The Unmaking of June Farrow

by Adrienne Young

This was the field that I had planted. With my very own hands. And then I’d left it all to rot.

I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around any of this. The woman I’d raised had then raised me. Then she’d sent me back in time to herself, and to her father. Did that make this a loop? A never-ending story destined to replay over and over again? All that time, she remembered me. She was just waiting for me to remember her.

I had a new notebook now—one where I’d written every memory I could think of that I would miss. I recorded them in as much detail as I could recall, making a kind of archive of the life I’d lived.

We stood there, four generations of Farrow women, cursed to live between worlds. But in that moment, in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we existed only in one.

When I reached him, he took my hand, holding it to his chest. I could feel his heartbeat there. This is real, I told myself.