I sat there, studying her face, her hands, the color of her hair. Those embers of memory were glowing now, and I was terrified of the moment they would reignite, like they’d burn all of me down if they could.
She was studying me, too, and I wondered if she was comparing me to her faded recollection of the mother she knew. I wasn’t sure what Eamon had told her about me or if Annie had even asked to begin with. I still hadn’t heard her speak a word, but I could see that same quietness about her that Margaret had mentioned in Eamon. The two were cut from the same cloth in countenance, but in the look of her, Annie was more like me.
Her attention snagged on my throat before she reached up, almost impulsively, to draw the locket watch from the collar of my shirt. I sat very still as she took it into her hands, turning it over so that the sunlight hit on its surface.
She inspected it, more focused than what I imagined was natural for a four-year-old girl. Almost as if she could sense that it wasn’t just a trinket. I remembered feeling like that, too, opening and closing the locket in a compulsive rhythm as I sat on Gran’s lap. She’d sing that song I loved . . . what was it? The words wouldn’t quite come to me now, but the broken melody was there, like a badly tuned radio cutting in and out of the silence.
The one place I hadn’t let my mind wander was to the thought that if this child was mine, that meant she was a Farrow. And if she was a Farrow, we shared a fate that ran in the blood. It flowed through her veins like it flowed through mine. One day, she would be like Susanna and the rest of us, with a mind frayed between time.
I swallowed against the thick emotion curling in my throat, the question bearing down on top of me until I could hardly draw breath. How could I have done it? This perfect creature would wither and fade, and it occurred to me all at once that maybe that’s exactly why I had left. Maybe I was afraid to watch the consequences unfold. Maybe I’d been running from this, from her, when I went back through that door.
Annie snapped the locket closed, looking up at me, and her gaze took me in. There was a calm intensity behind her eyes, giving me the sense that she knew what I was thinking. Or, at least, that she could feel what I was feeling. I hoped that wasn’t true.
“Annie.” My voice was strangled as I said her name. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to know if she remembered me. If she knew, really knew who I was. “Annie, do you—”
The sound of a truck made both of us look to the road, where Eamon was pulling in, tires cracking on gravel. The locket slipped from Annie’s fingers as she sprung up, pushing back through the gate and running toward him. The hollow space she left beside me was palpable in the air.
She was in Eamon’s arms seconds later, and I got to my feet, tucking the locket watch back into my shirt. It stung where it brushed my skin, as if Annie’s touch had electrified it somehow.
Margaret came down the porch steps, a bundle of what looked like clothes in her arms. The thought hadn’t occurred to me until just then that she had most likely been waiting for Eamon to return before she left. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t trust me with Annie, either.
She kissed Annie, exchanging a few words with Eamon, and though they didn’t look in my direction, I could feel the weight of their attention. Whatever they were discussing, it had to do with me. She waved before she climbed into Esther’s truck, and then she was gone.
Eamon walked toward me, his face turned toward Annie’s. Her mouth moved around words I couldn’t hear, and I found myself concentrating hard, trying to comb the sound of her voice from the wind. I came through the gate, pulling the gloves from my hands. The distance Eamon had put between us earlier was still there, and I thought back to that morning, when he’d watched me in the kitchen. When he’d said it was hard to look at me. There’d been an unraveling in that moment, one that had made me trust him. But the man who’d given me those gloves and the one who’d looked me in the eye and lied to me didn’t fit together in a way that made sense. There was more going on here than he was willing to tell me.
He set Annie down, meeting me halfway between the house and the fence. We stood there, looking at each other for several seconds before he finally spoke.
“Esther will be by in the morning. She’ll be heading to town to drop off flowers for the Faire, and I think it would be a good idea if you go with her.”
I blinked, sure I wasn’t understanding him. “Into town?”
Annie crouched behind him, picking a cluster of dandelions and gathering them in a ragged bouquet.
“Caleb coming by means that people in town are doing more than talking. The longer you stay out of sight, the more they’ll be curious, and we can’t afford to have people paying too close attention.”
I glanced at the road behind him. I’d seen more than one neighbor slow down as they drove by, sometimes the same car multiple times a day. Only minutes after Caleb’s visit, Eamon had gone to see Esther, and this was what they’d decided. Without me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, that choked sound resurfacing despite my best efforts.
“You can’t just hide here. Caleb isn’t the last person who will knock on that door. Trust me.”
Trust me. Those were the same words written on the envelope that had convinced me to walk through the door in the first place. At the time I’d thought they were the words of my mother. Now, I wondered if they were mine.
I shook my head. “I can’t. What if someone talks to me? What if I say something wrong?”
“You won’t.”
“Eamon—”
“Look, this town has been waiting for its chance to avenge Nathaniel Rutherford. You don’t want to know what can happen if they think they can get it here, at my door. In a place like this, no one is going to stop them, do you understand? No one is going to come to our rescue.”
I winced, bristling at the fierceness of his tone.
“First, it’s a knock on the door; then, it’s a fire in the barn. It doesn’t stop there, June. If you’re here tomorrow, you’re going to town with Esther. You’ll make an appearance, and we’ll show them we have nothing to hide.”
His voice held a finality that said he was done talking about it, and before I could argue, he started for the barn. That was what had been in his expression that morning, when he’d looked to the rifle hanging on the wall. He wasn’t just afraid of the sheriff, he was afraid of what Jasper was capable of. And what he was implying was that there was more than one person in town who wanted to know what I knew about the night Nathaniel died. By why?
As soon as he was through the door, he started on the smoking rig, lifting the lid off one of the aluminum bins and scooping what looked like wood shavings into the canisters suspended at either end of the dowel.