he only person who knew the whole truth—all of it—wasT me. I just had to remember.
Annie was up first, feet shuffling from the sitting room as she rubbed her sleep-heavy eyes. I had a dress out waiting for her, and I helped her into it quietly as Eamon slept, braiding her hair down her back before I tied a little satin ribbon to its end. The strands were like silk in my fingers, that sweet smell of her filling my chest.
When she was dressed, I peeled one of the boiled eggs on the counter and cut a peach into slices, removing the skins without even thinking about it. The fact that she didn’t like them was another dredged-up detail that had the feel of something I’d always known.
I riffled through the chest of Eamon’s clothes until I found one of his button-up work shirts, a blue cotton with brown buttons. I pulled it on, tying up my hair with a bandana while I looked at myself in the mirror.
By the time he woke, I had breakfast ready, and Annie was on her way to Esther’s. I stood in the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, and I had his waiting. Black—he drank it black, I remembered.
He stalled when he came around the corner, eyes dropping to the shirt of his I was wearing.
“We’re smoking the fields today,” I said, before he could get out whatever he was thinking. “All of them. We’ll cut and clear as we go. Re-dig the ditches that need it.”
“What are you doing? Where’s Annie?”
“I had Margaret take her to Esther’s. She’s staying there tonight, too, in case we have to work late.”
Something passed over his face that I couldn’t read, and it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t want to stay here alone with me. Annie’s presence in the house was like a safety net between us in more ways than one.
“June—”
“Look, I know you don’t want my help. But we both know you need it if you’re going to keep from losing that crop.” I met his eyes.
His jaw clenched, and we stood there staring each other down until his gaze fell to the coffee. He picked it up, taking a sip. That was all the answer I’d get out of him, but he wasn’t arguing. That was good enough for me.
I headed for the back door with my own coffee in hand. The sweet smell of honeysuckle stirred in the air as the sun warmed the wind. The soil was turned out in the rows where Eamon had already torn up the infected tobacco, and if we were going to get every single plant treated by nightfall, we had to start working.
Callie stamped her hooves excitedly behind the fence when I made it to the barn, mane flicking as she shook her head.
“Hi, Callie.” I caught her nose with my hand as I passed, stroking along her chin before I opened the door.
Eamon was behind me a moment later, hanging a bucket of oats for her on his way to the barn. He got straight to work, fetching two chains from where they were hung on the post. I took another long drink of my coffee before I set it down and rolled up my sleeves.
“Okay. Tell me what to do,” I said.
For a second, I thought I saw the shadow of a grin at the corner of Eamon’s mouth, but he turned away from me, crossing the barn to the racks that were stored on the opposite wall.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ve just never known you to take orders.”
My lips twisted to hide my own smile. Were we joking now?
I watched closely as he assembled the rigging so that I could repeat the process if necessary. First he dumped the ash from the chambers, and then he refilled them with the contents of the metal containers I’d seen him open before.
“It’s chaff,” Eamon explained. “Burns for an hour, sometimes more, and that’s enough to cover about half an acre if you’re moving fast enough.”
“How many acres are there?”
“Twelve.”
I did the math in my head. That meant he was getting through about four or five acres a day. Between the two of us, we might be able to manage it all by sundown.
“How much have you lost?”
He set his hands on his hips, the number making his expression change before he said it out loud. “Almost two.”
So, he’d already taken a significant hit. I wondered if Esther knew the extent of it, or if he’d kept it from her.
“And how long until harvest?”
“I think I can start in another week. Maybe two.”
“All right,” I said, pushing away the next thought. I didn’t know if I’d still be there in a week. “Show me.”
He pulled two clean bandanas from his back pocket, handing me one, and we tied them around our necks. The process was a simple one, but it was tedious and time- consuming. Eamon filled the containers with chaff and lit them, and as soon as he closed the hatch, smoke began to spill from the holes punctured in the metal.
“You walk ahead of me, tear out anything sick. The bad ones need to be pulled up completely. At the end of each row, we switch.”
He said it like we’d done it before. We probably had.
We walked to the corner of the field, where the tobacco was most discolored, and I started up the row first, scanning the plants from bottom to top. It was only a few steps before I had to start cutting, gathering up the leaves in bunches before scraping them from the stalk.
Eamon followed at a slow pace, letting the smoke gather as he moved. It curled around the plants, bleeding between the rows before it drifted up into the air, hiding the blue sky. There was more sick tobacco than I expected, and I was tearing out plants more quickly than I wanted to, leaving holes in the field every ten to fifteen feet. Some of them had to come up completely, like Eamon said, and after the first several were pulled from the earth, I looked back at him, searching for any sign that he was anxious. But there was no point in dwelling on what was already done. The life of a farmer was a precarious one, every harvest season bringing with it its own
challenges and losses. This one could sink him, but all he could do was get the job done. That was the only thing he had control over.
When we reached the end of the row, Eamon set the rig on my shoulders and gathered up the fallen crop, hauling it to the end so it could be burned. The weight of the dowel wasn’t extraordinarily heavy, but it was uncomfortable, and the balance was difficult. It took a few minutes for me to get the trick of it, and even then, one dip to the side almost sent the canisters crashing to the ground.
“You said your father taught you how to do this?” I asked.
The question caught him off guard. “Yeah.” He started down the row ahead of me and I followed, squinting through the sting of the smoke to keep him in sight. My eyes were already watering.
“Where are they? Your family?”
A pause. “This is my family.”
My steps faltered, and the smoke thickened around me as the canisters swung, making it harder to see him. It wasn’t cutting or meant to make me feel guilty. It was just a simple, honest answer. One that made that knife in my gut twist.
“We came from Ireland when I was a boy. Everyone went their own way, eventually.”
He said it with no emotion or regret. It was so matter-of-fact that I didn’t know what to make of it.
“You never understood that,” he added.
He knelt, cutting at the base of one of the plants and tossing the leaves to the ground. He didn’t ever talk about the “us” that existed before. In fact, he seemed to carefully avoid it.
“When I met you, you had Esther and Margaret. Mason.”
His voice changed just a little when he said Mason’s name.
“And here I was, alone in the world. You thought it was sad.
But family, for me and my brothers, wasn’t the same. I didn’t really have a real family until…” He didn’t finish.
The knife twisted deeper.
Margaret was right that Eamon was a quiet creature. He spoke only when he had something to say, and he didn’t lace it in false meaning or palatable words. There was something so honest about him that it made me afraid of what else he might say now that he was talking. Like whatever judgment he might render me was bound to be true.
“And the farm?” I asked.
He smiled, but I could see only half of it with his face turned to the side. “Bought the land with money I saved working on the railroad, and the only reason I could afford it was because no one wanted it. The plot was rocky compared to the others in these mountains, but I’d grown up farming in Ireland, where the ground is more stone than earth. It took two years to get it cleared.”
That young Eamon from my memory came back to me, that shy smile he’d had when he appeared at the fence.
He walked ahead, cutting as he went, and we fell into a comfortable silence, working through the morning and then the afternoon with brief spells of conversation that were easier and easier to have. He told me about the first crop he ever harvested here, about building the barn and how he’d bought Callie half-starved at an auction in Asheville. They weren’t so much stories as they were excerpts from a kind of archive.
One that made up his life. But when he finally quieted, taking longer to answer my questions, I found I didn’t have much to say. There wasn’t anything I could tell him that he didn’t already know.
The smoke billowed every time we refilled the canisters, and it darkened the air between the tall plants until it looked
like dusk. Before I knew it, it was. The temperature cooled and we made it to the last field, my hands black with soot the way Eamon’s always were. My muscles screamed under the weight of the rigging, and when I made it to the end of the final row, Eamon was waiting for me.
I watched as he lifted the end of his shirt, wiping his face with it. Beneath was a plane of sun-gold skin that glistened over the muscles of his back. I could see the indented path I’d traced with the tips of my fingers at the Midsummer Faire.
He took the rig when I reached him, and I stretched my shoulders back, neck aching. The fireflies were awake, floating over the grass, and the house was dark, but the moon was still bright. He hoisted the rig up as I peeled off my gloves and as soon as we reached the barn, he lit the lantern that hung from one of the beams.
He took the lid from the bucket that sat on the chair in the corner, and the light rippled on the water inside. When I looked at him, he tossed me a rag, gesturing toward it. The smell of smoke still permeated the air, the same scent he carried with him into the house each night. It would probably be in my hair for days.
The chirp of the crickets outside was punctuated by Callie’s impatient snorts, and I looked around us, to the empty barn.
We’d been working side by side all day, but I hadn’t really felt like we were alone until now.
He unhooked the chains, dumping the ash into the bin against the wall, and I hung both pairs of our gloves on the hook, side by side.
I dipped my sore hands into the water, stretching my fingers beneath the surface. “Can I ask you a question?”
For once, Eamon didn’t stall. “Sure.”
“How did I tell you the truth about me? About where I’d come from?”
He stood from the rigging on the ground, untying the bandana around his neck. “You just told me.”
“When?”
“We were together one night, and you just said out of nowhere that you needed to tell me something. That you couldn’t marry me unless I knew the truth.”
Together one night. The words felt intentionally nondescript.
“I just told you and you believed me?”
He shrugged. “It was too impossible a story not to be true.
And it somehow made sense to me. I’d known for some time that there was something strange about you.”
“Like how Nathaniel felt about Susanna?”
“Maybe.” He answered honestly.
I looked around the barn and to the moonlit fields visible through the open door. This man who’d loved me, accepted me, was hanging by a thread. So was this farm. And the weight of responsibility I carried for that was unbearable.
“I want to say—” I breathed, trying to steady my voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything. For ruining your life.”
His brows came together as he studied me. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“Someone has to.” I tossed the rag to him, stepping aside so he could reach the water.
He took a step toward it, turning the cloth over in his hands before he dragged it over the back of his neck and started to
wash.
“You’ve been waiting for me to come back, haven’t you?” I said.
The line of his shoulders straightened. He ran both wet hands through his hair, raking it away from his face.
“You believed I was coming back.”
“I did,” he admitted.
He turned toward me, and I didn’t move as he came closer.
My eyes followed the curve of his throat to his shoulder, suddenly wanting so badly for him to touch me. To put his arms around me like he had at the Midsummer Faire. I wanted to feel him, like I had in that dream-steeped memory I’d woken to.
I looked up to find him watching me, his gaze fixed. Now he was recognizable in a bone-chilling way that made me hold my breath.
A bead of water dripped from his chin, and I watched his mouth, knowing exactly what it would feel like. What it would taste like. But he stopped a few inches away, waiting to see if I’d cross that space.
“You may have ruined my life, June. But first, you gave me one.”
My fingers found the damp fabric of his shirt and I pulled him into me, pressing my lips to his. The fever of it spilled over inside of me, the moment as sharp and precise as the edge of a blade. His mouth opened on mine, his tongue sliding over my bottom lip, and he came low, kissing me more deeply. His fingers moved down the length of me until he had a tight hold on the waist of my jeans. Then he was walking us back, pushing me up and onto the workbench without breaking his mouth from mine. The air around us was already on fire, but now I could feel it inside of me.
He moved between my legs, scooting me close enough so that he could press himself against me, and a helpless sound broke in my chest. His hands went into my hair, unraveling it down my back. He wasn’t being gentle or careful or waiting to see if I would follow him. He was a crack in a dam, a man who’d gone hungry. And I couldn’t pull myself from the all- consuming feeling that existed everywhere his skin touched mine. I didn’t want to.
Outside the barn, Callie grunted, and the fence creaked as if she were leaning against it. Eamon went still, breaking away from me.
His eyes were unfocused. The horse was snorting, feet stamping.
Eamon let me go, sliding from my arms. He walked to the door, listening.
“What is it?” I slid down from the bench. “Eamon?”
But he was already walking. He disappeared, and I took the lantern from the beam, following after him. He was headed toward the house, pace quickening as Callie cried out. We moved through the dark with the sounds of night all around us, and when the flash of a light flickered in the window ahead, Eamon broke into a run.
I stopped short, lantern swinging. There was someone in the house.
I ran after him, losing sight of his shadow as the back door slammed closed. I lifted the lantern, hissing when the flame- heated glass burned my arm, and when I came through the door, Eamon was pushing into the bedroom. But movement in the sitting room drew my eye, and I squinted, mouth dropping open when I saw him.
Caleb.
He stared at me from across the house, feet shuffling backward, toward the front door. When Eamon came back into the kitchen, he froze, following my gaze.
Caleb made it out onto the porch, his footsteps pounding on the steps as Eamon followed. But before he reached the door, he took the rifle from the wall.
“Eamon!”
I set the lantern on the counter, nearly toppling it over as I wove around the table, past the sofa. They were almost invisible when I made it outside, Caleb’s white shirt the only movement in the dark.
“Eamon!”
The sound of the rifle cocking echoed out in the night just as Caleb reached his car, parked up the road. The sound of the shot tore through the silence, and then Eamon was cocking it again, setting the gun against his shoulder and taking aim.
The headlights of Caleb’s car illuminated, the engine roaring to life just as I reached Eamon, and I took hold of his arm. But the gun fired again, making me recoil when the sound exploded.
I shoved into him, forcing the gun down, and Eamon watched, his face contorted with rage, as Caleb drove away.
“What are you doing?” I screamed.
Eamon pushed past me, back toward the house, and I caught him by the wrist. “Eamon!”
He didn’t answer, tucking the gun beneath his arm and pulling free of my grasp.
“Stop!” I followed him inside, but he didn’t return the rifle to the wall. Instead, he took the truck keys from the hook.
I tore them from his hand, holding them away from him.
“Eamon, stop.”
Finally, his eyes locked with mine, and he went still long enough for me to set my hand on the center of his heaving chest. He was coming back into himself now, his breaths slowing.
When he didn’t move, I reached for the gun, and he let me take it. Carefully, I hung it back on the wall, staring at the gleam of light the lantern painted on its barrel.
The trembling was starting, finding my hands first. There was no doubt in my mind, when I looked at him, what he would have done. He would have killed that man right there on the road. He was ready to do it.
I blinked, forcing myself to turn back to the house. The contents of the room were toppled, drawers opened and papers littering the ground.
“What was he looking for?”
Eamon didn’t answer.
“Is there anything he could have found?” I said, warily.
“Anything at all? Evidence?”
He leveled his gaze at me before he shook his head once.
My heart sank. Was this an unspoken confession?
“You’re sure?” I whispered.
“Everything’s gone.” His deep voice made the trembling in my hands deepen.
I pinched my eyes closed, my head splitting with pain. The smell of smoke was in the air again, but this time, it was different. I could see the lick of flames. Feel the heat of them.
But the fireplace was cold. It was another memory, skimming the borders of my mind. It was too far away. Too fractured.
“I talked to Caleb at the Midsummer Faire.” I pressed a hand to my head. “I should have told you.”
“What?”
“He threatened me.”
“Threatened you how?” Eamon’s voice was even, but it had taken on a new tone. One that scared me.
“He said that we’re going to pay. That he’s going to find proof that we’re lying.” I pushed through the door to the bedroom, trying to breathe as I searched the room around me.
Everything was scattered. Clothes covered the floor, the wardrobe emptied. The pages of the books that had been on the shelf were torn from their spines. The wind poured through the open window, catching their edges, and they looked like the petals of a flower torn from the stem.
I went to the bed, using both hands to shift the mattress down before I reached behind it, searching for the burlap fold I’d hidden there. The newspaper clippings. The photograph.
The page with the years I’d written down. But my hand found nothing.
They were gone.
