Page 16 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

“Were you surprised when she disappeared?”

“Yes and no. Her decline was unpredictable, and mental illness isn’t exactly uncommon when it comes to missing persons. But if you’re asking whether I thought she might hurt herself or run off, the answer is no.”

“She never told you anything about who…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

“No. She never shared anything about who your biological father might be. To my knowledge, she didn’t share that with anyone.”

I exhaled, disappointment settling inside of me.

“Why do you ask?”

I shook my head. “No reason. I’ve just been thinking about her.”

I could see that he was drawing a straight line in his mind from what was happening to me and what happened to my mother. Maybe I was worried about the same thing.

His tone softened. “Well, it’s quite a tangled knot. But I want you to take what I said seriously, June. Get some rest.”

“I will.”

I opened the door and followed the narrow steps down to the first floor where the receptionist was bent low over the open drawer of afiling cabinet. She didn’t look up as I passed, but I could feel myself holding my breath, waiting for the moment her eyes would lift and find me. By the time I made it out onto the sidewalk, the gravity had begun to hit me. Episodes. Data. Blood tests. Patterns. Triggers. They were words I’d used many times when talking about Gran. Now, this wasmylife.

I stepped into the crooked alley between Dr. Jennings’s office and the grocery, finding a place to stand beneath an old fire escape that hid me from the street. My hand shook as I pulled my phone from my bag, and as soon as I found Birdie’s name in the contact list, my throat began to close up. I dialed the number, pressing the phone to my ear and wiping a silent tear from my cheek as it rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” I said, too brightly.

“June?”

I almost laughed. My name was plastered across the screen of her cellphone, but she still somehow acted surprised when it was me. “Yeah, it’s me, Birdie. Just making sure you made it.”

“Oh, I made it. Headin’ over to the warehouse now. Anything I should add to the order?” I wiped another tear, already feeling better now that I could hear her voice.

“Not that I can think of.”

“All right. You need anything? I was thinking, if this doesn’t take too long, I could come back tonight.”

“No, I don’t want you driving the mountain roads in the dark.”

“You know I’ve been driving for longer than you’ve been alive?” I could hear the humor in her voice now and the sound made the knot in my chest loosen just a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll make chicken and dumplings. How’s that?”

“Sounds good.” I pulled the keys from my bag and started toward the street.

“Love you, honey.”

The tip of my finger found the sharp edge of the key, the lump coming up in my throat again. “Love you.”

I climbed inside and turned the ignition. The smell of the engine and the hot leather conjured countless memories of summer. Countless memories with Mason. Driving in our wet bathing suits as the sun went down after an afternoon of swimming at the river. Picking him up for his shifts at the farm when Gran finally hired him. Parking under the big oak tree at Longview Falls with an open pizza box between us and our bare feet propped up on the dash.

As soon as I was through the intersection, I picked up the phone again, finding his number. I did that sometimes, impulsively calling him and then having to think of a reason. It was more for comfort than anything, a way to stave off that lonely feeling that had been with me so long. My world was a very small one, made up of only a few people and places, and it felt like it was shrinking by the second.

My thumb hovered over his name a second too long, and I dropped the phone onto the seat, my gaze going to my bag. I reached into the side pocket, hand searching until it found the photograph. I set it onto the dash in front of me, eyeing its reflection on the windshield.

What Ida said was possible. Our family had never been a large one. Each Farrow had but one daughter, and they’d all kept their maternal surname because most of the men who fathered them died young or faded from the picture. Somewhere along the line, one of the Farrow women could have had more than one child, and the Susanna Farrow in the photograph could have been simply lost to history. It didn’t seem that unlikely, especially in a small farming town like Jasper.

My fingers tapped the steering wheel as the road grew narrower, my mind sifting through each thought. I knew what I was doing, throwing myself down one rabbit hole to keep from falling down the other. I was distracting myself from what was happening. And deep down, I knew that it didn’t matter how deep the hole went. Eventually, I was going to hit the bottom.

I bit the inside of my lip and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, cranking the wheel hand over hand until I was turning around, headed in the opposite direction of home. Downtown passed in a bluras I drove back down the river road, turning at the light to cross the bridge. Seconds later, the steeple of the little white church appeared through the trees.