Chapter 61 Ginger
Ginger
My eyes hurt from looking at the computer screen all day. I need to start dinner, but I’ve been hoping to get an approval back from a client about her logo, so I click over to my email.
I scroll through my inbox when an unfamiliar email address catches my eye. The last bit has my heart rate spiking. It’s from Twisted Timber Designs.
Hutch’s business.
My chest tightens, and suddenly my fingers hesitate over the mouse. A familiar flutter rises in my belly.
After a few moments of hesitation, I click it open, unable to stop myself.
And his words flood over me.
From: admin@
To: ginger.westbrook10@
Subject: Found you (miraculously)
Ginger,
I’ve never felt more ancient in my life than I did trying to find some way to communicate with you. I dropped so many subtle hints at family dinner with Wren the other night, hoping she’d throw me a bone. Either she didn’t pick up on it or she’s still mad at me on your behalf. Which, fair.
So I took matters into my own hands. I made an Instagram account. I thought maybe I could find your business that way.
Instead I ended up on the page of a bakery in Santa Barbara called “Gingerbread Dreams” and liked twelve pictures of cupcakes before I realized what was happening.
Then I spent two hours scouring the internet like some bootleg detective, trying every combination of your name, address, and the words design, marketing, branding, that I could think of.
Eventually—I found your website. Ginger Westbrook Designs, right?
And now I’m just hoping this email actually gets to you.
I hope you’re doing ok. How are the boys? I hate that I don’t even know if you’re still in California or if you decided to make the move to Seattle. And I deserve that.
I know this doesn’t fix things. I know I don’t deserve a response. But I still love you and miss you.
-Bigfoot
My breath catches halfway through. I chuckle when I think about him making an Instagram.
God, he wrote this. Thought about me and the boys.
My heart pounds so hard I’m sure he could hear it through the screen. My eyes race back over his words, reading and rereading every line. It’s like he’s right here, talking to me, even though I’m sitting alone in this quiet house.
Tears sting at the edges of my vision. Hope flickers. It’s small and fragile, but real.
I don’t reply. Not yet.
A week later, another email comes through. Same sender. Same flutter in my chest.
It tears my heart open as much as the first one.
From: admin@
To: ginger.westbrook10@
Subject: I Built a Wall, But Not That Kind
Ginger,
We started framing the walls of the cabin today. Should be done in the next couple of days. The crew has been working hard. Trusses are coming this weekend.
It feels strange, building walls for someone who isn’t here.
But I’m hoping one day that changes.
I don’t want to push. I just need you to know I love you.
I hope, in some small way, you can see that. And maybe, one day, you can forgive me.
I love you. I miss you.
—Bigfoot
Another week. Another email.
I shouldn’t open it, but I always do.
From: admin@
To: ginger.westbrook10@
Subject: Things I’m Bad At: Expressing Feelings, Subject Lines
Ginger,
I moved our bed into the cabin today. The place is nowhere near done—no drywall, no real windows yet, but I couldn’t sleep in that loft anymore. Forget about the Vanagon.
I couldn’t keep walking past the bed we shared and pretending I didn’t hear you laugh when I got into it every night or that I didn’t see your hair on the pillowcase.
So I moved the bed. Hauled it over myself. Oakley watched like I’d lost my damn mind. And maybe I have. Then he jumped up and tried to claim your side, the traitor. I made him move. He whined about it, curled up at the foot of the bed instead.
The whole room still smells like sawdust and insulation, but I needed to be in the space I built for you. For the boys. For all of us.
There’s a damn echo in here. Great acoustics for The Chainsmokers though. Yeah, I’m listening to that song you love on repeat. Hank’s threatened to punch me in the junk if I play it one more time in his presence.
Anyway. If you’re wondering…I still love you. I still miss you.
—Bigfoot
It’s been months, but every week, without fail, an email shows up.
I haven’t replied—not once.
But I’ve started to look forward to them.
They come late at night or sometimes early in the morning, but always from the same email address that I now recognize in an instant.
Sometimes it’s a random thought he had in the middle of the day. Sometimes it’s a memory of us—something I’d forgotten until he brought it back to life with a sentence.
Other times, it’s progress on the cabin: walls going up, windows ordered, light fixtures he thinks I’ll like.
None of them is grand or polished or perfect. But all of it sounds like him. And I find myself reading over and over throughout the day.
Savoring them. Even when they tear me apart.
His newest email comes in late, almost midnight. I’m already in bed, with my phone on my chest, and the boys are finally asleep in the next room.
I don’t open it right away. I stare at his email in my inbox. It feels kind of perfect knowing, after everything, he’s still trying. And when I finally open it, my chest aches before I even finish the first two lines.
From: admin@
To: ginger.westbrook10@
Subject: Two Turkeys and Cabin Progress
Ginger,
Thanksgiving came and went. We did it at the big house like always. Hank carved the turkey, and Hudson deep-fried a second one just to prove a point. Haley showed up late with a store-bought pie (that Nat refused to let her put on the table) and zero shame.
I sat at that long table with all of them, food piled high, and the only thing I could think of was how much I wished you were there.
You and the boys. I kept looking at everyone around the table; happy, laughing.
Together. But it felt incomplete. I kept thinking about how Tate would have turned his nose up at the mashed potatoes, and how Jordan probably would’ve spilled his milk.
If you’d have been here, I wonder if you would have let me pull you outside for ten minutes of quiet.
And maybe a couple of other things if I was lucky enough.
I hope wherever you were, you were happy.
I picked up a playground set for the boys when I went to Bozeman last week.
It’s one of those old ones made of redwood.
It’s got a slide, and it's sturdy as hell but splintery as shit. Hudson thinks I’m a lunatic because I don’t even have a yard yet.
But it’s in the shop in pieces, anyway. I started sanding it down this morning.
I think the boys will love it. I’m gonna round off every damn edge until it’s smooth as glass.
I promise they won’t get a single splinter.
I keep picturing them going down the slide like little maniacs.
I miss you so much, baby. I miss your laugh. I miss your smart mouth and the way you smooth your hands over the boys’ hair when they’re upset. I’d give anything to roll over and feel even one crumb of a nutter butter in the sheets. I miss everything.
The cabin’s coming along. The exterior is done. Siding, roof, trim, all of it. The porch will be wide, like I know you’d want, wrapping all the way around to the back. There’ll be space for a swing, and for the boys to race around it a hundred times a day if they want.
The kitchen cabinets came yesterday. I don’t know if you looked at the plans, but the darkroom’s wired. I stood in there the other day for fifteen minutes picturing you there. I don’t know if you’ll ever see it. But it’s yours either way.
Sometimes I stand in the middle of the living room and talk to you like you’re already here. I tell you about my day. I tell you what I had for dinner or sometimes I sit and pretend you're working quietly next to me. But mostly, I tell you I’m sorry.
I guess I needed you to know that I’m still building this thing. Even if you never walk through the door. Even if the only place I ever get to see you is in the spaces I carved out for you.
Merry Christmas, baby.
I love you.
—Hutch
My breath catches before I even realize I’m holding it.
I press my fingers to my mouth like that’ll stop the way my chin trembles, like I can keep everything in if I hold still enough.
But it’s no use. I can’t stop picturing him.
Standing in the middle of that half-built cabin, talking to me. Like I’m still there, echoing through the spaces he framed for us.
He built me a darkroom?
Throwing the covers off, I get out of bed and leave my room, padding through the house in the dark.
In my office, I pull open my desk drawer and pull out the manilla envelope I tucked in there months ago.
I never could bring myself to open it. But I know I can’t wait anymore.
There’s a physical ache in my hands, and I can’t get the clasp open fast enough.
Flipping on my desk lamp, I peel the envelope open and slide out a thick, printed paper stack.
And my heart nearly stops in my chest.
Floor plans. Detailed renderings. It’s all there. And it’s not just a cabin.
I flip the page, my hands shaking.
A rendering of the outside, a large A Frame, with a wide wraparound porch. I flip the page again.
Tate’s room. Jordan’s. Ginger’s Darkroom.
I blink, my throat thick, flipping through each page, my eyes burning, my heart pounding, and I take in detail after detail.
Even though I know he said he was building it for us…my mind is having trouble catching up to what I’m looking at. Every single detail so meticulously planned out.
I don’t even know when the tears start. But they’re hot, and quiet, and they don’t stop. I press the pages to my chest and stare up at the ceiling in the dim light.
He never once asked me to come back. Not in any of the emails. He’s just been…building. Waiting. Loving me from a thousand miles away without demanding a damn thing in return.
And maybe that’s what ruins me most of all.
Because I want to go. God, I want to go.
I want to scoop up my boys, book the first flight I can find, and show up on that porch like I never left.
But I’m scared.
I blink up at the ceiling, heart pounding and chest splintering wide open, and whisper the only truth I know.
“I love you, too.”