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Three pages. She’d written me a three-page letter. I noticed them moving and realized my hands were shaking. I folded the pages back and set them on the bed. My gaze went to the box with the other letters. She’d really thought through her actions. Took the time to write letters to everyone.
I took a breath and picked my letter up again. I began to read. With each new word, my chest ached a little bit more. Reading those words, knowing that she had those feelings—the desire to die—it was too much.
A gasp made me look up. Ginger stood in the doorway, face ashen, eyes trained on the papers in my hands. Neither of us spoke. I kept my eyes on her as I folded the letter and returned it to its envelope.
“You weren’t supposed to read that.” Her voice sounded raspy.
“It had my name on it.”
She walked over. I noticed the slight tremble in her hand when she reached for my letter. She picked it up and put it back into the shoe box. I wrapped my hand around her wrist.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Malcolm.”
Ginger pulled her arm free, picked up the box, and exited the room. I remained on the bed trying to wrap my head around things. I knew she’d been through a lot, but the fact that man had damaged her to the point she thought ending her life was the only way, I couldn’t fathom it. Even more importantly, how could we have missed that things were that bad for her? We’d all been so blind. So fucking caught up in what we wanted for her, that we ignored how much pain she’d really been in. She’d been correct, we wanted her better, and that’s what she gave us.
I ran my hands down my face then through my hair before pushing off the bed in search of Ginger. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, staring into the fireplace. The smell of burnt paper filled the air. Ginger’s focus remained on the flames before her. The shoebox and letters it contained were now blackened remnants.
I walked up and circled my arms around her. I stood behind her not speaking, but watching the flames as she did.
“I wish you hadn’t read the letter.”
“I’m glad I did.”
“Why? Why would you want to know that?”
I turned her to face me. Bringing my hands up, I held on to either side of her face and leaned down for a soft kiss.
“You’re here. Not gonna lie, reading that, knowing what it was, that wasn’t easy.” I ran my knuckles up the side of her cheek. “But in the end, you’re here.”
Ginger pulled away, turning to stare at that creepy painting above the fireplace.
“I’ve spent a lot of hours staring at her. Talking to her. Hoping she held some magical answer.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, and massaged them briefly before wrapping my arms around her and pulling her back against me.
“I sat here on the floor working on
my second bottle of wine…”
I tightened my arms around her. “Baby, that’s in the past. What’s important is that no matter how low you felt in that moment, you found a reason to not go through with it.”
She reached up, and rested her hands on my arms. “What do you see when you look at her?”
“Look at who?”
“My lady on the cliff.”
I looked up at the picture. Studying it for the first time. Normally, I’d only give it a passing glance. It was an unsettling image, and I often wondered why she left it up after that bastard was gone.
Ginger started talking again before I answered her question. “She called to me the first time I saw her. I’ve never been into art. You’d hear in movies people talking about deep meaning of pictures, and I never understood it. Until her. There was something serene about that moment. I imagined that whatever brought her to that point, she stood there right at the edge and had a moment of clarity. Whether she stepped off, or turned back, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that moment right before the decision. That breath. That moment of freedom knowing that the next choice was hers and hers alone.”
My gaze remained on the painting. Seeing it as Ginger saw it. Not as some morbid picture depicting a woman about to plunge to her death. Instead, I saw Ginger. A woman teetering on the edge but holding on just enough to not go over.
“Precipice.” Her words spoken in a whisper.
“What?”
“That’s the name of the painting.” Ginger pulled away and walked over to turn the gas off to the fireplace. The flames died out almost instantly. “Seth gave me a lot of things, but the two most important are that painting and Shawn. Both saved my life. Shawn did so twice.”
