I looked around, frantically searching for something, anything, that would help me understand what I’d been doing here. Why I’d left.
I took a match from the jar on the bedside table and lit the candle, my eyes adjusting to the dim glow. The room was full of shadows. Ghosts with stories I didn’t yet know. But I’d had my secrets, just like everyone else did. For an entire year, I’d kept the detailed records of my episodes hidden. Years before that, I’d kept my research on Susanna from Gran.
I lowered down onto my knees, shoving both hands beneath the old mattress and working my way around to the other side. If Esther, Margaret, and Eamon didn’t know why I’d left a year ago, there had to be some clue they’d missed. Some piece of evidence they’d overlooked.
I tore back the quilts, lifting the pillows to feel down the wood-paneled wall. When my fingers hit something, I froze.
Carefully, I shifted the object back and forth until it was sliding up. It was rough, like a roll of coarse fabric or a flattened spool of thick twine. When I finally had it free, I sat down on the bed, pulling it into my lap. It was a wide fold of burlap.
I lifted one corner, revealing a stack of gray paper. Newspaper. Two big, black block letters stared up at me.
MI
I pulled them free, unfolding them in my lap.
MINISTER SLAIN
It was a clipping of the same article I’d found when I was looking in the state archives online, but these were the originals, printed and distributed in 1950s Jasper.
The next one was another I recognized.
BODY FOUND IN ADELINE RIVER
Several others were with them, some of which I’d never seen, but all were pieces from local newspapers chronicling the investigation into the murder of Nathaniel Rutherford. My father.
Even thinking the word was foreign to me. I’d lived in the shadow of my mother’s story, but a father was something that had never been talked about, never seemed to matter. All this time, he’d been in the past, further back than I could have imagined. And I couldn’t help but think that the curse on the Farrows had touched him, too.
If he died a year ago, that meant I must have met him while I was here, and if I was remembering things from that time, I’d eventually remember him, too. So, what was this? Another collection like the one back home? If it was, then why had I kept it hidden?
Tucked in between the newspaper clippings were more scraps of paper, and when I slid them out of the way, the light reflected off the glossy surface of a photograph.
It was almost the same picture that Gran sent me. Same camera. Same moment, but Nathaniel and Susanna were posed differently, like this was another snap on the same roll of film. When I turned it over, the back was blank.
Beneath it was a small rectangle of paper. It was a series of years written down in one long column. But this handwriting was unmistakably mine.
1912
1946
1950
1951
My eyes landed on the year 1951. That was now.
I went still when I heard a soft sound seeping beneath the bedroom door. Outside the window, the moon had risen over the crest of the mountains. I hadn’t even noticed that the house had gone quiet.
At first, it sounded like wind. I slipped the papers back into the envelope and tucked it beneath the quilts before my feet found their way across the cold floor. When I opened the door of the bedroom, I realized the sound wasn’t the wind. It was Annie.
A soft whimper echoed in the house, her tiny voice heavy with sleep. I peered around the corner of the kitchen, freezing when I saw a shadow moving in the dark. Eamon was sitting up on the sofa, pushing back the quilt draped over his legs and getting to his feet. The moonlight rippled over his skin as he moved through the sitting room, toward Annie’s little nook. I watched as he climbed into the bed with her and she curled into him, a tiny ball beneath the blanket.
I watched them, unable to pull my eyes from the sight. My fingers curled around the corner of the wall, that hollow ache inside of me waking. For years, I’d shielded myself with the claims that I didn’t want love or a child of my own. I’d even, at times, prided myself on the independence that my fate as a Farrow ensured me. But deep beneath that pretense was a longing I’d always kept tucked away from the world.
As I stood there watching Eamon’s arms fold around his daughter, I found myself in one of those vulnerable moments when the truth came for me. I’d stayed unyielding because I’d had to, but the June who’d married Eamon and had borne his child had been weak. She’d been the worst kind of selfish, and I was broken into two pieces—one that was ashamed of her and one that was envious of her.
The crying stopped, followed by a few quiet sniffs, and then the house was silent again. They lay like that until their breaths drew deep and long, and I stood watching them because I couldn’t stop. His arm draped around her little frame. Her head tucked beneath his chin. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and the thought made a pain erupt inside of me that I could hardly bear.
This was the field that I had planted. With my very own hands. And then I’d left it all to rot.
Fifteen
I had to remember. All of it.
I woke before Eamon and Annie, when the sun was just beginning to paint a blue haze on the mountain peaks in the distance. The farm was quiet when I came down the back steps, and the faint call of birds was muted by a soft breeze that swept over the tobacco.
I’d been up half the night thinking about it. If I was somehow triggering memories of my unlived life, then it was only a matter of time before I knew exactly what happened here before I left. There was no way to go back and undo it. What was done was done. But I’d had years here, filled with the things I’d never been brave enough to admit that I wanted. Now I needed to know why Gran had lied, and why I’d chosen to leave.
My boots waded through the tall, wet grass that stretched between the barn and the house as Callie watched me from the paddock. I tried to let my mind and my body follow the faint rhythm that was humming beneath my thoughts. It was at the tip of my fingers, under my tongue. A routine I was on the verge of remembering. One I’d done every morning.
I fetched the water and the eggs, testing myself with the little things I couldn’t possibly know. Which trays in the chicken coop would have eggs and which were always bare. How the pump at the well needed a firm tug to the side before I pushed it down. I’d been so careful not to touch anything, afraid I would disturb the precarious balance between me and this place. But with every surface my fingertips grazed, I was filling in the edges of a picture. It wasn’t just Eamon’s home. It had been mine, too.
I stepped out of my boots, leaving them on the steps as I came into the kitchen. I didn’t let myself think, moving with nothing more than muscle memory. It was stilted, but it was definitely there. I placed the kettle on the burner, and my gaze was instinctively pulled like a magnet to the coffee can on top of the icebox. I knew this choreography. I’d probably done it hundreds of times.
I smiled to myself, excitement brimming in my blood. It was a drip, but it was steady.
I had to search to find the jar of shortening, but other things came more easily. When I reached into the cupboard for the sugar bowl, it was exactly where I’d expected it to be. My hand even seemed to recognize the feel of the lid as I lifted it and the shape of the spoon as I stirred two spoonfuls into my coffee.