Page 29 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

I knew Hayward Gap Road the same way I knew every road in Jasper. I passed it every time I went to the farm, and I was sure that at some point, I’d driven it. There wasn’t a single inch of this town thatdidn’t feel familiar to me, but I had no idea what made that address significant. Most of those farmlands were nothing but empty fields and the crumbling barns once used for drying tobacco. Looking closer, I realized this wasn’t Gran’s handwriting. This was a hurried, frantic script in smudged pencil. The fleeting, terrified thought that skipped through my mind was one that I couldn’t bear to consider. Could it be my mother’s?

I slid a shaking finger beneath the seal, and it opened easily. My heart all but stopped beating as I reached inside, but my fingers didn’t find a letter or a photograph. There was something else. Something small and spindly. Fragile.

I slipped it out of the envelope, holding it to the light coming through the window. It was a perfectly pressed flower. A stalk of bluebells. They grew wild all over Jasper each spring.

I held the blooms up to the light, turning them slowly. The petals had almost completely lost their color.

I searched the envelope, turning it upside down, but there was nothing else inside. When the flap fell closed, two words stared up at me.

Trust me.

It was from Susanna. It had to be.

I pushed out the screen door and went down the steps with the envelope still clutched in my fist. The GPS on my phone said that 46 Hayward Gap Road was only twelve minutes away, not far from the farm. From the map, I could see that two corners of the properties actually touched on the farm’s northeast side.

The Bronco’s engine roared to life, and I already had the truck in reverse when Ida came out onto her porch. She lifted a hand in a wave, and for once, that concern was missing in her expression. As if seeing me go off to work like I did on any given normal day was reassuring. Like maybe I was okay.

But I wasn’t. I wouldn’t ever be again.

A faint, static buzz flickered from the broken speakers as the road bent and stretched before me. I let my foot fall heavier on the gas pedal. I was headed east, where the hills started to flatten just a little and the trees that lined the road spread apart. Sunlight sparkled on the dew-spotted grass, where wide, flat blooms of water hemlock swayed in the wind along the roadside ditches.

Gran had had thirty-four years. Thirty-four years to tell me whathappened to my mother. But she’d let my life pass with the unknowing and the only one Gran had trusted with the truth was Birdie.

It made sense now. This was why she’d never wanted to talk about Susanna. Why she’d never seemed haunted by the mystery of her disappearance, the way any other mother would be. I’d always taken it as grief, like maybe she couldn’t bear to think about what had happened. But all this time, she’d known Susanna was in the past, safe and sound. She’d lived a life and died in Jasper. She just hadn’t taken me with her.

I stared at the envelope in my lap, those two words like a beacon in the dark.

Trust me.

The turn onto Hayward Gap Road was marked with a makeshift scrap of wood. I slowed down, checking the GPS when I spotted it. The edge of the property I was looking for was at the turn, but the hill in the distance hid whatever was waiting there. The truck rocked over the deep, rain-filled potholes as the pavement gave way to gravel. But it took only a few seconds for me to spot a stone chimney ahead.

The rest of the structure came into view a few seconds later, and my fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter, as if I were bracing myself for something. I couldn’t shake that feeling, like every soft thing in my body was turning to stone.

It was an old farmhouse.

The shingled roof was caved in on one side, the rotting wooden siding almost completely gray where the white paint had chipped off. A small porch that wrapped around one side was still standing, but the house clearly hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.

I pulled onto the shoulder when I reached it, sliding the gear into park. There was nothing but tall grass in every direction, spanning a dozen acres at least. What had once been a barn to the south was now just a couple of beams left standing and a pile of wood overtaken by blackberry vines. The skeleton of an old tractor was buried in a thicketof hedges by the road. The metal was rusted over, but the manufacturer’s name was still faintly visible on the side.

I couldn’t remember ever stopping here or stepping past that fence, but there was a nagging, prodding feeling that Iknewthis place. I’d been here before, hadn’t I?

I opened the door, getting out of the truck as I studied the land. The view of the mountains from here was a perfect one, with rows upon rows of misty blue peaks reaching far into the distance. The river wasn’t far, either. I could hear it behind the tree line that wandered along the property, but this was upstream from town, an area we’d never really ventured to as kids.

I stepped over one of the fallen fence posts, letting one hand touch the tops of the reeds as I walked toward the house. Most of the glass windows were gone or cracked, and the screen door was crooked. It looked like one of the hundreds of farms that dotted the expanse of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but there was something strange about the place. Something almost frightening. The prick that danced on the back of my neck made me feel like someone was watching me from those hazy, broken windows.

In the time it had taken me to get here, I’d all but convinced myself that this was the key. Like this last clue would be the thing that clicked the pieces into that pattern I was searching for. But I couldn’t see it. Instead, I was filled with a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was like hearing a sound and being unable to tell which direction it was coming from.

The clouds rolling in brought a swift wind with them, and the grass bent all around me, making a whispering sound that made my skin crawl. The soft tingle of something moving below my wrist tugged at my mind and I looked down, going rigid. A wide-winged silk moth had landed on the back of my arm, its size stretching wider than my open hand. It was the same as the ones we found clinging to tree trunks in the woods when we were kids, its brown wings swirled with red markings that resembled two sets of eyes.

I lifted my arm carefully, watching in a kind of awe as the moth’sblack legs climbed to the tip of my finger. There it sat, giant wings opening and closing in a silent rhythm.

I could tell by the pooling warmth spreading in my chest that it wasn’t real. I was seeing something that wasn’t there. But for once, I forced myself to stand still, pressing into the vision instead of driving it from my mind the way I usually did. I’d always run from it, but now I was leaning in to that feeling, making the sense of familiarity widen inside of me. I could almost touch the thought, as if my mind were reaching into the air for it. But slowly. Carefully.

I blinked.

Behind me, I could feel the crumbling house and the gray sky. I could sense the cooler air and the empty road. But there, in front of me, was another world. The hills were greener, the sky bluer. And the fields—they weren’t empty anymore. Rows upon rows of tobacco covered the earth, the wide flat leaves like a sea of green.

I could feel the vision pulling at me, like I was teetering with one foot in this moment and one in another. Like I was standing in two places at once.