y eyes were glued to the side mirror, afraid I’d see thatM police car again. It wasn’t until the house came into view that I loosened my grip on the door handle. Esther was standing on the porch, arms wrapped tightly around herself as if she’d been waiting.
As soon as the truck stopped, I climbed out, boots hitting the ground hard. She looked from me to Eamon, waiting for one of us to speak. But I still wasn’t completely sure what had just happened. Not in the police station, and not in the truck.
Beside me, Eamon looked almost as dazed as I felt.
“Annie’s inside.” Esther answered Eamon’s unspoken question as she came down the steps to meet us.
Behind her, the windows in the sitting room were half- opened, the curtains pulling in the breeze. I had a nagging itch to see for myself that she was in there, perched on her bed with her doll.
Eamon motioned toward the barn, where Callie was pacing again. Esther and I reluctantly followed, and we didn’t stop until we were standing in a pool of sunlight between the paddock and the field. From here, we were hidden from the road.
“She knows about Caleb. And the investigation,” was all Eamon said.
“All right. What happened?”
I stared at them both, so exhausted that I could hardly muster the energy to speak. I’d been forced to trust them, but it was clear now they’d been looking out only for themselves.
“You should have told me about this.”
“We were trying to keep you out of it,” Esther answered.
“It’s complicated enough as is.”
“You can’t keep me out of it. The less I know, the more dangerous it is for all of us. What would have happened if I’d said something wrong in there?”
Esther and Eamon met eyes in a silent exchange. They didn’t argue with that.
“Let’s start with Caleb,” I said.
Esther glanced at the road around the corner of the barn, as if she, too, was afraid she’d see that car again. “He’s Nathaniel and Susanna’s son. He was born two years after you.”
I waited.
“After she left you, she wasn’t…well. I think she thought having another baby would help or somehow undo what she’d done. But she never got over it.”
“I don’t understand. You keep acting like Susanna was devastated to lose me. If that’s true, then why’d she do it?
Why did she leave me?”
She looked past me, to Eamon. “This is how it all started last time. This very conversation. She doesn’t need to know everything.”
“I need to know more than what I know right now,” I snapped.
She unbuttoned the collar of her shirt, opening it to the cool breeze. I could see her mind turning with the words before she finally started speaking. “She didn’t leave you, June. She didn’t have a choice.”
I could feel the warmth bleeding from my skin suddenly, the air around me like hard, jagged ice. Esther’s eyes were on the ground between us, her silver-streaked hair unraveling from its bun.
“I told you, there was something about Nathaniel that wasn’t right. His mind was twisted. From the beginning, he knew that Susanna was different somehow, that she was something unnatural. But he couldn’t resist her.” She paused.
“He thought she was touched by demons, or some other ridiculous thing his father preached about on Sundays. I think, in a way, he both loved and hated her at the same time. He thought she had some kind of hold over him and that God was testing his faith. But he couldn’t give her up, so he decided he wanted to save her, to fix things so that he could have her and still keep his own salvation. She was baptized in the church, and not long after, they found out she was pregnant.”
Beside me, Eamon was silent. He knew what came next.
“Nathaniel came to see me. He was desperate. Scared.
Terrified his father would find out.” Esther paused. “He offered me two hundred dollars to poison Susanna in order to kill the child growing inside of her.”
“He wanted you to kill her?”
“Not her,” she said. “You.”
My stomach turned on itself, the photograph of Nathaniel resurfacing in my mind.
“A witch to do the devil’s work,” she muttered. “But the only devil in this town was Nathaniel Rutherford. He figured I wouldn’t want Susanna to have a baby any more than he did.
So, he asked me to intervene before people could find out that the minister’s son had gotten a girl pregnant. And not just any girl. A Farrow.”
I stared at her, speechless.
“I didn’t tell Susanna what he’d asked me to do, but I convinced her to go back to her own time because she wasn’t safe with him. I could see when I said it that she knew it was true. For all of Susanna’s faults, she wasn’t blind. She’d already seen that darkness in him. I don’t know if it was because she had you to think about or if she’d already been considering it, but she went through the door the next time it appeared.”
That was when Susanna showed up in Jasper, I thought.
After she’d been missing for months, she’d come home pregnant with a baby no one could explain.
“It wasn’t long before she came back through that door, and I’ll never understand why she did it. I think in her mind, she thought that she could fix him, the way he thought he could fix her. And that was it. She’d made her choice, and there was no going back.”
“She’d crossed three times,” I murmured. The first time, when she’d come here and met Nathaniel; the second, when she returned to Gran pregnant. The third crossing was her last, when she came back and had me.
Esther nodded. “There was no hiding that she was pregnant, and Nathaniel’s father wasn’t kind or forgiving about it. They didn’t approve of her—him or the town—but they couldn’t turn her away. Not when the whole of Jasper was watching.
After a few sermons about the prodigal son and forgiveness, they gave in. Nathaniel married her right away, and a few weeks later, his father died of a heart attack right there in the church. Nathaniel was convinced it was God’s punishment for what he’d done, falling in love with a cursed soul and giving
in to temptation. He truly believed she’d brought it upon them.”
“Did he know? About the door?” I asked.
“No. She had enough sense not to tell him, but like I said, he knew she was different. He could sense it, and it played right into all those Bible stories he knew. I think in his own twisted way, he loved her. But he was also terrified of her, and he was consumed with guilt over his father.”
A car passed on the road, making her go quiet. When it was out of sight, she started again.
“When you were born, Nathaniel just couldn’t let it go. He was so fixated on the idea that he’d brought a tainted child into the world, that you had been conceived in sin. Susanna finally seemed to accept it then. She was afraid of him. Afraid of what he might do to you. I hadn’t seen her in months because he’d forbidden her to have any connection with us, saying that she was a part of his family now. So, when she showed up that night, I didn’t know what to make of it. Nathaniel was in Charlotte for weeks, meeting with the Presbyterian Regional Assembly, and she’d waited until he would be gone.” She finally looked at me. “She asked me to help her.”
“How?” I whispered.
“The door would no longer open for Susanna, so she asked me to take you to the other side. We waited for the door to appear, and when Nathaniel got back from Charlotte, she told him you were dead. That you died in your sleep and we’d buried you. I wasn’t sure he would believe her, but he did. At least, he wanted to, thinking God had finally acted to make things right. She was pregnant with Caleb not too long after.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth, trying to understand it.
“Caleb was born, but Susanna was just getting sicker. Her mind had already begun to undo itself, and it was made worse
by her grief over losing you. Another baby couldn’t fix that.
Caleb was just a little bigger than Annie when she died. He was there when Susanna jumped from the falls.”
If what Esther said was true, then Susanna thought she was saving me. And then she killed herself because of it.
I paced to the corner of the barn and back, willing myself not to completely come apart. This was all too much. Too fast.
I’d wanted answers, but not like this.
Caleb Rutherford, the vengeful son looking for justice, was also my brother. But all of this still felt like only one string in the web.
“So, Caleb knows that you’re family? That his mother was a Farrow?”
“He’s never acknowledged it, but he knows. He was raised by a man who hates us. That kind of thing can get into the blood, I suppose. Nathaniel kept him far away from the flower farm, but people still talked about it, telling the story about when the minister fell in love with the strange girl from Norfolk.”
“What else haven’t you told me?”
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, rubbing the place between her eyebrows. “A lot. It’s not just Susanna’s life that you don’t know about, there’s the one you lived here, too. It’s not something that can be covered in one conversation.”
“Why don’t you just skip to whatever you least want to tell me, then?”
Esther looked to Eamon again, hesitating. “When you showed up here the first time, I think Nathaniel knew who you were.”
“Knew what?” I stiffened.
“That you were June. His daughter.”
Eamon was staring into the fields now, silent.
“How could he possibly know that?”
Esther’s eyes dropped to the birthmark on my neck, and I reached up, instinctively touching it.
“You’ve had that since the day you were born. But it’s not just that. You look like her. You look so much like her.”
That was maybe the only thing Gran ever said about my mother. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at me, that lost look in her eyes growing distant.
“I’m sure that, at first, Nathaniel tried to talk himself out of it, but eventually, he became…obsessed with you,” Esther continued. “He convinced himself that you were sent to haunt him, that God was still punishing him for his sins. A few months after you came here, I started seeing him drive past the farm, sometimes multiple times a day. I’d see his car parked down the road and he’d just sit there, smoking his cigarette and waiting. There were a few times when you thought he was following you in town.”
That’s what Eamon had meant when he told Caleb that he’d told his father to stay away from me.
“And that’s why Caleb thinks we might have had something to do with Nathaniel’s murder?” I asked.
“Yes.” Eamon finally spoke. “Nathaniel and I had words more than once about it. A couple of times, there were witnesses to those conversations, so when he turned up dead, there was more than one person in town who reported it, and Caleb started asking questions about where I was that night.
He thinks you’re covering for me.”
“If he thinks that, why hasn’t he arrested you?”
“He doesn’t have any real proof, because there is none. But if enough people start taking those claims seriously, we’ll have
bigger problems. Nathaniel was loved by this town, and I’ve seen people take matters into their own hands for less.”
That’s what they were really worried about, I remembered.
The town turning on them. Maybe that was what eventually happened to Eamon. The reason his farm sat abandoned, no trace of his name in Jasper sixty years from now. He could have been run out of town. Or worse.
“I should get back.” Esther’s hand found my arm, squeezing. “Margaret’s probably sick with worry.”
I didn’t argue. In a matter of days, my entire world had come undone. I was slowly being taken apart, piece by piece.
Truth by truth. The life I’d lived for thirty-four years felt far away now, and when I went back to it, I would be a different person from the one who’d left it.
Esther walked back to her truck without another word, and the headlights disappeared over the hill, taking the sound of the engine with them. Then it was only me and Eamon and the wind in the tobacco that surrounded us.
Annie was sitting at the table with a piece of chalk and some torn pieces of paper when we came inside. I went to the sink, filling a glass with water and gulping it down. Eamon sat on the sofa, kicking his boots from his feet. He was so tired that the shadows on his face changed the look of him completely.
I hadn’t pried much into the relationship between us, because I was scared to. I was afraid to know what exactly I’d built here and even more afraid to remember it. I could feel this place seeping into me, and these people, too. When I went back, I needed to be able to cut myself from all of it.
I opened the door of the bedroom, but my hand caught its edge.
“Eamon?”
He looked up at me, and I caught a glimpse of the Eamon who’d said his life had ended when I left.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I said.
He was still for several seconds before he nodded, and his eyes lingered on me a beat too long. I knew he’d likely come out of concern for himself as much as for me, but when I’d seen him there in the police station, I’d stopped breathing. I could viscerally remember what it had felt like to be tucked into him, his arm around me and his voice close as we went down those steps.
I closed myself in the bedroom and leaned into the door, biting down on my thumbnail as my gaze drifted to the wardrobe. Caleb wasn’t just a son trying to solve his father’s murder. He had a history with Eamon and me. And what he’d said about Mimi Granger had been replaying in my thoughts since I’d left the station.
The woman’s wide eyes as she stumbled into the house and shut the door flashed through my mind. She’d been scared when she saw me, maybe thinking of that night she said I’d run through her field, covered in blood, with Annie in my arms.
I tried to summon the splintered memory that had tried to seize me at the police station. A field. The road. The sound of my own labored breath. But it wouldn’t come.
I crossed the floor of the small room and opened the doors of the wardrobe, inspecting the clothes folded on the three small shelves and pulling them out to feel along the wood.
Then I searched between and behind each of the hanging pieces. There was nothing there except for the faint smell of dried lavender and the dust that had gathered in the last year.
No blue shoe like the one Caleb had.
I sank down to the floor, feeling like this was another one of those threads, unraveling so fast that I couldn’t catch hold of it.
I looked at my hands, resting on the neatly folded stack of Eamon’s shirts. Without thinking, I curled my fingers around the one on top and picked it up. Before I could stop myself, I was pressing my face to it, inhaling deeply.
That smell was warmth. It pooled inside of me, filling the narrowest of spaces, and I closed my eyes. It hurt, unleashing a physical ache that reached through my entire body. It was alive, that feeling. A trapped thing trying to get out.
When my eyes opened, they focused on that swath of white lace in the back of the wardrobe.
Slowly, I set the shirt back in its place and got to my feet. I took the dress from where it hung and the length of it fell to the floor, kissing my feet. It was a simply cut garment with a fine layer of lace over the top that fluttered at the shoulders and clasped at the back of the neck.
The fabric was perfect and unstained, a creamy color that tinged gold in the dim light. Beautiful. And just looking at it made me lose my grip on that pain threatening to erupt inside of me. I couldn’t contain it anymore.
I’m standing beneath a willow tree, cool grass beneath my feet. Before me, a tortoiseshell button on Eamon’s shirt comes sharply into focus. I’m staring into his chest, but then my eyes find his.
I’m wearing the dress. I can see two tiny pink flower petals caught in the lace below my shoulder, and I know they’ve fallen from the woven crown that Margaret made for me to wear.
“For as long as we both shall live.” The words drip from my mouth in a softness that echoes the sting of tears I feel
behind my eyes.
Eamon’s mouth lifts just the slightest bit, a tiny smile meant only for me. “For as long as we both shall live,” he says.
He doesn’t wait to be told that he can kiss me. He just pulls me toward him, and his hand slides around my ribs, down the center of my back, so that he can hold me against him. Once I’m fully enveloped in his arms, he moves his face close. Our noses touch before his lips part on mine, and he kisses me deeply, every single atom in my body like blinking Christmas lights.
It’s not a vision. This is an embedded, sleeping beast that’s been waiting to wake. My head is filling with it, forming a map of memories that stretch and connect.
For the first time, I can feel a tether. It stretches tight between me and this man.
Eamon’s fingers slide around my neck, finding the nape of my hair. His thumb presses to my cheek, just above the edges of the red birthmark that stains my skin.
And then it was gone, snuffed out from the world around me, but I could still see it in my mind’s eye. I could recall it in perfect detail.
I’d been able to smell the honeysuckle in the air and feel the give of the earth beneath my bare feet. And it hadn’t been like the jarring, head-splitting episodes that I’d had before I came here. This was as smooth as slipping into cool, still water.
The wind picked up outside, making the house creak around me, and a soft cry echoed on the other side of the wall. After a few seconds of silence, it sounded again.
Annie.
It was followed by the creak of the sofa as Eamon got to his feet. The pop of the floorboards as he crossed the sitting room.
I followed the sounds, moving along the length of the wall with my fingertips trailing the wallpaper.
I could hear Eamon climb into bed with her the same way he had every night since I’d been here, a predictable pattern.
I met my own eyes in the mirror, still feeling the sting on my lips where Eamon’s mouth had pressed to mine in the memory. They were a pale silver in the lamplight, shifting with the shadows in the room. And before I could see my mother there, looking back at me, I turned out the light.
