“I don’t remember!” The words crashed into one another, making Mimi flinch.
I knew it was the wrong thing to say, a dangerous thing to admit. She could go straight back to Caleb and tell him everything. But there was something about the way she was looking at me that made the words spill from my mouth. Like if she could somehow see how lost I was, she would help me. She would tell me the truth.
Mimi’s hand fell from the doorknob as she stared up at me. She was quiet for a long moment before she came outside. The shawl around her shoulders was pulled tight now, her crooked brow relaxing.
“Please,” I said again, my voice tired.
She let the screen door close, turning toward the west field. Her hand lifted, and she pointed one knobby finger at the rocking chair that sat at the corner of the porch. “I sit out here at night just after the sun goes down, when it cools off and the mosquitoes clear out. I was sittin’ in that rocking chair there when I saw you.”
“What was I doing?”
She shrugged. “Runnin’。” The way she said it unleashed a dread within me. This woman wasn’t lying.
“Where, exactly?”
That same finger traced a path from the tree line in the distance to the fence that lined the road. “You were comin’ from the river.”
The river. That’s where Nathaniel had been murdered, but his body was found far downstream from here, closer to the falls.
“You were wearin’ a white dress and it had red splotches all over it, on your chest and legs. It was on your arms, too. In your hair.”
My stomach lurched.
“You had that little girl. You were carryin’ her in your arms, and when you made it to the road, you just disappeared. So, I called down to the sheriff’s office and told them they needed to send someone over to check on things.”
“I didn’t say anything?”
She shook her head. “I called out to you, but it was like you didn’t hear me. You had this look on your face . . . like . . . I don’t know how to describe it. You looked like you weren’t really there. Almost like you were sleepwalkin’ or somethin’。”
My eyes fixed on that field, trying again to imagine myself there.
“You really don’t remember any of this?”
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t.”
We stood there in a long silence as I watched the field. Only weeks ago, they’d found that shoe in the tedder—the one I’d sworn I’d never seen. Mimi had no reason to lie about what she saw that night. No reason to call the sheriff before Nathaniel’s body was even found. And then there was the fact that the timing lined up. If I’d walked back from Esther’s, I would have passed just beyond that tree line. If I had to, I could have cut through the field.
Mimi didn’t say another word as I walked back to the truck. I pulled onto the road as she stood on the porch and watched me. She had one hand up to block the sun from her eyes, the other propped on her hip. I still had that emptied-out feeling inside of me, but now it felt like an abyss.
I believed that Mimi Granger saw me the night of the Midsummer Faire, but it was a memory I didn’t have yet. That’s what this felt like, inheriting moments until they made an entire reality. Bit by bit, I was getting pieces. If that was true, then eventually, I would feel as if I’d lived this life. I’d recapture it, in a way.
Eamon and Esther had their secrets. So did I. It had never been clearer to me than it was now that this wasn’t just about the June who came through the door five years ago. It was about Susanna and the baby she’d left on Market Street. It was about the minister’s body found in the river. I still didn’t know if Eamon was actually capable of killing someone, but these were single stars in a constellation I couldn’t fully see.
The brush of something across the top of my leg made me look down, and I sucked in a breath as a chill ran up my spine, settling between my shoulder blades.
The world blotted out like drops of water, a broken reflection on the surface of a puddle. Esther’s truck was gone, but I was still moving. My hands were still gripped to the steering wheel, but the dash was replaced by the cracked one in the Bronco. The familiar smell of oil filled the air, and the unraveling, softened leather was soft beneath my fingers.
It’s happening again.
A hand is lazily draped over my knee, hooking to the inside seam of my jeans, and I follow the arm to the passenger seat, where Mason sits beside me.
His other arm is propped on the open window, fingers raking through his hair. The top buttons of his shirt are undone, the tan line at his wrist showing. But this touch—I look down to that hand on my leg. It’s the kind of touch that never passes between us.
“Mason,” I hear myself say.
His face finally turns to look at me, no trace of surprise there. As if I never left. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world to be sitting beside me.
“Yeah?” He answers.
I stare at him, my lips parting to say something when the car jerks around me, tearing me from the memory.
In an instant, the interior of Esther’s truck materialized, the Bronco vanishing, and my eyes focused on the road. It was curving, and the truck was drifting off the shoulder, toward the ditch.
I cranked the steering wheel to the left, slamming on the brakes, and the truck fishtailed as it came to a stop. Smoke from the tires filled the air, and as it cleared, I could see the trees that lined the river.
I looked around me, breaths heaving. I was on the shoulder, not another car in sight.
Slowly, I let my head turn back toward the passenger seat, now empty. Only seconds ago, it had felt like I could reach out and touch him. But Mason was gone.
I pushed the door open, getting out. The turnoff was overgrown, with wildflowers coming up between the cracks in the tar, and the river was just visible through the trees. It was a perfect half-moon of green water with a sandy bank.
This memory had been like the other one of Mason—when I’d been on the riverbank with a fire going and he was asking me if I was going to get in. This moment, too, had never happened. I would remember him touching me like that. But if these really were memories, when were they from?
I reached through the open window of Esther’s truck, opening the glove box. My hand pulled back when I saw the handgun, but I reached beneath it, searching for paper and a pencil. I found an invoice from a farm supply in Asheville, and I turned it over on the hood of the truck, scribbling.
There was only one time period when those memories with Mason could have happened. I’d gone through the door in June of 2023, my time. The future me went through in 2024. There were at least several months of life that I was missing in the span of that time. These memories with Mason were what happened to the June who didn’t go through the door until months after Gran’s funeral. It was a period of time I’d skipped. I’d missed it, because I’d gone through the door early.
I pushed the hair out of my face, closing my eyes and drinking in that sound of the water. When Mason and I were kids, we’d climb up onto the bridge with bottles of Coke we’d bought at the grocery and swing our feet out into the air until we were so hot, we had to jump. The river was always clear and cold, and it tasted sweet on my tongue.