“Hello.” The greeting was awkward, but I didn’t know what would sound the most normal. Had I called him Caleb before? Mr. Rutherford? Sheriff Rutherford?
He took a step toward me, and I inhaled the scent of stale smoke and sweat, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. I felt incredibly small next to him, and when I saw the look on his face, it was clear that was exactly what he wanted.
I shot a glance in the other direction, trying to spot Esther or Margaret, but the dance floor was filled with people again, blocking my view.
Caleb’s gaze didn’t break from me as he moved closer, putting himself between the edge of the tent and the place where I stood. “Enjoyin’ the party?”
I smiled. “I am.”
There was a beat of silence where his response would have naturally gone, but he let it expand, watching me shrink away from him just slightly.
“That’s good,” he finally said. “I’m sure you missed this place. Your family.”
I found the chain of the locket watch around my neck, fighting with it to give my hands something to do. But as soon as I realized the movement was drawing his attention to it, I instinctively turned a little away from him.
“I did.” I answered.
“You know, I’ve been thinkin’ about why you might have stayed away so long.”
“I was taking care of my—”
“Your mother.” He nodded. “That’s right.”
My palms were sweating now.
“The only thing is, I think you’re lyin’， June. I don’t know where you’ve been for the last year, but I don’t think you were in Norfolk. And it’s only a matter of time before I can prove it.”
He lifted the glass, taking his time as he drank the last of the beer.
“My only guess is that you thought if you stayed away long enough, all of this would go away. But it won’t.”
“Caleb.” His name slipped out, but I couldn’t tell if it struck him as odd. “I understand that you loved your father, and that you’re trying to get justice for him. But I don’t know anything about what happened to him that night.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about him.” His tone transformed, making me unsure if I’d heard him correctly. “He was a cruel bastard and no kind of father. But you already know that, don’t you?”
“What?” I said, hollowly.
I was frozen, telling myself that it wasn’t possible that Caleb could know who I really was. Even if he’d entertained the idea, he could never confirm it. The second I thought it, I second-guessed myself. I had no idea when paternity testing was invented. Was there some way he could know?
“See, my father wasn’t right after you came to Jasper,” he continued. “He was consumed with this idea that you weren’t who you said you were. When Eamon started makin’ complaints, sayin’ he’d found him parked on the road, watchin’ the house, I realized somethin’ was wrong.”
So, Caleb’s suspicions had started before his father was murdered.
“He wouldn’t tell me the truth. Just kept sayin’ that you were sent to torment him. That the devil had cursed your family and that he had to protect us from it.”
“Why didn’t you say any of this when you brought me in?”
He didn’t answer, but I was already putting it together.
“You don’t want any of that on record, do you?” I said. “Not on the tape, and not in the statements.”
Caleb looked amused by the suggestion. I was right.
He moved again so quickly that I didn’t see his hand coming until he’d already snatched up my arm. He squeezed it, making me gasp. But the music was filling the space around us. Laughter. A glass breaking.
“I see you, June Stone,” he murmured, his face close to mine. “You’re coverin’ for Eamon, and I’ll get what I need to prove it. Then you’re both gonna pay for what you did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I spoke through clenched teeth, fear coursing through me so swiftly that I could feel a scream trapped in my throat.
I could see the remnants of his father, our father, in that crazed look. It was the fractured man who stared back at me from that portrait in the diner. In the same breath, Caleb’s face blurred, interchanging with Nathaniel’s, those same black eyes boring into mine. It wasn’t the first time I’d tasted this fear.
The pain in my arm grew to a sharp ache before he suddenly let me go, and the easy smile returned to his face.
“Now, you enjoy your night.”
Caleb stepped past me and was swallowed up by the crowd. I glanced around me, looking for anyone who may have been watching, but there was no one. I smoothed out the rumpled shoulder of my dress before I set a hand on my stomach, holding it there as a wave of nausea rolled over me.
I could still feel that cold air that surrounded him. I could feel the throb where his fingers had clenched down on my arm. There was no mistaking that look in Caleb’s eyes. He wanted to hurt me.
The pop and fizz of the camera’s flash sounded again and the darkness washed out, blinding me. When my eyes focused, they settled on an old woman behind the back end of the tent. She wore a burgundy dress, her white hair pinned up on top of her head. She was watching me with ice-blue eyes, her wrinkled mouth twisting.
Mimi Granger. The women who’d seen me running through her field that night.
The terror on her face was like a beacon, the same expression I’d seen that day I’d stood on the road in front of her house. She shuffled backward, a hand drifting out behind her as if she was afraid she might fall.
Her gaze didn’t break from mine as she shrank back into the party, and then her dress was no more than a stroke of blood red flitting through the crowd.
Twenty-Two
I’m dreaming of Eamon.
In the drifts of shallow sleep, I can feel his hands dragging up my body. The weight of him between my legs. I can hear him breathing until there’s the break of a moan in his throat. I can taste salt on my tongue and see bare, moonlit skin.
I’m not asleep anymore. This is the in-between place, like being stuck between two stitches in a seam.
A rush of heat pours into me, spreading like wildfire as my hands find his face. His mouth is on my throat, my shoulder, leaving a tingling trail in its wake, and all I can think is that I don’t want him to stop.
He doesn’t.
The heat inside of me is liquid. It’s simmering now, on the edge of spilling over as I move against him. I can hear myself make a sound, and his hands tighten on me, but when I finally open my eyes, he isn’t there.
The dream faded and I closed my eyes tighter, trying to hold on to it. But the more my mind woke, the further it drew away from me. My hands twisted in the sheets as it bled into a sea of black, my heavy breaths the only sound in the sunlit room around me.
I could still feel him. Taste him. The smell of his body was swirling in the air, but when I turned my face to see the other side of the bed, it was empty.
It was a dream, yes. But I’d been dreaming of a memory.
I waited for my heartbeat to find its rhythm and for the burning on my skin to cool. It was like he’d really just been there. Like we’d just . . . I pressed my hands to my face, trying to think about anything else. Anything besides the slide of his skin against mine. Slowly, the live-wire feeling began to dim, and my breaths slowed, one by one.