y the time the sky was glowing gold over the hills, I’dB cleared an entire section of the little garden. The once- buried plants were now haloed in dark, rich soil, their leaves open to the sun, and when I looked at them, I felt like I could breathe just a little deeper.
I stretched my hands open in front of me, knuckles stinging.
The cuticles of my fingernails were torn and bleeding, my palms scraped and red. But that aroma—the sweetness of rich soil and the bright, sharp scent of green—was a known thing to me.
The smell of smoke had filled the air for most of the afternoon, and I scanned the sky until I spotted the drifting trail over the field. It was moving. The pillar of gray reached the edge of the plot, and Eamon appeared, pushing through the leaves on the other side of the house with a rod cast over his shoulders. A handkerchief was pulled up over his nose, a ring of sweat staining the neck and chest of his shirt.
He’d been in the fields all afternoon, coming from and going to the barn with the same rig. It was a wide wooden dowel that reached out to either side of him, and from both ends, a chain was fixed that suspended two metal containers that looked like lanterns. Smoke spilled from the holes in the metal, creating a cloud around him.
It wasn’t the same smell that came from an active fire, I thought. It was more like something smoldering buried beneath a pile of ashes. He set the whole thing down and pulled the handkerchief from his face, letting it hang around his neck. When he looked up, he caught me watching him. The wind curled around his frame, his black-stained hands hanging at his sides, but he dropped his gaze as soon as it met mine.
Smoking crops was an old method, but I’d never seen it done before. It had different applications, and in my time, it was really only employed by primitive practice farmers. I’d heard of it being used to control pests, but it also helped control moisture on the plant. In this case, I guessed Eamon was using it for the latter.
Behind him, the strands of wire he’d been cutting that morning were hung in a crisscrossing pattern from the rafters like the face of a checkerboard suspended in the air. I didn’t know much about tobacco crops, but I could tell by looking at the plants that they were almost ready to harvest, and my guess was that Eamon was rigging the drying lines. The barn hardly looked big enough for it.
He disappeared around the corner of the porch just as the sound of an engine came to life. A few seconds later, Esther’s truck was pulling onto the road, Margaret behind the wheel.
As soon as it was gone, I exhaled, looking back to the house. It loomed over me, an infinite number of forgotten moments living beneath its roof. But forgotten wasn’t the right word, was it? How could I forget something if I hadn’t lived it yet?
I closed the rickety gate to the garden, and the mare snorted when she saw me, pacing the paddock fence with her tail flicking behind her. Her head lifted, ears perking in my direction, and she stopped. She was looking me in the eye again, neck craning toward me as if she was waiting.
I moved toward her. That black eye shone in the setting sunlight, her nostrils flaring. Annie might not remember me, but this creature did.
Callie.
The word popped into my head like a bubble reaching the surface of water.
Callie. Was that the horse’s name? I was suddenly sure that it was. But how did I know it?
That tingle on my skin returned, but I could already feel the memory dimming, drawing away like a pinprick of light. A sense of déjà vu. I frantically tried to keep hold of it, my eyes focusing on the glint in the mare’s eye.
It came on in a rush, the barn and the paddock vanishing, replaced by the electric colors of spring.
I know where I am.
I’m standing at the back corner of the flower farm, where a small spring-fed pond is shaded by a cluster of wild dogwood trees. Before it, a chestnut mare with a mane that looks like tarnished bronze watches me.
I hold out a hand, taking a step toward her, and at first, I expect her to run. But then she’s dipping her head, coming toward me, and my fingers slide up her nose.
This isn’t a tear in the fabric. It’s more terrifying than that. This is a hidden seam, and the longer I am still and let it unwind, the clearer it becomes.
I’m remembering.
“Callie!”
A man’s voice echoes out around me before he appears in the trees ahead.
It’s Eamon. A younger, narrower version of him. His white shirt is rolled up to his elbows, his hair cut shorter and his face shaven. He stops short when his eyes land on me and I go rigid, realizing that he can see me. Actually see me.
I look down to my dress. My boots. I’m really standing here.
“I see you found my horse.” His accent makes the words sound like a song.
A smile lifts on one side of his face, and there is something both surprised and embarrassed about it. It makes my heart skip. I can feel myself smiling, too, a heat rushing to my cheeks.
“I think she found me,” I say.
The words leave my mouth without my permission. They haven’t so much as moved through my mind before they find my lips, and I suddenly know that this moment is happening without me, like skipping to a scene in a movie.
Eamon steps forward, a leather lead clutched in one hand. When I say nothing, he twists it nervously between his palms. “Sorry about this. I didn’t realize the fence was down.”
“That’s all right.” I hook my fingers into the mare’s bridle, walking her toward him.
When he has hold of her, he clips the lead to the buckle beneath her jaw and then wraps it around his fist once. The veins on the back of his hand are thick beneath his skin.
“Thanks.”
“Her name’s Callie?” I ask. Again, the words come on their own.
“Yeah. Callie.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Something I can’t decipher passes over his face and he smiles again, eyes catching the light. They are a deep, tawny brown.
When he says nothing, I nod, letting my hand glide down the horse’s neck. He moves to lead her away, but stops when he crosses the fallen fence post, turning back to me. “I’ll get that fixed.” He gestures to it.
I don’t know what to say, I just know that I’m hoping that he doesn’t really go. So, when he speaks again, I instantly smile.
“I’m Eamon, by the way.”
“June.”
What is that flutter in my chest? That buzzing beneath my skin? I want to chase after it, to blow on its embers until it’s a fire.
“June,” he repeats, in that way that I know in my bones now.
He looks at me another moment before he finally turns back into the trees and disappears. I watch him go, absently twirling something between the tips of my fingers. I look down, as if just remembering it’s there—a perfect bluebell.
All at once, I came back to myself. The barn, the fields, the paddock, and the horse. The memory was gone, and I could feel it drawing away from me inch by inch.
Callie pressed her nose into the flat of my palm. My skin was still warm with the afternoon sun, but I was burning now, that image of Eamon rooting itself deep within me. We’d met that day. That had been the moment when everything changed, but when I tried to push past it in my mind, in search of another memory, there was nothing.
I washed up in the water bucket out back, scrubbing as much dirt from my hands as I could manage in the near dark. I almost couldn’t bring myself to open the door as I stood on the steps, fireflies dancing in the dark.
The kitchen was warm when I finally stepped inside, a humid breeze drifting in through the open windows. The whole house smelled of something herbal, and I eyed the lidded pot on the stove. Things had been tidied, the rest of the dishes from the morning washed. There were wet clothes hanging by the fire and shoes lined up by the front door. It looked as if it wasn’t Margaret’s first time looking after Eamon and Annie, and the thought made me cringe.
I lifted the lid of the pot and the steam curled into the air. It was some kind of stew with bits of meat, carrots, and potatoes in a broth. But it rattled closed when Eamon came from the bedroom, startling me. There was a stack of clothes folded in his arms.
He was as still as the frozen river in winter, his eyes roaming over me like he was seeing someone else. This man I’d never seen before knew me. Not just who I was, but also the intimate details of my life. He’d been with me. Made a child with me.
His gaze moved over my shape slowly, his face set like stone. That look in his eyes wasn’t anger anymore. It was pain.
Like seeing me standing there in his wife’s dress, with his wife’s face, was almost more than he could take.
“I’m sorry, I just thought…” I pressed my damp hands to the blue fabric, suddenly flustered. “I don’t have any clothes or anything.”
“It’s fine.” He cleared his throat, casting his gaze to the floor. “I’ve taken some of my things out of there for the time being.”
I glanced to the bedroom, and that memory of him by the pond leapt back to the front of my mind. We’d shared that room. Slept in there together.
He dropped the folded clothes to the couch before he came back into the kitchen and started setting the table without a word. I followed his lead, taking a few of the glasses from the open shelf and setting them down beside the three bowls he’d put out.
His hair was wet, like he’d also washed up in the water bucket on the back steps when he came in. His shirt and trousers were filthy, and the soot from the smoke was still clinging beneath his fingernails even after he had finished drying them. I didn’t look much better, but his face had a drawn look, like he’d barely slept in days. If he was smoking the fields by himself, he was probably doing it around the clock, and I’d heard him get up last night when Annie started to cry.
When the silence grew so awkward that I couldn’t stand it, I desperately searched for something to say.
“Does Margaret always cook for you?”
“Sometimes” was his only answer.
Men were always left on the fringes of every story I’d heard about the Farrows. But here, even a year after I’d gone, Esther and Margaret were still treating him like family. Taking care of him, even. I didn’t know how long that would go on or how long Eamon would even live in Jasper. The very house we sat in had been crumbling when I saw it. At some point, they would leave this place.
He took the heavy pot from the stove and placed it at the center of the table. As soon as his chair scraped over the floor, Annie came running. Her little smile widened when she saw me, and she climbed into the seat beside Eamon. I took the one on the other side, not wanting to get too close to her.
He stared at my hands as I unfolded my napkin, eyes inspecting the cuts on my fingers. “You didn’t need to do that with the garden.” He motioned for me to help myself to the stew.
I filled my bowl, feeling uneasy in the scene that was playing out. The three of us, sitting around the table, like a family. I wasn’t sure how to respond to what he’d said, either.
Was he saying I didn’t have to, or that he preferred I didn’t?
Was he angry that I’d done it?
“You’re smoking the fields,” I said, changing the subject.
When I reached for Annie’s bowl next, Eamon stopped me.
“Don’t.” The word was low but heavy, and his eyes didn’t lift to meet mine. It was a warning. Another boundary. He’d let me stay in this house for all our sakes, and he’d let me eat at their table, but he didn’t want me acting like his daughter’s mother.
I sat back down as Annie’s gaze drifted back and forth between me and her father.
“Here, love.” Eamon spoke under his breath, reaching toward her, and she picked up her empty bowl, setting it into his open hand.
“Is it to stave off the blight?” I tried again as he served her himself.
The smallest hint of a reaction reached his face, and again, I couldn’t read it. Maybe he didn’t want me knowing anything about the crop, or maybe he was surprised that I’d spotted the blight.
“I saw the color change on the east side of the field. Is it spreading?”
“It’s something my father used to do.” Eamon answered the first question, but not the second.
“Does it work?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
The fields that were visible through the open back door looked to be at least ten or twelve acres, and that wasn’t counting anything he might have planted on the other side of the hill. Sowing, tending, and maintaining that much crop for an entire season was at least a three- or four-man job. I had no idea how he was doing it alone.
“I could help you tomorrow, if…” I said, thinking better of finishing that sentence. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t be here in the morning.
“No, thank you.”
I watched him carefully. His attempt at manners might have been for Annie’s sake, but he was obviously irritated. I wasn’t sure why I was even offering. Maybe out of guilt.
“It’s just that—” I paused. “It looks like you could use a hand.”
“I’ve got it.” The shift in his tone made it clear that he was finished discussing it.
He gave Annie a nod, as if to coax her into eating, and she picked up her spoon silently. Her legs kicked under the table, an excited gleam in her eye. It almost seemed as if she was enjoying this.
She watched me as she stirred the stew, the expression on her face making me wonder exactly what was going through her head. I had a feeling it was more than I could possibly pretend to know.
We ate in silence, and when I tried to help clean up, Eamon shrugged me off. He was stiff and uncomfortable around me.
That was clear. Anytime I stepped too close to him, he moved farther away, and his eyes never met mine. Not since the day
I’d shown up and he’d looked down into my face, so close I could feel the warmth of him.
Annie disappeared into her little nook off the sitting room, and I watched Eamon at the sink. Again, that feeling of familiarity found me. Like this floor under my feet was one I’d stood on countless times. It flickered back and forth like a flame, going as fast as it came.
I almost didn’t ask it. “What’s the horse’s name?”
Eamon stopped, setting the dripping bowl in his hands into the sink before he turned to face me. “The horse?”
“The mare out in the paddock.” I gestured to the window.
“What’s her name?”
“Callie.”
A horrible, strangled feeling sank from my throat down into my chest.
“Why?” he asked.
“No reason.”
His gaze turned inspecting, running over my face like he could hear every single thought sprinting through my mind. I reached behind me, hand searching for the doorknob to the bedroom.
“Good night.” I closed myself inside, pressing my hot forehead to the back of the door.
My body, bones and all, felt so heavy that I thought I could fall through the floor. And I wouldn’t stop there. The weight was so overwhelming that it could pull me straight into the center of the earth.
I stood there for a long time, staring into the growing darkness. That name—Callie—now felt like a rooted thing inside my head. And I could feel it growing, expanding into something else. Esther had described the madness as a fraying
rope. Threads of time. But that didn’t explain what had happened with the memory of Mason last night or what happened tonight at the paddock.
I could feel the memories brimming, some of them so close to the surface that if I reached out to touch them, they’d take shape. But I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to remember, as Birdie had put it, and that’s exactly what this was— remembering. A slow and steady carving, like a river eroding the earth.
I looked around, frantically searching for something, anything, that would help me understand what I’d been doing here. Why I’d left.
I took a match from the jar on the bedside table and lit the candle, my eyes adjusting to the dim glow. The room was full of shadows. Ghosts with stories I didn’t yet know. But I’d had my secrets, just like everyone else did. For an entire year, I’d kept the detailed records of my episodes hidden. Years before that, I’d kept my research on Susanna from Gran.
I lowered down onto my knees, shoving both hands beneath the old mattress and working my way around to the other side.
If Esther, Margaret, and Eamon didn’t know why I’d left a year ago, there had to be some clue they’d missed. Some piece of evidence they’d overlooked.
I tore back the quilts, lifting the pillows to feel down the wood-paneled wall. When my fingers hit something, I froze.
Carefully, I shifted the object back and forth until it was sliding up. It was rough, like a roll of coarse fabric or a flattened spool of thick twine. When I finally had it free, I sat down on the bed, pulling it into my lap. It was a wide fold of burlap.
I lifted one corner, revealing a stack of gray paper.
Newspaper. Two big, black block letters stared up at me.
MI
I pulled them free, unfolding them in my lap.
MINISTER SLAIN
It was a clipping of the same article I’d found when I was looking in the state archives online, but these were the originals, printed and distributed in 1950s Jasper.
The next one was another I recognized.
BODY FOUND IN ADELINE RIVER
Several others were with them, some of which I’d never seen, but all were pieces from local newspapers chronicling the investigation into the murder of Nathaniel Rutherford. My father.
Even thinking the word was foreign to me. I’d lived in the shadow of my mother’s story, but a father was something that had never been talked about, never seemed to matter. All this time, he’d been in the past, further back than I could have imagined. And I couldn’t help but think that the curse on the Farrows had touched him, too.
If he died a year ago, that meant I must have met him while I was here, and if I was remembering things from that time, I’d eventually remember him, too. So, what was this? Another collection like the one I’d had about Susanna back home? If it was, then why had I kept it hidden?
Tucked in between the newspaper clippings were more scraps of paper, and when I slid them out of the way, the light reflected off the glossy surface of a photograph.
It was the same one that Gran sent me. When I turned it over, the inscription was there.
Beneath it was a small rectangle of paper. It was a series of years written down in one long column. But this handwriting was unmistakably mine.
1912
1946
1950 1951
My eyes landed on the year 1951. That was now.
I went still when I heard a soft sound seeping beneath the bedroom door. Outside the window, the moon had risen over the crest of the mountains. I hadn’t even noticed that the house had gone quiet.
At first, it sounded like wind. I slipped the papers back into the envelope and tucked it beneath the quilts before my feet found their way across the cold floor. When I opened the door of the bedroom, I realized the sound wasn’t the wind. It was Annie.
A soft whimper echoed in the house, her tiny voice heavy with sleep. I peered around the corner of the kitchen, freezing when I saw a shadow moving in the dark. Eamon was sitting up on the sofa, pushing back the quilt draped over his legs and getting to his feet. The moonlight rippled over his skin as he moved through the sitting room, toward Annie’s little nook. I watched as he climbed into the bed with her and she curled into him, a tiny ball beneath the blanket.
I stared at them, unable to pull my eyes from the sight. My fingers curled around the corner of the wall, that hollow ache inside of me waking. For years, I’d shielded myself with the claims that I didn’t want love or a child of my own. I’d even, at times, prided myself on the independence that my fate as a Farrow ensured me. But deep beneath that pretense was a longing I’d always kept tucked away from the world.
As I stood there watching Eamon’s arms fold around his daughter, I found myself in one of those vulnerable moments when the truth came for me. I’d stayed unyielding because I’d had to, but the June who’d married Eamon and had borne his
child had been weak. She’d been the worst kind of selfish, and I was broken into two pieces—one that was ashamed of her and one that was envious of her.
The crying stopped, followed by a few quiet sniffs, and then the house was silent again. They lay like that until their breaths drew deep and long, and I stood watching them because I couldn’t stop. His arm draped around her little frame. Her head tucked beneath his chin. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and the thought made a pain erupt inside of me that I could hardly bear.
This was the field that I had planted. With my very own hands. And then I’d left it all to rot.
