I’d sink down and let the roar drown everything else out as I watched the light ripple above me in bursts that looked like stars exploding. And when my lungs couldn’t stand it any longer, when it felt like there was a storm in my chest, I’d shoot up to the surface, gasping for air.
That’s what this felt like.
I stared at the paper, the hood of the truck hot beneath my hands. In the distance, the dragonflies skipped across the river.
I didn’t know how I felt about the idea of Mason and me. Knowing it was never possible had been a refuge. So, what had changed? I couldn’t help but think that maybe that night at the house, a bottle of whiskey between us as I told him I was sick, had shifted things. If I hadn’t walked through that door, was that what would have happened? Was that what was waiting when I went back? If there was a world where Mason and I were more, maybe that’s what I’d gone back to. But then why build a life with Eamon in the first place?
We’d been so good at pretending, Mason and me. But our days of pretending were over.
Twenty-Three
The memories were coming, whether I wanted them or not.
Eamon was waiting when I came over the hill, eyes on the road like he’d been waiting for me to appear there. As soon as he saw me, he turned on his heel, stalking up the drive and toward the house. I braced myself as I got out of the truck.
Margaret was already gone, and there was no sign of Annie. The house was empty except for Eamon’s sobering presence. He stood in the sitting room when I came through the door, the lines of him rigid.
“Where were you?” he asked.
My hand tightened around the keys. I could lie to him, but I couldn’t see a point to it. “I went to see Mimi Granger.”
Whatever Eamon had expected me to say, it wasn’t that. The stern look on his face melted away, replaced by shock. “You what?”
I lifted my chin. “I went to see her. To ask about that night.”
Eamon stared at me, speechless.
“I have to know, Eamon. If you and Esther aren’t going to tell me what really happened here—”
“I told you what happened.”
“Not everything,” I said, more quietly.
His jaw clenched. “There are things you don’t need to know, June.”
“But I will know them. I’m remembering. I’m getting more memories every single day. Eventually, I will be able to recall that night,” I said, feeling my stomach clench. “And everything after.”
I didn’t want to say it, but the moment I was really thinking of was when I left. The moment I’d decided to walk away. It was the only memory I dreaded as much as I needed it.
Eamon ran a hand over his face, breathing through his fingers. He was coming undone in places, too. I could see it. Feel it, even.
“I’m beginning to think that maybe you don’t want me to remember,” I said, more quietly. “You don’t want me to know what you’re hiding.”
His eyes snapped up to meet mine, defensive and cold. But he wasn’t even going to try to deny it. That one look made me feel like my heart was breaking—an acute, palpable pain I’d never felt before. I’d never understood that expression because I’d never given my heart to anyone. But that’s exactly what I’d done in my own future—Eamon’s past. Now the man who stood before me, who’d loved me, whom I’d trusted, was torn between two versions of me.
I turned, headed for the door, and Eamon’s steps followed.
“June.” He said my name with a tenderness that made me bite down hard onto my lip. “June, listen.”
But I was already out the door, down the steps, climbing back into the truck. I started the engine and didn’t look back as I left, not even thinking for a second about where I was headed. I followed the road I’d traveled a thousand times when I felt like I had nowhere else to go.
I pulled into the flower farm a few minutes later, cranking the emergency brake with my gaze fixed on the fields before me. Dahlias and sunflowers bobbed in the wind as far as the eye could see. There were a few hats moving among them, making me think of Mason, and I was so homesick for him that I could cry.
A young Malachi Rhodes was digging a shallow trench a few feet away from the southernmost plot, an irrigation technique we still used on the farm. Esther had been ahead of her time on that practice, but now I wondered how much she’d learned from the future. Had Susanna brought with her the knowledge that Margaret had learned? Had I? Which way had the wisdom traveled?
My feet were heavy as they took me up the porch, but I stopped short when I saw a copy of the Jasper Chronicle on the top step.
I picked it up and unfolded it.
ONE YEAR LATER: STILL NO ANSWERS
It was one of the articles I’d found in the state archives, back when all of this began. But here it was, fresh off the press and sitting on Esther’s porch—the issue that marked the one year anniversary of Nathaniel Rutherford’s death.
Below the headline, Nathaniel’s picture stretched across the page. He was smiling, the church at his back, the edges of his white shirt invisible against it. His fedora-style hat was just a little tilted to one side, following the slope of his mouth.
The town of Jasper remembers the life of Nathaniel Christopher Rutherford, longtime minister at First Presbyterian Church of Jasper. Today marks one year since his death on the eve of June 21, 1950, a tragic mystery that his son, Merrill County Sheriff Caleb Rutherford, has vowed to solve.
Mourners gathered at the church on Saturday evening in remembrance, for a chorus of Nathaniel’s favorite hymns. The songs could be heard all the way down Main Street, only a mile and a half from where Nathaniel’s body was found by Edgar Owens, who was fishing on the river the morning after his death.
Those close to Nathaniel knew that he considered himself a modern-day Job, content to suffer as God saw fit. After the sudden loss of his father when he was a young man, Nathaniel then buried his infant daughter. Only a few years later, he lost his wife, a victim of long-term hysteria. After dedicating his remaining years to the town he loved and cherished, he died at the age of sixty-three. He is survived by his son, Caleb Rutherford, and the congregation that knew him to be a loyal shepherd.
The man that the town remembered was a far cry from the one Esther, Eamon, and Caleb described. He’d been beloved as a spiritual leader and pitied for the suffering he’d endured. Revered for his dedication to the people of this town. Looking at him in that photograph, there was no hint of the crazed, obsessive minister whom Susanna had both loved and feared. It didn’t look like the face of a man who’d wanted to kill his own child or who’d tried to rid his wife of demons.
“Can I help you?”
The voice finds me, sweeping me into a memory as vivid and clear as the world around me. The moment I hear it, I let myself sink. Faster. Deeper.
“Can I help you?”
The colors bubble and bleed until I’m standing before the church, eyes fixed on that narrow steeple from below. The wind whips my hair into my face as I stare up at it. Heavy boots crunch on the rocks, drifting toward me.
“Have you come for prayer?”
I turn around, wringing my hands when I see him. Nathaniel Rutherford, the man who’d been my mother’s end, stands only feet away. He’s my father, a monster that lives in the church beside the river, but I had to see him with my own eyes. I had to look into that face and try to see what it was that had bewitched the woman who’d left me. But I don’t see anything at all. I feel only like a cavern has opened inside of me that will never close.