I waited.
“Which side of time you want to live on. Which life you want to live.” She answered my unspoken question. “After that, there’s no going back.”
Is that what I’d done? Crossed to 1946 and eventually decided to cross back?
“And that’s not all. The second rule is that you may go only where you do not exist.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed at the locket. “There’s only one of you, June, just like there’s only one of those lockets. That will never change. The locket around your neck disappeared when you crossed because it already lives here. It ceased to exist. Your mind can exist in two places at once, but your body cannot. So, if you walked through the door right now and went back to a time you already exist in the future—say, 2022—you, also . . . disappear.”
I swallowed, the gravity of the idea like a weight pressing down on top of me.
“The other thing you need to think about is what kind of information you’ve brought with you. No talking about what happens in the future to any of us. No warning us of danger or opportunity or anything else. There are too many risks. Too many things that could be affected.”
My thoughts immediately went to Gran. There were decades of her life I’d witnessed. Details about her future that she couldn’t know. I even knew the exact day she died. But the people on this side of time didn’t have that luxury.
“Who did people think I was when I came here?”
Esther closed the locket, sliding it toward me. “It was years after Susanna died that you showed up. I said you were another cousin. Just left it at that, and people didn’t act too curious. Not until . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Well, until things got complicated.”
“So, where do people think I’ve been all this time?”
“Taking care of your sick mother back in Norfolk.”
That’s what the deputy had been talking about at the river, I realized. “For a year? People believe that?”
“Not really.”
That was why the deputy had acted so suspicious, but it didn’t explain why that woman on her porch had been so terrified.
“Which is why I’m taking you home as soon as you finish that cup of coffee.”
I froze. “What?”
“We might have been able to keep this quiet until the door reappeared, but now you’ve been seen, June. If Sam saw you yesterday, the entire town will have heard that you’re back.”
“You can’t seriously expect me to go back to that house.”
“That’s exactly what I expect you to do.” Esther frowned. “I know your life was turned upside down when you ended up here, and if you feel like all of this isn’t fair, then you’re right. You should have been told.” She lowered her voice, “Margaret should have prepared you. But while you’re on this side of the door, I expect you to do everything in your power to make sure our lives aren’t burned to the ground by the time you leave. It’s important that things go on as normal.”
She said it with a calm authority that didn’t leave room to argue, and that made me wonder just how much trouble the other June had caused them.
“He doesn’t want me there,” I said.
“No, but he knows that he needs you to be if we’re going to keep this town from turning our family inside out.”
I felt sick just thinking about that house on Hayward Gap Road. That bedroom. The photograph on the dressing table.
“You need to attract as little attention as possible while you’re here, and people will expect you to be at home with Eamon. Once you’re gone, we’ll figure out something to tell them.”
“Why are they so interested? Why do they care?”
“You’ve come at a . . . complicated time.” She said that word again.
She crossed the kitchen, going back to the sink. She was avoiding my gaze now.
“Are you going to tell me about that little girl?” I barely got the words out.
Esther stiffened just a little. “She’s Eamon’s daughter.”
The words felt intentionally incomplete. Did that mean she wasn’t mine, or that she was, but that I had no claim to her?
A creak popped overhead, and we both looked up to the milk-glass pendant light hanging over the table. The sound traveled across the ceiling until it reached the stairs. A moment later, a young woman was coming around the banister, one hand still struggling to tuck the tail of her blouse into her skirt. She nearly tripped over her own feet when she saw me.
Wide blue eyes the color of storm clouds fixed on me, a blush reaching her freckled cheeks. “June.” She breathed my name, and even now, here, over seventy years away, it sounded the same.
Margaret Anne Farrow, the same one I’d buried only days ago, stood steps away.
Gran. Living. Breathing.
A smile broke on her lips, and she walked straight toward me, throwing her arms around my shoulders and squeezing hard. She was shorter than me. Thin and narrow. But it was her. The prick behind my eyes was now a painful burn, and when I inhaled the smell of her, an ache bloomed in my throat.
Without even meaning to, I leaned into her, holding on so tightly that a broken sound escaped me. I was instantly that little girl again, crying into her shoulder. After the last twenty-four hours, with every inch of reality shifting beneath me, she felt like solid, unbreakable ground.
She pulled back to look at me again, her eyes bright with amazement. There was a girlish smile on her lips and a sun-kissed pink that colored her cheeks. She wasn’t a woman at all, a girl more than anything else. She couldn’t be older than sixteen or seventeen years old. But behind her eyes and in the air around her I could sense Gran. I could feel her. The woman who’d raised me. Who’d kept me.
I swallowed against the pain in my chest when the memory of standing on that hill for the burial flashed through my mind. Having her right in front of me, warm to the touch, made that ache of losing her tear back open.
There was a knowing in the look that painted Esther’s face now. A solemn understanding as she looked at me. She knew that in my world, my time, this girl was already gone. She’d had to have known that the last time I came here.
“There’s work to do, Margaret.” She said.
Margaret’s hands slipped from the sleeves of my shirt, a protest already brewing on her tongue. “But—”
Esther fixed her with her stare, and Margaret’s mouth snapped shut.
“We’re on sunnies today,” Esther said, using the sunflower nickname I’d only ever heard Gran use. “The delphinium we’ll cut tomorrow. It’s all going to town for the Faire.”
The Midsummer Faire.
I glanced to the calendar again. The summer solstice was labeled in red type on June 21, four days from now. With any luck, I’d be gone by then.
Margaret’s lips pursed defiantly, but she obeyed, giving me one last look before she headed to the back door. The screen slammed behind her.
Esther’s fair eyes sharpened on me. “Be careful. Best not to let her get too attached before you leave for good.”
I watched Margaret’s shape grow smaller through the window before she disappeared behind the fence.
“Eamon’s not the only one who was left with a broken heart. Understand?”