Page 26 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

I wanted to let it go, like he said. I wanted to focus on what was important. But the photograph felt…intentional. Planned. Like Gran was trying to tell me something.

There was too much to think about. Too many swirling words inside of my head. I couldn’t draw them into a straight line. Gran. The photograph. The dates. My mother. Birdie. Mason. It was all one never-ending maze, making me feel like my edges were beginning to fray. And they were.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a note from Mason on my bedside table.

Take an aspirin. Call you later.

I could feel the ache in my head the moment I sat up, my skin sticky beneath my nightgown from the humid morning air coming through the open window. I’d heard him get up at daybreak and I could smell the sharp scent of coffee, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to go downstairs.

Was this how it would be? Mason taking care of me, sleeping on the sofa when I didn’t want to stay alone? Going to doctor’s appointments and coming by if I haven’t called? I loved Mason, but I didn’t want that life for either of us.

I stared into the bathroom mirror with the faucet running, the shadows beneath my eyes making me look like a hollow thing. The birthmark below my ear was darker against my skin, my pale lips almost invisible. The fleeting, lightning-quick thought struck before Icould pull it back—was this how Susanna Rutherford felt before she threw herself over the falls?

I washed my face with ice-cold water and got dressed, holding tightly to the railing as I came down the stairs. The house was cast in the pink-tinged light of morning, the kitchen tidied. The half-eaten blueberry pie was gone from the table, the crystal lowball glasses washed and drying next to the sink.

The digital clock above the stove top read 8:08a.m. Mason would be in the fields by now.

I did as he said, taking the aspirin from the cabinet. Then I filled a glass with water and gulped it down, instantly regretting it. I still felt sick, but not from the whiskey. Last night and the string of clues I’d pieced together had changed things. I didn’t know how to explain it or how to prove it, but I was certain that all of this meant something. I could feel it. Like the idea had sunk into my bones, becoming as real as I was.

Susanna Farrow didn’t just wander into the woods one day, following the breadcrumbs of her broken mind. And Gran wanted me to know it.

My stomach was still turning as my gaze drifted back to the doorway of the sitting room, where the maze of papers and photographs still blanketed the floor.

The window was propped open, most likely by Mason when it had gotten too hot in here last night. At the corner of the desk, the stacked copies of the newspaper articles I’d printed were fluttering in the breeze.

The house creaked against the wind outside as I crossed the kitchen, but I stopped short when I saw a shadow slip over the floorboards in the sitting room. It was followed by a sound. Shuffling paper, maybe.

I came around the corner, eyes going wide when I saw Birdie sitting in the chair beside the fireplace. She had a pile of the pages she’d gathered up from the floor in her lap, a small rectangular photograph in her hands. She didn’t look at me as I stopped in the doorway. She was silent. In fact, she didn’t appear to be so much as breathing.

“What are you doing here?” I said, the tone of my voice almost defensive.

I was suddenly embarrassed. I thought I’d have hours before she got back from Charlotte, plenty of time to finish going through things and get the mess I’d made out of sight. What had she thought when she walked in to see all of this? What was she thinking right now?

I came closer, eyeing the photograph in her hand. It was the one Gran had sent me.

Birdie’s finger moved over the outline of Nathaniel’s wife, as if tracing her shape. “Couldn’t sleep, so figured I’d get on the road early.” Her voice was far and distant. When she finally looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes. Her gaze moved over the room before finding me again. “It’s finally started, hasn’t it?”

The buzz in the air turned electric as soon as she said it. There was a knowing in her eyes.

“What?” My lips moved, but the movement felt numb. I could hardly hear myself speak.

She knew. She knew I was sick.

Maybe Mason had called her, or maybe walking in to see the chaos of the sitting room only confirmed the suspicions she already had. She’d been watching me so closely, especially over the last six months. I’d thought she was worried because of Gran, but that look she was giving me now was saying everything she wasn’t. It was finally out—this thing we’d all been tiptoeing around.

“I thought I’d be ready when the time came,” she said.

She stared down at the picture in her hand with an expression I couldn’t read. Nostalgia? Affection? Sadness? When she turned it over, her eyes lingered on the inscription longer than necessary. Was I imagining it, or were her hands shaking?

She swallowed. “But I don’t know that I am.”

I was trembling despite the warmth that filled the house. Every muscle was jumping beneath my skin, my stomach twisting like I was about to fall, and keep falling.

“You’ve seen the door, haven’t you?”

The trembling stopped then. I felt a cold stillness bleed through me. “What?” This time, I did hear myself say it.

She stood, the photograph still pinched between her fingers. “How many times have you seen it, June?”