The Unmaking of June Farrow(11)

Four


I woke with arms around me.

The first swimming thought that bobbed to the surface of my mind was that I could smell something. A wild scent that reminded me of summer, like fresh wood and new grass and the sweet fragrance of blooming flowers on the farm.

I breathed it in, tasting it on the back of my tongue, and the weight of an embrace gently drew me closer. In the haze of my thoughts, I could feel the warmth of someone at my back, the line of a body pressed to mine. The faint echo of a touch moved over the back of my hand, slipping between my fingers. The tingle of it traveled over my skin, along my temple, down the center of my spine. And when I heard the sound, it was just a whisper, but it was so close to my ear that I could feel breath on my cheek.

“June.”

I gasped, choking as I sat up. I threw off the quilts, and the room came alive around me in the first moments of sunlight before I stumbled out of the bed, pressing myself to the wall.

Before me, the bed was empty—a pile of quilts and tangled sheets.

My fingers went to my cheek, and I rubbed the place I’d felt that warmth. My ear still tingled with the sound. It was so close. So real.

I paced back to the bed, slipping my hands beneath the sheets and frantically searching for the heat I’d felt. But it was cold on the other side of the bed. I was alone.

I stood there, staring into space until the churn in my stomach made me swallow hard. My feet clumsily found their way to the corner of the room, and I pressed myself into it. My skin was burning, my chest tight, and it occurred to me all at once that I might be having a panic attack. I went still, pinning my eyes to a small tear in the wallpaper. I had to breathe. I had to slow down my heart rate.

My hand reached out, steadying me against the window’s ledge as I sank down, and I pulled my knees into my chest, trying to take deep, even breaths. I pushed that feeling away until the space around me took shape into something reassuringly familiar. I was home. In our house. I was safe.

One, two, three.

I counted my breaths in a repeating sequence until my trembling slowed. The fever that had been under my skin was fading, replaced by a brittle cold.

“It’s not real,” I whispered on an exhale, forcing myself to count again.

But in that moment, it had been. And it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that voice, either.

The deep tone was something I could pick out now, the U in my name distinct and bent in a peculiar way. I’d first heard it at the farm the day the episodes began, calling out my name again and again. Now, almost a year later, I knew it the way I knew the sounds of this house or the rush of the river. That voice was an echo across the pages of my notebook.

I’d had dreams that tiptoed along the edge of reality before. Ones that pushed me from sleep with tears streaming down my temples or a scream trapped in my throat. In those dreams, it was as if my body and mind had bled into another world, only to surface too hard and too fast in reality. But this wasn’t like that. This . . . this was like someone had come through that barrier from the other side. Like those arms around me had reached through my mind, into my bedroom.

The sun had risen by the time I came downstairs, my hair pulled into a half-hearted bun at the nape of my neck. Birdie’s overnight bag was already sitting at the bottom of the steps, and I was relieved to see it. After what happened yesterday, I was almost sure that she would cancel her trip to Charlotte.

She was sitting in her usual seat at the table, a cup of coffee steaming beside the Jasper Chronicle. The headline announced the official schedule of the Midsummer Faire, the town’s largest and oldest event, which took place on the summer solstice. Local makers and craftspeople set up on Main Street to showcase their goods, and people came from neighboring towns for the music and dancing.

Birdie pretended not to watch me from the top of her gaze as she smeared cream cheese onto the toasted bagel in her hand.

“Morning.” I kept my back to her, taking the half-full pot of coffee and pouring it into a mug. The little sugar spoon clinked against the ceramic as I dumped two spoonfuls into the coffee and stirred.

“Morning, honey.” The newspaper crinkled as she turned the page.

I clutched the mug to my chest, leaning one hip into the counter as I faced her. It was our usual rhythm, except that a week ago, Gran would be sitting beside her. I couldn’t help but notice that Birdie’s plate and newspaper were set squarely to one side of the table, as if she’d subconsciously left room for Gran’s breakfast.

She tore the bagel in two. “When are you going to tell me what’s goin’ on in that head of yours?”

“Nothing’s going on.” I brought the mug to my lips again, trying to hide the nervous twitch of my mouth.

I was still thinking about the feeling of that body pressed to mine. I’d known for most of my life that certain things weren’t in the cards for me. The kind of relaxed, lived-in love where you woke up together in the morning was one of them. I’d been clear on that. With Gran, Birdie, and Mason. There were times when I’d sensed the slightest hint of sympathy worming its way into them. Sometimes, I’d catch Gran and Birdie giving each other a silent look in those conversations. But I’d never let any of them feel sorry for me, and I’d refused to feel sorry for myself.

The faint fissure in the ice of my resolve found me in the rarest of moments. The delicate, absent-minded touch of a woman’s hand on her pregnant belly. A newborn cradled in someone’s arms at the grocery. It would hit me like a train. Because there was only one thing I’d ever kept from them. It was a buried thing inside of me, so deep I could almost always pretend it wasn’t there.