So, Eamon wasn’t a killer, but he wasn’t innocent, either. We’d done this thing together.
“I put him into the water, and I thought I was close enough to the drop to be safe. It was so dark that it was hard to see, and I didn’t realize there was a fallen tree up the bank. He got caught downstream, and at first light, he was spotted by a fisherman.”
I tried not to imagine Nathaniel’s pale, tangled body half-submerged in the water.
“Sam came by late that night after they’d gotten the message that Mimi Granger had left at the sheriff’s office. Luckily, I was already back, and we told him we’d been home all night.
“But then people came forward saying they’d seen me arguing with Nathaniel in the weeks leading up to his death. Then when it got out that Mimi Granger had seen you that night, it drew even more attention.”
I closed my eyes, seeing it. Hearing it. My labored breaths as I tore through the sea of waist-high alfalfa, Annie in my arms. The pain in my foot from losing my shoe—the same shoe Mimi had found in her tedder, months later.
“No one had any reason to believe it. I don’t think they were even seriously considering what Mimi said until you left. The timing was suspicious, and the investigation went on, but no one could get ahold of you. When you didn’t come back, they started asking more questions.”
“Why didn’t we go to the police? Why didn’t we just tell the truth?”
“No one in Jasper who would believe what really happened. No one was going to sit on a jury and fairly consider that the minister was a bad man or that he wanted to hurt you. That’s not the Nathaniel this town knew.”
The only other person alive who did was Caleb. That grim flash in his eyes when he talked about his father, our father, was unmistakable.
“I can’t believe I pulled you into this,” I murmured.
“You didn’t pull me into anything, June. You needed my help, and I gave it to you. You would have done the same for me.”
“But Caleb knows we’re lying, Eamon. He looked me in the eye and he told me he knows.”
“He can’t prove anything.”
I wasn’t convinced. He had more reason than ever to pursue us as suspects, especially after what he’d found in the house. It wasn’t proof, but it only corroborated that we had more interest in Nathaniel than we pretended to.
“He was willing to break the law, break into our home, to look for evidence.”
Eamon’s expression changed. I hadn’t meant to say our, but I had.
“What if Annie had been here?” My voice rose.
“She wasn’t.”
“What if he knows who I really am?”
“He doesn’t.”
I pressed my fingers to my mouth, shaking my head. “There’s something else here. I just can’t see it yet.”
That’s what I’d been thinking for days. There was still more that I’d been hiding from everyone. Why leave at such a precarious time unless I had to?
The memories weren’t coming fast enough to answer all of my questions. And I didn’t know how much time we had to figure it out.
1912, 1946, 1950, 1951.
The years alternated in my mind, like flash cards.
Four years, four crossings, but my crossing in 1951 couldn’t have been predicted. Not unless it was planned.
I could see the two threads of my life.
The first was up to 2024, when I’d seemingly fallen for Mason and then went through the door only to meet Eamon. I made my choice. Lived five years with him, and then I’d left.
The second thread was the one I was living now. It spanned the same life until 2023, when my path was altered. I’d gone through the door early, and I’d never let myself fall in love with Mason. But somehow, I ended up where the first thread had ended.
Esther had called it an overlap, but it was more like folding time.
My eyes widened.
Eamon was watching me carefully now. “What?”
“Folding time,” I said, still trying to chase the thought down. “They’re becoming one. That’s why I’m losing memories. That’s why, in 2022, I started having episodes the exact month and day that I left here.”
“June, I’m not following.”
I pulled at the thought surfacing in the back of my mind, trying to gently coax it forward. I walked to the kitchen with heavy steps, yanking the drawers open until I found what I was looking for—a spool of thick brown twine.
I set it down on the small kitchen table, and Eamon came to stand on the other side, arms crossed over his chest as he studied me. I took the end and tugged until the twine was strung through the air between us. Then I pulled at its end with my fingers until the threads began unraveling.
“The curse isn’t the door, Eamon. It’s the splitting of time. Esther says that our minds are like a fraying rope.” I let the loosening fibers work their way down the length of the twine. “For every Farrow, it’s the same. Because we are one long, unraveling cord. Esther, Margaret, Susanna, me . . . we’re all connected.”
“All right.” He nodded, catching on.
“But how do you fix a fraying rope?”
“You . . .” He paused. “You cut it.”
“Exactly.” I picked up the knife, slicing through the twine in one motion. It left a clean edge. “Then you tie it off or burn it, whatever. You stop the unraveling.”
I twisted the cord in my fingers, still thinking. “That’s what I was trying to do. Fix it before Annie ever goes through the door.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know.” I dropped the twine, pacing now. “But it wasn’t an accident that I came here. It wasn’t an accident when I came here.”
I’d been retracing my steps through the unfolding narrative of my life and the winding path that had led me here. From the beginning, I’d been following a trail.
“I didn’t just see the door one day and walk through it. I’d gotten the photograph first. That’s what started all of this. From there, I couldn’t let it go. My mother, the baptism records, the envelope with your address . . . they were like breadcrumbs. That’s what made me cross, and when I did, I created a timeline that overlapped the other one.”
“You could have ended up anywhere, though, right? How did you end up here?”
I sucked in a breath, putting it together. I reached up, clasping the locket in my fist. The door had brought me to 1951 because that’s what the locket was set to. The locket that Gran gave me.
“It was Margaret.” I whispered the name. “I couldn’t have done it alone. I would have needed help getting myself back here, because you can’t go to a time when you already exist.”
That was the thing I’d missed. The fact that the locket watch was set to 1951 wasn’t an accidence. It had been set that way. By Gran.
We pulled Annie from bed and got in the truck, driving the three miles to the flower farm as the sun rose over the Blue Ridge Mountains. By the time I was knocking on the beveled glass window of Esther’s front door, the memory was pushing into the light of my mind. It was only fragments, but it was there.
I need your help.
I’m speaking the words, but at first, I can’t completely hear them. I look around and see that I’m standing in the shade of one of the greenhouses with Margaret. Her face is softer, younger, as she looks up at me.