A hollow feeling erupted inside of me as I studied the small room. There was a simple bed, a small dressing table, a closed wardrobe. It wasn’t the kind of space that only a man filled. It was feminine. Gentle. But I hadn’t seen a woman out at the barn. Whoever she was, she wasn’t home.
My eyes fixed on the bit of fabric closed in the door of the wardrobe, a dusty pink check that couldn’t belong to the tobacco farmer. For a moment, I could feel something beckoning me into that room. To the wardrobe. I could feel it guiding my drifting hand to that latch. And when I pulled it open, my gaze flitted over what lay inside.
Boots smaller than the ones by the front door. A thick wool coat. A few dresses and a couple of pairs of denim overalls. A small stack of folded colored fabric that looked like the bandanas we wore on the farm.
I turned back to the room, sifting through the items that likely didn’t belong to the man. A tortoiseshell comb, a small dish that held a thin gold ring. An hourglass-shaped silver bottle that looked as if it held perfume. I picked it up, bringing it to my nose, and I breathed in the scent of rose and orange. A lump rose in my throat, like the scent might make me cry.
A part of me felt the photograph before I actually saw it. In the mirror’s reflection, I spotted a small frame on the table beside the bed. A mother-of-pearl oval with a black-and-white picture behind the glass.
I set the bottle down, turning toward it, and slow, wary steps took me across the room. I had to pick it up to believe it. I had to hold it in my hands.
I unclenched my stiff fingers from my damp T-shirt, picking up the frame. There, the man who lived in this house had his arms wrapped around a woman, her face pressed to the crook between his shoulder and his throat. A wide smile was on her lips, but it was the birthmark that took hold of my attention and wouldn’t let it go. Below the ear, tucked beneath the jaw.
I reached up, touching the mark that traced down my own neck with trembling fingers. It was me.
It was me.
The picture slipped from my fingers, hitting the ground, and then I was moving through the house. Toward the door. I flung it open, my feet finding the steps, and then I was at the gate. The road. The turn that led to town.
And I ran.
Ten
I followed the river, staying off the road.
Every few seconds, I glanced back, watching the trees with a terrified feeling growing roots inside of me. I needed to forget what I’d seen, to wipe it from my memory. But the image of that photograph was already seared in my mind. This wasn’t the obscure, faint recognition of Susanna in the picture with Nathaniel Rutherford. The moment I’d laid eyes on that woman, I knew without any doubt that it was me.
I kept walking, adrenaline flowing hot in my veins. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I wasn’t headed toward something anymore. I wasn’t searching or looking for answers. Now, I was just running.
The water grew louder below as the terrain turned rocky, and again, I scanned the fields that stretched along both sides of the river, desperate to see the door. If I’d gone through it once, I could do it again. I didn’t care anymore what happened to Susanna. I didn’t want to know what truth the Farrows had kept buried or what Gran had been hiding from me. None of that mattered. Now, I only wanted to go home. To the house on Bishop Street and the farm and Mason.The sun was beginning to fall by the time I made it to the old railroad bridge that crossed the Adeline River, but it didn’t look as old anymore. It wasn’t covered in vines, littered with fallen branches. The only thing that was the same was the blue-green river that ran beneath it.
I pushed into the brush and scaled down the bank, scooping up the cold water and splashing my face. My skin was hot and flushed, my eyes swollen, and the sound that broke in my throat made me feel like the ten-year-old girl who’d jumped from this bridge with Mason.
The moment he entered my mind, the cry loosed itself from where it was tangled in my chest. What I would give to be sitting across the table from him, a blueberry pie between us. To rewind that moment and listen to him when he tried to convince me to let go of my obsession with my mother.
I wanted to believe that what I’d seen in the house on Hayward Gap Road couldn’t exist, but the image still flashed, making me wince. That smile on my face. The way the man’s arms had been wrapped around me. I could almost feel them, the way I had that morning when I woke up with the feeling of someone in the bed.
I stared into the water, where my reflection rippled, breaking and changing in the light with the patchwork of blue sky and thick tree branches overhead. That image was how I felt on the inside—distorted and broken. A picture that couldn’t quite come into focus.
Sweat beaded along my brow and my muscles burned, reminding me that I hadn’t actually slept last night. In fact, I’d barely slept for days now. My legs ached as I climbed the slope to the bridge, my center of gravity missing, like I was floating from one place to the next.
I stepped onto the tracks, following them away from the road until I was standing over the water. In the distance, Jasper sat nestled by the riverbank as if it had never changed. On one side of the downtown bridge, I could just make out the redbrick buildings on Main Street. On the other was the spindly white steeple of the church. It was mostly hidden by the trees, but even from here, I could see some of the headstones that dotted the cemetery. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had no idea what to do. If I wasn’t in 2023, or even in my own lifetime, I couldn’t just walk into town and find someone I knew. There was only one person who might be able to help me—Susanna.
A low, soft rumble reverberated on the railing beneath my hands, and I blinked, my grip tightening around one of the iron rods. The metal was vibrating with a deep resonance and when I looked down to my boots, I realized the sound was growing. The tracks I was standing on began to quake and I looked to the trees that sat on the other side of the river. When I heard the whistle blow, I sucked in a breath, pulling myself back across the bridge.
The train burst from the tree line, racing toward me, and I scrambled over the tracks, catching the end of the barricade. Then I was sliding down the hill, back toward the water. I landed clumsily, catching a limb with my sleeve and scraping along the thicket of brambles as the train made it to the bridge. Its shadow cast over me, light flitting between the cars as it passed.
It vanished across the road seconds later, leaving a drifting trail of steam behind it. The sound of it bled away before the rumble of another engine surfaced at the top of the riverbank, and I listened, going still as it got closer. The pop of tires on gravel and the screech of brakes drew my eye to the opening in the brush I’d come through, and a few seconds later, I saw him. The man from the house.
His eyes frantically searched the riverbank before he spotted me and he let out a heavy breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Again, that image of him holding me in the picture painted itself across my thoughts. I wanted to erase it.
When I didn’t answer, he walked toward me.
“Stay away from me!” My feet splashed into the river, cold water filling my boots.
“You need to come with me. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I cast my gaze behind me, to the other side of the river, judging the distance.