Page 46 of The Unmaking of June Farrow
It was a question that didn’t have an easy answer. I wasn’t sure I even knew what it was. HowhadI ended up here, exactly? Gran’s photograph? My mother’s disappearance? The episodes? They’d all converged into a woven thread that had been pulling tighter and tighter until I opened that door.
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
“Then explain it to me, June. I’m not an idiot.”
Again, I shivered at the sound of him saying my name, the way theustretched deep in his faded accent. It was, impossibly, both familiar and foreign at the same time. My hands tightened into fists every time I heard it.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Whatdidyou mean, then?”
“I was trying to find out what was happening to me. What happened to my mother.” My voice rose, defensive now. “I don’t know anything about you or…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the little girl’s name.
“Annie.” He enunciated the word.
My mouth opened before it clenched shut again. I couldn’t say it. I didn’t want to. “So, she’s…?”
“Mine. And June’s.”
I could feel the dress pulling tight across my chest as my breaths deepened. “If she’s mine, then why doesn’t she seem to recognize me?” I asked, grasping for any thread I could.
“She’d only just turned three when you disappeared, but children aren’t the fools we are. She knows you’re not her mother. Not really.”
I wasn’t sure if he’d meant to, but that last sentence felt like a line drawn in the sand. A boundary and a warning not to cross it.
“I just don’t see how any of this is possible.” I said.
“It is. I’ve lived it.”
“You don’t understand, none of this makes sense. I never—”
“Your plans changed,” he snapped.
I stilled. “My plans?”
“To never marry. To never have a family. To be the last Farrow.”
I bristled, stung by how bitterly he’d said it. Almost mocking. And the way he’d plucked the thought from my head was unnerving, because he was right.
“Yes.” He swallowed. “Iknowyou.”
“You don’t.”
He leveled his eyes on me, his expression darkening. “There’s a diamond-shaped window in your bedroom—the one you grew up in. It’s in the house that hasn’t even been built yet,” he began. “You drink too much coffee. You kept that notebook beneath your bed. In a few weeks, once the summer’s come, you’ll have freckles just here.” He gestured to the rise of his own cheekbones, and immediately, I felt myself blush. “Your neighbor’s name is Ida and your friend Mason will be looking for you, right?”
It was the mention of Mason that made my stomach drop. What else did he know about me? What else had I told him? Everything, I realized. If I’d been married to this man for four years, if I’d trusted him enough to tie my own life to his, then I’d told him all of it.
He exhaled. “Believe me, I wish it wasn’t true, too.”
“I just…I don’t understand….”
“Why you would come here and make a life with me? Why you would choose this?” He looked around us, to the house. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.”
He laughed, but it was a tight, coiled thing in his chest. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’m only saying that if I was here and then I left, there has to be a reason.”