“June!”
When I made it back to the second floor, Birdie was pulling towels from the hall closet, dropping them to the floor. Water covered the tile, reflecting the light coming through the window. The old claw-foot tub was filled to the brim, its surface rippling beneath the dripping faucet.
“I’m so sorry.” I took another towel from Birdie’s hands, crouching to spread it across the doorway before the bath water could spill onto the wooden floorboards. “I forgot it was running.”
“Where were you?”
I sopped up the water on my hands and knees, out of breath.
“June? Where were you, honey?”
“Downstairs,” I answered.
“But I was just down there.”
“In the basement, I mean.”
Her eyes focused more sharply on me before moving over the bathroom. That look was scrutinizing. Almost suspicious. The overflowing tub was exactly the kind of thing Gran would have done. I didn’t know how many times I’d come home to a smoke-filled kitchen or all the windows propped open during a storm. But this wasn’t that, was it?
“I was just changing over the laundry,” I lied, stomach turning when I began to worry that she might go and check.
I didn’t want to tell her about the picture. Maybe because it felt like something I didn’t understand. It had been my name on the envelope; Gran had specifically meant it for me.
It doesn’t mean anything, I reminded myself. She was sick, June.
I got back to my feet, glancing down the hall to my open bedroom door where I could see the edge of the quilt that was draped over my bed. The mail was still scattered where I’d left it, the journal tucked safely under the mattress.
Birdie’s hand lifted, pressing to my cheek. “You’re flushed, dear. Are you feeling all right?”
“Fine.” I smiled, still trying to slow my racing heart.
Birdie didn’t look convinced. “You know, I don’t need to go to Charlotte tomorrow. Why don’t I cancel?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “We’re already behind schedule.”
That was true. We were expanding the willow grove at the farm, and she was going to Charlotte to pick up the new trees. With Gran and the funeral, we’d already pushed it a week, and we couldn’t postpone again with the Midsummer Faire coming up.
“I’m sure Mason can go,” she said.
“He’s got enough to do. I’ll help him at the farm, you go to Charlotte.” When her mouth twisted to one side, I exhaled on a laugh. “It’s just a little water, Birdie. Relax.”
“All right, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I closed the bathroom door, shutting myself inside, and the smile melted from my face. I stood there, silent, as her hesitant footsteps disappeared. A few seconds later, I could hear her filling the kettle at the sink downstairs.
The water on the floor wasn’t warm anymore. I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been down in the basement. For a fraction of a moment, fear sliced hot through my mind at the thought that maybe I’d imagined it all. That maybe that letter, the photograph, hadn’t even been real.
My hand instantly went to the pocket of my robe, desperately searching for the picture. As soon as my fingertips found it, I let out a painful, relieved breath and pulled it free. Nathaniel Rutherford’s dark eyes met mine, so focused and calm that I almost expected him to move. For his finger to flick the ash from that cigarette, or for the collar of that crisp white shirt to shift in the wind.
In the mirror, the image of me was a faint echo of the woman standing beside Nathaniel. From this angle, the birthmark that stretched below my ear looked like blood. My reflection was blurred, the glass fogged with steam. I wiped the flat of my palm across it in an arc, watching as the reflection began to fade again.
Second by second, it was disappearing. Just like me.
Four
I woke with arms around me.
The first swimming thought that bobbed to the surface of my mind was that I could smell something. A wild scent that reminded me of summer, like fresh wood and new grass and the sweet fragrance of blooming flowers on the farm.
I breathed it in, tasting it on the back of my tongue, and the weight of an embrace gently drew me closer. In the haze of my thoughts, I could feel the warmth of someone at my back, the line of a body pressed to mine. The faint echo of a touch moved over the back of my hand, slipping between my fingers. The tingle of it traveled over my skin, along my temple, down the center of my spine. And when I heard the sound, it was just a whisper, but it was so close to my ear that I could feel breath on my cheek.
“June.”
I gasped, choking as I sat up. I threw off the quilts, and the room came alive around me in the first moments of sunlight before I stumbled out of the bed, pressing myself to the wall.
Before me, the bed was empty—a pile of quilts and tangled sheets.
My fingers went to my cheek, and I rubbed the place I’d felt that warmth. My ear still tingled with the sound. It was so close. So real.
I paced back to the bed, slipping my hands beneath the sheets and frantically searching for the heat I’d felt. But it was cold on the other side of the bed. I was alone.
I stood there, staring into space until the churn in my stomach made me swallow hard. My feet clumsily found their way to the corner of the room, and I pressed myself into it. My skin was burning, my chest tight, and it occurred to me all at once that I might be having a panic attack. I went still, pinning my eyes to a small tear in the wallpaper. I had to breathe. I had to slow down my heart rate.
My hand reached out, steadying me against the window’s ledge as I sank down, and I pulled my knees into my chest, trying to take deep, even breaths. I pushed that feeling away until the space around me took shape into something reassuringly familiar. I was home. In our house. I was safe.
One, two, three.
I counted my breaths in a repeating sequence until my trembling slowed. The fever that had been under my skin was fading, replaced by a brittle cold.
“It’s not real,” I whispered on an exhale, forcing myself to count again.
But in that moment, it had been. And it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that voice, either.
The deep tone was something I could pick out now, the U in my name distinct and bent in a peculiar way. I’d first heard it at the farm the day the episodes began, calling out my name again and again. Now, almost a year later, I knew it the way I knew the sounds of this house or the rush of the river. That voice was an echo across the pages of my notebook.
I’d had dreams that tiptoed along the edge of reality before. Ones that pushed me from sleep with tears streaming down my temples or a scream trapped in my throat. In those dreams, it was as if my body and mind had bled into another world, only to surface too hard and too fast in reality. But this wasn’t like that. This . . . this was like someone had come through that barrier from the other side. Like those arms around me had reached through my mind, into my bedroom.
The sun had risen by the time I came downstairs, my hair pulled into a half-hearted bun at the nape of my neck. Birdie’s overnight bag was already sitting at the bottom of the steps, and I was relieved to see it. After what happened yesterday, I was almost sure that she would cancel her trip to Charlotte.