I’d never felt fear like that. Not ever. And I didn’t think there was any way to ever come back from that explosion of light that had birthed a universe inside of me when she said that word.
Mama.
Twenty-Six
She wasn’t safe with me. She never had been.
I stood in the center of the sitting room in the dark, my eyes pinned to Annie’s sleeping form. She was tucked into her bed, lit by the moonlight coming through the window. Her peaceful face was nuzzled into the quilt, her breaths long and deep.
“June,” Eamon tried for the third time. “You can’t just stand there all night.”
I ignored him, refusing to blink even though my eyes ached.
I’d tried to go to bed, only to toss and turn, my feet bringing me back to this spot again and again. Every time she was out of sight, that crippling fear found me, its grip closing tight. I needed to see her with my own eyes. I needed to know that she was safe.
Those few seconds in the field had torn open an ocean of memories inside of me.
This changes everything.
I’m standing on the porch in the dark, the wind pulling my waving hair across my face. Eamon is only inches away, but he doesn’t touch me.
“This changes everything. You know that, right?” I say.
It’s a long moment before he nods, but it doesn’t feel like an agreement. It feels like a divide between us.
I blink, and I’m in our bed, naked beside Eamon, with the quilt pushed down to keep us cool. We’re in the last few moments before sleep takes hold, and my eyes are heavy. Eamon’s hand slides around my waist to the crest of my swollen belly, and I feel his lips press to the back of my shoulder.
I blink, and I’m at the farmhouse. I’m screaming, but not a high-pitched cry. It’s a groan from deep inside of me. Eamon’s hands bracing me, his mouth pressed to my ear, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.
I can feel sweat trailing down my back beneath my nightgown. I can feel pain wrapping around my body, and I push. That growl breaks in my chest again, and I can see Esther between my legs. Margaret standing in the moonlit window, waiting with a cloth draped over her hands.
And then there’s another cry that doesn’t come from me. I hold out my arms, reaching for her, and then she’s pressed against me as I sob. A deep, broken sound I’ve never heard before.
Warm, is all I can think. She’s so warm.
Eamon’s face presses into my hair, and I can feel his body trembling. Feel his arms tighten around me.
They were only a few of the dozens of memories that had worked themselves loose in the last few hours. My head was filled with them now. Annie in my arms as a baby, her mouth pressed to my breast. Eamon pacing the house with her cry in the dark, early hours of the morning. They were things I couldn’t unsee.
Mama.
That word contained multitudes. In an instant, it had wiped me from the face of the earth.
“June.” Eamon’s voice only made the ache inside of me cut deeper. That voice. I knew that voice. I’d known it before I ever walked through the door. “You need to get some sleep.”
“You should have told me I was sick,” I whispered.
“You weren’t sick.”
That’s what Gran had always said. It’s what Esther had told me, too. But being stuck between time, having a mind that was frayed, that was being broken. We were malfunctioning, all of us. It didn’t matter if it wouldn’t show up on a brain scan. There was something wrong with me.
“This is what happens,” I said. “I’ve seen it. With Gran. She saw it with Susanna and Esther, too. It was happening to me, even before I got here. This is what happens to us, Eamon. This is what’s going to happen to her.”
This was where it was always going to lead, wasn’t it? I’d known this as long as I’d known myself. So why did it hurt so much?
He looked at me with eyes that said he’d heard all of this before.
“This changes everything,” I repeated, watching his face.
He was watching me, too.
“That’s what I said when I told you, right? I warned you that this would change everything.”
I could see that he remembered standing out on the porch when I told him I was pregnant. He remembered when I spoke those words.
“How could I have left her?” My voice cracked. “How could I have just left her here by herself all alone?”
Eamon’s eyes dropped from mine. “Esther told you?”
“Margaret.”
He sighed.
“What kind of mother does that? What kind of person just leaves a three-year-old little girl by herself?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is. This sickness isn’t the only thing I got from Susanna, Eamon. I was never safe with her, just like Annie isn’t safe with me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do.” I nodded, insistent. “I never should have become a mother.”
Eamon looked at me with an expression that bordered on fury. “Look, I don’t know why you did what you did, but you would have died for our daughter. If you remember, then you know that.”
I wanted to hold on to the words and let them pull me from the darkness. I wanted to believe him.
“You’re the same person I met that day in Esther’s fields. The same one who decided to stay here and marry me. To have a child with me.” Tears filled his eyes as he said it. “Even if that door appears right now and you walk through it, all of that is still true.”
“Eamon.”
“Listen to me.” He took my face in his hands, the timbre of his voice deepening. “I wouldn’t change any of it. If I could walk through a door and undo all of this, I wouldn’t. Do you understand?”
I stared at him, afraid to speak.
“You and Annie are the loves of my life,” he breathed. “And I wouldn’t change it.”
My hands tightened on his wrists. I remembered the man who was holding me. I remembered the fierceness of his love and the way he felt so unwavering and safe. For the first time, I was truly afraid of the idea of leaving. I had loved Mason for who he was, but also because he was the only one who’d ever chosen me. But this—this was a home I’d built with my own two hands. I’d made this. It was mine.
There was a life on the other side of the door. A history. A strange disappearance. But in this life, I had something that I’d never had before.
“I need to ask you something.” Eamon’s eyes dropped from mine.
“What?”
He set his forehead against mine, holding me there. “Do you remember me?” He asked the question like he was scared. Like I had an answer that could destroy him. “I don’t mean do you have memories of us. I mean, do you remember me.”
I nodded, and he exhaled, like it was the first time he’d been able to breathe since I’d left.
“I do,” I whispered.
He caught my mouth with his, making the space between us come alive, and I melted into him. There was only the burn of his fingers. The heat of his breath. The feeling of his teeth grazing my lip.
I was desperate to feel it. All of it.
My hands found the collar of his shirt, frantically working at the buttons. For the first time, there wasn’t a storm-churned sea of thoughts in my head. There was only this—the way his skin felt under my palms as I pushed the shirt over his shoulders. The searing wake his mouth left on my throat. The way it hurt just a little when he touched me.