Page 78 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

When we spotted Margaret on the other side of the dance floor, Eamon let me go, and I was keenly aware when the warmth of him pulled away from me. He watched me until I made it to her, Annie on my heels, and then two men were drawing him into conversation.

Margaret’s bright eyes were sparkling over rouged cheeks, and her hair was pinned up, making her look several years older. The sleeves of her soft pink dress whisked at her shoulders, and a simple silver necklace with a small pendant hung around her neck.

She pulled me toward her, bouncing on her toes like she could hardly contain herself. “Was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“You look beautiful.” I smiled, taking her in.

Her grin doubled in size. “Thank you.”

She scooped Annie up, setting her on her hip, and Annie’s hands immediately went to the sparkling pin in Margaret’s hair. But Margaret’s eyes were drifting across the dance floor, watching a young man with a crate of glasses in his arms.

It took me a moment to recognize him as the hired hand at theflower farm I’d seen the day I’d spent at Esther’s. Margaret’s gaze followed him as he passed, her cheeks flushed a deeper red.

“And who is that?” I asked, giving her a knowing look.

“Just a boy.”

“Does he have a name?”

She glanced over her shoulder to Esther, as if to be sure she wasn’t listening. “Malachi.”

“Malachi Rhodes?” The name leapt from my mouth.

Margaret’s eyes widened, brows coming together. “How do you know that?”

I swallowed. “I heard someone say his name at the farm.”

I still wasn’t sure about the rules of interference. I was treading lightly, trying to make the fewest ripples possible, like Esther had said, and I had thought less about it with Eamon and Annie because they didn’t exist in my world. But Malachi and Gran had been close friends my entire life, so close that she’d insisted he play fiddle at her burial. I’d always wondered if there had ever been something between them. I’d even gone so far as to wonder if he may have been my mother’s father and my grandfather.

Margaret’s curiosity died with my less-than-interesting answer, and she swayed from side to side, rocking Annie in her arms. The music changed, and the crowd around the stage shifted shape, dispersing long enough for men with glasses of beer and women on their arms to weave along the edge of the dance floor. There were children chasing one another, and a group of a few black women in A-line dresses smoking cigarettes just outside. Beside them, a table was stacked with homemade desserts on pedestal stands.

My eyes found Eamon across the tent. He stood shoulder to shoulder with two other men, listening as one of them talked, a bottle of beer in one hand. The man’s red face was turned toward the lights, but Eamon’s was still draped in shadow.

“Who is that Eamon’s talking to?” I said, leaning closer to Margaret.

She lifted up onto her toes to see. “Oh, that’s Frank Crawley.”

Crawley. It took me a moment to remember. Frank Crawley was mentioned in the newspaper articles about the murder. That’s where Nathaniel had been headed the night he died.

“He lives at the end of Hayward Gap. Another tobacco farm down the road from you,” Margaret said.

“The Crawley barn,” I murmured.

“What?”

Annie slid down from Margaret’s hip, pulling at her hand.

“That’s on our road?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason,” I lied. “Just trying to place everyone.”

I watched Eamon, studying the way he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his reserved expression contorted by the dim light. He’d left the Faire early that night when Percy Lyle came to tell him that Callie had gotten out of the paddock. He’d gone home. If the Crawleys lived at the end of our road and Nathaniel was headed there, there was every reason to believe that he and Eamon could have crossed paths.

What had the article said? That there’d been signs of a struggle?

On the tape that Caleb played, I’d said that Eamon left to go home around 5p.m. If I’d gone home with Esther, that meant that he hadn’t come back to the Faire when he was finished dealing with Callie.