The Unmaking of June Farrow(42)

The light in the house changed as the clouds drifted in, and outside, the wind caught the leaves of the tobacco, making a sound that reminded me of the ocean. Eamon’s eyes found the window, a distracted concern surfacing in his expression.

“What were you looking for yesterday,” I asked, “when you looked at my arm?”

He considered the question, taking his time with the answer. “I was checking for something.”

“What?”

The muscle in his jaw clenched. “A scar. A couple of years ago, June burned herself on the stove.” He glanced to the kitchen, like he was remembering it. “It left a scar on the inside of her wrist.”

That was how he’d figured it out. I’d never been burned because I’d never been here. But the fact that he’d known my body that well made my pulse race. For a fleeting moment, I thought I could feel the remnants of heat there, below my palm. A faded, throbbing pain.

“Why did you come here?” His tone was flat, but there was a strained sound beneath it, like he’d been biting back the words since I’d walked through the door.

It was a question that didn’t have an easy answer. I wasn’t sure I even knew what it was. How had I ended up here, exactly? Gran’s photograph? My mother’s disappearance? The episodes? They’d all converged into a woven thread that had been pulling tighter and tighter until I opened that door.

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“Then explain it to me, June. I’m not an idiot.”

Again, I shivered at the sound of him saying my name, the way the u stretched deep in his faded accent. It was, impossibly, both familiar and foreign at the same time. My hands tightened into fists every time I heard it.

“I didn’t mean—”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I was trying to find out what was happening to me. What happened to my mother.” My voice rose, defensive now. “I don’t know anything about you or . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the little girl’s name.

“Annie.” He enunciated the word.

My mouth opened before it clenched shut again. I couldn’t say it. I didn’t want to. “So, she’s . . . ?”

“Mine. And June’s.”

I could feel the dress pulling tight across my chest as my breaths deepened. “If she’s mine, then why doesn’t she seem to recognize me?” I asked, grasping for any thread I could.

“She’d only just turned three when you disappeared, but children aren’t the fools we are. She knows you’re not her mother. Not really.”

I wasn’t sure if he’d meant to, but that last sentence felt like a line drawn in the sand. A boundary and a warning not to cross it.

“I just don’t see how any of this is possible.” I said.

“It is. I’ve lived it.”

“You don’t understand, none of this makes sense. I never—”

“Your plans changed,” he snapped.

I stilled. “My plans?”

“To never marry. To never have a family. To be the last Farrow.”

I bristled, stung by how bitterly he’d said it. Almost mocking. And the way he’d plucked the thought from my head was unnerving, because he was right.

“Yes.” He swallowed. “I know you.”

“You don’t know me.” I didn’t want to believe it.

He leveled his eyes on me, his expression shifting. “There’s a diamond-shaped window in your bedroom—the one you grew up in. It’s in the house that hasn’t even been built yet,” he began. “You drink too much coffee. You kept that notebook beneath your bed. In a few weeks, once the summer’s come, you’ll have freckles just here.” He gestured to the rise of his own cheekbones, and immediately, I felt myself blush. “Your neighbor’s name is Ida, you lived with a woman named Birdie, and your friend Mason will be looking for you, right?”

It was the mention of Mason that made my stomach drop. What else did he know about me? What else had I told him? Everything, I realized. If I’d been married to this man for four years, if I’d trusted him enough to tie my own life to his, then I’d told him all of it.

He exhaled. “Believe me, I wish it wasn’t true, too.”

“I just . . . I don’t understand. . . .”

“Why you would come here and make a life with me? Why you would choose this?” He looked around us, to the house. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

He laughed, but it was a tight, coiled thing in his chest. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m only saying that if I was here and then I left, there has to be a reason.”

“There’s no reason good enough. Not for what we’ve been through.” The word hardened that line. I stood on one side, he and Annie on the other. “You swore to me that you would never go back through that door.”

He went quiet, and for a flicker of a moment I could see that heartbreak Esther mentioned. It was rolling off of him like heat, filling the room around us.

I’d left him and Annie. I’d broken a multitude of promises. But I had no idea how I’d gotten there or what I could say that would make any of it better.