Margaret’s curiosity died with my less-than-interesting answer, and she swayed from side to side, rocking Annie in her arms. The music changed, and the crowd around the stage shifted shape, dispersing long enough for men with glasses of beer and women on their arms to weave along the edge of the dance floor. There were children chasing one another, and a group of a few black women in A-line dresses smoking cigarettes just outside. A table was stacked with homemade desserts on pedestal stands.
My eyes found Eamon across the tent. He stood shoulder to shoulder with two other men, listening as one of them talked, a bottle of beer in one hand. The man’s red face was turned toward the lights, but Eamon’s was still draped in shadow.
“Who is that Eamon’s talking to?” I said, leaning closer to Margaret.
She lifted up onto her toes to see. “Oh, that’s Frank Crawley.”
Crawley. It took me a moment to remember. Frank Crawley was mentioned in the newspaper articles about the murder. That’s where Nathaniel had been headed the night he died.
“He lives at the end of Hayward Gap. Another tobacco farm down the road from you,” Margaret said.
“The Crawley barn,” I murmured, looking at her.
“What?”
Annie slid down from Margaret’s hip, pulling at her hand.
“That’s on our road?” I asked.
Margaret looked confused. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason,” I lied. “Just trying to place everyone.”
I watched Eamon, studying the way he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his reserved expression contorted by the dim light. He’d left the Faire early that night when Percy Lyle came to tell him that Callie had gotten out of the paddock. He’d gone home. If the Crawleys lived at the end of our road and Nathaniel was headed there, there was every reason to believe that he and Eamon could have crossed paths.
What had the article said? That there’d been signs of a struggle?
On the tape that Caleb played, I’d said that Eamon left the Faire around 5 P.M. If I’d gone home with Esther, that meant that he hadn’t come back to the Faire when he was finished dealing with Callie.
“Everything okay?” Margaret looked concerned now.
I forced another smile, catching Annie’s attention before I pointed in the direction of the dessert table. “Look what I found.”
Her mouth opened, eyes going wide. She was so beautiful that it didn’t seem like she could be real, much less have come from me, and that look on her face set off a chain reaction inside of me. A feeling of complete and utter euphoria sprung to life, and the smile on my face stretched wider.
“Think we should go get some of that cake?” Margaret tugged one of Annie’s braids playfully.
Annie nodded, and then she was running toward the tower of desserts, Margaret trying to keep up.
The flash of a bulb made me flinch, and I blinked the bright light from my eyes, finding its source across the tent. In one corner, a man in a suit stood behind a wooden tripod set with a large boxlike camera. He leaned over it, checking the settings, before it flashed again.
The pop was followed by a brief fizzing sound, and there was something about it that pulled at the edges of a thought. I focused on that feeling, trying to tug it to the surface. It was that flash. The sound of the bulb. I squinted, trying to remember.
The music cut out, and the bodies on the dance floor stopped whirling, strings of laughter drifting through the air. When the fiddle started up again, it was slow, the notes pulling long before the mandolin joined in with a melancholy tune that made my heart ache. I could hear the river in the distance. The chirp of crickets carried on the wind coming off the mountains. They were the sounds of home, but here I was, in a sea of strangers.
I searched for Eamon again, finding him still standing in the same spot, but now another man had joined them. Eamon looked like he was only half listening, eyes scanning the room until they found me. When they did, a lump rose in my throat.
He murmured something to the others, and then he was stepping through the crowd gathered between us. When he reached me, he took my hand again. This time, it was with a confidence he hadn’t shown earlier. His fingers weaved with mine, and our palms touched before he set down the bottle of beer and pulled me with him.
We broke through to the other side of the dance floor, and he turned to face me. I looked around us, my breaths coming quicker as we drew attention, but this was why we were here, wasn’t it? To keep up appearances?
His arm came around me, his hand finding the crook of my waist with an ease that said he knew this body, its shape and form. The mere thought of it made me tremble, but the set of Eamon’s mouth looked like it physically hurt him to touch me. I wasn’t all that sure I wasn’t hurting, too.
He held me closely as we began to move in a kind of dance I didn’t know. But somehow, my feet were following his, and slowly, the people around us seemed to forget we were there. Their conversations grew louder as the song drew on, and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.
I stared at the way our hands fit together, wishing I could ask him to tell me more about us. To recount, from his perspective, how I’d decided to stay here. What words I’d said when I told him that I wanted to marry him. He had all of those memories, a bird’s-eye view of our story from beginning to end. I wanted so desperately to know it, but we couldn’t have a conversation like that in a place like this. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find a way to scratch its surface.
When I looked up at Eamon, he was watching me.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
The fiddle’s notes deepened, taking on a haunting tone, and I stretched my fingers between his, squeezing his hand. “Tell me.”
He considered his words for longer than I liked. I was afraid that he wouldn’t answer me, but then his mouth finally opened.
“It’s just that, sometimes, it feels like you’re back. But then I remember you’re not, and that makes me feel like,” He exhaled, “Like I can’t breathe.”
The burn behind my eyes woke, making my throat ache.
Eamon wasn’t a simple man, but he had a simple life. And I’d chosen him. Margaret said that she believed I had my reasons for what I did, but I didn’t think they could ever justify what I’d put this man through.
Again, the flash of the camera filled the tent, and the rising tide of a memory lapped at the edges of my mind. But this time, I didn’t chase after it.
Eamon didn’t take his eyes from me, holding my gaze. But he didn’t speak. His arm softened around my body, and I let my fingertips slide up his back, my face so close to his shoulder that I could catch the scent of him. This was the same touch I’d felt when I woke that morning in the house on Bishop Street. I’d heard his voice. Smelled him in the sheets. And for the first time, I had the distant sense that maybe I did really remember, like he was engraved on some part of me I couldn’t see even before I came here.
I closed my eyes, letting the pictures flash in my mind. The way he’d kissed me beneath the willow tree. His hand sliding into my hair. His mouth opening on mine.