“W-What?” I dropped my hand as he came closer.
“I said what the hell are you doing here, June?”
I gasped when I heard it. Not just my name, but my name spoken in that voice. The one that whispered in the dark. The one that had been like fire on my skin. I knew that voice.
I took another step backward, hitting the porch railing with a shoulder before he reached me. When he finally did, he was so close that I had to tip my head up to look at him.
“I’m sorry, did you say—”
The words sputtered out as I frantically studied his face. His eyes. They were a deep brown, with the same bronze hue that the sun had lit in that horse’s mane. And for just a moment, I was sure that I’d seen them before.
“Do you know me?” I whispered.
“What?” He was moving even closer now. So close that I could feel the heat coming off of him.
“You said my name.”
His full lips parted, face twisting in confusion. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I blinked, turning the sound of his voice over in my head. There was a faint accent to his speech that pulled at the vowels and sharpened the words. It was definitely the one I remembered.
He stared at me, waiting, but I hadn’t figured this part out yet. I hadn’t had any time to think about it. I hadn’t had a plan when I walked through that door.
“I’m looking for someone.” I took hold of the first thing I could think of. “Susanna Farrow.”
His eyes narrowed as he drifted back, putting inches of space between us. There was something changing in his manner now. A shift somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Rutherford,” I corrected. “Susanna Rutherford. Do you know her?”
“What is this?” He said it so softly that it sounded like he was asking the question of himself, not me. He looked wary, eyes studying me carefully.
“I’m looking for Susanna. Do you know how I can find her?” I sounded even less sure than I was. And it occurred to me all at once that he wasn’t asking about what I wanted. He was asking about me.
His hand came between us suddenly, snatching up my wrist. Before I could even react, he was pulling my arm long between us.
“What are you doing?” I tried to yank free, but his fingers clamped down harder.
I watched, gasping, as he pushed up the sleeve of my shirt and turned my hand so that the skin of my forearm was bare between us. His breaths were coming faster now, his grip squeezing tighter, but I didn’t know what he was looking for. And then, all of a sudden, he let me go, taking several steps backward.
I pulled my arm into me, wrist screaming with pain.
“You’ve never been here, have you?” he said.
“Been here?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked. “We’ve never met.”
“No.” Again, I looked to the empty road. “I told you—”
“Christ, June.” He dragged both hands over his face, pressing them to prayer in front of his mouth, and there it was again. That familiar way he was saying my name. “What did you do?”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He wasn’t talking to me, either. Whatever was unfolding behind his eyes was invisible to me. It took him a moment to blink, to come back to himself.
“Did anyone see you?” His attention went warily to the road. “Have you spoken to anyone at all?”
“Look, I don’t understand what—”
“Has anyone seen you.”
The woman on the porch and the truck on the road both flickered through my mind.
“You need to get inside.”
He brushed past me, going up the steps of the porch and pushing into the house. His boots hit the floor in a way that made me remember the ghost of a sound I’d heard so many times before. That steady, hollow beat.
I followed him, stopping in the doorway when I thought better of what I was doing. Walking into the home of a strange man I’d never even met. But it was obvious that he knew something. There was some piece of this that he had and I didn’t.
My eyes moved around the small house, finding everything the light touched. The fireplace still glowed with embers, a small sofa covered in a quilt set before it. There was a broom in the corner. A cedar chest. A framed cross-stitch of a bouquet of flowers on the wall. Beyond the living area was a small kitchen and another closed door.
He pulled up his suspenders, tugging on a thick canvas jacket that he’d taken from the hook beside the door. “Stay here.”
“You’re leaving?” The words came out stilted. I was still standing on the porch, hands pressed to either side of the doorframe.
He took a ring of keys from his pocket, waiting for me to step inside. But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. In fact, it looked like he was taking great care not to. “If anyone knocks on the door, don’t answer it. Stay in the house.”
“But—”
Again, his jaw clenched, the tension of it traveling down to his shoulders. His arms. “You want to know about Susanna?” His voice took on an edge.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then wait here.”
My eyes moved from his face to the clench of his hand on the keys. The veins that straddled his knuckles were raised beneath the skin.
I’m not sure what made me decide; in fact, I was almost convinced I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. But this man knew me. He knew my mother.
He shouldered past me as soon as I stepped inside. “Lock the door.”
It closed heavily behind him, making the windows in the house rattle. I went to the nearest one, watching him open the cattle gate and then climb into the truck. He fought with the gears once the engine was running, and a cloud of dirt kicked up into the air as he pulled onto the road.
Then he was gone.
I let go of the curtain, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach. Almost impulsively, I turned the deadbolt lock on the door, pressing my trembling fingers to my lips. What exactly had I done?
I replayed it, step by step. Coming around that corner to see Birdie in the sitting room. That look on her face. The way her hands trembled when she handed me that envelope. I’d done as she said. I’d gone through the door. But now what?
The house was silent around me except for the sound of my own breathing, and I tried to slow it. I was afraid to turn back around. To see with my own eyes any shred of familiarity. The extra pair of boots by the door. The kettle on the counter. The box of matches on the fireplace mantel. A rifle on the wall.
The possibility that this was all in my head was shrinking by the second. If I was imagining this, then I wasn’t just having an episode. I was lost in a labyrinth. I was so deep I’d never be found.
I took a tentative step away from the window, making my way across the knotted rag rug that covered the floor. It was made with fabric scraps in every color, faded and frayed along the edges. I took in every detail. The small table between this room and the next was fit with four wooden chairs, one of them missing a spindle from the back. The cast-iron pan on the stove was still just barely warm to the touch.
It wasn’t just a house. This was a home.
My hand slipped over the butcher block as I made my way toward that open doorway, something pulling me toward it until I was reaching for the cold metal knob. I pushed it open and the sunlight that was trapped within flooded out.