Chapter Twenty -Nine: Life in the Cradle
June changed everything—and nothing at all.
The rhythm of the house shifted, dictated now by tiny cries, midnight feedings, and lullabies hummed half-asleep. Ellie, exhausted and glowing, spent hours watching her daughter sleep. Jack, usually composed and quiet, talked to June like she was an old friend, narrating his day, asking her advice on carburetors and pie crusts.
One morning, Jack walked into the kitchen with June in one arm and a wrench in the other. "She prefers blues over country. Just so we're clear."
Ellie laughed. "I knew she had taste."
The town of Dalton wrapped around them like a quilt. Clara brought fresh loaves of bread every Friday. Miss Ruth knitted June a hat for each week. And the mayor officially declared the Lawson house "Dalton's coziest corner."
Still, Ellie had her quiet doubts. Could she be both mother and writer? Could she keep hold of her own voice while now living for another?
Jack noticed one evening, after dinner, when she sat by the window staring at her notebook, untouched.
"Words still in there?" he asked.
She nodded. "Just harder to reach."
Jack reached over, took the notebook, and flipped to the first page. He wrote one sentence and handed it back.
It read: You are still you. And she will grow up knowing her mother was a woman who never stopped becoming.
Ellie's throat tightened.
The next day, she wrote her first story since June's birth.
Time went on. June began to laugh—at spoons, shadows, Jack's off-key singing. Ellie found new rhythms, new truths, new stories waiting in the folds of motherhood.
One night, Jack stood at the crib, rocking June back to sleep. Ellie watched him from the doorway, heart full.
"We did it," she whispered.
Jack looked up, eyes soft. "No. We're still doing it."
And they were. Not perfectly, not easily—but with love so steady it could carry anything.
As the night folded around them, the Lawson house breathed with quiet joy. And in that cradle, under that roof, the shape of tomorrow slept soundly.