What had the article said? That there’d been signs of a struggle?
On the tape that Caleb played, I’d said that Eamon left the Faire around 5 P.M. If I’d gone home with Esther, that meant that he hadn’t come back to the Faire when he was finished dealing with Callie.
“Everything okay?” Margaret looked concerned now.
I forced another smile, catching Annie’s attention before I pointed in the direction of the dessert table. “Look what I found.”
Her mouth opened, eyes going wide. She was so beautiful that it didn’t seem like she could be real, much less have come from me, and that look on her face set off a chain reaction inside of me. A feeling of complete and utter euphoria sprung to life, and the smile on my face stretched wider.
“Think we should go get some of that cake?” Margaret tugged one of Annie’s braids playfully.
Annie nodded, and then she was running toward the tower of desserts, Margaret trying to keep up.
The flash of a bulb made me flinch, and I blinked the bright light from my eyes, finding its source across the tent. In one corner, a man in a suit stood behind a wooden tripod set with a large boxlike camera. He leaned over it, checking the settings, before it flashed again.
The pop was followed by a brief fizzing sound, and there was something about it that pulled at the edges of a thought. I focused on that feeling, trying to tug it to the surface. It was that flash. The sound of the bulb. I squinted, trying to remember.
The music cut out, and the bodies on the dance floor stopped whirling, strings of laughter drifting through the air. When the fiddle started up again, it was slow, the notes pulling long before the mandolin joined in with a melancholy tune that made my heart ache. I could hear the river in the distance. The chirp of crickets carried on the wind coming off the mountains. They were the sounds of home, but here I was, in a sea of strangers.
I searched for Eamon again, finding him still standing in the same spot, but now another man had joined them. Eamon looked like he was only half listening, eyes scanning the room until they found me. When they did, a lump rose in my throat.
He murmured something to the others, and then he was stepping through the crowd gathered between us. When he reached me, he took my hand again. This time, it was with a confidence he hadn’t shown earlier. His fingers weaved with mine, and our palms touched before he set down the bottle of beer and pulled me with him.
We broke through to the other side of the dance floor, and he turned to face me. I looked around us, my breaths coming quicker as we drew attention, but this was why we were here, wasn’t it? To keep up appearances?
His arm came around me, his hand finding the crook of my waist with an ease that said he knew this body, its shape and form. The mere thought of it made me tremble, but the set of Eamon’s mouth looked like it physically hurt him to touch me. I wasn’t all that sure I wasn’t hurting, too.
He held me closely as we began to move in a kind of dance I didn’t know. But somehow, my feet were following his, and slowly, the people around us seemed to forget we were there. Their conversations grew louder as the song drew on, and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.
I stared at the way our hands fit together, wishing I could ask him to tell me more about us. To recount, from his perspective, how I’d decided to stay here. What words I’d said when I told him that I wanted to marry him. He had all of those memories, a bird’s-eye view of our story from beginning to end. I wanted so desperately to know it, but we couldn’t have a conversation like that in a place like this. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find a way to scratch its surface.
When I looked up at Eamon, he was watching me.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
The fiddle’s notes deepened, taking on a haunting tone, and I stretched my fingers between his, squeezing his hand. “Tell me.”
He considered his words for longer than I liked. I was afraid that he wouldn’t answer me, but then his mouth finally opened.
“It’s just that, sometimes, it feels like you’re back. But then I remember you’re not, and that makes me feel like,” He exhaled, “Like I can’t breathe.”
The burn behind my eyes woke, making my throat ache.
Eamon wasn’t a simple man, but he had a simple life. And I’d chosen him. Margaret said that she believed I had my reasons for what I did, but I didn’t think they could ever justify what I’d put this man through.
Again, the flash of the camera filled the tent, and the rising tide of a memory lapped at the edges of my mind. But this time, I didn’t chase after it.
Eamon didn’t take his eyes from me, holding my gaze. But he didn’t speak. His arm softened around my body, and I let my fingertips slide up his back, my face so close to his shoulder that I could catch the scent of him. This was the same touch I’d felt when I woke that morning in the house on Bishop Street. I’d heard his voice. Smelled him in the sheets. And for the first time, I had the distant sense that maybe I did really remember, like he was engraved on some part of me I couldn’t see even before I came here.
I closed my eyes, letting the pictures flash in my mind. The way he’d kissed me beneath the willow tree. His hand sliding into my hair. His mouth opening on mine.
I was breathing harder now, pulling him closer to me so that the space between us disappeared. I let my head tip back, and his chin brushed the tip of my nose. I could feel his hand closing around the fabric of my skirt, a clenched fist of emerald green.
His mouth was centimeters from mine, and my entire body waiting for it. I was burning beneath my dress, a fire engulfing me as his breath touched my skin.
The sound of the fiddle suddenly snuffed out, and the world came rushing back: a smear of glowing lights, the hum of people, and the sound of the rushing river beneath the bridge.
Eamon’s grip on me tightened for just a second before he completely let me go.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “It’s too hard.”
He stepped backward, and the heat that had enveloped me bled away, leaving me cold. That muscle in his jaw was flexing again, his eyes finding everything in the room except for the one place I wanted him to look—at me.
“Eamon.” I said his name, and the light in his eyes changed. He searched my face with an intensity that made my blood run faster in my veins.
But then he turned into the crowd, becoming no more than a shadow moving in the darkness on the street. I pushed into the crush of people, looking for a space where I could find some air. When I finally made it through to the edge of the tent where I could feel a breeze, I found myself beside the railing of the bridge. Below, the black river was invisible.
There was a pit in my stomach, a horrible, plummeting feeling that made me close my eyes. What was I doing? Why had I touched him like that? The same questions had been in that look on his face when he pulled away from me.
“Mrs. Stone.” I bristled when I heard Caleb Rutherford’s voice, flat as still water, at my back.
He stood a few steps away, a glass dangling from his fingertips as he leaned into the wooden post with his shoulder. He wasn’t in his uniform, and for some reason, that made him look even more intimidating. A light blue shirt was tucked into his gray trousers, the gold rim of his cigarette case visible from the top of the chest pocket. He looked younger with his hair combed like that.