Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig theshortroad.com. NS
Answer
theshortroad.com. 4 NS ns-717.awsdns-25.net.
theshortroad.com. 4 NS ns-1658.awsdns-15.co.uk.
theshortroad.com. 4 NS ns-706.awsdns-24.net.
theshortroad.com. 4 NS ns-1037.awsdns-01.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0