Chapter 16: Measure Twice, Cut Once
The manuscript sat between them on the kitchen table for three days, a quiet monolith. Cass would touch the box’s corners, adjusting it minutely. Wade would glance at it over his coffee, saying nothing. On the fourth morning, he brought in a sturdy cardboard box lined with a clean feed sack. “This’ll do,” he said, and helped her pack the pages with a care bordering on reverence.
The drive to the post office in town was tense, the manuscript box on Cass’s lap like a sleeping child. She felt exposed, rolling past the diner, the hardware store, faces she knew turning to stare at Wade’s truck. “Let them look,” Wade muttered, his eyes fixed ahead. He double-parked outside the small brick building. “You want me to come in?”
“No.” She clutched the box. “I’ll do it.”
The bell jingled overhead. Marge Evans behind the counter looked up, her friendly smile freezing when she saw Cass. Her eyes dropped to the return address label, then back to Cass’s face, a flicker of naked judgment there. “Well,” Marge said, her voice cool. “Heard you were doing some writing out there.”
“Just mailing a letter,” Cass said, her own voice surprisingly steady. She paid for the postage, her fingers not shaking. The thump of the parcel hitting the bottom of the outgoing bin was a final, terrifying sound.
Wade was exactly where she’d left him. He didn’t ask how it went. He just put the truck in gear and said, “Lumberyard’s on the way back. Need a few things.”
The wait was a physical ache. Cass threw herself into the garden, weeding with a ferocity that made her lower back protest. She baked incessantly, filling the kitchen with the smell of browning butter and cinnamon. Wade was gone more often, taking odd repair jobs in town for cash, coming home smelling of other people’s sweat and mildew. He’d leave before dawn sometimes, a note on the table: Be back by sundown.
She’d watch from the window as his truck disappeared down the rutted road, a plume of red dust hanging in the still air. The silence of the house felt different on those days, a hollow echo where his solid, quiet presence usually lived.
One evening he returned later than promised, the summer sun already bleeding into the horizon. His truck bed was piled with fresh, clean lumber—pine, not the rough oak he usually scavenged. He unloaded it with a focused intensity, stacking the boards neatly against the side of the house. Cass watched from the porch, a glass of iced tea sweating in her hand.
“What’s all that for?” she called out.
“Project,” was all he said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
He started the next morning, in the shade of the old live oak. He didn’t use power tools, just a handsaw, a hammer, a square, and a pencil tucked behind his ear. The rhythmic zip-rip of the saw, the solid thock of the hammer, became the day’s music. Cass pretended to read on the porch, her eyes constantly drifting to his hands. They measured twice, cut once, his brow furrowed in concentration.
It took her three days to understand what the joints were forming. The shape emerged slowly: two tall sides, two shorter ends, slats for a base. It was a crib. He was sanding every surface to a silken finish, his fingers testing for the slightest splinter.
She stood at the screen door, her breath caught. He looked up, caught her watching. He didn’t smile, just gave a single, slow nod, and went back to his work. The unspoken hope in that nod was a weight she could finally, tentatively, share. She placed a hand on the hard curve of her stomach, a silent conversation with the life inside.
The letter from New York arrived on a Tuesday. The editor’s signature was a frantic scrawl below typed, glorious words: We were captivated... raw and powerful... a stunning debut... publication set for June. An advance check fluttered out, a number with four digits. Cass read it on the porch steps, the paper trembling. She read it again. Then she screamed, a pure, sharp sound of release that startled the chickens.
Wade came running from the barn, his face pale with alarm. “What? What is it?”
She couldn’t speak. She just shoved the letter at him. He read it, his lips moving silently. When he looked up, his eyes were bright. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered, a slow grin spreading across his face. “You did it, city girl.”
He swooped her up then, a careful, joyous lift that made her shriek again with laughter. He spun her once, gently, on the dusty yard. “We’re celebrating,” he declared, setting her down. “Properly.”
He drove to the IGA and returned with a boxed vanilla cake and a can of reddi-wip. That evening, he lit the kerosene lanterns like it was a party. He cut two thick slices of cake, dolloping a mountain of whipped cream on each. “To Cass,” he said, raising his glass of milk.
“To us,” she corrected, clinking her glass against his.
The first dollop of whipped cream hit her cheek with a cold, surprising splat. She gasped, staring at him. His face was the picture of innocence, but his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Slipped,” he said.
“Oh, it slipped, did it?” She grabbed the can, and a white arc caught him square on the chin.
The fight was brief, chaotic, and glorious. Whipped cream ended up in hair, on the ceiling, dripping from the table. They were both breathless, covered in sticky white, when Cass finally surrendered, holding her sides. Wade leaned against the sink, laughing a deep, rumbling laugh she’d never heard before. He looked young.
His laughter softened into a smile as he looked at her—really looked—at her smeared face, her messy hair, her swollen belly under the cream-spattered shirt. The lantern light was kind. He took a damp dish towel and approached. “Here,” he murmured, wiping a blob from her temple. His touch was tender.
She took the cloth from him and wiped the cream from his stubble. The air shifted, the playful energy deepening into something quiet and potent. They were close enough to share breath. The refrigerator kicked on, breaking the spell.
He cleared his throat, stepping back. “I’ll, uh, clean this up.”
“I’ll help.”
They worked in comfortable silence, the mess a testament to their joy. Later, in the dark, Cass lay awake listening to the cicadas. The check was in the tin box with the insurance paperwork. Her book was real. His crib stood unfinished under the oak tree, a promise in pine. For the first time since coming back, the future felt less like a sentence and more like a story she might want to read.
For the first time since coming back, the future felt less like a sentence and more like a story she might want to read. The baby made its presence known not with gentle flutters but with sharp, definitive kicks that stole her breath. “Feels like a damn bull rider in there,” Wade observed one evening, his palm resting on the taut dome of her belly, his eyes wide with a wonder he couldn’t hide.
The ultrasound in Haskell confirmed it. “You’re having a daughter,” the technician said, the grainy screen showing a ghostly, perfect spine. Cass started crying instantly, a messy, happy sob. Wade just squeezed her hand, his throat working. In the truck afterward, he was quiet for ten miles. “A girl,” he finally said, as if testing the word. “We gotta be real careful.”
“With what?”
“Everything.” He stared at the unspooling road. “June’s a good name. Strong. Not too fussy.”
“June,” Cass repeated. It felt solid and sweet on her tongue, like a ripe piece of fruit. “June Collins.”
Wade nodded once, a decision made, and reached over to adjust the vent away from her. The simple, protective gesture made her heart clench.
A new rhythm settled in. Wade took on fencing work for the Garretts, a young couple on the next spread over. Jed Garrett was talkative, his wife Ellen was quiet with a sharp, observing gaze. She was seven months along, her own belly a neat mound under her sundresses. One afternoon, Wade came home with a basket of early tomatoes and a message. “Ellen says you should come by. Or she’ll come here. Says you shouldn’t be out here alone all the time with no one to talk to.”
Ellen arrived two days later in a dusty sedan, bringing a casserole and a bag of hand-me-down maternity clothes. “Jed won’t shut up about how Wade saved him three days’ work on that fence line,” she said, settling at the kitchen table like she’d always been there. She eyed Cass’s manuscript pages, now stacked neatly by the computer. “He says you’re a writer. I brought you these journals. I never fill them.”
Her visits became weekly. She brought gossip from town, wordless comfort, and a pragmatic lack of pity that Cass craved. They sat on the porch shelling peas or mending clothes, their swollen bellies aimed at the sun, speaking in the casual shorthand of shared experience. It was the first uncomplicated friendship Cass had known in years.
Wade watched it from a distance, a quiet approval in his eyes. He started spending more time in the barn, staring up at the cavernous, hay-dusted attic. One night over beans and cornbread, he gestured with his fork. “That space above the barn. It’s got good bones. We could put in a floor, some windows. Make it a real room.”
“For what?” Cass asked, though she already knew.
“For later,” he said, avoiding her eyes, focusing on his plate. “If we needed it. Someday.”
The promise in that ‘someday’ was a warmth in her chest. Life, for a while, was just that: the slow, incremental work of building. The garden grew. Ellen’s baby arrived, a girl named Jessica . Cass’s book, Anchorless, vanished into the machinery of New York publishing, a distant dream.
Then June arrived, and the world tilted. A cardboard box appeared on their porch, ten copies of the book with her name on the spine. The feeling was physical, a dizziness. That same week, a reporter from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal called. Then a woman from NPR. The IGA in Haskell had a small pyramid of her books by the register. Marge Evans from the post office reportedly said she hadn’t read it, but her tone implied she’d heard enough.
It was a New York Times bestseller. The words were impossible. The royalty checks were not. They were life-changing. Wade taped the first one to the refrigerator, a strange monument. “Don’t let it change your head, city girl,” he teased, but he was looking at the land, at the future, seeing new possibilities.
One humid night, with the windows open to the chorus of crickets, Wade turned on the small radio. A staticky country ballad crackled out. He grinned, a rare, full thing, and offered her his hand. “Come on.”
They danced there in the middle of the worn kitchen floor, her enormous belly between them, his hand a steady anchor on her lower back. They swayed, clumsy and slow, her forehead resting against his collarbone. He smelled of soap and dry grass. They were laughing, a soft, shared sound, at his careful attempts to dip her.
The banging on the front door was not a knock. It was an assault, a furious pounding that shook the frame. The laughter died in Cass’s throat.
Wade’s body went rigid. In one fluid motion, he put Cass behind him and crossed the room, yanking his shotgun from its corner by the door. “Wait there,” he said, his voice low and iron. The fear in his eyes was not for himself.
“Cassidy! You open this goddamn door!” Her father’s voice was a drunken roar, slurred and poisonous. “I read your filthy book! My own daughter! Whorin’ and lyin’ for the whole world to see!”
The door shuddered under his fists. “You performed those unholy acts under my roof! You shame the McAllister name! You hear me? You shame me!”
Wade racked the shotgun, a sound like cracking ice. He opened the door and stepped onto the porch, blocking the threshold. “You need to leave, Robert. Now.”
“That’s my daughter in there, you piece of shit hired hand!” Spittle flew from her father’s mouth. The reek of bourbon carried into the house. “You think you can buy her with that dirty money? She’s a liar!”
“Last time. Get off my property.”
“Your property?” Robert lunged, not at Wade, but for the gun.
They grappled in the doorway, a chaotic tangle of grunts and curses. The shotgun was a metal knot between them. “Stop it!” Cass screamed, frozen in the middle of the kitchen. “Both of you, stop!”
Robert wrenched the gun free and swung the stock wildly. It clipped Wade’s shoulder. Wade’s answer was a closed-fist punch that snapped Robert’s head back. Robert roared and swung back, a clumsy, hard blow that caught Wade on the jaw.
“Wade!” Cass’s scream was pure terror.
He glanced at her, his eyes searching for a second. They dropped. A strange wetness darkened the floorboards between her feet, a pinkish fluid soaking the hem of her nightgown. She looked down at the spreading stain, then at her trembling hands, as if they belonged to someone else.
Wade made a sound, a raw animal noise. He threw Robert aside like empty sacks. The older man crumpled against the porch rail. Wade was at Cass’s side in an instant, scooping her into his arms. “No, no, no,” he murmured, but he was moving, carrying her down the porch steps toward the truck.
Robert stumbled to his feet, blocking the path. “You’re not taking her!”
Cass was crying, great heaving sobs that hurt. The world was narrowing, the pain a tightening band around her middle.
Wade didn’t break stride. “Get the fuck out of my way or get in the fucking truck,” he snarled, his voice shaking with a fury so immense it was calm. “Your granddaughter is coming right now. Decide.”
Robert McAllister’s rage shattered, replaced by a blank, bourbon-soaked confusion. He stared at his daughter’s pale, terrified face, at the obvious stain on her gown. He wavered. Then, wordlessly, he yanked open the passenger door and climbed in.
Wade laid Cass as gently as he could in the truck bed, piling a folded tarp under her head. “Hold on,” he pleaded, his hand on her cheek for a fleeting second. “Just hold on.” He slammed the tailgate and sprinted for the driver’s seat.
The truck roared to life, headlights slicing the dark. Cass stared up at the blurring tapestry of stars as they jolted down the dirt road. The pain came in waves, but between them, her mind floated loose. She was six, on her father’s shoulders, touching the leaves of the pecan tree. He was laughing, telling her she was his bird. She was ten, and he was teaching her to tie a fishing fly, his big hands guiding her small ones, his voice patient. “Like that, Cassie-girl. Just like that.”
The memories were sun-warmed and sweet, a stark, gutting contrast to the man hunched in the front seat, the smell of his sweat and his drink filling the cab. The truck hit a pothole, and a sharp contraction brought her back. She clutched her belly, a whisper escaping her cracked lips. “Daddy, please don’t hurt me.” Her snap back into reality, pain searing in her lower back. This was real. She was 25 now, her husband and her father in the front seats driving her to the hospital. What’s going to happen now?