Page 50 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

“I get it. They don’t trust me.”

“They’re angry because…” Her hands stilled on the pot. “You left Annie.” She looked up at me.

“I know.”

“No, I mean…” She took the rag from my hands, wiping the suds from her arms as she turned toward me. Her voice lowered. “The day you left, Eamon came home and Annie was alone. You’d left her here.”

My fingers slipped from the edge of the counter. “That’s not possible.”

Margaret’s mouth twisted to one side, almost exactly like Annie’s had.

I could feel the tremble in my hands now, an ache traveling up my arms, to my shoulders.

“No,” I tried again. “You don’t understand. That’snotpossible.”

“I’m only telling you because—” She hesitated. “I mean, that’s why they’re so angry. Why they don’t trust you.”

I stared at her, speechless. There was no way I’d left my own child. I knew what it was like to be abandoned by a mother. I’d never do that. Ever. So, why did it turn my stomach? Why did I have the feeling that she wasn’t lying?

“Sorry.” Margaret paled. “I just thought you should know.”

She returned her attention to the pot, sinking her hands back into the water, and I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t know what else to say. I certainly wasn’t going to ask any questions. Not when the weight of the answers could crush me.

I pushed out the back door, following the wall of tobacco so closely that the leaves brushed my arm as I passed. When I saw Eamon through the open doors of the barn, I stopped short. He stood with Annie braced in one arm, her little legs swinging around him as he unspooled a line of wire on the ground. Even when he lowered down on one knee to cut it, she still clung to him, a small white flower twirling in her fingers.

I walked toward them slowly, arms wrapped tightly around myself. Annie’s hand was hooked around Eamon’s neck, her wispy blond hair falling down her back. I scrutinized every detail of those tiny hands and that round face. The way she looked cradled in Eamon’s arms. Even if I didn’t want to believe it, this child was mine. A part of me did know her, even if I couldn’t remember her. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d stood in front of that crumbling house two days ago.

When Eamon rose back to his feet, I took a step in the other direction, moving out of his line of sight before he could spot me. My hand found the fence posts of the small, overgrown garden tucked against the house, and I lifted the gate latch, letting myself inside. The plants had been overtaken, strangled by weeds that rose almost halfway up the fence. It had been left untended, maybe for as long as I’d been gone.

There were tomato plants, onions, squash, and herbs. In one corner, I could see the sprouts of a sweet potato vine and the leaves of acucumber plant withering on the chicken wire. It was a garden of dying things.

I sank to my knees, impulsively tearing at the mounds of clover and dandelion and nut grass. I ripped them from the earth, frantically trying to clear the overgrowth as the panic rose inside of me. My heart was still racing, my throat aching with the scream that had been trapped there since the moment I’d seen Eamon’s face. It was a growing, spreading fever inside of me. A feeling that had edges sharp enough to cut me deep. This was a nightmare. All of it. And I couldn’t wake up.

I wrenched another handful of weeds from the earth as I blinked back the tears in my eyes. Again, I looked to the fields in the distance, desperately searching for any sign of the red door.

It would appear, I told myself. It was only a matter of time.

And when it did, I would be ready.

By the time the sky was glowing gold over the hills, I’d cleared an entire section of the little garden. The once-buried plants were now haloed in dark, rich soil, their leaves open to the sun, and when I looked at them, I felt like I could breathe just a little deeper.

I stretched my hands open in front of me, knuckles stinging. The cuticles of my fingernails were torn and bleeding, my palms scraped and red. But that aroma—the sweetness of rich soil and the bright, sharp scent of green—was a known thing to me.

The smell of smoke had filled the air for most of the afternoon, and I scanned the sky until I spotted the drifting trail over the field. It was moving. The pillar of gray reached the edge of the plot, and Eamon appeared, pushing through the leaves on the other side of the house with a rod cast over his shoulders. A handkerchief was pulled up over his nose, a ring of sweat staining the neck and chest of his shirt.

He’d been in the fields all afternoon, coming from and going to the barn with the same rig. It was a wide wooden dowel that reached out to either side of him, and from both ends, a chain was fixed that suspended two metal containers that looked like lanterns. Smoke spilled from the holes in the metal, creating a cloud around him.

It wasn’t the same smell that came from an active fire, I thought. It was more like something smoldering buried beneath a pile of ashes. He set the whole thing down and pulled the handkerchief from his face, letting it hang around his neck. When he looked up, he caught me watching him. The wind curled around his frame, his black-stained hands hanging at his sides, but he dropped his gaze as soon as it met mine.

Smoking crops was an old method, but I’d never seen it done before. It had different applications, and in my time, it was really only employed by primitive practice farmers. I’d heard of it being used to control pests, but it also helped control moisture on the plant. In this case, I guessed Eamon was using it for the latter.

Behind him, the strands of wire he’d been cutting that morning were hung in a crisscrossing pattern from the rafters like the face of a checkerboard suspended in the air. I didn’t know much about tobacco crops, but I could tell by looking at the plants that they were almost ready to harvest, and my guess was that Eamon was rigging the drying lines. The barn hardly looked big enough for it.

He disappeared around the corner of the porch just as the sound of an engine came to life. A few seconds later, Esther’s truck was pulling onto the road, Margaret behind the wheel. As soon as it was gone, I exhaled, looking back to the house. It loomed over me, an infinite number of forgotten moments living beneath its roof. Butforgottenwasn’t the right word, was it? How could I forget something if I hadn’t lived it yet?

I closed the rickety gate to the garden, and the mare snorted when she saw me, pacing the paddock fence with her tail flicking behind her. Her head lifted, ears perking in my direction, and she stopped. She was looking me in the eye again, neck craning toward me as if she was waiting.

I moved toward her. That black eye shone in the setting sunlight, her nostrils flaring. Annie might not remember me, but this creature did.