at the screen, scrubbing a hand over his sleepy face, but his heart sank like a stone when he read the words that popped up on the screen:
The Princess: She’s with Amy, Cain. Gran’s gone.
Chapter 35
There is nothing good about a phone ringing at 4:43in the morning. Your mind acknowledges, even before your fingers can move, that something terrible has probably happened.
It’s not that she wasn’t expecting it. She was. Just not yet.
“Ginger, baby? It’s your daddy.”
That’s all it took. And she knew.
“When?” she asked.
“An hour ago. Or so. One of the night nurses stopped in to check on her and realized that she wasn’t breathin’.”
Ginger swung her legs over her bedside. “Are you there?”
“I am.”
“Momma?”
“I let her sleep,” he said. “But you . . . you had such a special bond with her.”
Yes, I did.
“Wright’s is comin’ soon.” He paused. “Virginia Laire?”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to say good-bye,” she said, “before they take her. Don’t . . . don’t let them take her yet, Daddy.”
“I’ll be waitin’, baby.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes starting to burn as her brain processed the finality of Gran’s death.
“Me too, Ginger. But, all things considered, she had a good life. And she was loved.”
Yes, she was.
“I’ll be there soon, Daddy.”
She hung up her phone and clutched it in her hands for a moment, the quiet of Gran’s cottage surrounding her with the sort of peace she wasn’t expecting.
Her Amy’s back. She can see her and talk to her, and maybe it doesn’t hurt as much anymore.
Tears tumbled down her cheeks as his words gave her the strength to send him a quick text before getting up to get dressed.
It was still dark as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen, grabbed her keys, and headed out to her car. The tack room was dark as she passed the barn; the world was still fast asleep. She didn’t know why she insisted on saying good-bye at Silver Springs—Gran’s soul had departed for heaven hours before—but her body, as Ginger had always known it, would be poked and prodded into final prettiness once the Wrights took her. While it was still night, she wanted to say her final good-bye.
She pulled into the parking lot and used her employee pass to open the side door and take the service elevator to her gran’s floor. Her father sat in a chair by his mother’s body, holding her bony hand, his head bent, his shoulder shaking.
“Daddy?”
“Hey, baby,” he said, looking up her, his eyes red-rimmed and shiny.
She put her hand on his shoulder, and he reached up with his free hand to hold it. “She passed quietly, they said.”
“She’s with Amy now,” said Ginger.
Her father nodded. “That’s right.”
“Dr. Sheridan?”
“Came by with his condolences.”
She sat down on the bed bedside Gran’s lifeless body. “Why don’t you go splash your face with water and get us a couple of coffees? I’ll stay with her.”
It was the exact same line she’d used a thousand times to family members who’d lost an elderly loved one, and her father, like all the rest, nodded his ascent and stood up.
As he got to the door, he turned. “She, uh, she wanted you to have this.” He held out an envelope with her name on it.
“She wrote it?”
“Her words. I just wrote them down.”
Ginger took the envelope and stared at it, slightly dumbstruck.