Chapter 2: Dawn's Harsh Awakening
The pounding was a jackhammer inside her skull. It took Cassidy three disorienting seconds to separate the sound from her dreams—a relentless, wood-splitting thud against the guest room door.
“Breakfast shift starts in ten, princess.”
Wade’s voice was a low, sleep-roughened blade sawing through the pine wood. It was still dark. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 4:30 in angry red numerals.
Cassidy groaned, burying her face in the thin pillow that smelled of lavender and dust. Her body ached from the unfamiliar mattress. The pounding started again, louder.
“I’m up!” she snarled, her voice thick.
“See that you are.”
His boot heels retreated down the hall. She heard the back screen door slam a moment later. Silence, then the distant, aggrieved lowing of a cow.
The kitchen was a portrait of subdued industry when she stumbled in five minutes later, her hair a mess, wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothes. The overhead light was too bright. Her mother stood at the stove, the hiss and pop of bacon in a cast-iron skillet filling the room with the smell of grease and salt. Her father, Robert, was already at the table, dressed in clean work clothes, his hands cupped around a heavy ceramic mug. The way he held it was too careful.
He looked up, and the charming, crinkled-eyed smile she knew from community picnics and church socials spread across his face. “Morning, sweetheart. Coffee’s on the sideboard. You remember how to pour?”
It was meant to be light. It wasn’t.
“I remember,” she muttered, heading for the pot. As she passed behind his chair, she saw it. A quick, furtive tilt of the mug, the glug of liquid from the bottle of Old Crow that sat on the floor between his feet. He topped up his coffee with it, then nudged the bottle back under the table with his boot. He didn’t see her see. The smile never wavered.
Her mother, Martha, didn’t turn from the stove. “There’s eggs to scramble, Cassidy. The bowl and whisk are in the usual place.”
Cassidy poured her coffee, black and strong. She leaned against the counter, trying to sip some alertness into her system. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, each second a grain of sand piling up.
Martha finally turned, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes, the same pale blue as Cassidy’s, swept over her daughter’s outfit, the lack of makeup, the city-slicker helplessness. She said nothing. Instead, she picked up a piece of paper from the flour-dusted kitchen table and slid it toward Cassidy.
It was a list, handwritten in her mother’s precise script. Feed chickens. Collect eggs. Scrub water troughs in north pasture. Weed vegetable garden. It went on. The paper was stained with what looked like coffee and something brownish-green.
“Your father and Wade have the real work to do,” Martha said, her voice even. “This’ll keep you busy. Keep you out from underfoot.”
Cassidy stared at the list. It was a child’s chores. A punishment.
The screen door squealed open and Wade stepped back inside. The pre-dawn chill clung to him, along with the smell of hay and cool earth. He’d shrugged on a faded plaid shirt, but it was unbuttoned, hanging open over his chest. He ignored Cassidy completely, going to the sink to scrub his hands with a block of coarse, yellow soap.
“Sky’s clear,” he said to Robert, his voice all business. “Gonna be a scorcher. That baler’s still making that noise, sir. Sounds like a dying raccoon in the gears.”
Robert waved a dismissive hand, the charming patriarch. “We’ll get to it. After breakfast.” He took a long swallow from his mug.
Wade turned, drying his hands on a towel. His eyes landed on Cassidy, still leaning against the counter, holding her coffee like a shield. A slow, derisive smirk touched his mouth. He reached into a drawer, rummaged, and pulled out a wad of faded cloth. He tossed it at her.
It hit her in the chest and fell to the floor. She looked down.
It was an apron. Once blue, now pale from a thousand washes. Someone, with very careful, very mocking stitches, had embroidered a new tag on the bib. Two words in bright pink thread: City Girl.
Her blood went from sleepy to boiling in half a second.
“Figured you’d need it,” Wade said, his tone flat. “Wouldn’t want to get your fancy clothes dirty.”
Cassidy didn’t move. She looked from the apron on the floor to her mother’s rigid back, to her father’s performative sip of coffee, to Wade’s challenging stare. The clock ticked. The bacon popped.
She set her mug down on the counter with a sharp click. Then she bent, picked up the apron, and shook it out. She didn’t look at him as she looped it over her head and tied the strings behind her back, tight enough to constrict.
“The eggs, Cassidy,” her mother prompted, not turning around.
Cassidy walked to the refrigerator, her movements stiff. She took out the carton of eggs, found the bowl. The whisk felt alien in her hand. She cracked the first egg on the rim of the bowl. A piece of shell fell in. She fished for it with her fingers, the slimy cold yolk coating her skin.
She could feel Wade watching her. He hadn’t moved from his spot by the sink. She cracked another egg, harder than necessary.
“So,” Robert said, his voice booming with false cheer, slicing through the tension. “How long are we blessed with your company this time, sweetheart? A week? A month?”
The question hung there, ugly and direct. Martha’s spatula stilled for a heartbeat. Wade leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest, a spectator waiting for the next act.
Cassidy kept her eyes on the eggs, on the yellow yolks floating in the clear albumen. She could lie. She could say she was between jobs, taking a sabbatical, planning her next move. But the shame was a live wire in her gut, and her father’s smiling, whiskey-tainted inquiry felt like a prod against it.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“What’s that?” Robert asked, leaning forward.
“I said I don’t know!” The words came out sharper than she intended. She whisked the eggs violently, the clatter of the wire against the ceramic bowl loud in the quiet kitchen.
Robert’s smile tightened at the edges. He took another drink. “Well. Make yourself useful, then. The farm doesn’t run on nostalgia.”
A heavy silence descended, broken only by the sounds of cooking. Cassidy poured the eggs into a second, hotter skillet. They sizzled and immediately began to curl at the edges. She scrambled them, thinking of the list, of the apron, of the man in her bedroom.
When the eggs were done, she shoved the skillet toward the center of the stove. “Done.”
Wade pushed off from the counter. He picked up the skillet with a bare hand, unfazed by the heat, and dumped half the eggs onto a plate for Robert. He served Martha, then himself, taking a heaping portion. He left the skillet on the stove, a small, greasy remnant for her.
They sat. Robert said a quick, perfunctory grace. Then the only sounds were the scrape of forks on plates and her father’s steady, rhythmic sipping.
Cassidy stood by the stove, the City Girl apron feeling like a brand. She looked at the empty chair, the empty space at the table where no plate had been set.
Wade looked up, caught her eye. He held it for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he pointed his fork, not at the chair, but at the back door.
“Chickens are waiting,” he said. “They get mean if you’re late. Sun’s already thinking about coming up.”
He went back to his eggs.
Cassidy untied the apron slowly. She folded it once, the embroidered words hidden inside, and laid it neatly on the counter. Without a word, she turned and walked out the back door into the cool, dark grey of the morning that was not yet morning.
The screen door slapped shut behind her.
Inside, Robert chuckled, a dry, papery sound. “Gonna be a long day for a princess.”
Wade didn’t answer. He kept eating, but his eyes flicked to the window, following the shadowy figure stumbling toward the henhouse, armed with nothing but a bucket and a list.
The hens were indeed mean. They pecked at her ankles as she fumbled with the latch on the wire door, their beaks sharp and spiteful. The inside of the coop was a fog of dust and feathers and a stench so thick it felt solid in her throat. She filled the feeders with grain from a rusted bin, her silk blouse now speckled with grime and cobwebs. Gathering the warm eggs from the nesting boxes felt like a small, fragile victory until she dropped one, the yolk splattering like bright yellow defeat across the toe of her already-ruined shoe.
The sun rose fully, a merciless white coin in a bleached sky. By nine, the heat in the vegetable garden was a physical force. Cassidy knelt in the dirt, the rough granules working their way under her fingernails as she tore at stubborn weeds. Sweat dripped from the end of her nose, mingling with the soil. Each completed task on the list was a minor revolt, but her body ached in ways her spin classes had never prepared her for.
She saved the water troughs for last, hoping the north pasture might catch a breeze. It didn’t. The old metal troughs were slimy with green algae, the water warm and mosquito-ridden. She scrubbed with a stiff-bristled brush, her arms burning, while the dozen head of cattle watched her with blank, disinterested eyes. One of them, a huge red steer, lowed directly at her, a deep sound that vibrated in her chest and felt oddly like criticism.
When she finally stumbled back toward the barn just after noon, every muscle protested. The barn’s interior was a cathedral of comparative dimness, the air smelling of dry wood, diesel, and the sweet, decayed scent of old hay. Her next chore was scrawled at the bottom of the list: Clean out east stall.
The stall was a four-inch deep mat of compacted, filthy hay and manure. A pitchfork leaned against the wall. She stared at it for a full minute, then grabbed the wooden handle, her blistered hands screaming in protest. The first forkful was shockingly heavy, a dense, reeking cake of waste. She tossed it into the wheelbarrow outside the stall, the impact sending up a cloud of fine, pungent dust that coated her tongue.
She fell into a miserable, mindless rhythm: stab, lift, toss, cough. The heat in the enclosed space was stifling. She’d stripped off her ruined silk blouse an hour ago, working now in her camisole, the straps digging into her sweaty shoulders. This was the reality her father had mentioned. This was being useful.
The sound of an engine cut through her stupor. Tires crunched on gravel outside, followed by the solid chunk of a truck door closing. Footsteps approached the barn entrance, blocking the rectangle of blinding light.
“Well. Look what the cat dragged in and then threw back up.”
She leaned on the pitchfork, squinting. The silhouette resolved into a man taller than Wade, broader in the shoulders, with their father’s same bearing but none of the performed charm. Luke. Her older brother. He wore a sheriff’s deputy uniform, the tan shirt tight across his chest, his mirrored sunglasses reflecting her own filthy, diminished image back at her.
“Just dropped the twins at school,” he said, as if explaining his presence. He didn’t move closer, just took her in. The dirt-streaked camisole, the sweat-darkened hair at her temples, the raw red patches on her hands. A slow smile spread across his face, but it held no warmth. It was a smile of cold, satisfied recognition. “Heard you were back. Couldn’t hack it out there, huh?”
Cassidy wiped her forehead with her arm, leaving a new smear of grime. “It’s a visit, Luke.”
“A visit.” He chuckled, a low, humorless sound. He finally stepped into the barn, his boots loud on the concrete aisle. He plucked a piece of clean straw from a bale and rolled it between his fingers. “Funny. Mom’s already got you on shit detail. Dad’s telling folks at the diner you’re ‘recalibrating.’ Doesn’t sound like a visit.”
The casual cruelty of it, the speed with which her failure had been packaged and disseminated, stole her breath. She stabbed the pitchfork into the muck again. “What do you want, Luke?”
“Just checking on my little sister.” He said it like the words themselves were a joke. “Making sure the big city hasn’t made you too soft for honest work. Though, from the look of you, I’d say it did.”
She heaved the load into the wheelbarrow, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reply. The wheelbarrow was nearly full, a towering, reeking monument to her morning.
“You know,” he said, his voice dropping into a conversational tone that was more threatening than his sneer. “Wade’s a good guy. He keeps this place running. Dad depends on him.” He paused, letting the implication hang. “Doesn’t need you coming back here with your airs, looking down on him, messing with the rhythm of things.”
So that was it. This wasn’t just a fraternal hazing. He was the advance guard, reinforcing the perimeter. She straightened, meeting his reflected gaze in his sunglasses. “I’m not looking down on anyone.”
“Aren’t you?” He took a step closer. The smell of his starched uniform, of coffee and cheap aftershave, cut through the barn’s organic stink. “You showed up in a taxi wearing what, a skirt? He thinks you’re some real estate bitch Dad hired. You let him think that. You always let everyone think you’re above all this.”
The anger that had been simmering since the City Girl apron boiled over. “Above scrubbing shit? Yeah, Luke, I confess. I aspired to be above that. Guilty.”
His smile vanished. “This is what built the roof you slept under. It’s what paid for your fancy degree.” He gestured at the stall, at her, with the piece of straw. “And now it’s the only thing that’ll have you back. You should remember that. And you should be grateful.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He tossed the straw onto the filthy floor at her feet, turned, and walked back into the light. The engine started, and the sound faded away.
Cassidy stood there, the pitchfork handle slick in her grip. The confrontation left a hollow, shaking feeling in her gut. Grateful. The word echoed in the silent barn, mingling with the flies. She looked at the full wheelbarrow, then at the vast, untouched mess still in the stall. Her hands throbbed.
A shadow crossed the doorway again. She flinched, ready for another assault.
It was Wade. He had his hat on, a fresh sweat stain already darkening the front of his shirt. He glanced at the full wheelbarrow, then at her face, which she knew was flushed and tight with fury and humiliation. He didn’t mention Luke’s truck.
“You’re doing it wrong,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. He walked into the stall, took the pitchfork from her stiff hands. His fingers didn’t brush hers. “You’re fighting it. You gotta work with the weight, not against it.”
He demonstrated, a smooth, powerful motion that peeled up a perfect section of compacted hay and tossed it effortlessly into the barrow. It was fluid, efficient. He handed the fork back.
“Like that. Or you’ll throw your back out by supper.” He paused, his eyes on the raw patch on her palm. “There’s work gloves in the tack room. The blue ones. They’re small.”
Then he was gone, leaving her alone with the fork, the shit, and the unexpected, grudging knot of instruction. She stood still for a moment, hearing the truth in his words. You’re fighting it. She looked at the tool in her hands, then at the remaining filth. She took a breath, adjusted her grip, and tried to mimic his motion.