The Unmaking of June Farrow(92)

I don’t look back when we make it to the trees. I don’t slow, despite the burning tremble in my legs. I cross the footbridge and lift Annie over the fence of the Grangers’ west pasture, then I keep running. I don’t stop until I see the smoke trailing from our chimney.

“Eamon!” I scream his name as I disappear into the tobacco. “Eamon!”

My steps finally begin to drag, a sharp pain surfacing in the center of my right foot. I look down and find that somewhere, I’ve lost a shoe.

“Eamon!”

His name crumbles on another cry, and I break through the edge of the field, just as the back screen door flies open. It slams against the house, and I can see him. He’s a black silhouette against the kitchen light.

Annie is crying now, clinging to me, but I’m sure I’m going to drop her. I sink to the ground before I do, my knees scraping in the dirt.

Eamon is coming down the steps a second later. “June?”

I can’t breathe.

“June?” He pulls Annie from my arms. “What happened?”

I didn’t notice until now that her white dress is dotted with the blood that covers me. He’s frantically pulling it off of her.

“Where are you hurt, love?” He’s panicked, searching her body for the source of the blood.

“She’s okay.” I feel my mouth say the words but I can’t hear them. “She’s okay.” The words stick to my tongue, because that’s all that matters. “She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.”

Eamon stands. Carries her into the house. Then he’s taking hold of me, getting me to my feet, but I instantly collapse against him and he catches me in his arms.

“June?” He sounds so scared. “Tell me what happened.” Now his hands are all over me, lifting my hair, unbuttoning my dress.

“I killed him,” I say, my mouth numb.

“What?”

We’re in the house now, and I can finally see his face.

“Nathaniel Rutherford. I killed him.”

He sets me down in the chair, coming down onto his knees in front of me. “Where? How?”

“He followed us. He tried to—” My whole body shakes with a silent cry. “He tried to drown me in the river.”

Eamon is suddenly so still that it doesn’t look like he’s breathing. He’s staring at the center of my chest, hands still holding on to me. When his eyes finally lift, the panic in them is gone.

“Listen to me,” he says.

I double over, crying again.

“June,” he says, more firmly. “Take a breath.”

I swallow, trying to do as he says. I’m shaking so badly.

“Tell me exactly where he is.”

I try to think. “At the bend before the footbridge. He’s down by the water.”

Eamon stands, going to the stove, and I hear him light it. Then he’s propping open the back door and hauling in the two buckets of water from outside. I watch in a daze as he dumps them into the small tub beside Annie’s nook.

The kettle is beginning to hum when he fetches Annie’s stained dress from outside and pulls the remaining ribbon from her hair. He takes her stockings, her shoes. Then he does the same to me, gently helping me out of the dress until I’m sitting naked on the chair.

I can’t move. I can’t even ask what he’s doing, but I realize once the fire is going and he throws our clothes into it. That’s when I finally notice my hands. The blood caked beneath my fingernails.

I move to the sink robotically, turning on the tap and shoving my hands beneath the water. I scrub violently, watching the ribbon of red circle the drain.

The kettle squeals, and Eamon pours it into the tub before he comes back for me. I wrap my arms around his neck and he lifts me, lowering me into it. He’s setting Annie into my arms next, and the water sloshes over the side as she burrows into me. She’s not crying anymore. Neither am I.

“If anyone knocks on that door, you tell them I’ve gone to help Esther with her truck. You get her cleaned up. Put her to bed.”

I think I nod.

“June? Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He brushes a hand over Annie’s head and kisses me, but his lips linger on my forehead just a little longer than usual. Then he’s walking across the sitting room. He’s disappearing out the back door.

The only sound is the crackle of the fire as I stare into the flames, watching my dress burn.





Twenty-Nine


The night played out in my head one frame at a time. The wood plank fence that stretched along the flower fields. The aching cold in my hands as I stood over Nathaniel’s body. The fireflies blinking in the dark as I ran. The clearest part of the entire thing was the sight of those clothes burning in the fireplace. I could almost smell them, even now.

“When I got to the river, it was dark,” Eamon began. “I didn’t see anyone on the road, but I kept my light off anyway, just to be safe. No one saw me.”

I stood before the bedroom window, watching Callie graze in the paddock.

“I found him right where you told me he’d be—at the bend before the footbridge.” Eamon appeared at the corner of my vision as he leaned into the wall beside the window. “I could tell by looking at him that it would be suspicious. There were marks on his arms, his face. I think maybe from when you were . . .” He couldn’t finish. “If someone found him like that, there would be questions. So, I decided to drag him downriver and send his body go over the falls so that it would look like an accident. Maybe he’d had too much to drink at the Faire, or maybe he’d slipped and fell. There’d been a lot of rain that week, so the river was high. The current was strong.”