I kept walking, adrenaline flowing hot in my veins. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I wasn’t headed toward something anymore. I wasn’t searching or looking for answers. Now, I was just running.
The water grew louder below as the terrain turned rocky, and again, I scanned the fields that stretched along both sides of the river, desperate to see the door. If I’d gone through it once, I could do it again. I didn’t care anymore what happened to Susanna. I didn’t want to know what truth the Farrows had kept buried or what Gran had been hiding from me. None of that mattered. Now, I only wanted to go home. To the house on Bishop Street and the farm and Mason.The sun was beginning to fall by the time I made it to the old railroad bridge that crossed the Adeline River, but it didn’t look as old anymore. It wasn’t covered in vines, littered with fallen branches. The only thing that was the same was the blue-green river that ran beneath it.
I pushed into the brush and scaled down the bank, scooping up the cold water and splashing my face. My skin was hot and flushed, my eyes swollen, and the sound that broke in my throat made me feel like the ten-year-old girl who’d jumped from this bridge with Mason.
The moment he entered my mind, the cry loosed itself from where it was tangled in my chest. What I would give to be sitting across the table from him, a blueberry pie between us. To rewind that moment and listen to him when he tried to convince me to let go of my obsession with my mother.
I wanted to believe that what I’d seen in the house on Hayward Gap Road couldn’t exist, but the image still flashed, making me wince. That smile on my face. The way the man’s arms had been wrapped around me. I could almost feel them, the way I had that morning when I woke up with the feeling of someone in the bed.
I stared into the water, where my reflection rippled, breaking and changing in the light with the patchwork of blue sky and thick tree branches overhead. That image was how I felt on the inside—distorted and broken. A picture that couldn’t quite come into focus.
Sweat beaded along my brow and my muscles burned, reminding me that I hadn’t actually slept last night. In fact, I’d barely slept for days now. My legs ached as I climbed the slope to the bridge, my center of gravity missing, like I was floating from one place to the next.
I stepped onto the tracks, following them away from the road until I was standing over the water. In the distance, Jasper sat nestled by the riverbank as if it had never changed. On one side of the downtown bridge, I could just make out the redbrick buildings on Main Street. On the other was the spindly white steeple of the church. It was mostly hidden by the trees, but even from here, I could see some of the headstones that dotted the cemetery. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had no idea what to do. If I wasn’t in 2023, or even in my own lifetime, I couldn’t just walk into town and find someone I knew. There was only one person who might be able to help me—Susanna.
A low, soft rumble reverberated on the railing beneath my hands, and I blinked, my grip tightening around one of the iron rods. The metal was vibrating with a deep resonance and when I looked down to my boots, I realized the sound was growing. The tracks I was standing on began to quake and I looked to the trees that sat on the other side of the river. When I heard the whistle blow, I sucked in a breath, pulling myself back across the bridge.
The train burst from the tree line, racing toward me, and I scrambled over the tracks, catching the end of the barricade. Then I was sliding down the hill, back toward the water. I landed clumsily, catching a limb with my sleeve and scraping along the thicket of brambles as the train made it to the bridge. Its shadow cast over me, light flitting between the cars as it passed.
It vanished across the road seconds later, leaving a drifting trail of steam behind it. The sound of it bled away before the rumble of another engine surfaced at the top of the riverbank, and I listened, going still as it got closer. The pop of tires on gravel and the screech of brakes drew my eye to the opening in the brush I’d come through, and a few seconds later, I saw him. The man from the house.
His eyes frantically searched the riverbank before he spotted me and he let out a heavy breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Again, that image of him holding me in the picture painted itself across my thoughts. I wanted to erase it.
When I didn’t answer, he walked toward me.
“Stay away from me!” My feet splashed into the river, cold water filling my boots.
“You need to come with me. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I cast my gaze behind me, to the other side of the river, judging the distance.
“It’s not safe, June.”
Hearing him say my name sent another chill up my spine. There was no formality in it. No edge of uncertainty. His mouth moved around it like he’d said it a thousand times.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He pressed a hand to his forehead, as if there was pain there. “My name is Eamon,” he said, impatient. “Eamon Stone.”
“Why do you have a picture of me in your house?” I blurted out. I was cold all over now.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you.”
“No. Tell me now.”
His face changed as he measured his words. “I know you. You just don’t know me yet.”
“Yet?” I stilled, watching him. The panic I’d felt standing in that bedroom with that picture frame in my hands was now terror. “How do you know me?”
His hands fell heavily to his sides, fingers curling into fists. “Look, you need to come with me.”
I took another step deeper into the water before his eyes snapped up to the road. I could hear another car pulling onto the shoulder behind the trees.
Eamon shifted on his feet before he set the hat back on his head and a car door opened. There were footsteps moving behind the brush.
“Everything all right?” a man’s voice called out.
“Yeah.” Eamon smiled at whoever stood on the road, but it looked wrong on his face.
“Saw your truck.”
A man in an old style of police uniform appeared at the top of the bank, attention on Eamon. He had one thumb hooked in his belt as he wiped a handkerchief across his brow, and the badge on his chest was engraved with the word DEPUTY. He froze when he saw me.
“June? That you?”
I looked to Eamon, the cinching feeling around my lungs now an excruciating pain. What the hell was happening?
Eamon’s eyes bored into mine, like he was truly afraid of what I might say. “Just got back,” he stammered, turning so that he was half blocking the man’s view.
Back? From where?
The man stepped aside, trying to see me. His hand absently moved from his belt, and I had the fleeting thought that it could be drifting toward the gun at his hip.
“Well, it’s good to see you. Your mama doin’ all right?”
I looked from him to Eamon. My mother? Susanna?
My mouth opened, but before I could speak, Eamon was cutting in again.