Page 38 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

I’d known it for a long time. There was never a thing in me that felt like she was out there somewhere, waiting for me to find her. But ever since I’d seen that photograph, a part of me had wanted it to be true. The abandoned child tucked away and still living inside of me had seen the wordstrust me,and I’d let myself believe, in some small way,that I could find her. And when I did, I would finally understand why she’d left.

I sat up on the edge of the bed, knees drawn into my chest. My fingers nervously fidgeted with the hem of my jeans as I listened to the sounds of the house. Footsteps had been trailing up and down the hallway for at least an hour, but I hadn’t made a sound. If I opened that door, it wouldn’t be the house I knew. It wouldn’t be the farm I knew. This place was an unknown land, and something told me I wasn’t safe in it.

The breeze tugged at the curtains that framed the open window. Outside, the tractor that sat rusted and hidden by overgrown brambles at the corner of the barn in 2023 was clearly operational. The farm was laid out differently from the one I’d grown up working. From the second floor, I could see that there wasn’t a clear-cut pattern to the plots, and the fields were mostly wild, an old tactic that relied on native species growing between the plants to help with drainage and pests. In 2023 we had modern practices that controlled those things, and even from the road, you could see the orderly layout of the farm.

There were two makeshift greenhouses that no longer existed in my time, replaced by fancy structures with irrigation and aeration systems. These were more like glorified potting sheds where I suspected Esther grew roses. That was one of the things the farm had been known for during this time—year-round roses that you could otherwise get only in New York.

But the thing my eyes kept looking for was the door.

Every time I’d seen it, it had appeared unexpectedly, out of nowhere. And there had been days, weeks, sometimes months in between. But I didn’t have that kind of time. I needed to get out of here. Now.

A familiar scent crept into the air, and I closed my eyes when the burn of tears ignited behind them. Biscuits baking in the oven—a smell I intrinsically associated with home. I let my feet fall to the floor and stood, making my way to the door. It opened with a creak,and I came down the narrow wooden stairs to see Esther in the kitchen. Her hair was pinned at the nape of her neck and she wore a fresh, unwrinkled dress beneath her clean apron.

She didn’t look up at me as I timidly stepped out of the hallway. “Did you manage to sleep at all?”

I nodded, the chill in the drafty house making me shiver.

“Good. There’s coffee if you’d like some.”

My eyes went past her, to the percolator on the stove. There was steam pouring from the spout. “Thanks.”

Her gaze followed me as I crossed the kitchen. She was straining something through a cheesecloth in the sink. “Cups are up on the shelf.”

I searched around me until I saw the one she was talking about. A small, crude plank of wood beside the icebox held four mismatched mugs. For my entire life, there had always been a cabinet on that wall.

I reached up, taking the cup nearest to me and holding it to my chest. “Thank you for letting me stay.”

“Eamon didn’t give me much of a choice, did he?” Esther smirked. “But you’re a Farrow, June. This place is as much yours as it is mine, even if you’ve ended up on the wrong end of time.”

The wrong end of time. Is that what this was?

I set the mug down, taking the percolator up from the stove and pouring. When I took a sip, I winced at the bitter taste. I didn’t see a sugar pot anywhere.

Esther hauled the cheesecloth up out of the sink, giving it a shake before she dropped whatever was encased within it into a bowl on the counter.

“I have questions.” I sat down in one of the chairs, watching her.

“I’m sure you do. But I’ll tell you now that you should be careful which ones you ask. You might not want all the answers.”

It sounded exactly like something Gran would say, but I was finished with riddles and half-truths. I wasn’t going to play that game anymore.

“I think I deserve to know what’s happening to me,” I said.

She continued working, almost as if she hadn’t heard me. But a few seconds later, she sighed. “You’re not wrong about that, I suppose.”

She seemed to make up her mind, rinsing her hands in the bowl of water that sat on the counter. The expression on her face was unreadable, and I began to wonder if she was nervous. She fidgeted with the towel tucked into the waist of her skirt before she sat down on the other side of the table.

“So, where should we start?” she said.

“How about explaining how I got here. How all of this…” I lifted a hand, gesturing to the kitchen around us. “…is possible?”

“Well, I know less about that than you may imagine,” she answered. “I honestly don’t know how it began. My mother told me what her mother told her—that any woman in our bloodline will see that door at one point or another, and eventually, she’ll walk through it.”

That choice of words made me sit up straighter in the chair. “What do you meaneventually? Like, it’s inevitable?”

“There hasn’t been a Farrow I know of who’s managed not to go through the door. It doesn’t stop appearing. Sure, you might decide you’ll never walk through it, but it comes again. And then again. Until one day, you’ve finally got a good enough reason to open it.”

Her eyes studied me, head tilting like she was trying to see if I knew from experience what she meant.