“So, it’s not the same woman.” He looked up at me.
I said nothing, silently hoping he was about to offer some kind of explanation I hadn’t yet thought of.
“Then they just look alike. But why would Margaret mail this to you?”
“I have no idea. So, I started digging, trying to figure out who Nathaniel Rutherford was married to.” I paused. “Mason, her name was Susanna Farrow.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying me.
“She has the same birth date as my mother, except for the year, obviously. And she had a daughter named June.”
I couldn’t read the look on his face now. It was as misplaced as I felt.
“Her daughter was born around the same day and month as the birthday you chose for me. And she died the exact same day and month I was found in Jasper—October 2nd.”
“June . . .”
“I mean, isn’t that weird?” I was looking for reassurance now.
“Yeah. It’s weird.”
“But . . . I don’t know. There’s also something wrong about it.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s her,” he said.
I bit down on my lip, pulse skipping.
“Wait.” He set his elbows on the table, his face turning serious again. “You actually think it’s her?”
I raked my hands through my hair. “I don’t know what to think. I mean, tell me how this is possible. What are the odds?”
“I can’t explain it to you. It was more than a hundred years ago. Things get lost over that much time.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but his hand lifted between us, stopping me. “June, you’re throwing a lot at me right now. You just told me my best friend in the entire world is sick and she’s not going to get better. And now you’re telling me she thinks her mother . . . what? Went back in time?”
“I know it’s crazy.”
“Yeah.” He nearly laughed again, but now it sounded like a panicked thing. Like he was reckoning with the fact that I was really, truly broken.
We sat there for a long moment before he set a hand on my arm, squeezing gently. “Look, this . . .” His eyes dropped to the photos that sat between us. “This isn’t what’s important right now.”
I let out a breath, giving up. His eyes stared into mine, as if he were waiting to be convinced that I’d drop it. When I nodded, he finally let me go. I should have called him that night a year ago, like I’d promised. Maybe then I wouldn’t have ended up here, caught in the labyrinth of Nathaniel Rutherford and my mother and a child that had barely existed.
“When does Birdie get back?” he asked.
I could hear the real question behind the words. When will there be someone here to keep an eye on you?
“Tomorrow.”
“I’m going to stay over tonight.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m not asking.”
He reached for the whiskey, refilling my glass before he filled his again.
The prick behind my eyes didn’t fully give way to tears until more than an hour later, as I was lying in the dark of my room, the sound of Mason’s deep sleeping breaths drifting up the stairs. And even then, I swallowed them down before they could fall.
I wanted to let it go, like he said. I wanted to focus on what was important. But the photograph felt . . . intentional. Planned. Like Gran was trying to tell me something.
There was too much to think about. Too many swirling words inside of my head. I couldn’t draw them into a straight line. Gran. The photograph. The dates. My mother. Birdie. Mason. It was all one tangled knot, making me feel like my edges were beginning to fray. And they were.
Seven
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a note from Mason on my bedside table.
Take an aspirin. Call you later.
I could feel the ache in my head the moment I sat up, my skin sticky beneath my nightgown from the humid morning air coming through the open window. I’d heard him get up at daybreak and I could smell the sharp scent of coffee, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to go downstairs.
Was this how it would be? Mason taking care of me, sleeping on the sofa when I didn’t want to stay alone? Going to doctor’s appointments and coming by if I haven’t called? I loved Mason, but I didn’t like that idea. I didn’t want that life for either of us.
I stared into the bathroom mirror with the faucet running, the shadows beneath my eyes making me look like a hollow thing. The birthmark below my ear was darker against my skin, my pale lips almost invisible. The fleeting, lightning-quick thought struck before I could pull it back—was this how Susanna Rutherford felt before she threw herself over the falls?
I washed my face with ice-cold water and got dressed, holding tightly to the railing as I came down the stairs. The house was cast in the pink-tinged light of morning, the kitchen tidied. The half-eaten blueberry pie was gone from the table, the crystal lowball glasses washed and drying next to the sink.
I did as Mason said, taking the aspirin from the cabinet. The digital clock above the stove top read 8:08 A.M. He would be in the fields by now.
I filled a glass with water and gulped it down, instantly regretting it. I still felt sick, but not from the whiskey. Last night and the string of clues I’d pieced together had changed things. I didn’t know how to explain it or how to prove it, but I was certain that all of this meant something. I could feel it. Like the idea had sunk into my bones, becoming as real as I was. Susanna Farrow didn’t just wander into the woods, following the breadcrumbs of her broken mind. And Gran wanted me to know it.
My stomach was still turning as my gaze drifted back to the doorway of the sitting room, where the maze of papers and photographs still blanketed the floor.
The desk looked out over the garden through a wide window that had no curtain. It was propped open, most likely by Mason when it had gotten too hot in here last night. At the corner of the desk, the stacked copies of the newspaper articles I’d printed were fluttering in the breeze.
The house creaked against the wind outside as I crossed the kitchen, but I stopped short when I saw a shadow slip over the floorboards in the sitting room. It was followed by a sound. Shuffling paper, maybe.
I came around the corner, eyes going wide when I saw Birdie sitting in the chair beside the fireplace. She had a pile of the pages she’d gathered up from the floor in her lap, a small rectangular photograph in her hands. She didn’t look at me as I stopped in the doorway. She was silent. In fact, she didn’t appear to be so much as breathing.
“What are you doing here?” I said, the tone of my voice almost defensive.
I was suddenly embarrassed. I thought I’d have hours before she got back from Charlotte, plenty of time to finish going through things and get the mess I’d made out of sight. What had she thought when she walked in to see all of this? What was she thinking right now?
I came closer, eyeing the photograph in her hand. It was the one Gran had sent me.
Birdie’s finger moved over the outline of Nathaniel’s wife, as if tracing her shape. “Couldn’t sleep, so figured I’d get on the road early.” Her voice was far and distant. When she finally looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes. Her gaze moved over the room before finding me again. “It’s finally started, hasn’t it?”