Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (41 page)

Tears streamed down Griselda’s face as Ruth finished this elegant speech, all while looking at Seth with such profound love that Griselda almost felt as if she should slip quietly away and leave them to their memories. But Ruth turned to her and asked, “Is that the kind of love you and Holden have?”

“Yes,” said Griselda, realizing in her heart, in her very
soul
, that it was true.

Nothing,
nothing
, would ever come between her and Holden, despite their absences and separations from each other, now and in the future, despite trials and tribulations, good and bad times, sickness and health, plenty and want. Like Seth and Ruth, they’d already waged and won the biggest battle of all. Oh, she would always have some trouble trusting the situations and people in her life, but in that moment she decided once and for all to exclude Holden from that list. She trusted him. She trusted
them
. She was all in. And all that lay ahead was forever.

They talked for a few more minutes, and Griselda turned in her paper. She promised she would bring Holden to meet them when he was on leave, and they made her promise to ask them if she ever needed anything at all.

Then she embraced them both—these mythical people, Seth and Ruth, who had somehow turned out to be real—and as she left the office, she looked back just in time to see them reach for each other’s hands and lace them tightly together.

***

October 21

Dear Gris,

I was so stunned by what you told me in your latest letter, I had to read it three times. Seth and Ruth are not just alive, but happy and safe and in love? Married for thirty years? I just don’t even know what to say.

Is it weird that I’m a little mad? I mean, they knew he was crazy (he fucking locked them up, Gris, and from what you said, he was on a path to kill Ruth), and they didn’t call anyone or report him? Could have saved our lives a lot of terror and grief.

Then again, if I go down that wormhole and start rewriting history . . . It always could have been worse. What if Miz F had turned her eyes to me and started molesting me? Or what if you or I had been transferred to another placement before we got to know each other? If I rewrite one thing, I could ruin it all, the entire journey, right up to the moment you showed up at that fight in June. So, I guess I wouldn’t trade it. Any of it. Because I also wouldn’t trade our time at Quint’s cabin. I fucking hate Jonah, but I wouldn’t even trade that time we had in the hospital, since you turned out okay. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t trade that morning we spent in your bed in Georgetown. I wouldn’t trade that I’m in the military now and you’re in college. So, okay. Everything happened a certain way, and a lot of it sucked, but here we are today. And I like where we are today. So, okay.

I heard from Gemma, and I hope that doesn’t make you paranoid. (It shouldn’t. I don’t love her. I love YOU.) She just wrote to me to tell me how good she and Hannah are doing. Hannah is kicking up a storm, and Gemma said that she was always out of breath climbing up the stairs to my apartment, so she moved in with Quint, Maudie, and Clinton. She said that Maudie won’t let her lift a finger and asked me how I’d feel about Hannah growing up with Clinton as a stepdaddy. I wrote back and told her I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have around my little girl. Hannah’s going to have a lot of love, Gris. All of them. You and me. So much love. That’s all that matters.

Only four more weeks until graduation. Only two more until the fucking Crucible, which makes my head spin. This week is basic combat: marksmanship skills, land navigation, and how to maneuver under enemy fire. I’m getting to be a good shot, Gris. My DI said I have aptitude with a gun and told me to consider a transfer to infantry if artillery isn’t my thing. Maybe scout sniper. Something to think about. I was proud as hell when he said it.

We haven’t talked a lot about what comes next, Gris, but I’m hoping we can talk when I come see you in November. I have to tell you, it looks like my PDS will be out in California. Slight chance of North Carolina, but almost certainly Cali. I know that’s a long way from home for you. It’s a long way from college and the McClellans and Maya. But the weather looks real nice. And a friend of mine named Graham? His girlfriend is moving out there too, and he said he could hook you up with Claire. I’m not asking you anything. I just wanted you to chew on it a little. We’ll talk more when I’m home, okay?

A month from today I’ll be with you.

I can barely believe it’s true, but it is.

Please keep writing. I need every letter.

I miss you like crazy.

I love you forever, angel.

Holden

Griselda read the letter once, then twice, then a third time, as usual, loving the feeling that Holden was here with her, talking to her. She ran her fingers over his neat handwriting, grinning and crying a little, and missing him, and proud of him at turns.

But in the end, two things made her lips tighten:

His girlfriend is moving out there too . . . I’m not asking you anything.

She reread the letter, but instead of having the warm, wonderful feeling she usually had when she read one of Holden’s letters, her eyes skated back up to those lines again.

Griselda did not play games, and she had not demanded anything of Holden, but she knew two things in the deepest reaches of her heart: she didn’t want to be Holden’s girlfriend, and there was a very specific question she definitely wanted him to ask her.

He’d alluded to marriage before, but not for many weeks, and now in this letter—the only recent letter that mentioned the future in any solid way—he referred to someone else’s girlfriend and her in the same breath, and then said he wasn’t asking for anything. Hmm.

She folded up the letter and placed it carefully under his picture, lying back down on the bed and staring up at the ceiling, annoyed with herself.

She didn’t want to read into it. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions or get her panties in a wad because he wasn’t proposing by letter, which, hell, wasn’t what she would want anyway. And honestly it was encouraging that he wanted her to consider moving to California with him. It was. Because she wanted to be with him more than anything else in the world. And if he asked her to go without a ring, chances were she’d say yes. But the truth? The God’s honest truth? She had only recently started daring to dream of her life the way she wanted it, and the way she
wanted
to move to California with Holden was with a ring on her finger and with the name Griselda Croft.

Griselda’s little apartment at the McClellans’ house wasn’t Holden’s home, but it was where Griselda lived, which meant it was the closest thing to a home that he had.

Instead of flying north, he’d opted to take a bus because it saved him enough money to slip into Kay Jewelers in Beaufort and buy a ring. It was only a tenth of a karat, but he’d selected it right away because the ring was a silver color and the setting was copper-colored gold in the shape of a heart, and something about it just felt perfect for Gris. It had cost almost four hundred dollars, and in the whole of Holden’s life, he’d never made such an extravagant purchase, which is why he kept patting his breast pocket and refused to close his eyes to sleep on the fifteen-hour trip from South Carolina to Washington, D.C. He couldn’t risk someone trying to lift it. He’d never be able to replace it in any sort of timely manner, and for all that it was small, it held the fate of his world in its shiny depths.

He’d boarded the bus at ten o’clock last night. It was eleven o’clock in the morning now, and they were almost there. He scrubbed his hand over the bristles of hair left after the fresh buzz cut before graduation yesterday, and smiled at his reflection in the bus window. It looked like a warm, beautiful November day outside, which was exactly what he’d hoped for.

On Thursday, the day before graduation, when most of his fellow recruits were entertaining their visiting families, Holden had spent the afternoon on the Internet, planning a special day for Griselda. He’d looked up the twenty-five most romantic places in D.C. and Georgetown, and his plan was to visit five of them with her today. They’d start at the small, often overlooked D.C. War Memorial, a white marble gazebo-like building near the National Mall, then take a hand-in-hand stroll along the Tidal Basin. And if her feet got tired, they could relax a spell on the lawn of the Mall. As the late afternoon set in, they’d cab it over to Georgetown and follow the pretty path along the C&O Canal, and as the sun started to set, he wanted to end up near the Key Bridge, where he’d take her hand, drop to one knee, and ask her to be his wife.

For whatever reason, it was symbolically important to Holden to propose to Gris near the river—maybe because he wanted to replace their memory of the Shenandoah with a happier one, of officially starting their lives together.

He breathed deeply and patted the ring again. As he checked his watch, his heart kicked into a gallop. He’d be arriving at Union Station in forty minutes, and then it was a quick ten-minute ride to Griselda’s apartment, where he’d drop off his bags and open his aching arms to his love.

***

Griselda blow-dried her strawberry hair, trying not to be nervous, but she was. Dang it, but she was.

She’d said good-bye to the McClellans, who traditionally spent Thanksgiving week with Sabrina’s parents in Rhode Island, this morning. They’d be home next Sunday, and Sabrina had already asked Griselda if she and Holden would join them for dinner that evening. She’d accepted her boss’s well-intentioned invitation, though inwardly she groaned. Holden left for Fort Sill, Oklahoma, next Monday afternoon, and the last thing Griselda wanted to do on their final night together was share him with anyone.

She had bought a new pair of soft, off-white corduroy jeans from Old Navy, and a new pair of brown leather-looking boots from Payless. She’d splurged a little on a tan turtleneck sweater that was supersoft and hit right about where her jeans rested on her hips. If she moved just so, he’d see a little of her flat tummy, and she delighted in the idea of teasing him.

She did a careful job on her makeup, keeping it natural but pretty, making her blue eyes pop with bronze eye shadow and darkening her pale lashes with a deep brown mascara. Tracing her lips with a rose-pink lip pencil, she filled them in with pink lip gloss that tasted like pineapple, then leaned back to check her work.

And smiled.

She didn’t look like a foster kid or some kidnapped waif who’d ended up back in the system. She didn’t look like an abused girlfriend or someone’s nanny. She looked fresh and young—like the college girls she saw on campus at UDC. She could pass for any of them today in her new clothes. But it was more than that, and Griselda knew it: she’d changed in the months since finding Holden again. She’d become more confident, less introverted; more hopeful, less frightened. She had started to determine her worth in the world, based on the power of his love for her, and found herself not undeserving. Her past was checkered with terrible things, but she was more whole every day.

Ask me if I’m whole or broken, Holden. Just ask me today. I’ll tell you I’m almost whole. I’ll tell you that, for the first time in my life, I’m almost whole.

She flicked off the light in her bathroom and checked the clock by her bedside. It was twenty past eleven, and though he’d told her not to meet his bus, there was simply nowhere else on earth that she wanted to be than in his arms. She grabbed her keys and headed out the door.

***

Holden was minutes from Union Station when his phone rang, and a grin broke out across his face because he assumed it was Gris checking on his ETA. They’d decided not to talk on the phone after graduation, building the anticipation of finally seeing each other when he got to her apartment, but it made him happy to think she couldn’t wait. Truth told, he couldn’t either.

But when he looked at the phone, it wasn’t Griselda’s 202 area code that greeted him. It was a 304 number. It was Clinton.

“Hey, Clinton! How’s it—”

“Seth, you gotta come,” said Clinton, his voice abrupt and tight. The hairs on Holden’s arm stood at attention.

“W-what’s going on?”

“Oh God,” sobbed Clinton. “I don’t know. Gem was complainin’ about headaches yesterday and had this pain in her right side, but we just thought, you know, she’s big and uncomfortable. She’s getting closer. But she . . . God, she had a seizure this morning.”

“A seizure? Jesus, Clinton. Is she okay? Is Hannah—?”

“I don’t know. She fell off her seat at the kitchen table, and her whole body was shakin’ on the floor, and my mama called the ambulance. They came and took Gem away, and now I’m here at the hospital, but I’m not the father and we’re not married yet and her fucking mother’s on a bender, so she ain’t got no immediate family in there with her. You gotta come, Seth.”

Holden nodded as the bus pulled into the depot at Union Station. “Of course. Of course, I’ll . . . I’ll c-come right now. I just . . . I’m in D.C. I g-gotta figure out a way to . . .”

“She’s only thirty-four weeks, Seth! It’s too fucking early!”

“I know, man. I know. Listen, I’m on my way. I’ll be there just . . . just as soon as I can. Tell Gem to hang in there.”

“Can’t fucking see her, Seth. Can’t tell her nothin’!
You
gotta come.”

“I’ll be there. Hold it together, C-Clinton. I’m c-coming.”

His heart thundered with worry. So much worry that when he glanced out the bus window and saw the prettiest girl in the world waving at him after three months apart from her, he could barely wave back.

***

Griselda saw it on Holden’s face immediately, reading his expression just as easily as she’d always been able to.

“What happened?” she asked, scanning his worried face as he stepped off the bus.

“Gemma went into labor this morning.”

Griselda grimaced. “Oh no! She’s not due for six weeks.”

“I know. Clinton’s a mess. Something’s wrong.” He stopped talking for a second and looked at her face—her beautiful face and soft hair, her amazing body in new clothes. His bags fell from his shoulders, and he pulled her roughly into his arms. “You look beautiful. I missed you like crazy.”

“I love you forever,” she sighed against his neck, her arms coming around his waist as she stepped closer, so that her breasts pushed against his chest.

“You were with me every second at boot, Gris. Your letters. They were . . .”

“So were yours,” she said, leaning back to look into his eyes. “It was like one long conversation. Something new every day. I missed you so much, but I don’t feel like I
missed
too much. Does that make sense?”

“It does. I feel exactly the same way,” he said, leaning down to press his lips to hers. He kissed her gently, but there was a heavy and immediate matter that needed his attention. And as disappointed as she was to miss out on some of their time together, she knew she had to let him go. She stepped back, and he loosened his arms.

“Well,” she said, “at least we had this. I guess I’ll see you when—”

“No way,” he said, his face wiped clean of softness, his hard jaw square as he stared back at her. “You’re c-coming with me. No more separation. No more. I’m spending every second of these ten days with you, Griselda. You hear me? I had a whole day planned for us today, but, well, it’ll have to wait . . . but—”

“You want me to go with you?” she asked, reaching up to cup his cheek with her palm.

“Yes! I’m not letting you out of my sight.” His face fell, lines of worry deep between his eyes. “F-fuck, Gris, I’m going to
need
you by me if that b-b-baby—”

“No!” said Griselda. She shook her head. “No, don’t go there. Holden, we’ve had enough fear and doubt for a lifetime—we don’t need to borrow any more. Until we know different, we’re gonna stay hopeful. She’s gonna be okay. Hannah’s gonna be okay.”

He grabbed her roughly, pulling her back against his body and dropping his forehead to her shoulder. His voice was barely audible by her ear: “I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you so good and so much it hurts.”

Her eyes welled with tears, but she wasn’t crying today. No. Today they were together again, and today Hannah Croft was going to be born small but healthy. She knew it. She just knew it.

“I love you too.” She cupped the back of his head, her fingers stroking the soft bristles. “Your hair’s all gone.”

“That okay?” he asked, his voice gruff and emotional.

“Of course it is,” she said tenderly. “It’s you.”

He reached up and took her right wrist gently, pulling it down to look at it. He clenched his jaw once, shaking his head before pressing his lips to the small tattoo he found there. “The letters.”

“I fall asleep with my fingers over them every night.”

He swallowed, searching her face with tenderness, which segued to a mix of frustration and regret. “I’m so sorry this happened today. The timing . . .”

She heard Ruth Foster’s voice in her head:
Our life together wasn’t easy. We had plenty of heartbreak, plenty of sorrow. But we also had each other. We’d
fought
to have each other . . . as long as we had each other, anything was bearable. Anything was possible.

“That’s life, Holden. It isn’t nice and neat,” she said. “All that matters is that we’re together again.”

He looked back at her with wonder. “You’re . . . different.”

“I trust us,” she said simply. “I’m strong.”

“You were
always
strong.”

Only
you
would remember that,
she thought.
You’re the only person alive who remembers what I was like as a little girl. And yes, I lost my way for a while. But I found it again when I found you.

She leaned up and kissed him, gratitude making her eyes water. “We can talk more on the drive. I think we better get going.”

***

Once back at the McClellans’, Holden changed quickly into civilian clothes, and Griselda sat on her bed and sent a text to Sabrina, asking permission to use their car to drive to West Virginia.

“I’m allowed to drive Prudence to appointments and such, but I don’t feel right taking it across state lines without permission.”

He peeked at her from the bathroom doorway, jeans on, shirt in hand, and watched as her eyes widened and darkened, staring at his bare chest like it was Christmas morning.

“Angel, if you don’t stop staring at me like that, I’m going to lose my mind.”

She took a deep ragged breath, and her face flushed as she stood up.

Her voice was slightly breathless. “I’ll go track down the keys. I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

He knew she was leaving the room to take the temptation of her body away from him, and he tightened his jaw, his head a battleground of emotion: fear for Gemma’s and Hannah’s safety; disappointment that he’d planned the perfect proposal for Griselda and it would have to wait; crazy amounts of love for her kindness, understanding, and compassion; and south of his belt, which had been neglected for weeks, waiting to be reunited with her again, frustration. Extreme frustration.

He took a deep breath and released it slowly, willing his body to calm down and focusing on Clinton’s call. It would hurt like hell if little Hannah didn’t pull through this. And Gemma. For all that she’d trapped him into parenthood, he still cared for her welfare. He buttoned up his shirt and tucked it in, offering up a quick prayer for their safety, but knowing better than anyone that prayers often went unanswered.

Shrugging into his jacket, he checked his bag to be sure he had everything he needed for the next two days, and found the small black velvet ring box tucked into the duffel pocket where he’d hid it while Griselda texted Sabrina. Casting his eyes quickly at the stairs that led to the kitchen, he pulled it out and flipped open the small box, then closed it, shoved it into his jacket pocket and met Gris upstairs.