Page 109 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

“Go inside, Esther.” My voice wavered.

She didn’t move, looking from me to Eamon.

Eamon had his hands lifted in the air now, Sam standing between him and Caleb. There were a few seconds where I didn’t know what he was going to do. Charge him? Kill him? Get the two of us in the truck and run?

A sharp, familiar tingle raced up my spine, spreading until an unmistakable feeling settled inside of me. The sensation made me still,and a cold wind bled into the hot air, twisting around the place where I stood.

Caleb’s voice drew on, indecipherable as the world stopped turning. And it did. Time stopped, and I could feel it—that same pull of gravity. The bloom of brightness behind my vision. That floating feeling that filled my body. Slowly, I turned my head toward the fields, knowing exactly what I would see there.

The red door.

It stood among the dahlias, their heavy blooms rocking back and forth. The frame of the door looked like it had just sprung from the earth, the bronze handle glinting beneath a tangle of vines bursting through the door’s cracks.

The flash of sunlight on the cuffs in Caleb’s hand made me blink again, but I could only faintly hear him talking. It was like the sound of running water now, and the only thing that pierced that resonance in my head was Eamon’s voice saying my name.

“June?”

I blinked, eyes heavy. He looked at me over Sam’s shoulder, his brow furrowed as he studied me.

He followed my gaze in the direction of the fields, but he couldn’t see it. None of them could. No one, except Esther.

She stared at me, one hand balled in her skirt, and once Eamon saw her, he put it together. He glanced again to the field. It was empty to him, but he knew.

“Is it there?” he asked, voice tight.

Caleb looked between us, suspicion gathering behind his eyes. “Is what there?”

I nodded, throat aching. I couldn’t speak.

Eamon swallowed. “Go.”

I stared at him as two tears fell in tandem down my cheeks. He was telling me to leave. To save myself. But if I did, I’d never be able to come back.

“Go,” he said again.

In a fraction of a second, two paths unfolded before me. The oneI’d seen in those memories of Mason, something I’d always secretly wanted. And then there was this one, with Eamon. A simple existence in the little house on Hayward Gap Road in the time I actually belonged.

It was such an easy thing—that choice. I’d already made it.

I smiled, meeting his eyes for another second, before I turned, walking straight toward Caleb. I could hear Margaret crying inside the house.

“June.” Eamon’s voice rose, his breaths coming quicker now. “June, don’t.”

But I was already holding my hands out in front of me. I locked eyes with Eamon as Caleb fit the handcuffs around my wrists.

“I love you.” My mouth moved around the words, but I couldn’t hear them.

“June!”

Caleb pulled me toward the car, and I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through the cry that was climbing up my throat. He put me in the back seat as Esther stood on the steps, staring helplessly.

The door slammed closed, and then the engine was running.

I could feel Eamon being torn from me as the car pulled onto the road. He was the knotted rope that had pulled me from one time to the next.

I didn’t look back out that window as we reached the hill. I didn’t want to see him or the house or the farm grow small. There were none of those things where I was going.

Instead, I let my eyes fall on the field, where the flowers grew, a calm flooding through me.