He exhaled. “Believe me, I wish it wasn’t true, too.”
“I just . . . I don’t understand. . . .”
“Why you would come here and make a life with me? Why you would choose this?” He looked around us, to the house. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.”
He laughed, but it was a tight, coiled thing in his chest. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’m only saying that if I was here and then I left, there has to be a reason.”
“There’s no reason good enough. Not for what we’ve been through.” The word hardened that line. I stood on one side, he and Annie on the other. “You swore to me that you would never go back through that door.”
He went quiet, and for a flicker of a moment I could see that heartbreak Esther mentioned. It was rolling off of him like heat, filling the room around us.
I’d left him and Annie. I’d broken a multitude of promises. But I had no idea how I’d gotten there or what I could say that would make any of it better.
“Why did I leave?” I asked, my voice barely rising above a whisper.“I don’t know.”
Like Esther, he wasn’t telling me everything. Of that, I was sure. But if I was going to understand what happened here, how I ended up in this place, I needed them to talk to me.
“You have to at least have a guess. A theory.”
“You had secrets. You could have trusted me with them, but you didn’t.”
“I’m not her!” The words finally broke, my whole body trembling.
I was desperate for them to be true, but they weren’t. I’d been here. These people knew me. That June, the one who’d married this man and had his child, was me. The space between the two was narrowing fast, like a crashing wave seconds from hitting the sand.
Eamon stared at me, his eyes widening just enough for me to see something else behind that hard, stony look. Like that fracture in me had sharpened his focus.
“You have to know something,” I whispered.
His arms dropped from where they were crossed over his chest, and he closed the space between us. I’d forgotten how tall he was. How he towered over me when he looked down into my face. His eyes jumped back and forth on mine, like he was searching for something there.
“The only thing I really know about you, June—”
My fingernails bit my palms.
“Is that I never really knew you at all.”
He stood there, waiting for me to speak, but no words came to my lips. Those few seconds felt like hours, the invisible rope between us cinching until I could almost feel its pull at the center of my chest. When he finally took a step back, it took every ounce of will I had not to let out the breath I was holding.
He stalked out of the house, pushing through the back door, and then he was disappearing into the field. But the breeze that poured in before the door closed was colder than it had been moments ago, carrying with it the scent of winter jasmine. It curled around me, making me shiver.
The prickle was sharp and painful on my skin, making me wince, and the familiarity of it made me go still. I unclenched my fists, trying to focus. It was happening again, my consciousness splitting in two.
I didn’t move, trying to control my breathing as I leaned in to the feeling instead of instinctively pushing it away. It was like pressing into air so thick that I could taste it on my tongue—the bite of woodsmoke and the churn of river water. I held out a hand, propping myself against the counter as it all came into view.
The little farmhouse dissolves around me, replaced by a canopy of dark trees, where the night sky breaks through the branches. I’m outside somewhere, the night beetles buzzing in the silence.
“Are you getting in?” Mason’s voice rings out around me, so clear and close that I turn.
He’s standing waist-deep, his pale skin stark against the black water. He’s missing his shirt, his hair swept to one side. His beard is darker. Thicker. He’s smiling at me.
The sound of the water grows louder, and I look down to see river water running over my bare feet. I can feel the wind on me, every inch of my skin, and I realize I’m in my underwear. My clothes are tossed to the rocks, where a small fire is burning in a makeshift ring of stones.
When I look back to Mason, he’s watching me. One of his hands lifts up, out of the water, reaching in my direction.
But the moment I moved, the image was already pulling from my mind, fading fast. The sounds dissolved into silence, the bright sunlight of the house returning, and the image was replaced by the view of my boots standing on Eamon’s wooden floor.
I pressed a sweaty hand to my chest, where my heart was beating so hard I was almost sure it would stop. I’d been standing by the Adeline River, a fire glowing on the bank and the moonlight dancing on the water. And Mason was there. It had the sharp detail and nostalgic echo of a . . . memory. That was the only thing I could think to call it, but I was sure that it had never, ever happened.
Thirteen
I was trapped in a museum of another life.
I could hear Eamon up and moving when the light broke in the sky, but I sat still on the edge of the bed, studying the frozen world around me. The bedroom took on a dreamlike quality in the early morning light, the tiny remnants that had made up my life coming into focus.
There was evidence everywhere that this place had been home to me, down to the way the clothes were folded and how things had been arranged on the dressing table. The stones and feathers and seeds that littered the windowsill. That was something I’d done even as a child, dropping little treasures into my pockets only to forget about them until later. There was a similar collection in the eave of my bedroom window at home.
I picked up one of the spotted feathers, brushing its tip against my fingers. There was no mistaking that I’d chosen this place, like Eamon said, and I’d been happy here. Somehow, I was sure of that. So, why had I left?
I’d spent hours replaying that vision of Mason in my mind. It felt embedded there. As if I’d only stumbled upon something that had been buried long ago. I could recall every single detail, but I couldn’t place that night anywhere. We’d been at the river more times than I could count, but this had been different. There’d been something about the way he’d looked at me.
My feet found the floor and opened the wardrobe, letting the door swing open. This time, I let myself study its contents. My fingers skimmed along the soft cotton dresses and shirts that hung inside, a small but utilitarian array of what a woman in a 1951 farming town might need. They were colors I would have picked, I thought. Colors I did pick.
My hand stopped on a fold of delicate white lace tucked behind the others, and I twisted a finger into it, my throat closing. It was a wedding dress. In a series of lightning-quick flashes, I could see it. The weave of the lace draped over my arm. The brush of the hem along the floor and the milk-white color that warmed against my wavy hair. A string of bluntly spliced moments, a cracked mirror of reality, skipped through my mind. They were colors in a kaleidoscope that changed without warning to make a new picture.
I pulled my hand back, pressing my knuckles to my ribs, where my heart was pounding, and pushed the images from my thoughts before it could fully come alive.