he night played out in my head one frame at a time. TheT wood plank fence that stretched along the flower fields.
The aching cold in my hands as I stood over Nathaniel’s body.
The fireflies blinking in the dark as I ran. The clearest part of the entire thing was the sight of those clothes burning in the fireplace. I could almost smell them, even now.
“When I got to the river, it was dark,” Eamon began. “I didn’t see anyone on the road, but I kept my light off anyway, just to be safe. No one saw me.”
I stood before the bedroom window, watching Callie graze in the paddock.
“I found him right where you told me he’d be—at the bend before the footbridge.” Eamon appeared at the corner of my vision as he leaned into the wall beside the window. “I could tell by looking at him that it would be suspicious. There were marks on his arms, his face. I think maybe from when you were…” He couldn’t finish. “If someone found him like that, there would be questions. So, I decided to drag him downriver and send his body over the falls so that it would look like an accident. Maybe he’d had too much to drink at the Faire, or maybe he’d slipped and fell. There’d been a lot of rain that week, so the river was high. The current was strong.”
So, Eamon wasn’t a killer, but he wasn’t innocent, either.
We’d done this thing together.
“I put him into the water, and I thought I was close enough to the drop to be safe. It was so dark that it was hard to see, and I didn’t realize there was a fallen tree up the bank. He got caught downstream, and at first light, he was spotted by a fisherman.”
I tried not to imagine Nathaniel’s pale, tangled body half- submerged in the water.
“Sam came by late that night after they’d gotten the message that Mimi Granger had left at the sheriff’s office.
Luckily, I was already back, and we told him we’d been home all night. “But then people came forward saying they’d seen me arguing with Nathaniel in the weeks leading up to his death. Then when it got out that Mimi Granger had seen you that night, it drew even more attention.”
I closed my eyes, seeing it. Hearing it. My labored breaths as I tore through the sea of waist-high alfalfa, Annie in my arms. The pain in my foot from losing my shoe—the same shoe Mimi had found in her tedder, months later.
“No one had any reason to believe it. I don’t think they were even seriously considering what Mimi said until you left. The timing was suspicious, and the investigation went on, but no one could get ahold of you. When you didn’t come back, they started asking more questions.”
“Why didn’t we go to the police? Why didn’t we just tell the truth?”
“No one in Jasper would believe what really happened. No one was going to sit on a jury and fairly consider that the minister was a bad man or that he wanted to hurt you. That’s not the Nathaniel this town knew.”
The only other person alive who did was Caleb. That grim flash in his eyes when he talked about his father, our father, was unmistakable.
“I can’t believe I pulled you into this,” I murmured.
“You didn’t pull me into anything, June. You needed my help, and I gave it to you. You would have done the same for me.”
“But Caleb knows we’re lying, Eamon. He looked me in the eye and he told me he knows.”
“He can’t prove anything.”
I wasn’t convinced. He had more reason than ever to pursue us as suspects, especially after what he’d found in the house. It wasn’t proof, but it only corroborated that we had more interest in Nathaniel than we pretended to.
“He was willing to break the law, break into our home, to look for evidence.”
Eamon’s expression changed. I hadn’t meant to say our, but I had.
“What if Annie had been here?” My voice rose.
“She wasn’t.”
“What if he knows who I really am?”
“He doesn’t.”
I pressed my fingers to my mouth, shaking my head.
“There’s something else here. I just can’t see it yet.”
That’s what I’d been thinking for days. There was still more that I’d been hiding from everyone. Why leave at such a precarious time unless I had to?
The memories weren’t coming fast enough to answer all of my questions. And I didn’t know how much time we had to figure it out.
1912, 1946, 1950, 1951.
The years alternated in my mind, like flash cards.
Four years, four crossings, but my crossing in 1951 couldn’t have been predicted. Not unless it was planned.
I could see the two threads of my life.
The first was up to 2024, when I’d seemingly fallen for Mason and then went through the door only to meet Eamon. I made my choice. Lived five years with him, and then I’d left.
The second thread was the one I was living now. It spanned the same life until 2023, when my path was altered. I’d gone through the door early, and I’d never let myself fall in love with Mason. But somehow, I ended up where the first thread had ended.
Esther had called it an overlap, but it was more like folding time.
My eyes widened.
Eamon was watching me carefully now. “What?”
“Folding time,” I said, still trying to chase the thought down. “They’re becoming one. That’s why I’m losing memories. That’s why, in 2022, I started having episodes the exact month and day that I left here.”
“June, I’m not following.”
I pulled at the thought surfacing in the back of my mind, trying to gently coax it forward. I walked to the kitchen with heavy steps, yanking the drawers open until I found what I was looking for—a spool of thick brown twine and a paring knife.
I set the knife down on the small kitchen table, and Eamon came to stand on the other side, studying me. I took the end of the twine and tugged until it was strung through the air
between us. Then I pulled at its end with my fingers until the threads began unraveling.
“The curse isn’t the door, Eamon. It’s the splitting of time.
Esther says that our minds are like a fraying rope.” I let the loosening fibers work their way down the length of the twine.
“For every Farrow, it’s the same. Because we are one long, unraveling cord. Esther, Margaret, Susanna, me…we’re all connected.”
“All right.” He nodded, catching on.
“But how do you fix a fraying rope?”
“You…” He paused. “You cut it.”
“Exactly.” I picked up the knife, slicing through the twine in one motion. It left a clean edge. “Then you tie it off or burn it, whatever. You stop the unraveling.”
I twisted the cord in my fingers, still thinking. “That’s what I was trying to do. Fix it before Annie ever goes through the door.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know.” I dropped the twine, pacing now. “But it wasn’t an accident that I came here. It wasn’t an accident when I came here.”
I’d been retracing my steps through the unfolding narrative of my life and the winding path that had led me here. From the beginning, I’d been following a trail.
“I didn’t just see the door one day and walk through it. I’d gotten the photograph first. That’s what started all of this.
From there, I couldn’t let it go. My mother, the baptism records, the envelope with your address…they were like breadcrumbs. That’s what made me cross, and when I did, I created a timeline that overlapped the other one.”
“You could have ended up anywhere, though, right? How did you end up here?”
I sucked in a breath, putting it together. I reached up, clasping the locket watch in my fist. The door had brought me to 1951 because that’s what the locket was set to. The locket that Gran gave me.
“It was Margaret.” I whispered the name. “I couldn’t have done it alone. I would have needed help getting myself back here, because you can’t go to a time when you already exist.”
That was the thing I’d missed. The fact that the locket watch was set to 1951 wasn’t an accident. It had been set that way.
By Gran.
We pulled Annie from bed and got in the truck, driving the three miles to the flower farm as the sun rose over the Blue Ridge Mountains. By the time I was knocking on the beveled glass window of Esther’s front door, the memory was pushing into the light of my mind. It was only fragments, but it was there.
I need your help.
I’m speaking the words, but at first, I can’t completely hear them. I look around and see that I’m standing in the shade of one of the greenhouses with Margaret. Her face is softer, younger, as she looks up at me.
I’m watching over my shoulder, afraid that someone will hear us.
“I need your help,” I say.
Esther’s door opened, making the memory vanish, and I was back on the porch again, standing beside Eamon. The younger Margaret was gone, but the slightly older one stood before me now.
“Morning.” She tucked Annie’s hair behind her ear, letting the door open wider. “What are y’all doin’ here so early?”
Annie ran inside, but Eamon and I didn’t move.
She smiled. “June? You okay?”
“What’s all this?” Esther appeared in the hallway behind her, her hair long over her shoulder. She was missing her apron, too.
“It was you,” I said, gaze still pinned on Margaret. “Wasn’t it?”
Margaret gave a confused laugh. “What?”
“I came to you.” I pulled the memory back to the front of my mind. “I told you I needed your help.”
The smile on her face faltered then.
Esther looked between us. “Help with what? What are you talking about?”
I stared at Margaret. “What did you do?”
“Margaret?” Esther prodded.
Margaret was wringing her hands now, bottom lip trembling as she shot a glance at Eamon.
I took a measured step toward her. “You knew all this time.”
“I can’t.” Her voice scraped. “I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Tell me!” I took hold of her arms, squeezing.
“I promised you!” she cried, tearing away from me.
I let her go, and she stumbled into the porch railing, catching herself. She looked at the three of us with wide, glassy eyes.
“I’m not supposed to say anything. Not until you choose.”
“I gave you the envelope with the bluebell, didn’t I?” I said it out loud as it dawned on me. “I told you to help me come back here.”
Her red face was streaked with tears now, her hair falling from its braid.
“Margaret,” I said, more gently. “Tell me.”
When Annie appeared in the doorway, Esther shooed her back into the house. Then she came outside and closed the door.
Margaret wiped her face. “You said you had an idea about how to—” She stopped herself.
“It’s all right, honey.” Esther rubbed her back, smoothing her braid. “Take your time.”
“You had an idea about how to make it so Annie wouldn’t ever get sick, but you couldn’t tell Eamon because he wouldn’t understand. You said he’d stop you from doing what you had to do. You begged me.”
I could see it. I could almost hear my own voice saying the words. The memory was trickling in now. Margaret whispering. The slam of a door somewhere.
“You told me to keep the envelope safe. For a long time. I’m supposed to give it to you in 2022 so that you’ll come back here.”
I shook my head. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why not just explain?”
Now I was asking her to account for things she hadn’t yet done. That wasn’t fair. I knew it wasn’t, but I also couldn’t make sense of this.
“You said that you couldn’t know anything until the right time. If you did, it could change things. Set things off course.
I’m not supposed to tell you anything until you start to remember.”
My mind raced, trying to match the timeline with the one that would play out more than seventy years from now.
“But then so much time went by that…” Her voice broke. “I thought maybe I’d messed it up, somehow.”
“What exactly did I tell you to do, Margaret?”
“I’m supposed to give you the locket. You told me to set it to 1951, not before, so that you wouldn’t risk returning to a time where you were still here.”
You cannot go where you already exist.
That was one of the rules.
I’d kept the hallucinations from Gran and Birdie for nearly a year. What Margaret couldn’t have known was when she would die. Mailing the photograph might have been her last- ditch effort. Her Hail Mary, hoping it would start the chain of events before it was too late.
All of this was my doing.
“Where did I go when I left, Margaret?”
She stared at her shoes, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“It’s done now. I’m here. There’s no reason to keep it from me.”
She sniffed. “I need a piece of paper.”
Esther opened the door, and we followed Margaret inside.
She took a piece of paper from the desk drawer in the sitting room and sat down, with us peering over her shoulder. We watched as she drew two waving, intertwined lines that looked like a rope. It was eerily similar to the one I’d imagined when I was trying to explain it to Eamon.
He glanced up at me, thinking the same thing.
“This is the Farrow line. Two woven times.” Margaret’s face was still swollen, but she was calm now. Focused. She put an X at the right end of the rope and wrote 1950 above it. “This is where it becomes one timeline.”
“I don’t understand.”
From the X, she drew a single straight line. “When you left, you sent yourself to a place on the timeline that overlaps your life here. You thought that would make it so there was only one time.”
“This is insane,” Eamon muttered, his irritation not hidden.
“We made the plan, and you were going to do it the next time you saw the door. But then that night at the Midsummer Faire…” Her mouth twisted. “I tried to convince you to wait until things had died down, but you were worried that if Caleb found out the truth about that night, you’d be arrested. If that happened, you wouldn’t be able to cross like you planned.”
We were all quiet, waiting.
“The next time the door appeared, you left.”
“Okay, but where did I go, Margaret?”
She bit her bottom lip. “To 2022.”
Esther’s eyes went wide.
Margaret didn’t drop her gaze from mine. “You went to a place you already exist.”
I shook my head. “So I’m…gone.”
If there couldn’t be two of me, then I had to be. But this, what she was saying, that meant that I’d willingly ended my own timeline. My own life.
“What do you mean, gone?” Eamon’s voice was barely audible.
Beside me, Esther pressed a hand to her mouth.
“I killed myself?” I said it out loud.
“No.” Margaret’s eyes widened. “You found a loophole.
That’s all.”
My eyes narrowed on her. That was the word Esther had used.
“But what if it didn’t work? What if I was wrong about all of it?”
“You weren’t,” she said. “It’s already working.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to the straight, single line on the page before she picked up the pen. She continued the line by branching it into two that didn’t intertwine.
“There’s only one timeline now. This one and the one on the other side of the door. They can’t exist together anymore because you ended the fray. That’s why you’re losing memories.”
I hadn’t told Margaret that.
“That’s what’s happening right? You’re losing memories?”
Esther looked at me.
“So, what? I’m just going to lose my entire life?”
“Only if you don’t go back. You’re going to choose which life you want to live. If you stay here, then yes, you’ll lose your memories of that life. If you choose to go back, you’ll lose the ones from this one. You can’t have both. Not anymore.”
“Are you saying it actually worked?”
She nodded. “Yes. Once you lose all your memories of one life, your mind will exist only in one time. There’s no more fraying rope.”
I swallowed hard, chest burning with the breath I was holding. “So, it’s just…over?”
“For you and Annie, yes. Annie is an extension of your timeline. You thought that if you stopped the unraveling, it would keep hers from unraveling, too. If there’s no longer two timelines, the hope is that there’s no door connecting them. If there’s no door, Annie will never go through it.”
The four of us sat there in silence, the clock on the wall ticking.
“You said it was important that you had the choice.”
Margaret’s voice softened.
When Esther had first told me that, there was no choice. I was going back, no matter what. And I still could. But if I crossed again to 2023, there was no returning. That would be my third crossing, and I’d forget my life here. I’d forget Eamon and Annie. If I stayed, I’d erase from my mind the entire life I’d lived before I got here. I’d never see Mason or Birdie again.
“You knew everything,” I whispered. “All this time.”
I’d never doubted Gran’s love for me, but it went deeper and further back than I ever could have imagined. She had known that I would be left in Jasper as a baby. She probably knew the exact night that the sheriff would knock on her door with me in his arms. She’d been the person I trusted with this. The person I knew I could count on. That had always been true.
Susanna had gone to Esther to help her save her child. I’d gone to Gran.
The plan had been a detailed one. It was thought through, but it wasn’t without risk. The margin of error was enormous.
The only person Margaret had trusted with the truth was Birdie. The envelope she’d delivered to me that night,
couriered through time by Margaret, had that been her fail- safe? The locket, too, had been entrusted to her.
I made a promise. One I’ve kept for a very long time, Birdie had said.
“Who is Birdie?” I whispered.
Margaret didn’t look at me. Instead, her gaze went across the sitting room, to where Annie was standing on the stool in the kitchen. She was reaching for the jelly jar on the counter.
The hardening stone in my throat plummeted into my stomach, and I stared at her, her blond hair like glowing threads of gold in the light coming through the window.
Birdie.
She’d been a fixture in my life as long as I could remember.
The third member of our family. Gran’s oldest friend. But she’d been more than that, hadn’t she?
Annie Bird.
I could hear the name ringing in my head. I’d called her that, and looking at her now, I could see it. There was a sparkle in Annie’s eyes that hadn’t changed in seventy-two years. That golden-silver hair. The rise of her cheekbones. It was all there. In the face of my daughter.
I took a step toward her, then another, not stopping until I could touch her. She held the jelly-coated spoon in her hand, distractedly smearing it across a piece of bread as I wrapped her in my arms, a steady stream of tears falling into her hair.
I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around any of this. The woman I’d raised had then raised me. Then she’d sent me back in time to herself, and to her father. Did that make this a loop?
A never-ending story destined to replay over and over again?
All that time, she remembered me. She was just waiting for me to remember her.
“June,” Esther said, her voice frail. She was holding back the curtain of the window, watching as a cloud of dust drifted over the trees.
In the distance, another one appeared behind it. Cars on the road. And they were moving fast.
A faint twist ignited in my chest, the hair standing up on the back of my neck.
The sound of the sirens surfaced just before we saw them— police cars.
