We provide an explicit formula for the toric h-contribution of each cubical
shelling component, and a new combinatorial model to prove Clara Chan's result
on the non-negativity of these contributions. Our model allows for a variant of
the Gessel-Shapiro result on the g-polynomial of the cubical lattice, this
variant may be shown by simple inclusion-exclusion. We establish an isomorphism
between our model and Chan's model and provide a reinterpretation in terms of
noncrossing partitions. By discovering another variant of the Gessel-Shapiro
result in the work of Denise and Simion, we find evidence that the toric
h-polynomials of cubes are related to the Morgan-Voyce polynomials via
Viennot's combinatorial theory of orthogonal polynomials.Comment: Minor correction
