looked around me, turning slowly in a circle. My breathI shook when I caught sight of the freshly paved road winding between the fields like a snake disappearing into the hills.
The truck had vanished.
I was standing in the same spot. The exact same place where I’d pulled over only minutes ago. I knew where I was, but this road was…new. The air was filled with the smell of black, pebbled tar, the cracked pavement and rusted guardrails gone.
The fields surrounding me were missing fences. Barns. There were giant old trees where I’d never seen them. And a tiny wood-framed house sat where there had been nothing before.
“Wake up.” I spoke the words aloud, but they were muted in my ears. “Wake up!”
My voice broke through the wind, my vision sharpening on the world around me. It was too clear. Too specific. This wasn’t the distant, dreamlike glimpses I’d seen before. It felt real. Visceral and detailed. This was something else.
Something impossible.
My eyes focused on the tilted silver mailbox fixed to the fence post on the side of the road. It was painted with the name GRANGER.
My mind stumbled from one thought to the next before a screech echoed out and the screen door of the little house rattled closed. At the top of the steps, a short, gray-haired woman was watching me, eyes wide.
“Excuse me.” I lifted a desperate hand into the air, barely getting the words out.
It wasn’t until I took another step that I could read that look on her face. Shock. Terror, even. She scrambled backward, catching the door with her hand, and then she disappeared, slamming it behind her.
My eyes jumped from one darkened window of the house to the next. There was no movement, no sounds coming from inside, but I could feel her watching me, eyes peering through the glass.
I pressed a trembling hand to my hot forehead as I tried to think. There weren’t any other houses that I could see. No one in the fields or on the road.
I reflexively reached for my back pocket. My cellphone, my
keys, everything was in the truck.
Trust me.
The words that had been scribbled on the back of the envelope Birdie gave me were a faint whisper now. The problem was, I didn’t trust anyone anymore. Not even myself.
I ran one hand through my hair, pinning it back from my face. If I’d crossed time, like Birdie suggested Susanna had done, then I wasn’t in 2023 Jasper anymore. That didn’t give me many options.
I started walking in the direction I’d come from, steps faltering when I passed the spot on the road that the Bronco had been. I was almost sure I could hear the rumble of the engine somewhere far in the distance. I could even smell the exhaust on the wind. It was like before, when I’d see or hear
things that weren’t really there. Except now it felt like I was on the other side of those visions.
I walked toward the cascade of mountains in the distance.
Those peaks and valleys, at least, hadn’t changed, and the farther I walked, the more I was piecing together my surroundings. The riverbank looked different, more overgrown and wild with the water half-hidden by the thick brush. But there were subtle things that helped me keep my bearings, like a particular curve in the road or a tree I thought I recognized.
When I made it back to Hayward Gap Road, it wasn’t marked. The tar crumbled onto the shoulder, where years of tire tracks had worn it down, carving a dirt track. It was lined with a wooden fence, and beyond it was the hill I’d seen yesterday, arcing up on one side before the land came rolling back down.
The rumble of an engine sounded before a truck appeared in the distance, and I squinted, trying to make it out. It was an old model. Not old like the ones in the Jasper I knew, 1990s trucks and station wagons that had been turned into utilitarian farm vehicles. No, this truck was much older, its deep blue paint gleaming as the sun flashed off its fender.
The driver didn’t seem to notice me on the side of the road until he’d already passed, and the truck suddenly slowed, as if he’d hit the brakes out of a sudden reaction. But just as soon as I was sure he’d stop, he started moving again, faster this time.
An eerie feeling crept over me, my breath curling tightly in my chest. As soon as the truck disappeared around the bend, I stepped off the shoulder of the blacktop and onto the dirt road.
I followed it, wincing when the sight of the chimney came into view. The same one I’d seen not even an hour ago. But now there was smoke drifting from its mouth.
The leaning, termite-eaten structure that had stood at the bottom of the hill was gone. Transformed. The farmhouse was
nestled before the tree line that followed the creek stretching into the distance. The red brick still had its color, the wooden siding painted in a pale yellow. And behind it, acres and acres of tobacco grew in rows taller than I stood. The crumbling barn was no longer the bare remnants of a structure. It was whole.
I was frozen, half expecting the entire scene to disappear into a swirl of smoke as it had before, but it didn’t. The minutes just kept passing. Time kept moving. And I had, somehow, crossed it.
The overwhelming sense that I knew this place was even stronger now. Almost unbearable. The windows of the house were dark, but the distant sound of a hammer wove through the air, a sharp ping that grew louder the closer I came. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I could see the open doors of the barn, a few chickens scratching in the dirt.
I set both hands on the closed cattle gate, waiting for someone to appear.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice unsteady.
The thud of hooves drew my eyes from the barn to the paddock, where a horse was watching me from behind the fence. Dust kicked up into the air, casting it in a glow, but I knew. It was the same horse I’d seen before. The chestnut. She had one wild eye fixed on me as she stamped the ground, her head craning as she snorted.
The piercing ring of the hammer went on in a steady beat, echoing out over the fields. I lifted the latch of the gate and let it swing open, stepping onto the drive that stretched to the house from the road. Wild, wispy grasses lined the path that led from one side of the porch to an overgrown garden filled with weeds. I followed it, searching for the source of the sound.
The horse trotted along the fence of the paddock anxiously.
Her chocolate-colored coat was tinged with bronze, her mane catching the light. When I took another step, she whinnied, nostrils flaring.
“Hello?” I called again, coming around the house slowly as the pounding grew louder. It stopped suddenly as I made it to the corner of the porch, and my eyes landed on a figure standing on the other side of the barn.
A man.
His gaze was on the horse, as if he’d come out to check on her. A hammer hung heavy at his side, and I could hear the low, faint rumble of his voice as he made his way toward her.
He reached up, running one hand up the creature’s snout.
The mare calmed for a moment, breaths slowing, and the man’s eyes followed her gaze in my direction. His dark hair was falling to one side, tucked behind an ear and curling at its ends. The suspenders that hung from his belt were slack against his legs, his white shirt damp. And when his eyes finally focused on me, his whole body went rigid, making me flinch.
I lifted a hand against the harsh light of the glaring sun, trying to make out his face. “Hello?”
He visibly exhaled, his chest deflating beneath the pull of his shirt, but he said nothing as he stood there, staring at me.
And then, suddenly, he was walking. The hammer slipped from his fingers, hitting the ground, and he stalked toward me with an intensity that made me move backward. When he didn’t slow, I glanced at the road. Then to the house. There was no one else here.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“W-What?” I dropped my hand as he came closer.
“I said what the hell are you doing here, June?”
I gasped when I heard it. Not just my name, but my name spoken in that voice. The one that whispered in the dark. The one that had been like fire on my skin. I knew that voice.
I took another step backward, hitting the porch railing with a shoulder before he reached me. When he finally did, he was so close that I had to tip my head up to look at him.
“I’m sorry, did you say—”
The words sputtered out as I frantically studied his face. His eyes. They were a deep brown, with the same bronze hue that the sun had lit in that horse’s mane. And for just a moment, I was sure that I’d seen them before.
“Do you know me?” I whispered.
“What?” He was moving even closer now. So close that I could feel the heat coming off of him.
“You said my name.”
His full lips parted, face twisting in confusion. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I blinked, turning the sound of his voice over in my head.
There was a faint accent to his speech that pulled at the vowels and sharpened the words. It was definitely the one I remembered.
He stared at me, waiting, but I hadn’t figured this part out yet. I hadn’t had any time to think about it. I hadn’t had a plan when I walked through that door.
“I’m looking for someone.” I took hold of the first thing I could think of. “Susanna Farrow.”
His eyes narrowed as he drifted back, putting inches of space between us. There was something changing in his manner now. A shift somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Rutherford,” I corrected. “Susanna Rutherford. Do you know her?”
“What is this?” He said it so softly that it sounded like he was asking the question of himself, not me. He looked almost…wary.
“I’m looking for Susanna. Do you know where I can find her?” I sounded even less sure than I was. And it occurred to me all at once that he wasn’t asking about what I wanted. He was asking about me.
His hand came between us suddenly, snatching up my wrist.
Before I could even react, he was pulling my arm long between us.
“What are you doing?” I tried to yank free, but his fingers clamped down harder.
I watched, gasping, as he pushed up the sleeve of my shirt and turned my hand so that the skin of my forearm was bare between us. His breaths were coming faster now, his grip squeezing tighter, but I didn’t know what he was looking for.
And then, all of a sudden, he let me go, taking several steps backward.
I pulled my arm into me, wrist screaming with pain.
“You’ve never been here, have you?” he said.
“Been here?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked. “We’ve never met.”
“No.” Again, I looked to the empty road. “I told you—”
“Christ, June.” He dragged both hands over his face, pressing them to prayer in front of his mouth, and there it was again. That familiar way he was saying my name. “What did you do?”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He wasn’t talking to me, either. Whatever was unfolding behind his eyes was invisible to me. It took him a moment to blink, to come back to himself.
“Did anyone see you?” His attention went to the road.
“Have you spoken to anyone at all?”
“Look, I don’t understand what—”
“Has anyone seen you.”
The woman on the porch and the truck on the road both flickered through my mind.
“You need to get inside.”
He brushed past me, going up the steps of the porch and pushing into the house. His boots hit the floor in a way that made me remember the ghost of a sound I’d heard so many times before. That steady, hollow beat.
I followed him, stopping in the doorway when I thought better of what I was doing. Walking into the home of a strange man I’d never even met. But it was obvious that he knew something. There was some piece of this that he had and I didn’t.
My eyes moved around the small house, finding everything the light touched. The fireplace still glowed with embers, a small sofa covered in a quilt set before it. There was a broom in the corner. A cedar chest. A framed cross-stitch of a bouquet of flowers on the wall. Beyond the living area was a small kitchen and another closed door.
He pulled up his suspenders, tugging on a thick canvas jacket that he’d taken from the hook beside the door. “Stay here.”
“You’re leaving?” The words came out stilted. I was still standing on the porch, hands pressed to either side of the doorframe.
He took a ring of keys from his pocket, waiting for me to step inside. But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. In fact, it
looked like he was taking great care not to. “If anyone knocks on the door, don’t answer it. Stay in the house.”
“But—”
Again, his jaw clenched, the tension of it traveling down to his shoulders. His arms. “You want to know about Susanna?”
His voice took on an edge.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then wait here.”
My eyes moved from his face to the clench of his hand around the keys. The veins that straddled his knuckles were raised beneath the skin.
I’m not sure what made me decide; in fact, I was almost convinced I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. But this man knew me. He knew my mother.
He shouldered past me as soon as I stepped inside. “Lock the door.”
It closed heavily behind him, making the windows in the house rattle. I went to the nearest one, watching him open the cattle gate and then climb into the truck. He fought with the gears once the engine was running, and a cloud of dirt kicked up into the air as he pulled onto the road.
Then he was gone.
I let go of the curtain, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.
Almost impulsively, I turned the dead bolt lock on the door, pressing my trembling fingers to my lips. What exactly had I done?
I replayed it, step by step. Coming around that corner to see Birdie in the sitting room. That look on her face. The way her hands trembled when she handed me that envelope. I’d done as she said. I’d gone through the door. But now what?
The house was silent around me except for the sound of my own breathing, and I tried to slow it. I was afraid to turn back around. To see with my own eyes any shred of familiarity. The extra pair of boots by the door. The kettle on the counter. The box of matches on the fireplace mantel. A rifle on the wall.
The possibility that this was all in my head was shrinking by the second. If I was imagining this, then I wasn’t just having an episode. I was lost in a labyrinth. I was so deep I’d never be found.
I took a tentative step away from the window, making my way across the knotted rag rug that covered the floor. It was made with fabric scraps in every color, faded and frayed along the edges. I took in every detail. The small table between this room and the next was fit with four wooden chairs, one of them missing a spindle from the back. The cast-iron pan on the stove was still just barely warm to the touch.
It wasn’t just a house. This was a home.
My hand slipped over the butcher block as I made my way to the closed doorway across the kitchen, something pulling me toward it until I was reaching for the cold metal knob. I pushed it open and the sunlight that was trapped within flooded out.
I studied the small room. There was a simple bed, a small dressing table, a closed wardrobe. It wasn’t the kind of space that only a man filled. It was feminine. Gentle. But I hadn’t seen a woman out at the barn. Whoever she was, she wasn’t home.
My eyes fixed on the bit of fabric closed in the door of the wardrobe, a dusty pink check that couldn’t belong to the tobacco farmer. I could still feel something beckoning me into that room. To the wardrobe. I could feel it guiding my drifting hand to that latch. And when I pulled it open, my gaze flitted over what lay inside.
Boots smaller than the ones by the front door. A thick wool coat. A few dresses and a couple of pairs of denim overalls. A small stack of folded colored fabric that looked like the bandanas we wore on the farm.
I turned back to the room, sifting through the items that likely didn’t belong to the man. A tortoiseshell comb, a small dish that held a thin gold ring. An hourglass-shaped silver bottle that looked as if it held perfume. I picked it up, bringing it to my nose, and I breathed in the soft scent of rose and orange. My throat constricted, like it might make me cry.
A part of me felt the photograph before I actually saw it. In the mirror’s reflection, I spotted a small frame on the table beside the bed. A mother-of-pearl oval with a black-and-white picture behind the glass.
I set the bottle down, turning toward it, and slow, hesitant steps took me across the room. I had to pick it up to believe it.
I had to hold it in my hands.
I unclenched my stiff fingers from my damp T-shirt, picking up the frame. There, the man who lived in this house had his arms wrapped around a woman, her face pressed to the crook between his shoulder and his throat. A wide smile was on her lips, but it was the birthmark that made me feel like I had just been nailed to the floor. Below the ear, tucked beneath the jaw.
I reached up, touching the mark that traced down my own neck with trembling fingers. It was me.
It was me.
The picture slipped from my fingers, glass shattering as it hit the ground, and then I was moving through the house.
Toward the door. I flung it open, my feet finding the steps, and then I was at the gate. The road. The turn that led to town.
And I ran.
