Chapter 23
She 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.
Under the urgent need to hurry, she was hearing two 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, 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.” 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 onto the bucket.
“Everything has to be absolutely clean.” Spotless.
He glanced around the room. “It’s fine. You won’t even be in the room, anyway.”
Not be in the room? 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. Was he afraid to leave the room? Why?
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.
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.”
What an odd comment to make, 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 garment Muriel had given her. She tried to take the pail from Red.
“Where do you want it?”
“Fill a basin and hang it over the fire.”
He did as she asked with alacrity.
She threw her nightgown in the still-cold water to soak.
While she was there, she checked the cook pot.
Today of all days, the potatoes wouldn’t be scorched.
She leaned into the fireplace, and using a towel to protect her hand, she lifted the lid on the pot that hung side by side with the stewing nightgown and stirred.
Red took the lid out of her hand and pulled her away from the fire and dealt with the potatoes himself.
Then she elbowed him aside and checked the ham in the cast-iron skillet that sat nestled off to the side of the flames.
“Watch out for the fire.” Red tugged her back.
She was just straightening from her task to slug him in the shoulder when the baby made itself known again. She looked down at her stomach in disgust. How was she supposed to get her work done and forget about the coming difficult hours if the child kept pestering her?
“You’ll do fine, Cassie. We’ll get everything done that needs doin’.”
He was reading her mind again, and that made her angry, and she had to clamp down on the irate Cassie inside of her all the more.
She was aware of Red uncurling her hand, one finger at a time, from his shirt.
But she didn’t remember how her hand had gotten there to begin with.
Then the pain got strong enough that all she was conscious of was Red holding her and sharing his vast strength with her.
When it eased, she was sitting in his lap again, and that struck her as completely ridiculous when she had dinner cooking and a house to clean.
She leaped off his lap and went back to work.
The noon meal was fine except she didn’t eat it and Red ate his so fast, she didn’t remember his sitting down to the table.
And it was all burned because she was forever finding herself hugged up tight against Red.
One time, she stood up to find the potatoes boiled dry and scorched until they were ruined.
Red said he liked them that way and set the pot aside.
The next time the pain eased, the ham had dried out.
Cassie didn’t mean to cry over something so insignificant as a burned piece of meat, but Red told her not to cry and so she supposed she had.
Red didn’t seem to mind the blackened ham.
He said he loved ham and potatoes just that way.
And when the biscuits burned, Red was the one who pulled them out of the fire, and he blamed himself for not getting them sooner, so that was his own fault.
Why did he keep distracting her and holding her when he knew she had work to do?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll never distract you again. I promise.”
Which was stupid of him since she hadn’t told him what she was thinking.
Then he said, “I agree completely. It was stupid of me.”
Which confused her all the more, especially since a few minutes later, she found herself in his arms again, and after his promise!
He dished himself up a full meal, then she was being held close and the meal was gone. Had he enjoyed it?
He said, “It was delicious.”
At that point, she resigned herself to having a husband who could read her mind and released that worry from her overcrowded collection of worries.
Somewhere the acceptance of Red’s mind reading reached through the strange panic that had seized her from the moment of her first pain. She started to feel almost entranced by him. His voice seemed to be the only solid ground as her body acted on its own, hurting her for no reason.
Red crooned to her and stayed by her side while she fussed over her kitchen and the bedroom.
He took orders, stirring her gown in the boiling water and rinsing it and wringing it out.
Then he even heated the flat iron and pressed the nightgown until it was dry and left it draped over a chair near the fireplace to rid it of its last bit of dampness while he helped her hunt down cobwebs in the cave passageway.
At some point, she quit working altogether and just sat in a chair Red always had at hand and barked orders at him.
Then her stomach would begin to tense up, and she’d freeze up from her chores, and Red would be right there, a port in the storm that raged around her.
He’d hold her and whisper gentle petitions to the Lord for courage and wisdom.
The time came when the pains became too persistent, and she had to give up on cleaning the house, although she demanded he mop the kitchen floor.
“It’s a dirt floor, Cass. It’ll turn to mud.”
Then he was wiping tears from her eyes and promising he’d scrub the floor until he was down to bedrock. He held her then and kissed her hair and talked in the casual way he always did to God, bringing a holy presence into the room with them.
He asked her about preparing the bed for the time the baby would come.
She told him of Muriel’s instructions on how to boil water and lay out the baby’s clothes and sterilize a knife to cut the cord and lay thick sheets on the bed to protect the mattress.
Cassie didn’t know what the mattress was being protected from, but she was determined to follow Muriel’s orders to the letter.
The lantern was lit, which seemed odd to Cassie, because it wasn’t noon yet, and Cassie found herself with bare moments between the pains to try and bring order to her thoughts.
She thought about demanding time and privacy to put on her nightgown, but then her stomach was grabbed as though a mountain lion sank its teeth into her belly, and somehow she was in bed, wearing her nightgown.
The next clear thought she had was that she must have put her nightgown on very swiftly and gone to bed, because somehow she was in bed but she didn’t know how she’d found the strength. Unless she’d found it from Red. He was always there. Always within reach.