Page 82 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

A plate sat on the table when I came out of the bedroom, a small knife at its side. Through the open back door, I could see the empty barn, and I bit the inside of my cheek. Eamon had left me breakfast, a thick slice of crusty bread topped with a wedge of cheese. Beside it sat a hard-boiled egg and a mug of coffee.

We’d driven back from the Faire in complete silence, and when we got home, Eamon put Annie to bed. I shut myself in the bedroom, one hand pressed to the door as I listened to his footsteps move across the house. I hadn’t told him about what Caleb had said to me. I hadn’t told Esther or Margaret, either. All I could think about now was how I’d felt when Eamon’s mouth was just a breath from mine. How his hand had twisted in my dress.

I ate and washed my plate, going out onto the porch when I saw Annie hanging on the railing of the paddock to watch Callie. I made my way toward them, fingers skipping lightly over the knotted wood fence.

“I was wondering where you were,” I said, smiling when Annie looked over her shoulder at me.

The closer I got, the more still the horse was, and when I reached for her, she touched her muzzle to my palm. Her warm breath enveloped my hand as I stroked up to the place between her eyes. She leaned into it, calming under my touch.

“Callie,” I said, softly, trying it out. The name felt so known to me now.

She settled, pressing her nose to my shirt, and I leaned into her, breathing through the choked feeling in my throat. I was still stuck in the dream I’d had of Eamon, drifting between the many memories that were now filling my head. Somewhere between this world and another, I was losing myself.

My eyes drifted over the fields until the sunlight glinted off the windshield of Esther’s truck coming over the hill.

I exhaled, letting my hands fall from the mare’s mane.

Margaret pulled in, getting out of the truck and tossing the keys to the seat. She had that glow about her from last night, like she was still buzzing from the revelry of the Faire.

“So?” I said, making my best attempt at acting as if everything was okay. “Did you dance with him?”

She blushed, shoulders drawing up around her ears. “Twice.”

I laughed, and it felt good. I missed that mischievous glint in Gran’s eyes. The way she could make things sound like a secret.

Margaret climbed the steps of the porch with Annie and they went inside, leaving me alone with Callie. I could finally see Eamon out in the fields, on the north side of a hill that overlooked the house. He was hauling a load of yellowed, cut tobacco stalks up onto his shoulder. They were ones he’d been forced to cut in an attempt to prevent the blight from spreading. But it was too late. It was here. The only thing to do now was to keep as much of it healthy before harvest as possible.

Another truck drove past, and the man behind the wheel lifted a hand into the air, waving. I waved back.

It was Percy Lyle, the pig farmer who ran a farm up the road.

My hand dropped back to my side as I played the evening over again in my head. The dance with Eamon, the conversation with Caleb, the eerie sight of Mimi Granger. Margaret said that the Crawleys lived on Hayward Gap, and if Percy had come to get Eamon that night to tell him Callie had gotten out, then Eamon and Nathaniel could have crossed paths. But no one was here to see it. But there was someone who saw something that night.

That look in Mimi’s eyes when she saw me at the Faire wasn’t from too many glasses of ale. It had been on her face that day I came through the door, when she saw me from her porch, too.

She’d known something. She’dseensomething.

I looked up the road, where Percy’s truck vanished over the hill. Beyond it, the turn onto the river road was only a mile or so from that old farmhouse with the mailbox that readgranger.

In the distance, Eamon was out of sight in the fields again. I knew what he’d say if I told him what I was thinking. He and Esther both would think I was insane. But if neither of them was going to tell me what really happened that night, I had to find out for myself.

I opened the driver’s-side door of Esther’s truck and snatched the keys up from the seat. Before I could think better of it, I shoved theminto the ignition. I was up the road before I saw anyone come out onto the porch, and I figured I had maybe ten minutes before Margaret got far enough out into the field to find Eamon and tell him what I’d done.

I turned off of Hayward Gap, eyes drifting to the rearview mirror. I was half afraid that I’d see the red flashing light of Caleb’s police car there, but the road was clear.

The Granger farm was the only one in at least a three-mile stretch, the driveway one long track between two fields. At its end, the house sat behind a tall golden green sea of alfalfa. I turned onto the drive, the tires sliding in the dirt when I hit the brakes.

There was a flash of a shadow in the front window of the house when I came to a stop. I got out of the truck and climbed the steps, pounding a fist on the door. I could hear the clatter of a dish inside. Footsteps.

The wind rippled through the field, an expanse that stretched all the way to the tree line, where the river narrowed after it flowed past the flower farm. I tried to picture a woman running, a child in her arms. I tried to trace her path to the road, but there was nothing.

I knocked again. This time, harder.

“Mrs. Granger! Please, I just want to talk to you.”

It was a few seconds before the door swung open, and behind it, Mimi stood with a stricken look. She changed her mind almost as soon as she saw me, and she scrambled to close the door again. I shoved my boot in front of it, keeping it open.

Her rasping breath was on the verge of a cough, her pallid skin colorless as she peered up at me. “Leave! Or I’ll call the sheriff!”