arm light spilled through the open bedroom door as IW fit two pearl earrings to my ears. My waving hair toppled over my shoulders, and it looked lighter against the jewel hued green of the simple dress I wore.
It was the nicest one in the wardrobe, and I found it a little unsettling how much I liked it. The fabric hugged my curves like paper wrapped around a bouquet of flowers. There was a gold brooch pinned at one side of the waist, where the fabric gathered and draped over my hip. I smoothed my hands over it, inspecting myself in the mirror. I looked like…myself.
Slowly, the memories were stitching together to complete the spider’s web. I could remember little things without much effort now, snatching them from the atmosphere around me as I put on my shoes or uncovered another reseeded plant in the garden. They were trickling in, bits of memory filling my head like drops of water. Longer, weightier memories were harder, drawing away from me almost every time I tried to chase them. When I tried to remember the moment I left, the night of the murder, or even Annie’s birth, the images disintegrated faster than they could form.
I straightened the locket watch around my neck, letting it come to rest between my breasts. On the dressing table, the light glinted on the ring in the abalone dish, and I changed my
mind more than once before I picked it up. The gold was scratched and cloudy in places, as if it hadn’t been taken off for some time, but I’d left it here for a reason. I knew I had.
If Caleb was trying to find a crack in my story and the rest of the town was suspicious, I couldn’t afford to show up as June Farrow at the Midsummer Faire.
Tonight, I was June Stone.
I slipped the band onto the ring finger of my left hand and stared at it, a slow rush of something I couldn’t name running hot under my skin. When I looked at it now, I remembered vows under the willow tree. It wasn’t the replay of a story I’d heard. I’d been there, the moment fusing itself to my very core.
I drew in a steadying breath before I took the shawl from the edge of the bed and went into the kitchen. The house was empty, the front door propped open, and I could see Eamon’s shape through the thin curtains that hung in the window. Annie was on the bottom step, walking its edge back and forth.
I fidgeted with the thin, gauzy fabric of the shawl in my hands before I drew up the courage to step outside, and I felt the burn in my face when Eamon looked at me.
He swallowed, eyes traveling down my body to study the shape of me. The feeling made my stomach drop.
He’d shaved, making the angle of his face sharper over the white collar of his clean shirt. His brown tweed trousers and jacket were unwrinkled; the rich brown leather of his shoes shined. Even the soot had been scrubbed from beneath his fingernails.
“Ready?” I said, voice tight.
He ran a hand anxiously beneath the line of his jaw before he pulled the keys from his pocket. “Come on, Annie,” he
called over his shoulder, and she let go of the porch railing, jumping down.
Her white dress was rimmed in eyelets, a pair of black Mary Janes on her feet. Two long blond braids were tied with blue bows at each shoulder—Margaret’s doing, I guessed.
Eamon opened the passenger door first, and I helped Annie, hands finding her tiny waist as she struggled to lift herself into the truck. When she was settled in her seat, I followed, smoothing out the skirt of my dress over my legs. She did the same, mimicking the movement and I caught Eamon trying not to look at us, his head turning away just when I felt the weight of his gaze.
The mountains were ablaze with the oncoming sunset as we drove, a cotton candy sky speckled with pinks and violets that made everything look like it was pulled from a sleepy dream.
I’d been in this very truck one year ago, headed to the Midsummer Faire. Had I known then that everything was about to change?
“Is there anything I should know about us before we do this?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I tried to think of how to say it without feeling stupid. “What was it like before? What will people expect from us?”
Eamon let his hand move to the bottom of the steering wheel. He was pensive, as if images of our life were flashing through his thoughts.
“We’re friendly with people in town, but not too friendly.
Most don’t want to be too closely associated with your family, but everyone keeps up appearances for the most part. The new minister has been coming around, trying to convince me that Annie needs to be baptized.”
My head snapped in his direction. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
Eamon seemed surprised by my reaction.
“I’m serious. You wouldn’t ever get her baptized, right?”
The tone of my voice was almost defensive now, bordering on angry. But I couldn’t account for the anxious feeling that had gripped me when he said it. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t draw a full breath.
“No, we agreed we wouldn’t,” he answered, leaning forward to see my face. Then his hand lifted, his knuckles pressing to my cheek like he was checking for a fever. “June, you look like you’re going to be sick. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I tried to breathe. “I’m fine.”
I looked at my reflection in the side mirror, realizing that Eamon was right. The color had completely drained from my face.
“What else?” I said, dropping it. The knot in my chest was slowly unwinding.
“What else do you want to know?”
“How do we…” I tried to think of how to ask it. “Act?”
“Act?”
“Like, do we hold hands? Do we touch?”
Eamon was struggling now, the tension radiating from him.
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“What do you want me to say?” He shifted in his seat, irritated. “If you’re asking if we acted like we loved each other, then yes. We did.”
I fell quiet when Annie looked up between us, her brown eyes trying to read the dissonance that had settled in the truck.
Eamon gave her a reassuring smile, taking her small hand in his and raising it to his mouth. He kissed it, giving her fingers a squeeze before he let her go.
It was such a natural, intuitive movement, a reflex to seeing that subtle distress on her face. And it worked. Annie let her head fall against his arm, her eyes glittering as the lights of downtown Jasper came into view.
The road was the busiest I’d seen it. Even in 2023, the Midsummer Faire was something that no one in Jasper missed.
But in 1951, it wasn’t just an annual event, it was the one-year anniversary of Nathaniel Rutherford’s murder.
Three police cars were parked in front of the diner when we neared the white tent, and I clenched my fingers into a fist.
Over Annie’s head, I could feel Eamon give me an appraising look. The whole town was probably talking about seeing me in the back of Caleb Rutherford’s police car, and they’d have their own theories about why. It seemed like Caleb had kept his suspicion of Eamon quiet.
The tent erected over the bridge looked like the portal to another world, a blush-hued glow spilling from beneath its roof. Strands of glowing string lights stretched across the street outside, taking on the appearance of fireflies.
As soon as Eamon turned off the engine, I could hear the music—bluegrass. It was a timeless sound I could feel at home in. For a split second, the divide between the Jasper I knew and the one I’d fallen into felt almost nonexistent.
“You sure about this?” Eamon still had his hand on the keys, ready to start the truck back up and turn around.
“No,” I answered.
I got out anyway, waiting for Annie to hop out behind me before I shut the door. Eamon was at her side a moment later, and she stepped into the street, sticking close to him. His hand
floated into the air between us, and I drew in a deep breath before I took it, goosebumps racing over my entire body when his fingers folded between mine.
I swallowed hard when his grip tightened, pressing the wedding ring I’d put on between our fingers. He went still, lifting our hands between us, and then he turned mine over until he saw it. The small gold band gleamed in the soft light.
He stared at it, a gentle summer breeze catching the collar of his shirt.
I hoped he wasn’t hurt, but he didn’t betray whatever it was he was thinking. A second later, he was walking again, his hand still in mine.
The light from the tent framed the mouth of the river bridge, and we walked toward it, our three shadows moving side by side. Across the water, the white glow of the church sat nestled in the trees. It was nearly dark, but it all looked the same. The small parking lot that was half gravel and half grass. The crude fences of the churchyard, though they were narrower. They hadn’t moved them to expand the cemetery yet, and I found myself searching the distant green hill for the white headstones of the Farrows.
I forced myself to smile as we ducked inside, swallowed up by the sound of voices and the quick-step melody of a song.
The flowers we’d brought from the farm were woven into long garlands that were draped from each corner of the tent to the next, a cascade of golds and pinks that cast a rose-colored haze around us. Beneath them, the stage propped up a four-piece band consisting of a fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and steel guitar.
I ignored the feeling of eyes on us as Eamon pulled me through the crowd.
“Hey, June!” A woman about my age with copper-red hair squeezed my shoulder as I passed, giving me what appeared to be a genuine smile.
“Hey!” The response was automatic as I tried to place her face. Hers was one I definitely knew, painted in the background of some memory that hadn’t unfurled yet.
She waved, chasing a little boy toward the stage, and then she was gone, replaced by a dozen other faces.
When we spotted Margaret on the other side of the dance floor, Eamon let me go, and I was keenly aware when the warmth of him pulled away from me. He watched me until I made it to her, Annie on my heels, and then two men were drawing him into conversation.
Margaret’s bright eyes were sparkling over rouged cheeks, and her hair was pinned up, making her look several years older. The sleeves of her soft pink dress whisked at her shoulders, and a simple silver necklace with a small pendant hung around her neck.
She pulled me toward her, bouncing on her toes like she could hardly contain herself. “Was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
“You look beautiful.” I smiled, taking her in.
Her grin doubled in size. “Thank you.”
She scooped Annie up, setting her on her hip, and Annie’s hands immediately went to the sparkling pin in Margaret’s hair. But Margaret’s eyes were drifting across the dance floor, watching a young man with a crate of glasses in his arms.
It took me a moment to recognize him as the hired hand at the flower farm I’d seen the day I’d spent at Esther’s.
Margaret’s gaze followed him as he passed, her cheeks flushed a deeper red.
“And who is that?” I asked, giving her a knowing look.
“Just a boy.”
“Does he have a name?”
She glanced over her shoulder to Esther, as if to be sure she wasn’t listening. “Malachi.”
“Malachi Rhodes?” The name leapt from my mouth.
Margaret’s eyes widened, brows coming together. “How do you know that?”
I swallowed. “I heard someone say his name at the farm.”
I still wasn’t sure about the rules of interference. I was treading lightly, trying to make the fewest ripples possible, like Esther had said, and I had thought less about it with Eamon and Annie because they didn’t exist in my world. But Malachi and Gran had been close friends my entire life, so close that she’d insisted he play fiddle at her burial. I’d always wondered if there had ever been something between them. I’d even gone so far as to wonder if he may have been my mother’s father and my grandfather.
Margaret’s curiosity died with my less-than-interesting answer, and she swayed from side to side, rocking Annie in her arms. The music changed, and the crowd around the stage shifted shape, dispersing long enough for men with glasses of beer and women on their arms to weave along the edge of the dance floor. There were children chasing one another, and a group of a few black women in A-line dresses smoking cigarettes just outside. Beside them, a table was stacked with homemade desserts on pedestal stands.
My eyes found Eamon across the tent. He stood shoulder to shoulder with two other men, listening as one of them talked, a bottle of beer in one hand. The man’s red face was turned toward the lights, but Eamon’s was still draped in shadow.
“Who is that Eamon’s talking to?” I said, leaning closer to Margaret.
She lifted up onto her toes to see. “Oh, that’s Frank Crawley.”
Crawley. It took me a moment to remember. Frank Crawley was mentioned in the newspaper articles about the murder.
That’s where Nathaniel had been headed the night he died.
“He lives at the end of Hayward Gap. Another tobacco farm down the road from you,” Margaret said.
“The Crawley barn,” I murmured.
“What?”
Annie slid down from Margaret’s hip, pulling at her hand.
“That’s on our road?” I asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“No reason,” I lied. “Just trying to place everyone.”
I watched Eamon, studying the way he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his reserved expression contorted by the dim light. He’d left the Faire early that night when Percy Lyle came to tell him that Callie had gotten out of the paddock. He’d gone home. If the Crawleys lived at the end of our road and Nathaniel was headed there, there was every reason to believe that he and Eamon could have crossed paths.
What had the article said? That there’d been signs of a struggle?
On the tape that Caleb played, I’d said that Eamon left to go home around 5 P.M. If I’d gone home with Esther, that meant that he hadn’t come back to the Faire when he was finished dealing with Callie.
“Everything okay?” Margaret looked concerned now.
I forced another smile, catching Annie’s attention before I pointed in the direction of the dessert table. “Look what I found.”
Her mouth opened, eyes going wide, and I stared at her in awe.
She was so beautiful that it didn’t seem like she could be real, much less have come from me, and that set off a chain reaction inside of me. She was becoming so real to me now.
Too real.
“Think we should go get some of that cake?” Margaret tugged one of Annie’s braids playfully.
Annie nodded, and then she was running toward the tower of desserts, Margaret trying to keep up.
The flash of a bulb made me flinch, and I blinked the bright light from my eyes, finding its source across the tent. In one corner, a man in a suit stood behind a wooden tripod set with a large boxlike camera. He leaned over it, checking the settings, before it flashed again.
The pop was followed by a brief fizzing sound, and there was something about it that pulled at the edges of a thought. I focused on that feeling, trying to tug it to the surface. It was that flash. The sound of the bulb. I squinted, trying to remember.
The music cut out, and the bodies on the dance floor stopped whirling, strings of laughter drifting through the air.
When the fiddle started up again, it was slow, the notes pulling long before the mandolin joined in with a melancholy tune that made my heart ache. I could hear the river in the distance. The chirp of crickets carried on the wind coming off the mountains. They were the sounds of home, but here I was, in a sea of strangers.
I searched for Eamon again, finding him still standing in the same spot, but now another man had joined them. Eamon looked like he was only half listening, eyes scanning the room until they found me. The moment they did, my throat constricted.
He murmured something to the others, and then he was stepping through the crowd gathered between us. When he
reached me, he took my hand again. This time, it was with a confidence he hadn’t shown earlier. His fingers weaved with mine, and our palms touched before he set down the bottle of beer and pulled me with him.
We broke through to the other side of the dance floor, and he turned to face me. I looked around us, my breaths coming quicker as we drew attention, but this was why we were here, wasn’t it? To keep up appearances?
His arm came around me, his hand finding the crook of my waist with an ease that said he knew this body, its shape and form. The mere thought of it made me tremble, but the set of Eamon’s mouth looked like it physically hurt him to touch me.
I wasn’t all that sure I wasn’t hurting, too.
He held me closely as we began to move in a kind of dance I didn’t know. But somehow, my feet were following his, and slowly, the people around us seemed to forget we were there.
Their conversations grew louder as the song drew on, and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.
I stared at the way our hands fit together, wishing I could ask him to tell me more about us. To recount, from his perspective, how I’d decided to stay here. What words I’d said when I told him that I wanted to marry him. He had all of those memories, a bird’s-eye view of our story from beginning to end. I wanted so desperately to know it, but we couldn’t have a conversation like that in a place like this. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find a way to scratch its surface.
When I looked up at Eamon, he was watching me.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
The fiddle’s notes deepened, taking on a haunting tone, and I stretched my fingers between his, squeezing his hand. “Tell me.”
He considered his words for longer than I liked. I was afraid that he wouldn’t answer me, but then his mouth finally opened.
“It’s just that, sometimes, it feels like you’re back. But then I remember you’re not, and that makes me feel like”—he exhaled—“like I can’t breathe.”
The burn behind my eyes woke, making my throat ache.
Eamon wasn’t a simple man, but he had a simple life. And I’d chosen him. Margaret said that she believed I had my reasons for what I did, but I didn’t think they could ever justify what I’d put him through.
Again, the flash of the camera filled the tent, and the rising tide of a memory lapped at the edges of my mind. But this time, I didn’t chase after it.
Eamon didn’t take his eyes from me, holding my gaze. But he didn’t speak. His arm softened around my body, and I let my fingertips slide up his back, my face so close to his shoulder that I could catch the scent of him. This was the same touch I’d felt when I woke that morning in the house on Bishop Street. I’d heard his voice. Smelled him in the sheets. I had the distant sense that maybe I did really remember him, even before, like he was engraved on some part of me I couldn’t see.
I closed my eyes, letting the pictures flash in my mind. The way he’d kissed me beneath the willow tree. His hand sliding into my hair. His mouth opening on mine.
I was breathing harder now, pulling him closer to me so that the space between us disappeared. I let my head tip back, and his chin brushed the tip of my nose. I could feel his hand
closing around the fabric of my skirt, a clenched fist of emerald green.
His mouth was centimeters from mine, and my entire body was waiting for it. I was burning beneath my dress, a fire engulfing me as his breath touched my skin.
The sound of the fiddle suddenly snuffed out, and the world came rushing back: a smear of glowing lights, the hum of people, and the sound of the rushing river beneath the bridge.
Eamon’s grip on me tightened for just a second before he completely let me go.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “It’s too hard.”
He stepped backward, and the heat that had enveloped me bled away, leaving me cold. That muscle in his jaw was flexing again, his eyes finding everything in the room except for the one place I wanted him to look—at me.
“Eamon.” I said his name, and the light in his eyes changed.
He searched my face with an intensity that made my blood run faster in my veins.
But then he turned into the crowd, becoming no more than a shadow moving in the darkness on the street. I pushed into the crush of people, looking for a space I could get some air.
When I finally made it through to the edge of the tent where I could feel a breeze, I found myself beside the railing of the bridge. Below, the black river was invisible.
There was a pit in my stomach, a horrible, plummeting feeling that made me close my eyes. What was I doing? Why had I touched him like that? The same questions had been in that look on his face when he pulled away from me.
“Mrs. Stone.” I bristled when I heard Caleb Rutherford’s voice, flat as still water, at my back.
He stood a few steps away, a glass dangling from his fingertips as he leaned into the wooden post with his shoulder.
He wasn’t in his uniform, and for some reason, that made him even more intimidating. A light blue shirt was tucked into his gray trousers, the gold rim of his cigarette case visible from the top of the chest pocket.
“Hello.” The greeting was awkward, but I didn’t know what would sound the most normal. Had I called him Caleb before?
Mr. Rutherford? Sheriff Rutherford?
He took a step toward me, and I inhaled the scent of stale smoke and sweat, the hair standing up on the back of my neck.
I felt incredibly small next to him, and it was clear that was exactly what he wanted.
I shot a glance in the other direction, trying to spot Esther or Margaret, but the dance floor was filled with people again, blocking my view.
Caleb’s gaze didn’t break from me as he moved closer, putting himself between the edge of the tent and the place where I stood. “Enjoyin’ the party?”
I smiled. “I am.”
There was a beat of silence where his response would have naturally gone, but he let it expand, watching me shrink away from him just slightly.
“That’s good,” he finally said. “I’m sure you missed this place. Your family.”
I found the chain of the locket watch around my neck, fighting with it to give my hands something to do. But as soon as I realized the movement was drawing his attention to it, I instinctively turned a little away from him.
“I did,” I answered.
“You know, I’ve been thinkin’ about why you might have stayed away so long.”
“I was taking care of my—”
“Your mother.” He nodded. “That’s right.”
My palms were sweating now.
“The only thing is, I think you’re lyin’, June. I don’t know where you’ve been for the last year, but I don’t think you were in Norfolk. And it’s only a matter of time before I can prove it.”
He lifted the glass, taking his time as he drank the last of the beer.
“My only guess is that you thought if you stayed away long enough, all of this would go away. But it won’t.”
“Caleb.” His name slipped out, but I couldn’t tell if it struck him as odd. “I understand that you loved your father, and that you’re trying to get justice for him. But I don’t know anything about what happened to him that night.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about him.” His tone transformed, making me unsure if I’d heard him correctly. “He was a cruel bastard and no kind of father. But you already know that, don’t you?”
“What?” I said, hollowly.
I was frozen, telling myself that it wasn’t possible that Caleb could know who I really was. Even if he’d entertained the idea, he could never confirm it. The moment I thought it, I second-guessed myself. I had no idea when paternity testing was invented. Was there some way he could know?
“See, my father wasn’t right after you came to Jasper,” he continued. “He was consumed with this idea that you weren’t who you said you were. When Eamon started makin’
complaints, sayin’ he’d found him parked on the road, watchin’ the house, I realized somethin’ was wrong.”
So, Caleb’s suspicions had started before his father was murdered.
“He wouldn’t tell me the truth. Just kept sayin’ that you were sent to torment him. That the devil had cursed your family and that he had to protect us from it.”
“Why didn’t you say any of this when you brought me in?”
He didn’t answer, but I was already putting it together.
“You don’t want any of that on record, do you?” I said. “Not on the tape, and not in the statements.”
Caleb appeared to be amused by the suggestion. I was right.
He moved again so quickly that I didn’t see his hand coming until he’d already snatched up my arm. He squeezed it, making me gasp. But the music was filling the space around us. Laughter. A glass breaking.
“I see you, June Stone,” he murmured, his face close to mine. “You’re coverin’ for Eamon, and I’ll get what I need to prove it. Then you’re both gonna pay for what you did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I spoke through clenched teeth, fear coursing through me so swiftly that I could feel a scream trapped in my throat.
I could see the remnants of his father, our father, in that crazed look. It was the fractured man who stared back at me from that portrait in the diner. In the same breath, Caleb’s face blurred, interchanging with Nathaniel’s, those same black eyes boring into mine. It wasn’t the first time I’d tasted this fear.
The pain in my arm grew to a sharp ache before he suddenly let me go, and the easy smile returned to his face.
“Now, you enjoy your night.”
Caleb stepped past me and was swallowed up by the crowd.
I glanced around me, looking for anyone who may have been watching, but there was no one. I smoothed out the rumpled shoulder of my dress before I set a hand on my stomach, holding it there as a wave of nausea rolled over me.
I could still feel that cold air that surrounded him. I could feel the throb where his fingers had clenched down on my arm. There was no mistaking that look in Caleb’s eyes. He wanted to hurt me.
The pop and fizz of the camera’s flash sounded again and the darkness washed out, blinding me. When my eyes focused, they settled on an old woman behind the back end of the tent.
She wore a burgundy dress, her white hair pinned up on top of her head. She was watching me with ice-blue eyes, her wrinkled mouth twisting.
Mimi Granger. The woman who’d seen me running through her field that night.
The terror on her face was the same expression I’d seen that day I’d stood on the road in front of her house. She shuffled backward, a hand drifting out behind her as if she was afraid she might fall.
Her gaze didn’t break from mine as she shrank back into the party, and then her dress was no more than a stroke of blood red flitting through the crowd.
