The Unmaking of June Farrow(99)

“I think you know why,” I said.

He went rigid, and I was glad that I’d caught him off guard. Maybe he hadn’t expected me to answer, but there was no point in hiding anymore. Something told me that Caleb knew a lot more than he wanted to admit.

He jerked the wheel, and the car slid off the road completely, into the ditch that edged one of the fields. I slammed into the door as the car slid to a stop, the keys swinging in the ignition as Caleb stared out at the road.

My heart was racing again, heat licking like flames up my arms. My throat. I couldn’t tell what he was going to do. Drag me into that field and shoot me? Kill me, the way his father tried to?

Without warning, he reached for the door and got out, as if he were making a move before he could change his mind. He came around to the passenger side and pulled me out of the back seat by the sleeve of my dress, shoving me into the road. I stumbled, sliding in the gravel before I got my footing.

I looked around us, to the expanse of golden fields that stretched in every direction. An unsettled sea of wheat whispered in the wind.

“Who are you?” he shouted, but his face was different suddenly. More human. His hands fell heavily to his sides as he watched me, still scrutinizing the planes of my face. He looked so tired.

“I’m June Rutherford.” My throat burned as I said the name out loud for the first time in my life. I was sure of it, because what it did to my insides was something I would have remembered.

Caleb was shaking his head, hands raking through his hair. A red flush painted his skin before he pulled the pistol from his belt again. “No.”

“I am,” I said.

“I told him he was crazy.” His words warped. “That he was imagining things.”

“He wasn’t.”

“He said that you were a demon come to haunt him. To punish him.” Caleb was breathing hard now. He paced to one side of the road and back again. “June Rutherford died as a baby. She’s buried in the church cemetery,” he mumbled, desperately trying to reason himself out of it.

“Then dig up the grave. There’s nothing there, Caleb.”

He stared at me.

“He wanted me dead. She thought he was going to kill me, so she lied. She told him I died when he was in Charlotte, and he believed her.”

“Then where have you been all this time?”

“Does it matter?”

Trying to explain the door to him would only convince him that I was lying about everything else. There was no chance his mind would be able to hold it.

“When I came back, he knew. Deep down, he knew who I was, and he started following me. Waiting for me in town. When he saw me walking home that night with Annie.” The vision materialized so vividly across my mind that I could hardly draw breath. “He wanted to hurt me. Make the demons go away.”

There was no reaction in Caleb’s expression. He was placid and cold, like none of this surprised him. And that was exactly what I wanted him to think about—the fact that he knew his father. I couldn’t imagine what kind of horrors he’d endured growing up in that man’s house.

“You knew what he was,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

He sucked in his bottom lip, a gesture that made him look like a little boy, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. But then he lifted the pistol, pointing it at me.

My hands reflexively flew up in front of my face. I was shaking all over, still searching the road for any sign of a car. But this was a remote stretch. It would be a miracle if there was anyone for miles.

“You were there,” I stammered. “You were five years old, Caleb. You have to remember.”

His jaw clenched.

“I think you know that she didn’t jump from the falls that day. Deep down, you always knew that, right?”

A gleam shone in his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They didn’t find her body because he buried her.”

His lips parted, his eyebrows coming together. “What?” If he was lying now, it was convincing.

“Nathaniel told me. Right before he tried to drown me in the river.”

His chest rose on a sharp inhalation of breath. This, I could tell, was the thing he really needed to know.

“Yes,” I answered. “I killed him.”

The gun went off, the sound exploding in my ears, and it echoed into the hills. I waited for an eruption of pain in my chest. My stomach. But when I looked down, there was no bloom of red. He’d fired the gun, but he hadn’t shot me.

Slowly, my eyes lifted. Tears glimmered in Caleb’s eyes as he stared at me, and I didn’t know if they were for Nathaniel or for Susanna. Only one of them deserved any kind of pity.

“He held me under the water.” My voice broke. “He held me there while my daughter watched from the riverbank.”

He believed me. It was etched deep in the lines of his face. The tears brimming in his eyes finally spilled over, but his face didn’t change. He stood there, freed from the lie he’d been telling himself for his entire life. He’d been a child who believed the story he’d been told because he needed to survive. Now it was time to let that story go.

“You’ll find our mother buried under the oak tree at the corner of the woods beside the falls. She deserves a grave, Caleb.”