The Carpenter's Daughter Read Free

other. His knuckles paled. “Women.” The word sizzled from his lips.
    My eyelids slid closed, and something high pitched rang in my ears.
    “Not you.” Dad reached across the space and gripped my hand. “I didn’t mean you.” He searched my face, a fierceness in his eyes.
    Dad adored me. I’d known that since the day he taught me how to pound a nail straight. But he didn’t raise me to be like them . Like her . No sir, he raised me with a determination that I would know what things were important, which things had true value. Vanity was never part of his agenda.
    Silence dangled awkwardly between us, and I wished I’d left it all unsaid.
    Dad sighed and pushed to his feet. “Don’t let some cat get to you.”
    Right. I knew that.
    He paused, dropping a hand to my head. “You’re better than them.”
    Was I?
    Dad shoved his hand into his pocket and moved to the door. “Sleep it off, kid. They don’t know you, so it doesn’t matter.”
    The latch clicked behind him, and emptiness settled in my room. I left the bed to flick the light switch, but caught my reflection in the mirror near the door.
    Butch.
    They don’t know you…
    That was when I realized it. I didn’t know me either.
    I couldn’t sleep it off. I couldn’t sleep at all.
     
    Dale
    I paced the worn-out carpet in my room, my fist clenching the phone with a grip that might have killed.
    “Who said that?” Darcy’s indignation spewed hot over the line.
    My sister and I shared the same temper, which meant it heated up in a hurry. Mine was already above boiling point.
    “I don’t know, just some woman.”
    “Why would anyone say something like that to a stranger?”
    “I don’t know.” If I did, I wouldn’t be standing in the hotel talking on the phone. I’d be in someone’s face. “It doesn’t matter, Dars. I need your help. I don’t know what to do.”
    “Seems a few years late.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “No. Not your asking for help. Sorry.” Darcy sighed. “I meant this whole ordeal. She made it all the way through school without having to deal with this garbage. Seems like a rotten deal that it comes up now.”
    “She was quiet in high school.”
    “Sarah’s quiet now. What’s that got to do with it?”
    “I think people were afraid of her. The strong, silent type.”
    “Dale.” Her voice carried an eye roll. “You can’t assign a male stereotype to your teenage daughter. Or your grown-up one, for that matter.”
    Lectures from my big sister. Some things never changed.
    “What do I do?”
    “I’m not sure.” Darcy sighed again. “Do you want me to call her?”
    “Would you? Maybe you could do a girls’ weekend or something? Take her shopping or whatever it is women do on those things.”
    Her eye-roll voice carried over again. “Dale, new clothes and a tube of lipstick aren’t going to fix this.”
    Who said anything about lipstick? “Like she’d wear that junk anyway. That’s not what I was saying. Look, just take her out.”
    A long pause made me doubt Darcy’s concern. Darcy was the closest thing Sarah had to a mother. She ought to be concerned. At least a little. I couldn’t handle this. All this junk was nowhere in my playbook.
    Finally, in a soft, tender voice, Darcy spoke. “Did she take it hard?”
    The moment tears seeped from Sarah’s eyes replayed. She was a steady girl, not a bundle of emotional explosions. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “She cried.”
    Darcy’s voice cracked. “I’ll call.”
    I grunted a thanks, and that was that. Should take care of it. Except, the whole thing kept looping through my mind.
    I’m not pretty.
    I lowered onto the lumpy double bed in my room, still dumbfounded that my daughter said those words. Sarah wasn’t that kind of woman. She wasn’t shallow. Wasn’t frail. And wasn’t ugly.
    She looked like the best combination possible of Cassie and me, and Cassie was a looker.
    Cassandra von Holtzhausen, or locally known as Cassie Holtz, had made