Cade Thornwood became ridiculous after Ruby was born.
There was no gentler description for it.
The same man who had once faced a wounded black bear with nothing but a hunting knife now panicked every time his daughter sneezed.
“She sneezed twice.”
Eleanor continued folding laundry.
“Babies sneeze.”
“Twice?”
“Yes.”
“Together?”
“Yes, Cade.”
“Could be fever.”
“She does not have a fever.”
“You didn’t check.”
“I checked five minutes ago.”
“Check again.”
Eleanor looked toward him.
Cade stood beside the cradle with Ruby resting against one forearm.
The child was six weeks old.
She had discovered his beard and treated it as her personal property.
At that moment one tiny fist was tangled in it.
Cade did not seem to mind.
“Give me the baby.”
“Why?”
“So I can check her.”
“I can check.”
“You will interpret ordinary body warmth as imminent death.”
“That happened once.”
“Four times.”
Cade surrendered Ruby.
Eleanor kissed the baby’s forehead.
“Perfectly fine.”
Ruby yawned.
Cade relaxed.
Then the baby hiccupped.
His eyes widened.
Eleanor sighed.
Parenthood changed Cade in other ways too.
Before Ruby, he entered town only when necessary.
After Ruby, he found reasons.
She needed cloth.
She needed soap.
She needed a ribbon even though she possessed almost no hair to tie it around.
He carried her against his chest in a sling Eleanor had sewn.
At first people stared.
An eight-foot mountain man walking through Pine Hollow with a six-pound infant tucked against him was difficult not to notice.
Children followed him.
Women smiled.
Older men pretended not to.
Even Abigail Prentice softened.
“She has your eyes,” she told Cade.
Cade looked horrified.
“Poor girl.”
Abigail slapped his arm.
“Stop that.”
It was perhaps the first time anyone in Pine Hollow had casually struck Cade Thornwood without fearing for their life.
He grinned all afternoon.
Eleanor recovered slowly.
The birth had been difficult.
For several months Cade did nearly everything around the cabin.
He cooked badly.
Washed clothes adequately.
Changed diapers with the concentration of a surgeon.
At night when Ruby cried, he rose first.
“You have work tomorrow,” Eleanor would whisper.
“So do you.”
“I’m not teaching yet.”
“You’re feeding a person every two hours. Sounds like work.”
Sometimes Eleanor watched him from the bed.
Cade would stand near the window, daughter against his shoulder, humming an old melody Ruby had once sung to him.
Eleanor had never known his mother.
Yet in those moments she almost felt the woman was present.
One night Ruby would not settle.
Cade carried her outside.
Eleanor followed, wrapped in a shawl.
The mountains lay dark beneath a field of stars.
Cade rocked the baby.
“My mother used to bring me out here,” he said.
“When you couldn’t sleep?”
“When I got too big for the house.”
Eleanor smiled.
“You were always unusually tall?”
“By twelve I was bigger than grown men.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“I broke chairs.”
“That is tragic.”
“Two church pews.”
She laughed.
“Now that is impressive.”
His expression became thoughtful.
“People stopped seeing a boy pretty early.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“What did they see?”
“Something they should be careful around.”
Ruby stirred.
Cade glanced down.
“I don’t want that for her.”
“She may not be eight feet tall.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He hesitated.
“She has my blood.”
“So?”
“You know what people called me.”
“I know.”
“Somebody will say it to her one day.”
“Probably.”
His jaw tightened.
Eleanor stepped closer.
“And then she will come home to two parents who tell her who she actually is.”
Cade looked toward her.
“You make everything sound survivable.”
“Most things are, with the right people beside you.”
He kissed her forehead.
The summer of 1885 faded into autumn.
Ruby grew.
She smiled first at Cade.
Eleanor refused to be jealous.
Mostly.
She began teaching again three days a week, carrying Ruby with her.
The schoolchildren adored the baby.
Cade built a small cradle for the classroom.
Life became almost peaceful.
Then a letter arrived.
It came from Kentucky.
No return name.
Cade stared at the handwriting.
Eleanor noticed his face.
“What is it?”
He did not answer.
“Cade?”
He handed her the envelope.
Inside was a short letter.
Mr. Thornwood,
My name is Thomas Thornwood. I believe we share a father.
Eleanor read the line twice.
Cade stood beside the window.
“I don’t have a brother.”
“Perhaps you do.”
“No.”
She continued reading.
Thomas claimed their father, Benjamin Thornwood, had died earlier that year.
Before his death, he had spoken about a son born in West Virginia to Ruby Greywolf Thornwood.
Cade’s face went cold.
“He remembered.”
Eleanor folded the letter.
“Yes.”
“For twenty-two years.”
“Yes.”
“And never came.”
She did not soften the truth.
“No.”
Thomas wanted to visit.
Cade refused.
Eleanor did not argue.
Three weeks later, Thomas came anyway.
He was twenty-seven.
Average height.
Brown hair.
Similar eyes.
Cade saw him from the porch and knew before the man introduced himself.
Thomas stopped below the steps.
“You’re Cade.”
Cade said nothing.
Thomas looked up.
“I suppose asking whether you’re my brother would be unnecessary.”
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Talk.”
Thomas glanced toward the cabin.
Eleanor stood inside holding Ruby.
“Our father was not a good man,” Thomas said.
“I know.”
“He wasn’t much better to us.”
That surprised Cade.
Thomas explained.
Benjamin Thornwood eventually married a woman in Kentucky.
They had three children.
He drank.
Disappeared for months.
Returned angry.
Cade listened without sympathy.
“He left me before I could remember him.”
Thomas nodded.
“I used to envy you.”
Cade stared.
“You envied me?”
“At least you knew he was gone. We spent twenty years waiting for the next time.”
The statement unsettled him.
Thomas removed something from his coat.
A small wooden horse.
Cade recognized it instantly.
His mother had carved it.
“How?”
“Father kept it.”
Cade took it.
His massive fingers trembled.
“He had this?”
“In a box. With a picture of your mother.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he ever say my name?”
“Near the end.”
Cade’s jaw tightened.
“What did he say?”
Thomas hesitated.
“That leaving you was the worst thing he ever did.”
Cade laughed bitterly.
“How convenient.”
“I know.”
“Dead men find courage easily.”
Thomas lowered his eyes.
“I thought you deserved to know.”
“Did he ask forgiveness?”
“Yes.”
“From you?”
“For everything.”
“Did you give it?”
Thomas considered.
“I told him forgiveness wasn’t a door he got to order open because he was dying.”
For the first time, Cade looked at his brother rather than through him.
Thomas continued.
“But I told him I hoped God could do what I couldn’t yet.”
Silence settled.
Ruby began crying inside.
Cade turned immediately.
Thomas smiled faintly.
“That yours?”
“Yes.”
Cade entered the cabin.
A moment later he returned carrying Ruby.
Thomas’s eyes widened.
“She’s tiny.”
“They generally start that way.”
Thomas laughed.
Then his expression became serious.
“Father said he was frightened when you were born.”
Cade’s face hardened.
“He should’ve been frightened of himself.”
“I think he was.”
Cade looked at Ruby.
His daughter stared up at him without judgment.
Without fear.
Thomas said quietly, “You didn’t become him.”
Cade swallowed.
“No.”
It was the first time he had said it without Eleanor telling him first.
No.
He was not Benjamin Thornwood.
He had inherited blood.
Not choices.
Thomas stayed for supper.
Then for two days.
Cade did not instantly embrace him as family.
Real life was not that simple.
But when Thomas left, Cade told him he could return.
That was enough.
Winter came again.
On Ruby’s first Christmas, Pine Hollow held a gathering at the schoolhouse.
Eleanor decorated evergreen branches.
Children sang.
Cade carved twenty-nine toys.
One for every student.
And one extra.
For a child whose father had died in a mining accident that November.
Silas Wade approached Cade near the stove.
“Remember that joke I made last year?”
Cade looked at him.
“Yes.”
“About you and Eleanor having a child?”
“Yes.”
Silas rubbed his neck.
“Turns out I don’t know much.”
“That has been established.”
Silas laughed.
Then looked toward Ruby asleep in Eleanor’s arms.
“She’s a good-looking baby.”
“She is.”
“And Mrs. Thornwood seems happy.”
Cade looked at Eleanor.
She caught his eye from across the room.
Smiled.
“Yes.”
“You happy?”
Cade considered the question.
A year earlier he might not have known how to answer.
Now he did.
“More than I knew a man could be.”
Silas nodded.
Then he walked away.
Later that evening, the children asked Cade for a story.
He sat on the floor because no chair could comfortably hold him.
Ruby rested in his lap.
Eleanor leaned against the teacher’s desk.
“What story?” Cade asked.
“The mountain ghost!” Samuel shouted.
Laughter filled the room.
Cade looked at Eleanor.
She smiled.
So he told them.
He told them about a lonely giant who lived above a town and believed everybody was afraid of him.
He told them about a teacher lost in a snowstorm.
He told them how the giant carried her through the woods.
He changed names.
Not one child was fooled.
“And then?” Lucy asked.
“Then the teacher discovered the giant wasn’t a ghost at all.”
“What was he?”
Cade looked toward Eleanor.
“A man who’d been hiding too long.”
Ruby woke and grabbed his finger.
The room became quiet.
“And what happened to him?” Samuel asked.
Cade’s voice softened.
“He came home.”