Page 79 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

“Everything okay?” Margaret looked concerned now.

I forced another smile, catching Annie’s attention before I pointed in the direction of the dessert table. “Look what I found.”

Her mouth opened, eyes going wide, and I stared at her in awe.

She was so beautiful that it didn’t seem like she could be real, much less have come from me, and that set off a chain reaction inside of me. She was becoming so real to me now. Too real.

“Think we should go get some of that cake?” Margaret tugged one of Annie’s braids playfully.

Annie nodded, and then she was running toward the tower of desserts, Margaret trying to keep up.

The flash of a bulb made me flinch, and I blinked the bright lightfrom my eyes, finding its source across the tent. In one corner, a man in a suit stood behind a wooden tripod set with a large boxlike camera. He leaned over it, checking the settings, before it flashed again.

The pop was followed by a brief fizzing sound, and there was something about it that pulled at the edges of a thought. I focused on that feeling, trying to tug it to the surface. It was that flash. The sound of the bulb. I squinted, trying to remember.

The music cut out, and the bodies on the dance floor stopped whirling, strings of laughter drifting through the air. When the fiddle started up again, it was slow, the notes pulling long before the mandolin joined in with a melancholy tune that made my heart ache. I could hear the river in the distance. The chirp of crickets carried on the wind coming off the mountains. They were the sounds of home, but here I was, in a sea of strangers.

I searched for Eamon again, finding him still standing in the same spot, but now another man had joined them. Eamon looked like he was only half listening, eyes scanning the room until they found me. The moment they did, my throat constricted.

He murmured something to the others, and then he was stepping through the crowd gathered between us. When he reached me, he took my hand again. This time, it was with a confidence he hadn’t shown earlier. His fingers weaved with mine, and our palms touched before he set down the bottle of beer and pulled me with him.

We broke through to the other side of the dance floor, and he turned to face me. I looked around us, my breaths coming quicker as we drew attention, but this was why we were here, wasn’t it? To keep up appearances?

His arm came around me, his hand finding the crook of my waist with an ease that said he knew this body, its shape and form. The mere thought of it made me tremble, but the set of Eamon’s mouth looked like it physically hurt him to touch me. I wasn’t all that sure I wasn’t hurting, too.

He held me closely as we began to move in a kind of dance I didn’t know. But somehow, my feet were following his, and slowly, thepeople around us seemed to forget we were there. Their conversations grew louder as the song drew on, and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.

I stared at the way our hands fit together, wishing I could ask him to tell me more about us. To recount, from his perspective, how I’d decided to stay here. What words I’d said when I told him that I wanted to marry him. He had all of those memories, a bird’s-eye view of our story from beginning to end. I wanted so desperately to know it, but we couldn’t have a conversation like that in a place like this. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find a way to scratch its surface.

When I looked up at Eamon, he was watching me.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

The fiddle’s notes deepened, taking on a haunting tone, and I stretched my fingers between his, squeezing his hand. “Tell me.”

He considered his words for longer than I liked. I was afraid that he wouldn’t answer me, but then his mouth finally opened.

“It’s just that, sometimes, it feels like you’re back. But then I remember you’re not, and that makes me feel like”—he exhaled—“like I can’t breathe.”

The burn behind my eyes woke, making my throat ache.

Eamon wasn’t a simple man, but he had a simple life. And I’d chosen him. Margaret said that she believed I had my reasons for what I did, but I didn’t think they could ever justify what I’d put him through.

Again, the flash of the camera filled the tent, and the rising tide of a memory lapped at the edges of my mind. But this time, I didn’t chase after it.

Eamon didn’t take his eyes from me, holding my gaze. But he didn’t speak. His arm softened around my body, and I let my fingertips slide up his back, my face so close to his shoulder that I could catch the scent of him. This was the same touch I’d felt when I woke that morning in the house on Bishop Street. I’d heard his voice. Smelled him in the sheets. I had the distant sense that maybe I didreally remember him, even before, like he was engraved on some part of me I couldn’t see.

I closed my eyes, letting the pictures flash in my mind. The way he’d kissed me beneath the willow tree. His hand sliding into my hair. His mouth opening on mine.

I was breathing harder now, pulling him closer to me so that the space between us disappeared. I let my head tip back, and his chin brushed the tip of my nose. I could feel his hand closing around the fabric of my skirt, a clenched fist of emerald green.

His mouth was centimeters from mine, and my entire body was waiting for it. I was burning beneath my dress, a fire engulfing me as his breath touched my skin.

The sound of the fiddle suddenly snuffed out, and the world came rushing back: a smear of glowing lights, the hum of people, and the sound of the rushing river beneath the bridge.

Eamon’s grip on me tightened for just a second before he completely let me go.