I could feel a fire burning in my chest, her words like gasoline, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Eamon wasn’t mine. He didn’t belong to me. Still, I couldn’t stand that look on her face when she said his name.
“Hello, Claire.” Esther was suddenly beside me again, her hand tightening on my arm before I could speak.
The woman smiled wider, but it was stiff. “I was just tellin’ June how much she was missed while she was away.”
“Yes, well, that’s very kind of you.” Esther’s tone was placating at best.
“None more than Annie, surely.” Claire’s smile deflated, and she locked eyes with me.
Again, the words singed. Whatever the reason, I had left Annie, and I still couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around that. The shame of it was growing heavier by the day, and Claire didn’t look the slightest bit concerned about offending me. I recognized that cool judgment in her tone. The sweetness-laced insult. I’d known a lot of women like that in my life.
“June, honey, would you mind popping into the diner and getting a pie for supper?” Esther pressed a couple of bills into my hand, and I had to fight to unclench my fingers.
“Sure.” But I didn’t move. Esther had to turn me toward the opening of the tent and give me a nudge before I started walking.
I could feel Claire’s scrutinizing eyes follow me as I stepped out of the shade of the tent and into the sunny street. Once I was out of sight, that same attention found me from three women on the sidewalk.
I ignored them, pinning my eyes on the diner, where the words COFFEE, SANDWICHES, and PIE were painted on the windows that overlooked the river bridge. Behind the glass, almost every table was filled.
Other than the paint color, it didn’t look that different from Edison’s Cafe. My reflection moved over the windows as I came up the walk, and I reflexively tucked my hair behind my ear, trying to look relaxed. Like everyone wasn’t already staring at me.
The string of copper bells tied to the knob jingled as I pulled open the door, and more than one head turned in my direction. The haze from the kitchen griddle filled the air, along with the smell of thick-cut bacon. I could feel the eyes instantly. Not sympathetic glances or concerned appraisals, but a sifting kind of gaze.
I headed toward the stool-lined counter, where orders were hung like little waving flags in the window to the kitchen. For the most part, everyone returned their attention to their plates when I found a place to stand in front of the cash register. But as soon as my eyes settled on the wall beside me, I almost recoiled.
A simple wooden frame was hung above the counter, holding a portrait of Nathaniel Rutherford. He was wearing a jacket and tie, a stoic expression on his face. It looked like the kind of photograph that might have been taken for the Presbyterian Regional Assembly directory, or an official picture that would hang in the church.
In 2023 there was another photo that hung there. A different one, with a different frame. Maybe it had become some kind of tradition that Rhett Miller followed when he bought the place. I’d seen the one at Edison’s many times, but there was something that struck me differently about this one. Nathaniel’s eyes bored into mine, the black pupils almost seeming to widen and stretch. I could feel myself falling into them, my stomach dropping with the sensation.
Those shoulders and even the shape of his ears made me think of that man I’d seen in the church window as I stood before Gran’s grave. The same figure had been on the porch that night. There’d been a cigarette in his hand, the glow of it illuminating in the dark. Had it been him?
“June?”
The man pouring coffee on the other side of the counter stopped before me, steaming pot in hand.
“I’m sorry.” I blinked. “What?”
“I said what can I get for you?”
“Oh.” I glanced back at the portrait almost involuntarily before I turned my back to it altogether. “A pie, please.” I squeezed the bills in my palm.
He put down the coffeepot and went to a shelf on the wall where six pie plates were set in a row, waiting to be cut. “Cherry or blueberry?”
“Blueberry,” I answered automatically, an emptiness materializing between my ribs. All I could think about was the blueberry pie on the kitchen table between me and Mason. That night felt like years ago.
I handed over the money, and the man hit the stiff keys of the register before the drawer popped open. I glanced at his name tag as he dropped the change in my hand.
“Thanks, David.”
He gave me a nod, and I picked up the pie, winding back through the tables to the door. By the time I was outside, Esther was unloading the last crate of flowers. I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as I climbed into the truck, setting the pie in my lap. I could feel the sweat beading at my brow, my pulse still elevated from what Claire had said. I hadn’t been the one to marry Eamon or have his child or choose to leave, but the nagging feeling of being responsible for it all was impossible to ignore.
The truck door opened, jolting me from the thought, and I gasped, the pie almost toppling from my lap.
“You alright?” Esther climbed in, fitting the keys into the ignition.
“I’m fine.”
She started the truck, and I pressed my back into the seat, still keenly aware of the eyes on us. The air poured through the open window as she hit the gas, and I felt myself relax a little as the buildings disappeared in the side mirror. I was suddenly desperate to be as far away from all of it as possible. The urge to be home, at the farmhouse, was all-consuming.
Home.
I caught hold of the thought the moment it floated into my mind. I had only fragments of memories there, but somehow, it did feel like the farmhouse was a home. To a part of myself, anyway. Right now any place felt safer than this.
“You have any trouble in the diner?” Esther asked, shooting a glance in my direction.
I turned the question over in my head. There’d been no trouble, but that portrait of Nathaniel had shaken something loose in me. Instead of tugging on the feeling and bringing it into the light, I pushed it away. I wanted the memories, I wanted to know what happened, but that felt different, somehow. When I’d seen him at the church and on my porch, it had felt like he was watching me. Were those memories, too?
“No,” I answered.
“Good.” She looked relieved. “That’s good.”
The farther we went into the hills, the more I felt like I could breathe. The oppressive weight of Nathaniel’s empty gaze and Claire’s cutting words was like tightly would vine loosening its grip. Again, that thought of home resurfaced, my eyes finding a fixed spot in the distance, where I was waiting to see the turn onto Hayward Gap Road.
Beside me, Esther was quiet.
“What will you tell them when I’m gone again?” I asked.
Her eyes cut to me, revealing that it wasn’t the first time she’d thought about it. In fact, she and Eamon had likely already discussed the subject.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
The ominous tone in her answer made me wonder if they’d tell people I’d died. When Susanna had put me back through that door, leaving me in 1989, they’d let people believe she’d lost a daughter. They’d even erected a headstone with my name on it. Esther and Eamon could tell the town anything they wanted: that I’d run off and left my family for good, or maybe even that I’d thrown myself from the falls like one of the other lost souls of Jasper. Was that what they’d tell Annie, too, when she was old enough to ask why she didn’t have a mother?