“I’m sorry, I just thought . . .” I pressed my dirty hands to the blue fabric, suddenly flustered. “I don’t have any clothes or anything.”
“It’s fine.” He cleared his throat, casting his gaze to the floor. “I’ve taken some of my things out of there for the time being.”
I glanced behind him, to the bedroom, and that memory of him by the pond leapt back to the front of my mind. We’d shared that room. Slept in there together.
He dropped the folded clothes to the couch before he came back into the kitchen and started setting the table without a word. I followed his lead, taking a few of the glasses from the open shelf and setting them down beside the three bowls he’d put out.
His hair was wet, like he’d also washed up in the water bucket on the back steps when he came in. His shirt and trousers were filthy, and the soot from the smoke was still clinging beneath his fingernails even after he had finished drying them. I didn’t look much better, but his face had a drawn look, like he’d barely slept in days. If he was smoking the fields by himself, he was probably doing it around the clock, and I’d heard him get up last night when Annie started to cry.
When the silence grew so awkward that I couldn’t stand it, I desperately searched for something to say.
“Does Margaret always cook for you?”
“Sometimes” was his only answer.
Men were always left on the fringes of every story I’d heard about the Farrows. But here, even a year after I’d gone, they were still treating him like family. Taking care of him, even. I didn’t know how long that would go on or how long Eamon would even live in Jasper. The very house we sat in had been crumbling when I saw it. At some point, they would leave this place.
He took the heavy pot from the stove and placed it at the center of the table. As soon as his chair scraped over the floor, Annie came running. Her little smile widened when she saw me, and she climbed into the seat beside Eamon. I took the one on the other side, not wanting to get too close to her.
He stared at my hands as I unfolded my napkin, eyes inspecting the cuts on my fingers. “You didn’t need to do that with the garden.” He motioned for me to help myself to the stew.
I filled my bowl, feeling uneasy in the scene that was playing out. The three of us, sitting around the table, like a family. I wasn’t sure how to respond to what he’d said, either. Was he saying I didn’t have to, or that he preferred I didn’t? Was he angry that I’d done it?
“You’re smoking the fields,” I said, changing the subject.
When I reached for Annie’s bowl next, Eamon stopped me.
“Don’t.” The word was low but heavy, and his eyes didn’t lift to meet mine. It was a warning. Another boundary. He’d let me stay in this house for all our sakes, and he’d let me eat at their table, but he didn’t want me acting like his daughter’s mother.
I sat back down as Annie’s gaze drifted back and forth between me and her father.
“Here, love.” Eamon spoke under his breath, reaching toward her, and she picked up her empty bowl, setting it into his open hand.
“Is it to stave off the blight?” I tried again as he served her himself.
The smallest hint of a reaction reached his face, and again, I couldn’t read it. Maybe he didn’t want me knowing anything about the crop, or maybe he was surprised that I’d spotted the blight.
“I saw the color change on the east side of the field. Is it spreading?”
“It’s something my father used to do.” Eamon answered the first question, but not the second.
“Does it work?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
The fields that were visible through the open back door looked to be at least ten or twelve acres, and that wasn’t counting anything he might have planted on the other side of the hill. Sowing, tending, and maintaining that much crop for an entire season was at least a three-or four-man job. I had no idea how he was doing it alone.
“I could help you tomorrow, if . . .” I said, thinking better of finishing that sentence. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t be here in the morning.
“No, thank you.”
I watched him carefully. His attempt at manners might have been for Annie’s sake, but he was obviously irritated. I wasn’t sure why I was even offering. Maybe out of guilt.
“It’s just that—” I paused. “It looks like you could use a hand.”
“I’ve got it.” The shift in his tone made it clear that he was finished discussing it.
He gave Annie a nod, as if to coax her into eating, and she picked up her spoon silently. Her legs kicked under the table, an excited gleam in her eye. It almost seemed as if she was enjoying this.
She watched me as she stirred the stew, the expression on her face making me wonder exactly what was going through her head. I had a feeling it was more than I could possibly pretend to know.
We ate in silence, and when I tried to help clean up, Eamon shrugged me off. He was stiff and uncomfortable around me. That was clear. Anytime I stepped too close to him, he moved farther away, and his eyes never met mine. Not since the day I’d shown up and he’d looked down into my face, so close I could feel the warmth of him.
Annie disappeared into her little nook off the sitting room, and I watched Eamon at the sink. Again, that feeling of familiarity found me. Like this floor under my feet was one I’d stood on countless times. It flickered back and forth like a flame, going as fast as it came.
I almost didn’t ask it. “What’s the horse’s name?”
Eamon stopped, setting the dripping bowl in his hands into the sink before he turned to face me. “The horse?”
“The mare out in the paddock.” I gestured to the window. “What’s her name?”
“Callie.”
A horrible, strangled feeling sank from my throat down into my chest.
“Why?” he asked.
“No reason,” I said, hoarsely.
His gaze turned inspecting, running over my face like he could hear every single thought sprinting through my mind. I reached behind me, hand searching for the doorknob to the bedroom.
“Good night.” I closed myself inside, pressing my hot forehead to the back of the door.
My body, bones and all, felt so heavy that I thought I could fall through the floor. And I wouldn’t stop there. The weight of the idea was so overwhelming that it could pull me straight into the center of the earth.
I stood there for a long time, staring into the growing darkness. That name—Callie—felt like a rooted thing inside my head. And I could feel it growing, expanding into something else. Esther had described the madness as a fraying rope. Threads of time. But that didn’t explain what had happened with the memory of Mason last night or what happened tonight at the paddock.
I could feel the memories brimming, some of them so close to the surface that if I reached out to touch them, they’d take shape. But I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to remember, as Birdie had put it, and that’s exactly what this was—remembering. A slow and steady carving, like a river eroding the earth.
I was remembering, but I didn’t know how. The only person who could answer that was the one who’d lived in this house. This room.