followed the river, staying off the road.I
Every few seconds, I glanced back, watching the trees with a terrified feeling growing roots inside of me. I needed to forget what I’d seen, to wipe it from my memory. But the image of that photograph was already seared in my mind. This wasn’t the obscure, faint recognition of Susanna in the picture with Nathaniel Rutherford. The moment I’d laid eyes on that woman, I knew without any doubt that it was me.
I kept walking, adrenaline flowing hot in my veins. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I wasn’t headed toward something anymore. I wasn’t searching or looking for answers. Now, I was just running.
The water grew louder below as the terrain turned rocky, and again, I scanned the fields that stretched along both sides of the river, desperate to see the door. If I’d gone through it once, I could do it again. I didn’t care anymore what happened to Susanna. I didn’t want to know what truth the Farrows had kept buried or what Gran had been hiding from me. None of that mattered. Now, I only wanted to go home. To the house on Bishop Street and the farm and Mason.
The sun was beginning to fall by the time I made it to the old railroad bridge that crossed the Adeline River, but it didn’t
look as old anymore. It wasn’t covered in vines, littered with fallen branches. The only thing that was the same was the blue-green river that ran beneath it.
I pushed into the brush and scaled down the bank, scooping up the cold water and splashing my face. My skin was hot and flushed, my eyes swollen, and the sound that broke in my throat made me feel like the ten-year-old girl who’d jumped from this bridge with Mason.
The moment he entered my mind, the cry loosed itself from where it was tangled in my chest. What I would give to be sitting across the table from him, a blueberry pie between us.
To rewind that moment and listen to him when he tried to convince me to let go of my obsession with my mother.
I wanted to believe that what I’d seen in the house on Hayward Gap Road couldn’t exist, but the mere memory of the image made me wince. That smile on my face. The way the man’s arms had been wrapped around me. I could almost feel them, the way I had that morning when I woke up with the feeling of someone in the bed.
I stared into the water, where my reflection rippled, breaking and changing in the light with the patchwork of blue sky and thick tree branches overhead. That image was how I felt on the inside—distorted and broken. A picture that couldn’t quite come into focus.
Sweat beaded along my brow and my muscles burned, reminding me that I hadn’t actually slept last night. In fact, I’d barely slept for days now. My legs ached as I climbed the slope to the bridge, my center of gravity missing, like I was floating from one place to the next.
I stepped onto the tracks, following them away from the road until I was standing over the water. In the distance, Jasper sat nestled by the riverbank as if it had never changed. On one side of the downtown bridge, I could just make out the
redbrick buildings on Main Street. On the other was the spindly white steeple of the church. It was mostly hidden by the trees, but even from here, I could see some of the headstones that dotted the cemetery. It wasn’t until that moment that I admitted to myself that I had no idea what to do. If I wasn’t in 2023, or even in my own lifetime, I couldn’t just walk into town and find someone I knew. There was only one person I could think of on this side of the door who might be able to help me—Susanna.
A low, soft rumble reverberated on the railing beneath my hands, and I blinked, my grip tightening around one of the iron rods. The metal was vibrating with a deep resonance and when I looked down to my boots, I realized the sound was growing.
The tracks I was standing on began to quake and I looked to the trees that sat on the other side of the river. When I heard the whistle blow, I sucked in a breath, pulling myself back across the bridge.
The train burst from the tree line, racing toward me, and I scrambled over the tracks, catching the end of the barricade.
Then I was sliding down the hill, back toward the water. I landed clumsily, catching a limb with my sleeve and scraping along the thicket of brambles as the train made it to the bridge.
Its shadow cast over me, sunlight flitting between the cars as it passed.
It vanished across the road seconds later, leaving a drifting trail of steam behind it. The sound of it bled away before the rumble of another engine surfaced at the top of the riverbank, and I listened, going still as it got closer. The pop of tires on gravel and the screech of brakes drew my eye to the opening in the brush I’d come through, and a few seconds later, I saw him. The man from the house.
His eyes frantically searched the riverbank before he spotted me and he let out a heavy breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Again, that image of him holding me in the picture painted itself across my thoughts. I wanted to erase it.
When I didn’t answer, he walked toward me.
“Stay away from me!” My feet splashed into the river and cold water filled my boots.
“You need to come with me. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I cast my gaze behind me, to the other side of the river, judging the distance.
“It’s not safe, June.”
Hearing him say my name sent another chill up my spine.
There was no formality in it. No edge of uncertainty. His mouth moved around it like he’d said it a thousand times.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He pressed a hand to his forehead, as if there was pain there.
“My name is Eamon,” he said, impatient. “Eamon Stone.”
“Why do you have a picture of me in your house?” I blurted out. I was cold all over now.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you.”
“No. Tell me now.”
His face changed as he measured his words. “I know you.
You just don’t know me yet.”
“Yet?” I stilled, watching him. The panic I’d felt standing in that bedroom was now terror. “How do you know me?”
His hands fell heavily to his sides, fingers curling into fists.
“Look, you need to come with me.”
I took another step deeper into the water before his eyes snapped up to the road. I could hear another car pulling onto the shoulder behind the trees.
Eamon shifted on his feet before he set the hat back on his head and a car door opened. There were footsteps moving behind the brush.
“Everything all right?” a man’s voice called out.
“Yeah.” Eamon smiled at whoever stood on the road, but it looked wrong on his face.
“Saw your truck.”
A man in an old style of police uniform appeared at the top of the bank, attention on Eamon. He had one thumb hooked in his belt as he wiped a handkerchief across his brow, and the badge on his chest was engraved with the word DEPUTY. He froze when he saw me.
“June? That you?”
I looked to Eamon, the cinching feeling around my lungs now an excruciating pain. What the hell was happening?
Eamon’s eyes bored into mine, like he was truly afraid of what I might say. “Just got back,” he stammered, turning so that he was half blocking the man’s view.
Back? From where?
The man stepped aside, trying to see me. His hand absently moved from his belt, and I had the fleeting thought that it could be drifting toward the gun at his hip.
“Well, it’s good to see you. Your mama doin’ all right?”
I looked from him to Eamon. My mother? Susanna?
My mouth opened, but before I could speak, Eamon was cutting in again.
“Much better,” he answered, eyes shooting to me. The muscles in his throat tightened, and he gave me an almost undetectable nod of his head.
“Yeah.” I swallowed, taking my cue from him. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Good.”
I nodded awkwardly.
The deputy’s gaze moved to my feet. “Everything okay?”
I looked down to my boots, now submerged beneath the water.
“Yeah,” I said, more loudly than was necessary. I was still out of breath.
The man was clearly confused, but before he could ask any more questions, I trudged back up the rocks, to where Eamon stood. Behind his truck, the glossy black-and-white paint of the police car reflected the sun. A single red light was fixed to the hood.
I didn’t even see Eamon moving before his arm came around me, hand hooking my waist. I stared at it, watching his fingers curl into my shirt. He pulled me closer to him, but I could feel the tension coiled tight around his body. Whatever was happening, Eamon was doing his best to smooth it over.
“Well, like I said, it’s good to have you back.” The deputy was still watching me intently. “Been a hell of a year.”
I nodded again, keeping my mouth shut. I wasn’t going to risk saying or asking anything that would make this more complicated. Not before I could figure out what exactly was going on here.
The officer tipped his hat before he walked back to the car, opening the door with one more glance in our direction.
“I, uh.” He hesitated. “I’ll need to let the sheriff know.” He said it as if he were apologizing.
“Of course.” Eamon nodded, his voice finding a more convincing ease. “Don’t worry about it, Sam.”
The man got into the car, and Eamon lifted a hand in the air.
As soon as the car was out of sight, he dropped his arm from where it was wrapped around me, eyes pinching closed for just a moment. When he finally turned to look at me, it was with a coldness that made me recoil.
“Get in the goddamn truck.”
He didn’t say a word as he walked up the bank, not even waiting to be sure I would follow. For a moment, I considered refusing, but beneath the anger, that look on Eamon’s face had been desperate. He didn’t just know me. I also had the sense that he was trying to protect me.
The engine started up as I opened the door and climbed in.
Eamon didn’t wait for it to close before he hit the gas.
“I told you to stay put,” he said, grip tight on the steering wheel. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I studied the inside of the truck. It was an old farm rig with wooden railings fit to the bed and mismatched tires that had probably blown in the fields. Straw and dirt covered the floor where the mats were missing, and the radio dial was fogged over, the numbers illegible.
We were headed back the way I’d come, away from town. I watched the steeple of the church disappear behind us.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Eamon stared at the road.
“You said that if I came with you, you’d tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know what’s going on.” He ground it out one punctuated word at a time, his accent deeper now.
“You know a hell of a lot more than I do. What did you mean, I don’t know you yet?”
He let his eyes land on me for just a moment before he pulled them away again. “We met five years ago. If you don’t recognize me, it’s because it hasn’t happened yet—for you.”
“How is that even possible?”
“How is any of this possible?” His voice rose.
And that’s when I saw it—the glint of gold on his left hand.
A wedding ring.
“Oh my god.” I leaned forward, putting my head in my hands and trying to breathe.
“I came home one day and you were gone. I haven’t seen you since,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
“When was that?”
“Almost a year ago.”
I closed my eyes, trying to breathe. A year ago was when my episodes had started. When everything changed. Could that timing be a coincidence?
“It wasn’t me,” I choked out. “It couldn’t have been me.”
“It was you. I think I know my own wife.”
I shook my head, wishing I could unhear those words. “I’m telling you that I have never been here before. I’ve never met you.”
He cranked the wheel, and the truck jostled left to right as it turned. I grabbed hold of the handle above my head to keep from hitting the window, and as soon as I saw what lay ahead, I sat up straighter, leaning closer to the glass.
A relieved breath left my lips.
The Adeline River Flower Farm sat back from the road, framed by the mountains in the distance. The house was a different shape, but it was still the same one I’d grown up in.
The windows were in the same place, the porch and steps just
like I remembered. But the front room that had now become our office wasn’t built yet. Instead, that part of the yard was covered in ferns and a chicken coop framed with gridded wire.
Behind it, the land was striped with rows of flowers in full or partial bloom.
Eamon pulled into the drive, barely getting the truck parked before he opened the door, then he was slamming it behind him.
He walked toward the house as the front door opened and a woman’s face appeared, her hand twisted into the edge of the apron tied around her waist. His voice was drowned out by the sound of the cicadas in the trees, but I could tell the two of them were arguing.
I hesitated before I reached for the handle and pushed the truck door open. My feet found the ground as I watched them on the porch. The woman’s eyes jumped from Eamon to me.
I knew who she was as soon as I saw her. I’d seen her countless times in photographs. Esther Farrow, my great-great- grandmother, stood there looking at me with an expression that said she knew exactly who I was, too.
Their voices quieted as I crossed the yard, but Esther’s expression didn’t change from the deep concern that wrinkled her brow. She was completely still for several seconds before she finally gave Eamon a nod.
“Thank you.” His voice was heavy.
Esther Farrow stared at me, eyes trailing from the top of my head down to my feet. When they lifted to meet mine again, they were guarded. Distant.
“Annie!” Eamon took hold of the front door, pulling it wider. A few seconds later, a quick patter of footsteps sounded inside the house. It was followed by the bob of a head behind the window.
A small girl that looked to be at least a few years old came outside, hiding behind Esther’s long skirt. Her wild, waving blond hair was pulled into two unraveled braids and the dress she wore came down to her knees, where tall woolen socks were pulled up over her calves. By the time my gaze made it to her face, she was staring at me. No, not at me. Into me.
She stood so still, her pink lips the same shade as the apple of her cheeks. I pinned my eyes to the porch steps, unable to look at her for even another second. I couldn’t bring myself to ask who she was. I was certain I didn’t want to know.
Eamon reached for her and she untangled herself from Esther’s skirt so that he could pick her up. The girl tucked herself against him and her eyes found me over his shoulder, but Eamon shifted her in his arms, blocking her view. He carried her to the truck without another word.
“Hello, June.” Esther still stood in the doorway, hands clasped at her waist. “We’ve got ourselves quite a problem, don’t we?”
She watched me come up the steps, her sharp eyes not missing anything. They were an icy blue that was brightened by her fair, silver-streaked hair, making her look almost ethereal. Like she was cast in moonlight despite the glow of the late afternoon sun.
“Is she here?” My voice wavered.
“Who?”
“My mother,” I said.
The word mother was unfamiliar on my tongue, and it sounded strange spoken in my voice. Foreign, even.
She took a step forward, meeting me halfway on the porch.
“When you showed up here five years ago, that was the first question you asked me.”
Five years ago. Those three words landed one at a time, making my heart race.
“Where is she?” I whispered.
“It’s 1951, June.” She looked me in the eye, a well of compassion brimming in her voice. “Susanna is dead.”
