Page 7 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

I took up the stack of mail from the corner of the bed, desperate to put my mind to something else. It was mostly bills to pay and invoices for the farm, but when I spotted the corner of a speckled brown envelope, I paused. It was the same kind we used at the shop, but that wasn’t the strange part.

I slid the other envelopes out of the way, staring at the script.

June Farrow

12 Bishop Street

Jasper, North Carolina 28753

It was Gran’s handwriting.

I picked it up, inspecting it. There was no return address, but the stamp matched the ones we had in the desk drawer downstairs, and the postage was dated only two days before she died.

How long had it been sitting on the entry table?

I turned it over, tearing the envelope open. The scalloped edge of what looked like a small white card peeked out from inside. I pulled it free, brow furrowing when I read what was written there.

Nathaniel Rutherford and wife, 1911

Rutherford was a name I knew because it was the subject of almost every ghost story told in this town. He was the minister who’d been murdered at the river.

It wasn’t a card, I realized, feeling the thickness of the paper between my fingers. It was a photograph.

I flipped it over, and an old black-and-white image that was yellowed at its edges stared back at me. A man in a white button-up shirt leaned into the side of a brick wall with one shoulder, a cigarette in hand. The memory of the figure on the porch the night before resurfaced in my mind. Those broad shoulders set on a narrow frame.

He was handsome, hair combed to one side, with a sharp jaw and deep-set eyes that looked straight into the camera. A faint, painful twinge crept into the tips of my fingers.

A woman stood beside him, turned in his direction with one hand tucking her waving, windblown hair behind her ear. The other was hooked into the crook of his arm. There was a smile on her lips.

The running water in the bathroom down the hall bled away into silence as I studied her. Every inch of her outline. Every detail of the simple dress she wore. I was looking for something, anything, that would explain the feeling that erupted in my chest.

Because it was a face I’d recognize anywhere, even if I couldn’t remember ever seeing it myself.

It was the face of my mother.

My feet paced the length of the upstairs hallway until they were taking me down the staircase, my eyes still glued to the photograph. I held it out before me, tracing the tip of the woman’s nose. The shape of her chin. When I reached the bottom step, I pried my focus from the picture, finding the one that sat framed on the table below the hall mirror.

It was the only photo of my mother displayed in the house. I passed it every time I came down the hallway, its image burned into my mind like a brand. I stared at it. The chill that had raced up my spine was now a cold blanket wrapped around me. I wasn’t imagining things this time. It looked just like her.

My eyes drifted through the sitting room to the basement door, and then I was walking again, pacing past the fireplace, the afternoon light pooled on its wide, flat stones. My hand tightened on the photograph, and I pressed it to my chest as I reached for the glass knob and turned it. The door swung open, bringing with it the cool, damp air. The basement smelled like fresh mud in the summer, and it thickened as I went down the steps, reaching into the darkness for the string that hung from the single lightbulb.

I gave it a tug, and the tinny fizz of electricity filled the space, making the small room come to life around me. There wasn’t much down there except for the peaches and plums we’d canned last season and the clothes washer, but Mason had built metal shelves along one wall for us after the basement flooded a couple of years ago. We’d transferred everything from disintegrating cardboard boxes to clear plastic bins. I pushed the first few to the side, looking for the only one that wasn’t labeled. It had been intentional on my part because I hadn’t wanted to draw Gran’s attention to what was inside.

I was sixteen years old when I first started looking into my mother’s disappearance. I’d figured out at a young age that Gran didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, she didn’t want to talk about my mother at all. That framed photo on the table by the stairs was the only evidence in this house that Susanna had ever even existed.

It began with a newspaper clipping I’d found at Birdie’s. That single tether to the mystery had turned into an obsession. Before that, Susanna had been no more than another town rumor to me. Part of the folklore that lived in these mountains. Seeing it in print, her name inked onto paper, had somehow made her come alive in my mind. It took some convincing, but I’d enlisted Ida at the courthouse to help me meticulously compile every bit of information that could be found on my mother and what had happened to her.

I slid the bin from the shelf and lowered it to the ground, my bare feet now cold on the basement floor. The lid came off with a pop, and I peered inside at a large accordion folder. The file was thick, its edges worn. I hadn’t opened it in years, but it was heavier than I remembered. The feel of it brought back memories of the summer afternoons I’d spent in Mason’s garage. I’d sprawl out on the old, tattered sofa, notating and cross-referencing and cataloging every piece of paper while he played video games on an old box TV set.

The research had taken over my entire life for the better part of a year, something I’d had to keep hidden from Gran. There had been a feeling of urgency to it. Like it was my only chance to understandwhat happened. Only, it didn’t matter how much I colored in the picture or filled in the blanks. All these years later, I only had more unanswered questions.

I sank back and pulled the folder into my lap, unlacing the twine and bending the flap backward so that I could read the labels. It was everything I’d collected. Stacks of articles, photographs, and copies of the police report were arranged with dates and sources.

The sheriff gave me what few answers he could. There were statements filled with stories about Susanna that turned my stomach—glimpses of what I imagined would be my own future. Then there were little things, too, like library records of the last book she’d checked out. The purchase agreement for the Bronco, which she’d paid cash for after years of saving. A bill from the cafe showed what she’d ordered the morning she disappeared: pancakes. There had been something so heartbreaking about that particular detail. In a matter of hours, Susanna would be gone forever. But that morning, she’d eaten pancakes.

There were several newspaper articles, mostly about her disappearance, from theJasper Chronicle,theCitizen Timesin Asheville, andTheCharlotte Observer.But there was also one announcing that a twelve-year-old Susanna had won the sixth grade spelling bee.

I fished the stack of photographs from one of the sections and clumsily spread them out on the floor beside me, my eyes searching the many faces of Susanna Farrow. A baby in Gran’s arms. A toddler in a pair of overalls, chest bare beneath the sagging straps. A young girl blowing out birthday candles. A teenager with wide, wire-rimmed glasses in the fields at the farm. My frantic hands finally stilled when I found the one I was looking for—a Susanna who was in her early twenties, I guessed.