had to remember. All of it.I
I woke before Eamon and Annie, when the sun was just beginning to paint a blue haze on the mountain peaks in the distance. The farm was quiet when I came down the back steps, and the faint call of birds was muted by a soft breeze that swept over the tobacco.
I’d been up half the night thinking about it. If I was somehow triggering memories of my unlived life, then it was only a matter of time before I knew exactly what happened before I left. There was no way to go back and undo it. What was done was done. But I’d had years here, filled with the things I’d never been brave enough to admit that I wanted.
Now I needed to know why Gran had lied, and why I’d chosen to leave.
My boots waded through the tall, wet grass that stretched between the barn and the house as Callie watched me from the paddock. I tried to let my mind and my body follow the faint rhythm that was humming beneath my thoughts. It was at the tip of my fingers, under my tongue. A routine I was on the verge of remembering. One I’d done every morning.
I fetched the water and the eggs, testing myself with the little things I couldn’t possibly know. Which trays in the
chicken coop would have eggs and which were always bare.
How the pump at the well needed a firm tug to the side before I pushed it down. I’d been so careful not to touch anything, afraid I would disturb the precarious balance between me and this place. But with every surface my fingertips grazed, I was filling in the edges of a picture. It wasn’t just Eamon’s home.
It had been mine, too.
I stepped out of my boots, leaving them outside the back door as I came into the kitchen. I didn’t let myself think, moving with nothing more than muscle memory. It was stilted, but it was definitely there. I placed the kettle on the burner, and my gaze was instinctively pulled like a magnet to the coffee can on top of the icebox. I knew this choreography. I’d probably done it hundreds of times.
I smiled to myself, excitement brimming in my blood. It was a drip, but it was steady.
I had to search to find the jar of shortening, but other things came more easily. When I reached into the cupboard for the sugar bowl, it was exactly where I’d expected it to be. My hand even seemed to recognize the feel of the lid and the shape of the spoon as I stirred two spoonfuls into my coffee.
As the kettle whirred on the stove, I started the biscuit dough, folding the milk into the peaks of flour with one hand while I turned the mixing bowl with the other. My blistered knuckles burned as I stirred. It was the same recipe that I’d grown up making with Gran and that she’d grown up making with Esther. I’d decided to start here, with things I knew I would have brought with me through the door the first time, and it was working. In fact, it was working better than I’d expected.
The groan of the little bed in Annie’s nook made me look up from the wide-mouthed bowl. Through the doorway, I could see Eamon sitting up stiffly, as if his whole body hurt. He’d
slept the rest of the night in that bed, him and Annie tangled together, and I’d had to force my eyes to stop finding them as I moved quietly through the house. They, too, felt like a fixed point. A gravity relentlessly pulling at my edges.
Eamon’s gaze scanned the house, eyes blinking against sleep, and when they found me, his brow furrowed. He stood, making a half-hearted attempt to comb his hair back with his fingers, and his white T-shirt hiked up on one side to reveal his hip. I immediately dropped my eyes, heat flaring along my collarbone. Eamon was the kind of handsome that was carved from forests and rivers. He had the look of someone who’d spent his life in the sun, hands in the dirt. Every color, curve, and angle of him was shaped with it. That stomach-dropping feeling inside of me when I looked at him was a reflex, I told myself. Just a different kind of recall.
When he made it into the kitchen, he leaned into the wall with one shoulder, watching me. His jaw flexed as he swallowed, the seconds reconstructing themselves into a white-knuckled silence.
I stopped stirring. “What?”
He shook his head as if trying to break loose whatever train of thought was there. “Nothing.” His voice was a deep rasp.
“It’s just—” He didn’t finish.
I set my hands on the table, waiting and noticing that for once, he wasn’t angry. He seemed almost upset, like he was swallowing down that same pain in his chest that I could feel expanding behind my ribs.
“It’s just that sometimes”—he paused—“it’s hard to look at you.” His accent was thicker. With sleep or emotion, I couldn’t tell. But it made that spreading pain find my hollow places.
I bit the inside of my cheek, unsure of what to say, but Eamon didn’t give me the chance to respond. He turned back
into the sitting room, taking something from the side table next to the sofa. When he came back, he held it out to me.
It was a pair of gloves. Small leather gloves.
My eyes traveled up to meet his, but they were off of me now. “Are these…?”
“Yours,” he answered.
I glanced down at my hands. They were torn up from working in the garden yesterday, my calluses useless without gloves. My skin was striped with cuts, my nails rimmed in red.
He’d noticed.
I took the offering, pressing the soft, worn leather between my fingers. “Thank you,” I said, softly.
He nodded once, filling the kitchen with that silence again before he gestured to the percolator on the stove. “May I?”
I looked at him in confusion before I realized he was asking permission to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Oh, yeah,” I stammered awkwardly, tucking the gloves into the back pocket of my jeans.
He turned to the side, moving past me in the small kitchen, and when he reached over me for the cup, the space between us grew narrower. A feeling like static surfaced on my skin, an electric hum that made me draw away from him just slightly. I couldn’t help it.
When he noticed, he stepped backward, putting more space between us.
I picked up the spoon, stirring, and I watched him from the corner of my eye as he took a sip of coffee. “I knew her name,” I said.
His cup stopped midair, eyes locking with mine. “What?”
I let out a long breath, trying to decide how much I wanted to tell him.
“The horse. Yesterday, I remembered her name before you told me what it was.”
Eamon was still rigid, his eyes fully awake now. “How?”
“It just…came to me.”
“What else do you remember?” His voice was tight, nearly defensive, and a fragmented recognition flickered to life inside me when I heard it.
I studied the tension in his shoulders. The clench in his jaw.
“Almost nothing. Just little things here and there.”
“How can you remember something if it hasn’t happened to you yet?”
“I don’t know.”
Eamon seemed anxious, but I didn’t know why. It was almost as if he was afraid of me knowing something, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was. I’d been planning to ask him about the newspaper articles I’d found last night, but now I thought better of it.
“I wanted to ask you.” I paused, taking a different tack.
“Did I keep a journal?”
He set the coffee cup down. “No.”
“Maybe a notebook of some kind?”
“Nothing like that.”
I stared at the floor, thinking. That could mean that I’d stopped having episodes after I came here, or maybe I’d just stopped writing them down. That, or Eamon wasn’t telling me the truth. The thought hadn’t occurred to me before now. What reason would he have to lie?
“What about—”
“The answer is no,” he said again.
“I’m just trying to think of anything that might help me make sense of why I left. Where I went.”
“I know where you went.”
I looked at him, shifting on my feet. I hadn’t expected him to say that, but he looked directly at me, a confidence in his gaze that couldn’t be mistaken.
My voice was a breath. “Where?”
“Back.” The single word was a heavy, solid thing between us.
If that was true, there had to be a reason. I wouldn’t have just left. Somehow, I knew that.
The screech of the gate out at the road drew Eamon’s attention to the front window, and with his eyes off me, I finally exhaled. Margaret was here, and she and Esther seemed to be the only buffers between me and Eamon. The vulnerable, sleep-infused first moments of morning were gone, and it had taken only seconds for him to put his guard back up and shut me out. He was a field of buried land mines.
If he wasn’t going to talk to me, I’d have to rely on my own memories, maybe even find a way to trigger more of them on my own. That, or find a way to get answers somewhere else.
Margaret, I suspected, could help with that. Esther was prudent and careful, but there was a version of Margaret I knew better than anyone.
Three heavy knocks pounded on the door, and the shadow of a figure moved over the wall in the sitting room. Eamon and I looked to each other, the house settling uneasily around us. It wasn’t Margaret, I thought. Yesterday, she hadn’t knocked.
There was a new tension in the air now, and I could feel it almost right away. Eamon’s hand lifted, gesturing for me to stay quiet. He was watching that shadow, gaze moving to the rifle hanging on the wall.
I pulled my flour-covered hands from the bowl, taking a step backward. “Eamon?” I whispered.
The knock sounded again, rattling the glass window on the door, and he finally moved, leaning to catch a glimpse out the kitchen window.
His hand slipped from the curtain. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
“Shit,” he said again, turning toward me.
Quietly, I moved closer to him so I could see what was out there. A police car was parked inside the gate, a drift of dust still swirling in the air from when it pulled in. I looked to Eamon. The muscles of his arms and shoulders were flexed beneath his shirt, his entire body stiff.
“Don’t say a word.” His voice was so low I could hardly hear it.
I searched his face, the fear in his eyes now flooding into my own veins.
He came closer, hand finding my arm and gripping me tight.
It pulled me toward him until I was looking up into his face.
“June, do you hear me?”
I glanced down to where his fingers touched my skin before my eyes lifted back to his. I nodded.
He let me go, and I slipped into the bedroom silently. I watched around the corner of the door as he went back into the living room, his gaze landing on that rifle again. There was a split second when I was sure he was going to reach for it.
What the hell was going on?
Again, the pound on the door echoed, and Eamon finally opened it, letting in a blinding light. My mouth went dry when the man on the other side came into view. It was a police officer. Not the man we’d seen on the riverbank. This was
someone else, and as soon as my eyes focused on him, the house seemed to fill with a bitter cold. He took the hat from his head, tipping it in Eamon’s direction. His blond hair was cut short and combed in a neat, waving swoop over his dark, narrowed eyes.
His chin lifted in a greeting, and the door swung wider.
“Eamon.”
I pressed myself into the wall, not making a sound.
“Caleb.” Eamon was doing his best to look relaxed, but he wasn’t succeeding. He was still wound up tight, the line of him like stone.
“Heard June finally made it home.”
The man Eamon had called Caleb was peering into the house now, and I drew away from the crack in the door.
“Just got in a couple of days ago,” Eamon said.
“I heard.” A pause. “Thought I’d come welcome her back to Jasper myself. Have that little talk I’ve been waiting so long for.”
“It can wait, Caleb. She just got back.”
“Now, you’re not the only one who’s been waiting for June to come home.” There was something dark beneath the smooth cadence of his voice. I could almost hear a smile in it.
“Another time.” Eamon’s tone didn’t waver.
I couldn’t tell if my breath sounded as loud in the room as it did in my ears. My head was light with it. I chanced a look through the crack again to find Eamon’s hand gripped tight on the edge of the front door.
“Well, it’s waited this long. I suppose another day or two couldn’t hurt.” Caleb’s mouth pulled in a sterile smile as he set the hat back on his head, but there was a threat in his eyes. A menacing glint. “You all have a good day now.”
He turned, going down the steps, and Eamon closed the door. He stood there, waiting until the sound of the car was gone. When I came around the corner of the sitting room, he ran a hand through his hair, exhaling.
In the nook, Annie was awake, sitting on the edge of her bed with her knees drawn up into her chest. She looked from me to Eamon, her small mouth crooked like she might cry. In an instant, something thorned was growing inside of me, and I could feel myself moving toward her. But Eamon was already crossing the room, scooping her up, and her arms hooked around his neck as she buried her face in his shoulder. He brushed the hair from her face, avoiding my gaze.
“What was that?” I asked, going to the front window to check the road. The police car was out of sight now.
Eamon’s eyes found me over Annie’s blond head. I could see him trying to decide how to answer. Or maybe deciding if he would answer at all. It was the same look he’d had a few minutes ago.
He passed me, going into the kitchen and taking an apple from the bowl on the shelf. “Why don’t you go say good morning to Callie?” His deep voice softened, his mouth pressing into Annie’s hair as he placed it into her hands.
Her fingers closed around it, and he set her down, her nightgown swaying around her skinny legs. Then she was pushing out the back door, letting the screen slap behind her.
He watched her go. “It’s not important. He just has some questions.”
“About what?”
Eamon hesitated, and my eyes narrowed on him. He was sifting information again, deciding exactly what to say.
“Not long before you left, something happened.” His hands slid into his pockets. “He’s interviewed everyone in town
about it as part of his investigation, and now he wants to talk to you.”
Slowly, the pieces strung together in my mind. “The murder,” I said.
Eamon hesitated just enough for me to notice. “Yes.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Nothing. He’s the sheriff, June. It’s his job. That’s all.”
That definitely wasn’t all. Eamon didn’t want me talking to him, and I suppose the fact that I didn’t actually remember anything was the reason. If I was questioned about the murder, I’d have no clue what to say. But that didn’t explain why those newspaper clippings and a photograph of Nathaniel Rutherford were hidden in the bedroom or why Eamon had gone white when he saw that police car outside.
This was what Esther was talking about when she said I’d come at a complicated time.
Eamon glanced out the window again, jaw ticking. Down by the barn, Annie’s small frame was clinging to the fence of the paddock. The mare was sniffing her tangle of blond hair, and Annie’s hand was hooked around her snout as if the horse were a puppy.
The sheriff had shaken him, that was clear. There’d been no mistaking that panic in his eyes before he opened the door. I could still feel the place on my skin where he’d touched me, the way his fingers had slid down my arm and squeezed. He’d been afraid in that moment. For me, or for him, I didn’t know.
But Eamon had something to hide.
