I didn’t know if Eamon was used to giving me orders, or if he was just scared enough that he wasn’t going to give me the option of refusing. I had a feeling it was the latter. He was a man on the verge of coming apart. That was obvious now. He’d already lost his wife, and at any moment, he could lose his home, his farm, his livelihood.
I looked up to the sun, now falling from the center of the sky. He was getting a late start on the fields, which meant he’d be working late into the night. Much too late if he was going to get any amount of sleep.
“Let me help you, Eamon,” I called out.
He ignored me, striking a match and sinking low to light the canister at his feet.
I sighed, shoving the gloves into my back pocket. If he was stubborn enough to do the job of three men on his own every day, then I wasn’t going to convince him. I don’t know why I was trying to help in the first place.
I stalked toward the house, where the chimney was smoking, the curtains fluttering behind the open windows. The kitchen smelled like pot roast when I came inside, and I stopped when I saw the trimmed carrot tops on the butcher block. They were cut bluntly at the base and stuck into a jar of water.
Gran had always done that, never wanting to waste anything. She’d save the tops to sauté with greens or to chop and cook into a meatloaf. Whatever was left was tossed out for the chickens, but until then, they sat like a wild bouquet of greenery in the window above the sink.
I could see her barefoot in our kitchen, hear her humming that song. What was it called? It was on the tip of my tongue, the very edge of my thoughts. But every time I tried to bring it into focus, it only blurred, floating further away from me.
Gooseflesh snaked up and around my entire body, like the trail of a flame. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t recall it. Second by second, more of it vanished. The bits of melody, the words . . . it was all slowly disintegrating.
I knew it. I’d known that song my whole life, heard her sing it countless times. So, why couldn’t I remember?
Seventeen
Esther’s old truck was waiting on the side of the road when I came outside, its wood framed bed filled to overflowing. Buckets of greenburst sunflowers and peach melba gladiolas filled every square inch of the back, their blooms heavy and drooping over the rails.
Her hand was resting at the top of the steering wheel when I made it to the passenger side window, her eyes appraising as I climbed inside.
“Well, you haven’t killed each other,” she said. “Guess that’s something.”
I looked to the moving pillar of smoke already drifting over the tobacco fields. I’d been asleep by the time Eamon came in last night, but the moment Annie’s cries sounded in the dark, the sound of his footsteps crossed the sitting room on the other side of the wall. Each night it pulled me from sleep before the house went silent again. I didn’t like knowing those rhythms.
He’d already been in the fields when I came into the kitchen that morning, which meant that he’d gotten no more than a few hours of sleep. He was working almost around the clock and for the most part, it looked like he’d managed to keep the color change at bay. But the blight was still there, waiting for its chance to take the field. It was only a matter of time before it did. Eamon just had to make it to harvest first. Esther took her foot off the brake, guiding the truck back onto the road. “How are you holding up?”
I looked at her, unable to muster anything that resembled an answer. “Why didn’t you tell me the sheriff wanted to talk to me about the minister’s murder?”
She arched an eyebrow in response to my tone. “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d be here long enough for it to matter. It’s just some nonsense between him and Eamon.”
“What kind of nonsense?”
“The kind that men always seem to find themselves in.”
She said it with a weariness she hadn’t had the last time I saw her. When I’d gone to the farm, she’d been controlled and direct, almost cold. Now, I could see an undercurrent of worry in her. “This isn’t a good idea.” I said, my pulse quickening as we turned onto the river road.
“People are starting to wonder why you haven’t shown your face. Even the hands at the farm are starting to talk. The longer you’re out of sight, the more cause they have to start creating their own explanations. You’ll smile at a few people, give a few waves, and then we’ll be on our way.
“And if people talk to me? Ask me questions?”
“Stick to the story, and we’ll be fine.”
We. The subtle reminder that this bore a weight on all of them wasn’t lost on me. She had herself, a family, and a farm to look after, but no one was looking after me. I’d come all this way to learn the truth about Susanna, and I’d discovered only that I was more alone than ever. But on this side of the door, June had knit herself into the fabric of a whole life only to leave it behind. I was getting less and less comfortable with not knowing why.
Eamon seemed genuinely concerned about what the town would do if they thought we knew anything about what happened to Nathaniel. What he hadn’t said was exactly what that might be.
Esther fell quiet, her carefully constructed answers lingering between us. The first time I’d seen her, I’d been overwhelmed with relief. Like she and the flower farm, no matter how far I’d journeyed through time, were a safe place that would catch me. But I was beginning to think there was more Esther wasn’t saying than what she was. Just like Eamon.
Her silver-streaked hair lifted into the air as we picked up speed and the wind poured into the truck. I wanted to press her, to make her tell me what was really going on here, but this woman wasn’t the one who’d raised me. I studied her from the corner of my gaze, looking for some reflection of the woman Gran had become, but I couldn’t find it. She and Esther were different in more ways than one.
We made it around the next turn, and the view opened up to the wide vista of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Soft, dusty blue peaks rolled like waves in both directions, a thread of clouds coloring the morning sky. In a few hours, when the sun reached its zenith, that vista would turn a vibrant green, and then several shades of purple as the sunset loomed.
My hand gripped tighter on the lip of the open window as downtown Jasper appeared in the distance. The buildings that stretched ahead were like perfect copies of the ones I knew. The reflection of a reflection in a mirror.