Page 41 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

A look of disbelief flashed over her features. “The locket, June.”

Immediately, my hand went to my throat, fingers searching for the chain of the locket watch. But it wasn’t there. I set down the coffee cup and opened the collar of my shirt, searching for it.

“It’s gone,” she said.

“I must have dropped it in the field, or along the road.” I said, anxiously. “I—”

“You didn’t lose it.” She reached into the collar of her own dress, pulling a chain free. Then she was lifting it over her head. She set the locket watch down on the table between us.

I stared at it. “How did you…?”

“We’ll get to that.” She opened the locket, turning it so that the watch face was right side up for me. All four of the hands werepointing to the number zero. “So, you were wearing the locket, but you didn’t choose the year.”

I was so confused now that I didn’t have a response.

“Do you remember what the hands were set to?”

“I don’t know. I think five? One?” I swallowed. “Yes, there were two hands on one.”

“One, nine, five, one. 1951.” She said.

My eyes snapped up to look at her. “Thisis how you cross?”

“You fix the four hands into the four digits of a year, starting with the shortest. It was 2023 when you left?”

I nodded.

“All right.” She pulled a pin from her hair. Beginning with the shortest hand on the watch face, she moved them to the numbers two, zero, two, and three. When she was finished, she snapped it closed. “As long as the locket says 2023 when you open that door, that’s where it will take you.”

I turned it over in my fingers, dazed by the flicker of sunlight on the gold. I’d always known the watch didn’t work, and I’d found the four hands and missing numbers strange. But there was nothing about it I hadn’t dismissed with the reasoning that it was old. Very old. It still looked ancient, but the metal wasn’t quite as fogged and smoothed as the locket I’d worn around my neck.

I eyed the calendar tacked to the wall by the back door. It was a farmer’s almanac, open to the month of June. Today was the seventeenth, only four days since Gran’s funeral. I didn’t know how that was possible. How had four days been enough time to completely unravel everything I thought I knew?

“I’ve never understood why your grandmother never told you any of this,” Esther murmured.

Gran.

That’s right. If it was 1951, then Gran was here. She’d been raised by Esther in this very house.

My hands slipped from the mug. “Where is she?”

Esther shifted in her seat, and for a moment, I wondered if she wasconsidering lying to me. “She’s here.” Her hand came down on mine, stopping me before I could stand. “Listen to me.” She leaned in closer. “The best thing you can do, for all of us, is go back.”

I searched her face. What did that mean,for all of us?

“As soon as you see that door again, cross. And stay there.”

I wasn’t going to argue with that. “When will that be?”

She sighed. “There’s no exact timing, unfortunately.”

“No exact timing?” My voice rose. “Are you saying that I’m stuck here?”

Stuck.The word made me feel nauseous. Claustrophobic.

“Itwillappear again. You just need to be ready to walk through it.”

“There are people who will be looking for me.” The image of the empty Bronco on the road flashed in my mind. “How am I going to explain where I’ve been?”