Page 33 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He wasn’t talking to me, either. Whatever was unfolding behind his eyes was invisible to me. It took him a moment to blink, to come back to himself.

“Did anyone see you?” His attention went to the road. “Have you spoken to anyone at all?”

“Look, I don’t understand what—”

“Has anyoneseenyou.”

The woman on the porch and the truck on the road both flickered through my mind.

“You need to get inside.”

He brushed past me, going up the steps of the porch and pushing into the house. His boots hit the floor in a way that made me remember the ghost of a sound I’d heard so many times before. That steady, hollow beat.

I followed him, stopping in the doorway when I thought better of what I was doing. Walking into the home of a strange man I’d never even met. But it was obvious that he knew something. There was some piece of this that he had and I didn’t.

My eyes moved around the small house, finding everything the light touched. The fireplace still glowed with embers, a small sofa covered in a quilt set before it. There was a broom in the corner. A cedar chest. A framed cross-stitch of a bouquet of flowers on the wall. Beyond the living area was a small kitchen and another closed door.

He pulled up his suspenders, tugging on a thick canvas jacket that he’d taken from the hook beside the door. “Stay here.”

“You’re leaving?” The words came out stilted. I was still standing on the porch, hands pressed to either side of the doorframe.

He took a ring of keys from his pocket, waiting for me to step inside. But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. In fact, it looked like he was taking great care not to. “If anyone knocks on the door, don’t answer it. Stay in the house.”

“But—”

Again, his jaw clenched, the tension of it traveling down to hisshoulders. His arms. “You want to know about Susanna?” His voice took on an edge.

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Then wait here.”

My eyes moved from his face to the clench of his hand around the keys. The veins that straddled his knuckles were raised beneath the skin.

I’m not sure what made me decide; in fact, I was almost convinced I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. But this man knew me. He knew my mother.

He shouldered past me as soon as I stepped inside. “Lock the door.”

It closed heavily behind him, making the windows in the house rattle. I went to the nearest one, watching him open the cattle gate and then climb into the truck. He fought with the gears once the engine was running, and a cloud of dirt kicked up into the air as he pulled onto the road.

Then he was gone.

I let go of the curtain, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach. Almost impulsively, I turned the dead bolt lock on the door, pressing my trembling fingers to my lips. What exactly had I done?

I replayed it, step by step. Coming around that corner to see Birdie in the sitting room. That look on her face. The way her hands trembled when she handed me that envelope. I’d done as she said. I’d gone through the door. But now what?

The house was silent around me except for the sound of my own breathing, and I tried to slow it. I was afraid to turn back around. To see with my own eyes any shred of familiarity. The extra pair of boots by the door. The kettle on the counter. The box of matches on the fireplace mantel. A rifle on the wall.

The possibility that this was all in my head was shrinking by the second. If I was imagining this, then I wasn’t just having an episode. I was lost in a labyrinth. I was so deep I’d never be found.

I took a tentative step away from the window, making my way across the knotted rag rug that covered the floor. It was made with fabric scraps in every color, faded and frayed along the edges. I took in every detail. The small table between this room and the next was fit with four wooden chairs, one of them missing a spindle from the back. The cast-iron pan on the stove was still just barely warm to the touch.

It wasn’t just a house. This was a home.

My hand slipped over the butcher block as I made my way to the closed doorway across the kitchen, something pulling me toward it until I was reaching for the cold metal knob. I pushed it open and the sunlight that was trapped within flooded out.

I studied the small room. There was a simple bed, a small dressing table, a closed wardrobe. It wasn’t the kind of space that only a man filled. It was feminine. Gentle. But I hadn’t seen a woman out at the barn. Whoever she was, she wasn’t home.

My eyes fixed on the bit of fabric closed in the door of the wardrobe, a dusty pink check that couldn’t belong to the tobacco farmer. I could still feel something beckoning me into that room. To the wardrobe. I could feel it guiding my drifting hand to that latch. And when I pulled it open, my gaze flitted over what lay inside.