The Unmaking of June Farrow(49)

“No, thank you.”

I watched him carefully. His attempt at manners might have been for Annie’s sake, but he was obviously irritated. I wasn’t sure why I was even offering. Maybe out of guilt.

“It’s just that—” I paused. “It looks like you could use a hand.”

“I’ve got it.” The shift in his tone made it clear that he was finished discussing it.

He gave Annie a nod, as if to coax her into eating, and she picked up her spoon silently. Her legs kicked under the table, an excited gleam in her eye. It almost seemed as if she was enjoying this.

She watched me as she stirred the stew, the expression on her face making me wonder exactly what was going through her head. I had a feeling it was more than I could possibly pretend to know.

We ate in silence, and when I tried to help clean up, Eamon shrugged me off. He was stiff and uncomfortable around me. That was clear. Anytime I stepped too close to him, he moved farther away, and his eyes never met mine. Not since the day I’d shown up and he’d looked down into my face, so close I could feel the warmth of him.

Annie disappeared into her little nook off the sitting room, and I watched Eamon at the sink. Again, that feeling of familiarity found me. Like this floor under my feet was one I’d stood on countless times. It flickered back and forth like a flame, going as fast as it came.

I almost didn’t ask it. “What’s the horse’s name?”

Eamon stopped, setting the dripping bowl in his hands into the sink before he turned to face me. “The horse?”

“The mare out in the paddock.” I gestured to the window. “What’s her name?”

“Callie.”

A horrible, strangled feeling sank from my throat down into my chest.

“Why?” he asked.

“No reason,” I said, hoarsely.

His gaze turned inspecting, running over my face like he could hear every single thought sprinting through my mind. I reached behind me, hand searching for the doorknob to the bedroom.

“Good night.” I closed myself inside, pressing my hot forehead to the back of the door.

My body, bones and all, felt so heavy that I thought I could fall through the floor. And I wouldn’t stop there. The weight of the idea was so overwhelming that it could pull me straight into the center of the earth.

I stood there for a long time, staring into the growing darkness. That name—Callie—felt like a rooted thing inside my head. And I could feel it growing, expanding into something else. Esther had described the madness as a fraying rope. Threads of time. But that didn’t explain what had happened with the memory of Mason last night or what happened tonight at the paddock.

I could feel the memories brimming, some of them so close to the surface that if I reached out to touch them, they’d take shape. But I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to remember, as Birdie had put it, and that’s exactly what this was—remembering. A slow and steady carving, like a river eroding the earth.

I was remembering, but I didn’t know how. The only person who could answer that was the one who’d lived in this house. This room.

I looked around, frantically searching for something, anything, that would help me understand what I’d been doing here. Why I’d left.

I took a match from the jar on the bedside table and lit the candle, my eyes adjusting to the dim glow. The room was full of shadows. Ghosts with stories I didn’t yet know. But I’d had my secrets, just like everyone else did. For an entire year, I’d kept the detailed records of my episodes hidden. Years before that, I’d kept my research on Susanna from Gran.

I lowered down onto my knees, shoving both hands beneath the old mattress and working my way around to the other side. If Esther, Margaret, and Eamon didn’t know why I’d left a year ago, there had to be some clue they’d missed. Some piece of evidence they’d overlooked.

I tore back the quilts, lifting the pillows to feel down the wood-paneled wall. When my fingers hit something, I froze.

Carefully, I shifted the object back and forth until it was sliding up. It was rough, like a roll of coarse fabric or a flattened spool of thick twine. When I finally had it free, I sat down on the bed, pulling it into my lap. It was a wide fold of burlap.

I lifted one corner, revealing a stack of gray paper. Newspaper. Two big, black block letters stared up at me.

MI

I pulled them free, unfolding them in my lap.

MINISTER SLAIN

It was a clipping of the same article I’d found when I was looking in the state archives online, but these were the originals, printed and distributed in 1950s Jasper.

The next one was another I recognized.

BODY FOUND IN ADELINE RIVER

Several others were with them, some of which I’d never seen, but all were pieces from local newspapers chronicling the investigation into the murder of Nathaniel Rutherford. My father.

Even thinking the word was foreign to me. I’d lived in the shadow of my mother’s story, but a father was something that had never been talked about, never seemed to matter. All this time, he’d been in the past, further back than I could have imagined. And I couldn’t help but think that the curse on the Farrows had touched him, too.

If he died a year ago, that meant I must have met him while I was here, and if I was remembering things from that time, I’d eventually remember him, too. So, what was this? Another collection like the one back home? If it was, then why had I kept it hidden?