It wasn’t the same smell that came from an active fire, I thought. It was more like something smoldering buried beneath a pile of ashes. He set the whole thing down and pulled the handkerchief from his face, letting it hang around his neck. When he looked up, he caught me watching him. The wind curled around his frame, his black-stained hands hanging at his sides, and he dropped his gaze as soon as it met mine.
Smoking crops was an old method, but I’d never seen it done before. It had different applications, and in my time, it was really only employed by primitive practice farmers. I’d heard of it being used to control pests, but it also helped control moisture on the plant. In this case, I guessed Eamon was using it for the latter.
Behind him, the strands of wire he’d been cutting that morning were hung in a crisscrossing pattern from the rafters like the face of a checkerboard suspended in the air. I didn’t know much about tobacco crop, but I could tell by looking at the plants that they were almost ready to harvest, and my guess was that Eamon was rigging the drying lines. The barn hardly looked big enough for it.
He disappeared around the corner of the porch just as the sound of an engine came to life. A few seconds later, Esther’s truck was pulling onto the road, Margaret behind the wheel. As soon as it was gone, I exhaled, looking back to the house. It loomed over me, an infinite number of forgotten moments living beneath its roof. But forgotten wasn’t the right word, was it? How could I forget something if I hadn’t lived it yet?
I closed the rickety gate to the garden, and the mare snorted when she saw me, pacing the paddock fence with her tail flicking behind her. Her head lifted, ears perking in my direction, and she stopped. She was looking me in the eye again, neck craning toward me as if she was waiting.
Without even deciding to, I moved toward her. That black eye shone in the setting sunlight, her nostrils flaring. Annie might not remember me, but this creature did.
Callie.
The word popped into my head like a bubble reaching the surface of water.
Callie. Was that the horse’s name? I was suddenly sure that it was. But how did I know it?
That tingle on my skin returned, but I could already feel the memory dimming, drawing away like a pinprick of light. A sense of déjà vu. I frantically tried to keep hold of it, my eyes focusing on the glint in the mare’s eye.
It came on in a rush, the barn and the paddock vanishing, replaced by the electric colors of spring.
I know where I am.
I’m standing at the back corner of the flower farm, where a small spring-fed pond is shaded by a cluster of wild dogwood trees. Before it, a chestnut mare with a mane that looks like polished bronze watches me.
I hold out a hand, taking a step toward her, and at first, I expect her to run. But then she’s dipping her head, coming toward me, and my fingers slide up her nose.
This isn’t a tear in the fabric. It’s more terrifying than that. This is a hidden seam, and the longer I am still and let it unwind, the clearer it becomes.
I’m remembering.
“Callie!”
A man’s voice echoes out around me before he appears in the trees ahead.
It’s Eamon. A younger, narrower version of him. His white shirt is rolled up to his elbows, his hair cut shorter and his face shaven. He stops short when his eyes land on me and I go rigid, realizing that he can see me. Actually see me.
I look down to my dress. My boots. I’m really standing here.
“I see you found my horse.” His accent makes the words sound like a song.
A smile lifts on one side of his face, and there is something both surprised and embarrassed about it. It makes my heart skip. I can feel myself smiling, too, a heat rushing to my cheeks.
“I think she found me,” I say.
The words leave my mouth without my permission. They haven’t so much as moved through my mind before they find my lips, and I suddenly know that this moment is happening without me, like skipping to a scene in a movie.
Eamon steps forward, a leather lead clutched in one hand. When I say nothing, he twists it nervously between his palms. “Sorry about this. I didn’t realize the fence was down.”
“That’s all right.” I hook my fingers into the mare’s bridle, walking her toward him.
When he has hold of her, he clips the lead to the buckle beneath her jaw and then wraps it around his fist once. The veins on the back of his hand are thick beneath his skin. “Thanks.”
“Her name’s Callie?” I ask. Again, the words come on their own.
“Yeah. Callie.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Something I can’t decipher passes over his face and he smiles again, eyes catching the light. They are a deep, tawny brown.
When he says nothing, I nod, letting my hand glide down the horse’s neck. He moves to lead her away, but stops when he crosses the fallen fence post, turning back to me. “I’ll get that fixed.” He gestures to it.
I don’t know what to say, I just know that I’m hoping that he doesn’t really go. So, when he speaks again, I instantly smile.
“I’m Eamon, by the way.”
“June.”
What is that flutter in my chest? That buzzing beneath my skin? I want to chase after it, blow on its embers until it’s a fire.
“June,” he repeats, in that way that I know in my bones now.
He looks at me another moment before he finally turns back into the trees and disappears. I watch him go, absently twirling something between the tips of my fingers. I look down, as if just remembering it’s there—a perfect bluebell.
All at once, I came back to myself. The barn, the fields, the paddock, and the horse. The memory was gone, and I could feel it drawing away from me inch by inch.
Callie pressed her nose into the flat of my palm. My skin was still warm with the afternoon sun, but I was burning now, that image of Eamon rooting itself deep within me. We’d met that day. That had been the moment when everything changed, but when I tried to push past it in my mind, in search of another memory, there was nothing. Only black.
I washed up in the water bucket out back, scrubbing as much dirt from my hands as I could manage in the near dark. I almost couldn’t bring myself to open the door as I stood on the steps, fireflies dancing in the dark.
The kitchen was warm when I stepped inside, a humid breeze drifting in through the open windows. The whole house smelled of something herbal, and I eyed the lidded pot on the stove. Things had been tidied, the rest of the dishes from the morning washed. There were wet clothes hanging by the fire and shoes lined up by the front door. It looked as if it wasn’t Margaret’s first time looking after them, and the thought made me cringe.
I lifted the lid of the pot and the steam curled into the air. It was some kind of stew with bits of meat, carrots, and potatoes in a broth. But it rattled closed when Eamon came from the bedroom, startling me. There was a stack of clothes folded in his arms.
He was as still as the frozen river in winter, his eyes roaming over me like he was seeing someone else. This man I’d never seen before knew me. Not just who I was, but also the intimate details of my life. He’d been with me. Made a child with me.
His gaze moved over my shape slowly, his face set like stone. That look in his eyes wasn’t anger anymore. It was pain. Like seeing me standing there in his wife’s dress, with his wife’s face, was almost more than he could take.