Chapter Twenty-One
“So, wait—y’all were just straight up brawlin’ in the kitchen?
Right in front of Junie?” Luanne shook her head like she couldn’t decide if she was horrified or impressed.
“Not that I blame you—after what she said…” She shot Cassie a look from behind the wheel of her Jeep, one brow raised. “I’d’ve slapped her twice.”
Cassie scoffed. “Yeah, well, it was hardly a brawl. You know Addy—first thing she does is go for the hair. I was mostly just tryin’ not to lose a chunk.” She shifted in her seat. “And Junie was upstairs at that point. Thank you very much.”
She’d called Luanne late that afternoon after spending most of the day pacing Margie’s house, showering again like she could scrub the morning off her skin, then sitting at the kitchen table with Connor’s wallet dumped out in front of her—staring at the pile of crumpled, coffee-stained pawn shop receipts until she couldn’t sit still another second.
It was a long shot. The shops were probably cleaned out by now. But it was something to do. Something to keep her mind off everything else.
“You know what though,” Cassie went on after a second, quieter now, “I just don’t understand how I was ever friends with her. Fuck. Was she always this…awful?”
“Ain’t none of us had it easy here; we all got our own brand of damage.” Luanne flicked her blinker on. “But Addy’s always taken hers out sideways—smilin’ to your face while stabbin’ you in the damn back.”
“Only good thing I’ll say about her,” she added, easing through the turn, “is she loves that kid. Least she does when Nash ain’t around.”
That’s…something, Cassie thought, wincing each time the memory of Junie crying flashed through her head. And again when she thought about what Addison had revealed.
It wasn’t as if she’d simply gotten pregnant, gone to the clinic, and never thought about it again. There’d been nights—more than she cared to admit—where her mind drifted there without permission. Quiet what-ifs she never let herself linger on for long.
“So, Cas…” Luanne glanced at her with a crooked smile. “I gotta know. This thing with Nash—is it serious or…are you just gettin’ some old shit outta your system?”
Cassie’s head fell back against the headrest with a groan. “Can’t a girl just fuck an ex without it havin’ to mean something?”
“An ex? Girl, please. The two of you ain’t never been just any old thing. Everybody was jealous back in the day—well, probably not Becca, but Becca and Brady don’t count.”
“Jealous of what exactly? Our completely toxic dynamic?”
Luanne snorted. “No, of bein’ wanted like that.
“Hell, the way he looked at you. The way he talked about you,” she went on. “The whole town knew you were his from the get-go—you ever notice how nobody else even tried? And it ain’t ’cause you’re ugly. They all knew better.”
“His?” Cassie glanced over, unimpressed.
“Oh, don’t start. You know what I mean.”
“Okay, but we fought constantly.”
“Yeah,” Luanne said. “And then ten minutes later, he’d have his arms around you and you’d be lookin’ up at him like you didn’t even know anybody else was in the room.”
Cassie opened her mouth to argue, only to shut it again.
Maybe that was how it looked from the outside.
And maybe that’s how it had been…sometimes.
They fell quiet after that, the radio filling the space. Luanne sang softly along with the bluegrass tune drifting through the speakers while Cassie slouched lower in her seat, trying not to replay the morning frame by frame.
There hadn’t been time to know Nash’s true reaction to the revelation of her pregnancy; not that it would change anything now.
If anything, time had only solidified that she’d made the right choice.
At eighteen, she’d been no more ready to be a mother than Connor had been ready to parent her at the same age.
He’d known that and wanted more for her.
"This is your life, kid. You’re only gettin’ one. You wanna spend it here, raisin’ babies and workin’ a register, or out in the world makin’ a name for yourself?"
She’d done the right thing.
The only real regret she had…was keeping it from Nash.
The further from Clifton they drove, the less there was to see besides trees and stretches of empty road. Eventually the radio began to lose signal, the music warbling before switching over to a preacher mid-rant—
“The day of reckonin’ is comin’, and it’s comin’ swift. The Lord ain’t sittin’ idle while folks out shillin’ poison, sellin’ sin and death by the ounce! No, sir! The devil’s got his hands in our town and some of y’all are shakin’ ’em like it’s nothin’—”
“Jesus,” Luanne muttered, twisting the dial. “Sounds like he could use a stiff drink.”
“Him and me both,” Cassie replied dryly.
Luanne continued to flip stations, eventually finding half a song, then more static, before giving up and letting the silence ride with them the last few miles into Mills.
Mills wasn’t much more than a name on a map now—a former rail stop left behind long ago.
Most of the buildings they passed were dark and boarded up, others half swallowed by weeds.
An ice chest sat outside the rotted shell of an old train depot, doors open; a bent newspaper stand lay on its side at the edge of the road, remnants of a curb crumbled into dust around it.
Then Cassie spotted it—a squat little building, more shed than shop, with a faded sign above the door that read Fletcher's Pawn jewelry glinted dully in velvet trays.
Behind the counter, rifles stood in a locked rack, upright and orderly, and above it all, taxidermy deer heads loomed, their blank glass eyes all fixed with the same dead stare.
“Evenin’, ladies,” a deep voice called out.
An older man stood behind a nearby counter, polishing a shotgun stock with a worn rag. A Vietnam POW cap sat low over his brow, and his bare forearms were a tapestry of faded tattoos.
“Evenin’,” Luanne replied as they passed, Cassie’s gaze sliding absently over everything…
until it stopped on a strikingly familiar cuckoo clock.
The carved oak casing looked just as she remembered, worn smooth and darkened to the color of old tobacco.
Delicate vines curled along the frame; the pine cone weights dangled from their chains, and a little bluebird sat crooked on its perch.
The old, yellowed hands were frozen at 8:06.
“I see you eyein’ that cuckoo,” the man said, moving down the counter. “Real honest-to-God antique. Came outta Pennsylvania, hand carved by Mennonites far as I know—”
“That’s not where it’s from,” Cassie said, cutting him a look.
He blinked, brows lifting. “No?”
“No,” she echoed, folding her arms. “It’s from out Greenbrier way. My great-granddaddy carved it, gave it to my great-mamaw as a wedding gift.”
The man scratched the back of his neck. “Huh. Well…I’ll be. I coulda sworn—”
“I told you one day someone was gonna walk in here and call you on your horseshit, Lyle,” another voice cut in—a woman’s voice, with a smoker’s rasp and a smile.
She stepped through a back curtain, at least a decade younger than the man. Her gray-blonde hair was twisted neatly into a clip, her eyes quick. She gave Cassie and Luanne a brief once-over and flashed a smile. “So you’re sayin’ that clock’s yours?”
“My family’s,” Cassie replied, reaching into her bag and pulling out Connor’s receipts, separating the ones stamped with Fletcher’s name before handing them over. “Whatever these are for—whatever you still have, I’ll take it all.”
The woman flipped through the receipts slowly, her lips pressing together, her face pinching.
“He started out small,” she murmured, eyes lifting. “Tools and electronics and such. He was in real rough shape when he brought that clock in.”
Cassie swallowed back her flinch. “He’s gone,” she replied quickly. “Just, uh, tell me what’s still here. I’ll pay whatever you’re askin’.”
The woman hesitated, then shook her head. “You don’t have to pay, honey. If it was yours to begin with, it never should’ve ended up here.” She turned toward the back room. “I’ll go pull what we got—Lyle, you wrap up that clock real careful-like.”
Nodding, Lyle reached for a stepladder. Carefully lifting the clock from its mount, he carried it back to the counter.
“You see this here,” he said, pointing at the frozen clock face. “Song of Solomon, 8:6. Love is as strong as death."
Cassie and Luanne shared a look.
“Well,” Luanne said after a beat. “Ain’t that a cheerful little blessin’.”
Lyle chuckled as he wrapped the clock carefully in brown paper. “Did three tours in Nam. Scripture’s about as cheerful as I get.”
It was fully dark by the time they returned to Clifton—the hills swallowing everything but moonlight.