An eerie feeling crept over me, my breath curling tightly in my chest. As soon as the truck disappeared around the bend in the distance, I stepped off the shoulder of the blacktop and onto the dirt road. I followed it, wincing when the sight of the chimney came into view. The same one I’d seen not even an hour ago. But now there was smoke drifting from its mouth.
The leaning, termite-eaten structure that had stood at the bottom of the hill was gone. Transformed. The farmhouse was nestled before the tree line that followed the creek stretching into the distance. The red brick still had its color, the wooden siding painted in a pale yellow. And behind it, acres and acres of tobacco grew in rows taller than I stood. The crumbling barn was no longer the bare remnants of a structure. It was whole.
I was frozen, half expecting the entire scene to disappear into a swirl of smoke, but it didn’t. The minutes just kept passing. Time kept moving. And I had, somehow, crossed it.
The overwhelming sense that I knew this place was even stronger now. Almost unbearable. The windows of the house were dark, but the distant sound of a hammer wove through the air, a sharp ping that grew louder the closer I came. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I could see the open doors of the barn, a few chickens scratching in the dirt.
I set both hands on the closed cattle gate, waiting for someone to appear.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice unsteady.
The thud of hooves drew my eyes from the barn to the paddock, where a horse was watching me from behind the fence. Dust kicked up into the air, casting it in a glow, but I knew. It was the same horse I’d seen before. The chestnut. She had one wild eye fixed on me as she stamped the ground, her head craning as she snorted.
The piercing ring of the hammer went on in a steady beat, echoing out over the fields. I lifted the latch of the gate and let it swing open, stepping onto the drive that stretched to the house from the road. Wild, wispy grasses lined the path that led from one side of the porch to an overgrown garden filled with weeds and dead plants. I followed it, searching for the source of the sound.
The horse trotted along the fence of the paddock anxiously. Her chocolate-colored coat was tinged with bronze, her mane catching the light. When I took another step, she whinnied, nostrils flaring.
“Hello?” I called again, coming around the house slowly as the pounding grew louder. It stopped suddenly as I made it to the corner of the porch, and my eyes landed on a figure standing on the other side of the barn.
A man.
His gaze was on the horse, as if he’d come out to check on her. A hammer hung heavy at his side, and I could hear the low, faint rumble of his voice as he made his way toward her. He reached up, running one hand up the creature’s snout.
The mare calmed for a moment, breaths slowing, and the man’s eyes followed her gaze in my direction. His dark hair was falling to one side, tucked behind an ear and curling at its ends. The suspenders that hung from his belt were slack against his legs, his white shirt damp across the chest. And when his eyes finally focused on me, his whole body went rigid, making me flinch.
I lifted a hand against the harsh light of the glaring sun, trying to make out his face. “Hello?”
He visibly exhaled, his chest deflating beneath the pull of his shirt, but he said nothing as he stood there, staring at me. And then, suddenly, he was walking. The hammer slipped from his fingers, hitting the ground, and he stalked toward me with an intensity that made me move backward. When he didn’t slow, I glanced at the road. Then to the house. There was no one else here.
“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice found me before his eyes did, and when they locked with mine again, it sent a searing flash of heat coursing through me.
“W-What?” I dropped my hand as he came closer.
“I said what the hell are you doing here, June?”
I gasped when I heard it. Not just my name, but my name spoken in that voice. The one that whispered in the dark. The one that had been like fire on my skin. I knew that voice.
I took another step backward, hitting the porch railing with a shoulder before he reached me. When he finally did, he was so close that I had to tip my head up to look at him.
“I’m sorry, did you say—”
The words sputtered out as I frantically studied his face. His eyes. They were a deep brown, with the same bronze hue that the sun had lit in that horse’s mane. And for just a moment, I was sure that I’d seen them before.
“Do you know me?” I whispered.
“What?” He was moving even closer now. So close that I could feel the heat coming off of him.
“You said my name.”
His full lips parted, face twisting in confusion. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I blinked, turning the sound of his voice over in my head. There was a faint accent to his speech that pulled at the vowels and sharpened the words. It was definitely the one I remembered.
He stared at me, waiting, but I hadn’t figured this part out yet. I hadn’t had any time to think about it. I hadn’t had a plan when I walked through that door.
“I’m looking for someone.” I took hold of the first thing I could think of. “Susanna Farrow.”
His eyes narrowed as he drifted back, putting inches of space between us. There was something changing in his manner now. A shift somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Rutherford,” I corrected. “Susanna Rutherford. Do you know her?”
“What is this?” He said it so softly that it sounded like he was asking the question of himself, not me. He looked wary, eyes studying me carefully.
“I’m looking for Susanna. Do you know how I can find her?” I sounded even less sure than I was. And it occurred to me all at once that he wasn’t asking about what I wanted. He was asking about me.
His hand came between us suddenly, snatching up my wrist. Before I could even react, he was pulling my arm long between us.
“What are you doing?” I tried to yank free, but his fingers clamped down harder.
I watched, gasping, as he pushed up the sleeve of my shirt and turned my hand so that the skin of my forearm was bare between us. His breaths were coming faster now, his grip squeezing tighter, but I didn’t know what he was looking for. And then, all of a sudden, he let me go, taking several steps backward.
I pulled my arm into me, wrist screaming with pain.
“You’ve never been here, have you?” he said.
“Been here?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked. “We’ve never met.”
“No.” Again, I looked to the empty road. “I told you—”
“Christ, June.” He dragged both hands over his face, pressing them to prayer in front of his mouth, and there it was again. That familiar way he was saying my name. “What did you do?”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He wasn’t talking to me, either. Whatever was unfolding behind his eyes was invisible to me. It took him a moment to blink, to come back to himself.
“Did anyone see you?” His attention went warily to the road. “Have you spoken to anyone at all?”
“Look, I don’t understand what—”
“Has anyone seen you.”
The woman on the porch and the truck on the road both flickered through my mind.