he courthouse loomed over me as the door of the policeT car opened, and I stared up at it, a lump in my throat.
If the sheriff wanted to cause a scene, he’d been successful.
Nearly everyone on the street had stopped to stare as we climbed the steps. The birds nesting in the eaves above the entrance took off, darting over the roof and out of sight as the doors opened.
“This shouldn’t take long.” Caleb gave me another tight smile, gesturing for me to walk ahead of him.
I tucked my hair behind my ear as I stepped inside, avoiding the gazes of the men and women who passed me. The lobby of the courthouse was more refined than the one I knew, with shining marble walls and floors. The lights were brighter in the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling, the murmur of voices making the place feel alive in a way it never had to me before.
The window to the police station was open, a brass placard engraved with the county’s name. Behind the glass, Sam, the deputy who’d pulled over at the river, was seated behind a desk. He got to his feet, opening the door to let us in.
“Mrs. Stone,” he said, the words echoing eerily around us.
I tensed, realizing he was speaking to me. June Stone.
Behind the door, warm wood paneling covered the walls of a narrow room. Papers littered a series of low desks fit with bronze lamps, and I could hear the click of a typewriter somewhere up the hall.
“They didn’t believe me when I told ’em I’d seen you the other day.”
The younger officer looked to Caleb with a satisfied smile.
He was missing the taut, awkward energy that Caleb carried, but there was still something unspoken in the air that I wasn’t following.
Caleb took off his hat, setting it on one of the desks. “Do we have a room ready, Sam?”
He nodded. “Room four is all set up.”
That meant that he’d planned this. Eamon and Esther had wanted people to see me in hopes that it would keep the town from boiling over with curiosity. They hadn’t thought about giving Caleb the opportunity he wanted.
I forced myself to follow the sheriff down the claustrophobic hallway. It felt like it was narrowing by the second. He turned into an open doorway, and I stopped at the threshold, scanning the small room. A wooden table and four chairs were arranged at its center, where a cardboard box sat unopened. Beside it, a large machine fit with ancient turntables was rigged with shiny black ribbon. It looked like the kind of tape you’d pull from an old cassette. An exact replica was sitting on another small table in the corner.
“June?” Caleb pulled out one of the chairs, waiting.
I stepped inside, swallowing down the sick feeling in my throat as the door closed behind me. I took a seat in the open chair and set my shaking hands into my lap. I didn’t know what I was afraid of, I was just sure that I should be afraid. Of something.
My eyes lifted to the three rectangular windows set into the top of one wall. High and small enough that no one would be able to get through them, I realized.
Caleb took the seat in front of me, scooting in the chair, and Sam stayed standing, positioning himself beside the table in the corner. After a few agonizing seconds, Caleb pressed the red button on the recording device and the wheels started turning.
“Caleb Rutherford, Sheriff, interviewing June Stone on the twentieth of June 1951.” He stretched out his arm, taking a quick look at his watch. “The time is 1:11 P.M. Deputy Samuel Ferguson present.”
The words blurred together as I shifted in the chair. He was watching me closely, eyes skipping from my face to my shoulders before they settled at my throat. I reached up, adjusting my collar to hide the chain of the locket watch. Is that what he was looking at?
He cleared his throat. “Now, June, I know Eamon’s given you some idea of what we’d like to talk about today, but I just want to assure you that all we’re doing here is trying to make the pieces fit together. Can you help us do that?”
I stared at him. The tone of his voice didn’t match the words coming out of his mouth.
“Of course,” I answered.
“Good.”
I nodded, unable to speak past the painful lump in my throat.
“Why don’t you start with where you’ve been for the last eleven months.”
I picked at my fingernail beneath the table anxiously. “In Norfolk. Taking care of my mother.” The answer was rote,
repeated exactly from what Eamon and Esther had told me.
“When did you first hear she was ill?”
“I’m not sure. A few days before I left?” It was a total guess, but as long as I kept to the most logical of details, I had the best chance of getting out of whatever this was. June had left suddenly, so if she was going to see her mother, it couldn’t have been planned. “I got a letter.” I added.
Caleb made a note on the pad in front of him. “Do you still have this letter?”
“I don’t think so. I can look.”
“I would appreciate that. And what exactly happened to your mother?”
“She’d had a stroke and needed me to come look after her.”
“So, you’ve been in Norfolk since?”
I nodded.
“Answer aloud for the tape, please.”
“Sorry. Yes.”
“Can you provide the name of the hospital where she was treated?”
I could feel the pulse at my wrist beating harder by the second. “I…” I bit down on my lip. “I can’t remember it right off. I can find out.”
“You do that.” He met my eyes long enough to let me know that he thought I was lying. This was a game. One he thought he was winning. From where I sat, it appeared that he was.
“Why haven’t you come home to visit in the last year?”
“I couldn’t leave my mother.” I was clumsily filling in the blanks now, grasping for the most reflexive answers.
“I see.” He folded his hands on the table. “Well, it’s been quite a long wait for us to sit down with you. You can imagine
that we’re relieved to finally get some of these questions answered.”
I looked to Sam, who still stood by the door. He was facing the opposite wall, no reaction visible on his face.
“Why don’t you take me through that night again,” Caleb said, setting his pen down.
That night. The only thing he could be talking about was the night Nathaniel was murdered, but he’d said again. That meant he’d asked these questions before.
“June?”
“The night of the Faire?”
“Yes. The night of the Midsummer Faire.”
My mind was moving so fast now that I could hardly track the thoughts. They were one huge storm in my head.
That night, you were home. With Eamon and Annie. Just the three of you.
Esther’s frantic words rang in my skull.
“Where did you go after the Faire, June?” Caleb pressed.
“We were home. The three of us. All night.”
Caleb’s eyes narrowed again. I’d said something wrong.
“You went home together?”
“Yes,” I said, too loudly.
Caleb and Sam met eyes across the room, and I bit down so hard that my teeth ached. I’d messed up somewhere, but I didn’t know how. I was stumbling in the dark, Esther’s incomplete instructions and the few newspaper articles I’d read the only things lighting my path.
“That’s not exactly what you told us last time.”
I smiled, but it felt misshapen on my face. “It’s not?”
“No.”
Caleb gestured to Sam, who moved away from the wall, reaching for the machine on the table in the corner. He pressed the button, and the tables started turning. A scratching buzz sounded in the silence, and all the air left my lungs when I heard it.
My voice.
“…maybe about five?” A pause. “I had to be there early to help Esther.”
My vision tilted just a little, the room around me tipping to one side and making me feel like I was going to fall out of the chair. There was no mistaking that it was me. My voice. The one trapped in my throat, ready to scream.
“What did you do at the Faire?” It was Caleb’s voice now. It sounded even deeper on the tape.
“We walked around awhile, danced, listened to the band.”
“I see. And did you leave together?” Caleb again.
“No.”
My stomach dropped. That was what had prompted the look on Caleb’s face. I’d deviated from the story.
“Percy came and found Eamon to let him know Callie had gotten out of the fence again, so he went home.”
“And then?”
“Annie and I followed a little while later.”
“And how did you get home?”
“We rode to the flower farm with Esther, and then we walked from there.”
Sam pressed the button on the machine again and the buzz of the recording cut out, leaving us in silence.
Caleb looked at me, waiting for an explanation.
“That’s right.” I tried not to sound as terrified as I was. “I’d forgotten that he left early.”
“You forgot,” Caleb echoed.
“It was a year ago,” I said. “Didn’t seem like an important detail at the time.”
“I’m afraid that every detail is important when you’re investigating a murder.” Caleb reached for the box on the table, sliding it toward him.
I held my breath as he opened it.
His hand disappeared into the box, and I heard the rustle of plastic before he lifted out what was inside. It was a bundle of something I couldn’t make out.
“Mimi Granger came forward to tell us she saw you that night.”
My brow furrowed. Granger. Somehow, I knew that name.
“She said she saw you running through her west pasture.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from inside the folder, setting it down in front of him.
“…running across the field, that baby in her arms, and I could have sworn she had blood on her dress.” He read the statement aloud. “I remember, because when she got to the road, she was wearing only one shoe. One blue shoe.”
The edges of my vision wavered as a rush of cold came over me. The sound of water drowned out Caleb’s words, a pricking dancing on my skin. From the corner of my eye, I thought I could see that field, rolling waves of gold that stretched to the black tar road. I could hear breathing, a ragged sound coming from my own mouth.
In a panic, I pushed the memory away before it could suck my mind in, focusing my eyes on the recorder that sat on the
table. Caleb’s voice came back to me slowly, the vision bleeding away.
He looked up from the page. “Now, that’s a pretty specific detail, but there aren’t too many folks around here who would put much stock into one of Mimi Granger’s stories.”
I suddenly placed the name. Granger was the name on that mailbox—the one in front of the house off the river road. The day I’d come through the door, the woman on the porch had seen me. I still remembered that horrified look on her face.
There was still a glimmer in the room, my surroundings like rippling water. The scene around me was threatening to give way to the rush of the memory.
“Hell, she’s drunk half the time, and that’s why I didn’t worry too much about it,” he said.
I could hear the but coming, riding ahead of the words.
“But I have to do my due diligence, don’t I? And just when I went to check it with you and your timeline of that night, you up and disappeared to Norfolk,” he said. “Now, I’m a patient man, so I figured I’d wait until we could clear all this up. Then months went by, and you never came home. And all of a sudden, a few weeks ago—” He reached for the lump of plastic, unrolling it. “Mimi came barging in here with this.”
I leaned forward as the plastic came free, revealing a blue slip-on shoe caked with dried mud. A fabric buckle was fixed to one side. He set it down in the center of the table, and it took every ounce of composure I could muster not to recoil from it. I recognized it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was certain it was mine.
“Apparently, it got stuck in one of the forks of the tedder when they were cutting the west field and baling hay.”
If there was anything to say now, I didn’t know what it was.
This wasn’t just fitting the pieces together. He was trying to fit
the pieces around me.
That fear in Eamon’s eyes wasn’t just about his wife and the entire life she’d burned down when she left this place. It was about the minister. About the night he died.
“You told me that you didn’t have a pair of blue shoes. Is that right?”
“That’s right.” I didn’t hesitate, not wanting to risk even the slightest chance it would inflame his suspicion. All I could do was bank on whatever I’d told him last time.
He nodded. “All right. Is there any reason why Mimi would think she saw you that night? Or why she thought you were covered in blood?”
If I’d walked home from Esther’s, I wouldn’t cut through that field. I’d walk the path along the river.
“No. I don’t know what she saw, but it wasn’t me.”
He folded his hands patiently. “Look, June. I’m not fool enough to believe that a little thing like you could kill a full- grown man with your bare hands. I am, however, inclined to think that a loving wife would protect her husband at any cost.”
My lips parted as his meaning sunk in. It wasn’t me he was after. It was Eamon.
A frantic knock sounded at the door, and Sam sprung forward, opening it. A man I couldn’t see stood on the other side.
“We’ve got a problem out here. Eamon just showed up.”
Tears instantly filled my eyes, my lungs finally expanding. I resisted the urge to stand from the chair, hands twisting into my skirt. I could hear shouting down the hall and the familiar accent-laced rasp of Eamon’s voice found me.
“Speak of the devil,” Caleb said, flatly.
He hit the button on the recorder, making the turntables stop. The machine fell quiet as he got to his feet. “Something tells me this isn’t the last conversation we’ll be having. So, I’d appreciate it if you could stay where I can find you.”
“I will.”
The surface of Caleb’s entire countenance was simmering now, an ominous underbelly to the polite manners. “You be sure that you do.”
Sam opened the door, and I bumped the table as I stood, nearly knocking the box that held the shoe to the floor. I walked out, following the hallway back to the front desk.
Eamon’s voice grew louder. “You can tell me where the fuck she is.”
He stood on the other side of the glass barrier that separated the office from the waiting room. He was straight-backed and stern, his jacket collar pulled up around his jaw.
“Eamon.” Another officer had a hand in the air, a gesture that was meant to calm him down. But Eamon looked like he was coming out of his skin.
“Open the door, Paul.” Eamon wasn’t asking. “Now.”
Caleb pushed past me in the hallway, with Sam on his heels.
As soon as he spotted me, Eamon exhaled, the relief visible on his face. But when his eyes focused on Caleb, his fury was back in spades. “What the hell is this?”
“I ran into June today and she graciously agreed to come in.” Caleb’s tone was infuriatingly even.
“Ran into her?” Eamon repeated. “You expect me to believe that?”
The officer Eamon had been shouting at slinked back, happy to be freed from Eamon’s attention. I moved toward the open door, hardly able to blink back the tears.
“You should have brought her in yourself when she got back.” Caleb squared his shoulders to Eamon.
Eamon took one step forward, pointing a finger at the center of Caleb’s chest. “I told your father. Now I’m telling you,” he growled. “Stay away from my wife.”
Your father.
Eamon’s arm reached out for me, and I walked toward him, swallowing down the cry in my throat when his hand firmly found my waist, pulling me to his side. I didn’t look back as he guided me to the door and through the entrance of the courthouse. I couldn’t even feel my feet as we went down the steps.
“You all right?”
His voice was close to my ear, but I couldn’t speak. I stared at my feet until we could see the truck. A smudge of black marked the bricks behind the tires, and it was parked crooked along the curb, like he’d pulled in too fast and slammed on his brakes. Esther must have gone straight to get him.
He opened my door, and I lifted myself inside as the courthouse doors opened again. Caleb stepped out, watching as we pulled away.
“What the hell was that?” I choked out, wiping at my cheeks as the first furious tears began to fall.
Eamon lifted a hand as if to reach for me again, but he stopped himself with some effort, placing it back on the wheel.
“What did he say?”
I sniffed, trying to catch my breath.
“June. What did he say?”
“He wasn’t just taking statements, Eamon. He thinks we had something to do with Nathaniel’s murder. He asked where I was that night. Where you were.”
“What did you say?”
“Esther told me to tell him we were home all night.”
He nodded, letting out a breath. “Good. What else?”
“How could you just lie to me?”
“I knew they wanted to talk to you, but I hoped you wouldn’t be here long enough for this to catch up to us,” he snapped. “Did he say anything else?”
I put my face into my hands, trying to breathe. “They found a shoe and they think it was mine? I don’t know.”
If he reacted, I couldn’t see it. I pinched my eyes closed, trying to erase myself from the moment. There had been several minutes in that room when I thought I might not leave it.
“A woman said she saw me that night. They think I’m involved, Eamon.”
But Caleb hadn’t been interested only in me. I looked at Eamon from the corner of my eye. Caleb had really wanted to know about him. And if what I said was true and he’d left early that night…
“He wants to see the letter my mother wrote me saying that she was sick.”
Eamon scoffed, shaking his head. “Of course he does.”
“I have to get out of here. Tonight. I can go to Asheville or Charlotte. Wait for the door to reappear.”
“No. You leave and he’ll be on the phone to every police station within three states telling them to look for you.” When I said nothing, he ran a hand through his hair. “He doesn’t have anything real on you. If he did, you wouldn’t have walked out of that station. And you might be able to run from this, but we can’t. We’re stuck here.”
I looked at him. When he’d said we, he was talking about Annie.
“You leave now and you’ll just convince him he’s right. All of that attention will shift to me, do you understand? You might not give a shit about that, but my daughter’s lost one parent already.”
That’s what this was to him. Not concern for himself. He was trying to contain this thing before it spilled over onto Annie.
“Things had died down before you came back. I thought it was behind us.”
His voice faded out, the words almost inaudible, like he’d thought better of saying them mid-sentence. I studied him, trying to pry their meaning from the silence.
“You didn’t want me to come back, did you?” I said.
His whole body tensed, and his eyes found me, disbelief paling his face. “My life ended the day you left. You’ll never understand what that did to me. So don’t talk about what you think I wanted or what you think you know about me.”
He said it with so much hurt that it was as if the words had sucked all the air out of the truck. I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
It was the first time he’d let me see him, really see him, since I’d come here. There weren’t any walls built around that truth —it was unguarded. Defenseless.
Another tear fell, trailing along my jaw as I stared at the road. “Who exactly is Caleb Rutherford?”
Eamon took a long time to answer. “He’s your brother, June.”
