Page 40 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

That’s what had kept Susanna here, I thought. Love.

“Nathaniel and Susanna were both a little broken, to be honest, but they were passionate. They were never good for each other. She knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. His father was the minister, and our family isn’t exactly welcome in the church, so of course, he didn’t approve. They were meeting in secret for some time before I ever found out, and then it was much too late. A few months later, she was pregnant with you.”

A shadow flitted past the window, and Esther’s eyes followed a young man in a flat cap and denim shirt walking toward the barn with a digging fork propped on one shoulder. His olive skin was a deep golden color that only came from long days in the fields.

“I convinced Susanna to cross back, but she returned months later. Once you were born, there was no undoing it.”

“But why would she take me back to her time and just…leave me there?”

Esther said nothing.

“Why would she do that? Why stay here without me?”

“I told you. I don’t know why Susanna did a lot of things.”

My hands slipped from the table and I sank back into the chair, staring at her. There was more to the story than she was telling me. I could see that. But this woman was different from Gran. Her edges were harder, her gaze sharp.

“She got sicker, much sicker, once you were gone. The doctors here in this time call it ‘hysteria,’ and eventually, it became too much for her. A few years later, she took her own life.”

The image of my mother standing up at the top of the falls, her eyes drifting over the drop, made me tremble.

“I thought it was over then. But five years ago, you showed up here looking for her.”

“And then?”

“Not so different from Susanna, you met Eamon. Fell in love. Got married. And then one day, you were gone.”

“And you don’t know where I went?”

She shook her head. “You were here one day and then you weren’t. This is the first we’ve seen of you in nearly a year. It’s never happened like this before—an overlap.”

“Overlap?”

“A younger version of you showing up after an older version does. I don’t know what else to call it, and I don’t know what to make of it, quite honestly.”

Just listening to her say it out loud made me feel dizzy. “So, what? Does that mean there are two versions of me?”

“No, there isn’t more than one of any of us. If you cross into a different timeline, you don’t keep existing in the other. You’re either hereor there. But somehow, things have been disrupted. You’re the same June I met five years ago, but if you don’t remember me, then you’re the younger her. You went through the door…early. The things that happened here haven’t happened to you yet.”

“How early am I?” I whispered. “How much earlier did I cross than before?”

“What year was it when you crossed?”

“2023.”

“Well, it’s early for you, but late for us. That’s the problem. The first time you came here, it was 2024 for you.”

“2024,” I repeated, trying to wrap my mind around it.

That meant I most likely would have been thirty-five. I’d come through the door at least nine months after Gran’s funeral, maybe longer. And I hadn’t come to 1951. If it was five years ago, it had been 1946 for them.

Esther was studying me again, those pale eyes refocusing. “Why did you choose 1951?”

“What?”

“When you crossed. Why did you choose 1951?”

“I didn’t choose anything. I walked through the door, and it brought me here.”