Mary Connealy (30 page)

This was nothing like that. Cassie opened her mouth and made a terrible ruckus with her sobs. Her skin got all blotchy, tears turned her eyes red, her nose ran, and her hair started sticking to her face wherever she was soggy.

Red rubbed her back. “There, there.” It was all he knew about birthing babies. Although he’d made Muriel tell him a few things.

Birthing babies? Muriel! Red thought of the vicious sleet pounding down more fiercely every minute. No one was going to make it out here to help bring this babe.

“Ouch!” Cassie shouted through her tears.

“What? What’s happening?” Red asked desperately.

“You’re crushing me!”

Red was sitting, thinking about what was in store for them, and he’d been strangling her. He relaxed his hold.

“Go for help, Red,” Cassie whispered. Her voice caught. She gasped raggedly for a second, then she choked out, “Go to Jessups’ and send for Muriel.”

Red was struck speechless. He wasn’t going ten feet in this weather. He was going to have to do it alone. Cassie was too young to have a babe, and Red realized with a sickening twist of his gut that he was, too.

An urgent desire to do something, anything, made Red stand with Cassie still in his arms. “Let’s get you to bed.” He carried her into the bedroom.

By the time Red had her in the back room, she started pushing at his shoulders. “Let me down. I’m not going to bed.”

Then she glared at him. “Muriel can’t come out in this weather. Don’t you dare go for her!” Cassie sounded calm and confident, not the frightened little girl she’d been two minutes ago and not the shy, submissive wife she was the rest of the time.

Red was having a little trouble adjusting. “No, I mean, yes, I mean, what do you want me to do?”

“Let me down this instant!” Cassie shoved at his shoulders again.

He lowered her to the floor, never letting go of her in case she sank into a heap on the ground or started moaning again or burst into flames…or whatever women in labor did.

“That took me by surprise, but now that I’m ready for it, it won’t be so bad next time.” Cassie looked around the bedroom ceiling as if she were searching for cobwebs and considering knocking them down. She gave a nod of her head and dusted her hands together and left the room.

Red trailed behind her.

Cassie headed for the cooler and ducked inside.

“What are you doing? What do you need in there?” Red joined her in the cramped room. She was slicing the ham.

Red grabbed the knife from her. “We don’t need to eat now.”

Cassie turned to him. “I don’t believe I’ll eat, no. But it’s near your noon mealtime. You’ll be wanting something.”

The mere thought of food made Red want to choke. “Don’t you think you should lie down?” Red asked, hacking at the ham just for something to do.

“Muriel says I should stay up for as long as possible. She said I’ll be so sick of lying in bed by the end that I’ll want these first few hours back.”

“Hours?” Red stopped slicing and looked sideways at her. “How many hours?”

“Muriel said her first child made his appearance about twenty-four hours after the first pains.”

“Twenty-four hours!” Red yelled.

Cassie patted him on the arms as if he were the one facing a full day of pains.

“Yes, but Libby said her first was only four hours and Leota said ten, so I guess we can’t know for sure.” Cassie took the slice of ham and didn’t mention the fact the Red had hacked it into four pieces. She left the cooler.

Red hurried to catch up.

Cassie turned into a woman Red had never met before. She was utterly calm, totally competent, and almost maniacally busy.

She cooked him a noon meal even though it was only about half past ten. He didn’t mention that fact, and she didn’t seem to care. She peeled potatoes and mixed a batch of biscuits. She started a new rising of bread for tomorrow and wiped every inch of the kitchen.

And she talked. She talked more words in the following half hour than Red had heard her say since they’d gotten married.

“I never gave eggs much thought back East. Then when we got out here and there were no chickens, Griff had some sent from St. Louis. The cost of those chickens! And none of them lived out the first week we had them. We had a pig that died, and a milk cow that never gave us so much as a swallow of milk. Griff told me coyotes got the chickens and …”

Cassie bustled around the kitchen at about twice her normal speed, chattering about chickens and how much she liked eggs. She occasionally asked his opinion about something, and it took Red about five minutes to catch on that he’d better have an answer right quick, but it’d better be a short one. Her eyebrows would furrow, and she’d look nervously at him if he didn’t hold up his end of the conversation. But if he answered more than, “Yes,” or, “No,” or, “Whatever you say,” she’d start talking right over top of him. She was listening to him for the sound but she wasn’t really
hearing
anything he said. He just humored her because he didn’t have any idea what else to do.

He took anything the least bit heavy out of her hands and moved it to wherever she had in mind. He stayed out of her way as best he could, while she whirled from the table to the sink to the fireplace, preparing him a dinner he didn’t think he could begin to eat.

Red had been hovering nearby for nearly half an hour, watching her for the first sign of impending disaster—which Red assumed was inevitable—when she stopped in her monologue to stiffen and hold her stomach.

The exact moment she started breathing hard, he stepped away from her because she’d been heading for the cooler with a bucket. He’d taken it from her, almost resulting in a tug-of-war before she let it go. He headed to the cooler to refill it. He glanced back at her and saw her gripping the back of a chair with whitened knuckles and staring blankly into space. He dropped the bucket and dashed to her side and held her.

“Don’t touch me,” Cassie snarled.

Red jumped back as surely as if a rattler had attacked him. Then her voice deepened almost to a growl. “Get your filthy hands off me.”

It was a voice he’d never heard come out of his submissive little wife before.

The minute he backed away, Cassie turned to him and grabbed him around the waist. She buried her face against his chest. “Hold me, please, Red.”

His head spinning, he cautiously wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her silken hair softly, like he did when they slept side by side. He rubbed her rigid shoulders. She moaned as if the touch were comforting. He felt her stomach grow hard between them, and his heart ached as Cassie whimpered with distress and burrowed closer to him. Since she seemed to like her shoulders rubbed, he slid one hand down her back and around to massage her taut belly.

“What are you doing?” She shrieked like he’d tried to push her off a cliff. “Get your hands off me.” She shoved hard at his arm.

Pulling away from her, he stammered, “I’m…I’m sorry. I won’t touch you if you …”

A loud wail broke off his wretched apology. “You think I’m fat and ugly.” Cassie buried her face in both hands and sobbed as if she’d lost her best friend in the world.

“Cassie, no.” He stepped away from her. “I think you’re—”

“Red!” She hurled herself back into his arms. “Don’t let me go. No matter what, never let me go.”

Red held his hands carefully out at his sides, afraid to touch her as she snuggled up against him. He slowly lowered his hands, ready to snatch them back at the first sign of trouble. When his hands settled lightly around her waist, she whispered, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

He held her closer, careful to avoid her stomach, thinking that might have been the problem. Gingerly he moved with her to a chair and sat in it with her, as he had during her first pain. He rubbed her back and made meaningless noises of comfort to her, and thought,
Thirty minutes down, twenty-three and a half hours to go.

The worst-case example was Muriel’s daylong laboring. Red didn’t see any reason to hope for the best. He held her and rocked back and forth and prayed for divine intervention.

Suddenly, she shoved his arms away from her and stood briskly. “What are you thinking? I’ve got dinner to get on.” She hurried back to the fireplace.

He wondered whether his twisting stomach could hold down a single swallow. And would he make her angry if he refused to eat? Worse yet, would she start crying again?

She started humming softly while she worked.

It occurred to Red that she had been yelling at him and demanding that he do her bidding and do it right now. With a sudden melting in his heart he thought,
I’m finally meeting the real Cassie…except insane.

He knew it was true. This was Cassie with all of her conditioned behavior stripped away. Sassy and demanding and efficient and filling his home with music. He’d been half in love with her since the first time he’d laid eyes on her, and his heart had softened to her right from the beginning of their marriage, but now he knew that hadn’t been love because now he knew what the real thing was.

Love, fierce like a lion defending its cubs, roared through him. This Cassie was who he wanted, and he wasn’t going to settle for anyone else. He wished fervently that after the babe was born she’d stay like she was right now, but he knew there was little chance. It would take time, but they had all the time in the world. He’d dig this woman out of her shell if it took him the rest of his life.

Cassie grabbed at the heavy skillet she had hanging on a peg on the wall, and Red rushed to lift it for her. She whacked at his hands with a wooden spoon. “Don’t you have any chores to do outside?”

“I’m carrying this frying pan for you.” Red pried her fingers off it. “Now tell me where you want it.”

She fussed and scolded at him as she shooed him toward the fireplace.

Red thought,
Maybe we don’t have all the time in the world. A man can die a hundred times, in a hundred different ways, in twenty-four hours.

S
he had to finish dinner.

She had to clean up the kitchen afterward, not just tidy but clean down to the bone.

She had to scrub the floor, but she couldn’t scrub a dirt floor. But she had to!

She had to scald all the cook pots and search out the last particle of dust. Cobwebs! There might be cobwebs!

What about the slit that opened off her bedroom? What kind of filth lurked in that dark passageway? She had to ferret out every threatening speck so nothing dirty would touch—Her mind veered away from the why. She didn’t dare think about the baby on the way.

She became aware that under the urgent need to hurry, she was hearing two different voices guiding her. For the first time in a long time she was separated from herself. The china doll, trying to be perfect, but with a twist because the china doll had been trying to be perfect for Griff. Now, her only standard was for herself, because Red never asked her to be perfect. But in some disjointed way, she knew the drive to have everything sparkling clean and in order was linked to the china doll.

And the other Cassie, the furious, childish Cassie, wanted everything just right, too. But she wanted to holler. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to make Red clean the stupid house himself, for heaven’s sake. She shouldn’t have to clean in her condition.

Which led her to think of the baby coming, and her mind careened off again. Having a baby was too huge. She was too young. She wasn’t ready to give birth to a child, let alone raise one.

Panic roiled in her stomach, blared in her head. The childish Cassie wanted to release all of the tension with violence…or at least with a temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums. She yanked tight on the reins of her emotions and kept the angry, terrified Cassie silent.

To cover her turmoil, she forced the china doll to the forefront of her mind and worked. She had to wash and iron her nightgown. It had to be immaculate. She grabbed a bucket and hurried toward the cooler.

Red took it from her.

She nearly jumped out of her skin. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’ve been here right along, Cass.” Red gave her a worried look as he rested his hand on her arm. “I’ll get water. You shouldn’t be doing heavy lifting.”

“Everything has to be clean. Everything has to be absolutely clean.” Her ears hurt a little, as though she’d shouted the words, but it hadn’t sounded loud, so that couldn’t be the source of the pain. Somehow her ears hurting must be Red’s fault. She wanted the nightgown washed in boiling water, and he was holding on to the bucket. Everything in the room had to be spotless.

He glanced around the room. “It’s fine. You won’t even be in the room anyway.”

Not be in the room? A vision of her baby being born without her being in the same room with it ricocheted around in her head. What kind of stupid thing was that to say?

He stared at her funny for a few seconds, and Cassie had the sudden sick feeling that maybe she’d spoken her thoughts out loud. She shook her head. Impossible. She’d never call Red stupid, no matter what kind of idiot he acted like.

His eyes widened and he glanced nervously from her, to the bucket, to the cooler, and back to her again. She got the impression he was afraid to leave the room.

She had to wash her nightgown. The baby might take twenty-four hours, but she didn’t want to rely on that. She reached for the pail, determined to take care of fetching water if he was too lazy and useless to help her.

His eyebrows shot up all the way to his red hair. He held the pail away from her and practically ran into the cooler.

She wondered what had him acting so weird.

He came back out with a full bucket. They always left one sitting under the trickling spring to fill. Speaking softly, using the same voice she’d heard him use on a spooky, green-broke horse, he said, “I’m not acting weird.”

She thought that was an odd comment to make. It was as if he’d read her mind. She shook her head to clear it of such a distracting possibility.

“My nightgown.” She raced into her room and came back with the white gown Muriel had given her.