nnie looked up at me, the spoon still clutched in herA hand. Across the room, Eamon had gone white.
The sound of the sirens grew louder as I picked Annie up, hugging her to me just long enough to kiss her face. Then I crossed the room, eyes on Margaret.
“Take her,” I breathed, setting Annie into her arms. “Go to the barn.”
Margaret didn’t hesitate, heading straight for the back door.
Annie was still watching me over her shoulder before the screen door slammed and they disappeared.
“Eamon, listen,” I said.
He wasn’t looking at me. His gaze traveled down the hallway, where Esther was unlocking a cabinet at the bottom of the stairs.
Through the window, I watched as the cars pulled into the drive too fast, slamming on their brakes, and then the doors were opening. I saw Caleb first. He was wearing his uniform again, his hat fixed on his head and his pistol at his hip. When the driver of the second car got out, I recognized Sam’s dark mustache.
I stood in the open doorway, my heart breaking into a sprint.
He wasn’t here for Eamon. Caleb’s eyes were fixed on me.
The door to the cabinet opened behind me, and I froze when I saw Esther take a rifle from inside. In the next breath, she was handing it to Eamon.
“Don’t!” I tried to catch hold of him as he stalked outside, but he pulled free of me, going down the steps. “Eamon, don’t!”
Caleb and Sam both drew their guns the moment they saw him. Eamon had the rifle at his side, ready to raise it.
Sam’s hand lifted in the air. “Eamon, let’s just calm down now.”
“Get the hell out of here.” Eamon’s eyes were on Caleb.
But that smug look on Caleb’s face told me everything I needed to know. Somehow, he’d gotten what he needed, and now he’d come for me.
He pulled the handcuffs from his belt just as I heard Margaret’s voice behind us. “Annie!”
I turned. Annie was running up the fence toward us, Margaret chasing after her. I caught Annie in my arms, and when Caleb took a step in our direction, Eamon lifted his gun.
In an instant, Sam and Caleb raised their pistols. Both were pointed at Eamon.
I turned my body, putting myself between Annie and the aim of the guns.
“Daddy?” Annie’s voice was bent. She stared at him over my shoulder.
I lifted a hand slowly, setting it on his arm. “Eamon.” I kept my voice even. “Stop.”
He didn’t look at me, every muscle in his body coiled so tight that the gun in his hands didn’t so much as shake.
My fingers curled around his wrist. “You pull that trigger, and she’s alone,” I whispered. “Do you understand?”
His chest rose and fell for several seconds before his grip loosened on the barrel.
“Put it down before one of them shoots you.”
After another breath, he listened. The barrel lowered, the butt of the gun still pressed to his shoulder, and Sam moved closer, placing himself in front of Eamon with his aim still trained at his chest.
Caleb’s eyes drifted to me. “Sam, get the kid so I can place Mrs. Stone under arrest.”
Sam holstered his gun, reluctantly moving toward us.
Annie’s fingernails scratched around my neck as he reached to pull her from my arms. She screamed.
“June Stone, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Nathaniel Rutherford,” Caleb began.
Sam tried to take hold of Annie again, and she wrapped her legs around me, hands tangling in my hair.
When she screamed again, Eamon’s fist flew through the air, catching Sam in the face with so much force that he went to his knees. He wrenched Sam up by the collar, throwing him back.
I ducked, tightening my arms around Annie, one hand holding the back of her head as she cried into me. The distinct click of metal was what made them stop swinging. From where I was crouched, I looked up over Annie’s hair to see Caleb with his gun drawn. Now it was pointed at me.
Eamon still had Sam by the shirt, and I could see him thinking it—wondering if he could get to Caleb before he pulled that trigger.
Margaret’s feet were moving slowly in my direction, and I peeled Annie off of me, handing her over before I stood.
“Mama!” She was looking at me now with wide, terrified eyes.
“It’s okay, baby.” I smiled through tears as Margaret carried her, still screaming, into the house.
“Go inside, Esther.” My voice wavered.
She didn’t move, looking from me to Eamon.
Eamon had his hands lifted in the air now, Sam standing between him and Caleb. There were a few seconds where I didn’t know what he was going to do. Charge him? Kill him?
Get the two of us in the truck and run?
A sharp, familiar tingle raced up my spine, spreading until an unmistakable feeling settled inside of me. The sensation made me still, and a cold wind bled into the hot air, twisting around the place where I stood.
Caleb’s voice drew on, indecipherable as the world stopped turning. And it did. Time stopped, and I could feel it—that same pull of gravity. The bloom of brightness behind my vision. That floating feeling that filled my body. Slowly, I turned my head toward the fields, knowing exactly what I would see there.
The red door.
It stood among the dahlias, their heavy blooms rocking back and forth. The frame of the door looked like it had just sprung from the earth, the bronze handle glinting beneath a tangle of vines bursting through the door’s cracks.
The flash of sunlight on the cuffs in Caleb’s hand made me blink again, but I could only faintly hear him talking. It was like the sound of running water now, and the only thing that
pierced that resonance in my head was Eamon’s voice saying my name.
“June?”
I blinked, eyes heavy. He looked at me over Sam’s shoulder, his brow furrowed as he studied me.
He followed my gaze in the direction of the fields, but he couldn’t see it. None of them could. No one, except Esther.
She stared at me, one hand balled in her skirt, and once Eamon saw her, he put it together. He glanced again to the field. It was empty to him, but he knew.
“Is it there?” he asked, voice tight.
Caleb looked between us, suspicion gathering behind his eyes. “Is what there?”
I nodded, throat aching. I couldn’t speak.
Eamon swallowed. “Go.”
I stared at him as two tears fell in tandem down my cheeks.
He was telling me to leave. To save myself. But if I did, I’d never be able to come back.
“Go,” he said again.
In a fraction of a second, two paths unfolded before me. The one I’d seen in those memories of Mason, something I’d always secretly wanted. And then there was this one, with Eamon. A simple existence in the little house on Hayward Gap Road in the time I actually belonged.
It was such an easy thing—that choice. I’d already made it.
I smiled, meeting his eyes for another second, before I turned, walking straight toward Caleb. I could hear Margaret crying inside the house.
“June.” Eamon’s voice rose, his breaths coming quicker now. “June, don’t.”
But I was already holding my hands out in front of me. I locked eyes with Eamon as Caleb fit the handcuffs around my wrists.
“I love you.” My mouth moved around the words, but I couldn’t hear them.
“June!”
Caleb pulled me toward the car, and I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through the cry that was climbing up my throat. He put me in the back seat as Esther stood on the steps, staring helplessly.
The door slammed closed, and then the engine was running.
I could feel Eamon being torn from me as the car pulled onto the road. He was the knotted rope that had pulled me from one time to the next.
I didn’t look back out that window as we reached the hill. I didn’t want to see him or the house or the farm grow small.
There were none of those things where I was going.
Instead, I let my eyes fall on the field, where the flowers grew, a calm flooding through me.
The red door was gone.
