Page 56 of She Autumn Be Mine

“Bring Nanette back something from the gift shop,” I teased.

“For her, I am the gift shop.” Nanette never did say much about what happened between the two of them, but if the name Cash was brought up, she smiled ear to ear.

Our future homesite took my breath every time, elevated a little, with a pleasant view of the goats in the main meadow.

Jake had staked the outline of the whole house with string—kitchen here, big south windows there, the porch swing already ordered. All the felled timber sat stacked, wood chips in bright piles, too. The two men finished up, sweaty and pleased with themselves at the work.

One tree still stood at the edge of the clearing: the big dead cottonwood. Hung up in its crown, a branch the size of a fence post, cracked and caught in the fork. It swayed when the wind caught it enough.

“We call that a widow-maker,” Cash chuckled, following my eyes as he shrugged into his leather jacket. “That’s the technical term, and it earns it—a branch like that’ll wait a month or drop in an hour, hard to tell. I gave Jake instructions how to take it down. He and his father can tackle it next week. Until then, nobody works under that tree.” He kissed my cheek, ruffled Stetson’s hair, and swung onto the chopper. “Save me pie, McCalls. I’ll swing by again soon.”

The bike rumbled off down the lane, Jake waved at him, and it was just the three of us and a picnic in the last warm hour of November.

We ate in the string outline of our house, in the taped shape of our kitchen. Jake walked me room to room through thin air—“pantry here, mudroom there, that’s where the tree’ll go at Christmas”—and in the string rectangle that would someday be our bedroom, my husband kissed me like the walls were already up. Stetson toddled the length of the future hallway with his wooden goat in one fist, narrating in a language only Bah spoke fluently, and I took pictures of everything. Jake mid-laugh with Stetson framed in string. The kind of pictures you take for a moment in time to last forever.

I cleaned up the picnic and thought Jake had an eye on Stetson. For a few minutes, I scrolled today’s photos to find the best ones and sent them off to Nanette, to Ivy Wylde, to Dot.

Only the babble changed. A little too far away. Not Stetson’s hurt sound. Not the happy shriek. A small uncertain “Da?” aimed the wrong direction.

My head snapped up. A man stood at the edge of our clearing with my son in his arms.

“Jake!” I screeched. I hadn’t heard a car approach, but somehow Brantley Eaton, meaner around the eyes, held my squirming son. Not his son. Stetson didn’t get to be his anymore.

Every drop of blood I owned went to ice. Jake had popped up from where he was stacking logs and turned to stone, pale like me realizing the severity of it all.

My thumb slid the camera to video and pressed the red dot, praying Brantley didn’t notice.

“What are you doing here?” Jake shot him with a frosty tone.

“Just a little visit with my son,” he smirked. “What’s it look like?”

“You never wanted Stetson.” I stepped forward, drawing his eyes to me and away from my husband. “You didn’t come to the hospital. You didn’t sign the custody petition. You don’t want him now, Brantley.”

“Doesn’t matter.” His jaw did the petulant thing I’d once mistaken for character. “She does. So I’m taking him back. Maybe then she’ll leave me alone.”

“Marlene? You don’t have to do this for her.” One more step. Stetson whimpered, reaching past Brantley’s shoulder for me, and I schooled my voice to stop shaking and be strong for his sake. “She’s a terrible person, and she’s making you do a horrible thing. Look at yourself. Snatching a baby⁠—”

“Shut up.” It cracked out of him, loud enough that Stetson began to wail, and Brantley took a step back from the sound of his own voice.

Back. Toward the treeline. Toward the dead cottonwood swaying in the breeze more than it had when Cash advised us on it.

“Brantley. Careful.” Jake held out a hand, and saw the branch too.

“Or what? You think I’m afraid of you? Should have taken the money, Autumn. Should have asked for more. Hell, if I’d known I’d have gone in with you. We could have split mom’s money and she’d never been wiser.”

I heard it—a crack like the world split itself.

The widow-maker let go.

What happened next took two seconds, a scene that would play on repeat in slow motion for the rest of my life. Jake sprinted toward them. One arm ripped Stetson out of Brantley’s grip. His shoulder hit him square, a shove that sent him staggering backward into the timber’s path, while Jake spun, curling around my baby, diving⁠—

Several lower limbs came crashing down on them.

The sound it made hitting them—no words could describe.

Then the clearing was just dust and one goat-shaped toy lying in the wood chips near my feet.

“JAKE! STETSON!” A blood curdling scream pulled out of me. Pulled small limbs and whatever was in my path, calling to them.