The Unmaking of June Farrow

by Adrienne Young

She’d never believed she was sick, either, saying that she was simply in two places at once.

I wouldn’t tell him that the tinge of pink at the tip of the petals had told me they were ready, and that tomorrow just a little of their color would be gone. I wouldn’t tell him that the amount of dew on the stalks this morning had me worried about the leaves, either.

I couldn’t see a ring on the woman’s finger, but the inscription called her Nathaniel’s wife. And then there was the way she leaned toward him, like there was a center of gravity I couldn’t see.

Something stiffened in Birdie’s posture, just slightly. Almost too subtle to notice. “What?”

In the span of a few moments, that compulsive need I’d had to understand the photograph had turned into a slithering thing.

I’m not sick, honey. I’m just in two places at once.

“Well, I’d like to go with you next time. Talk to him about what kind of plans we need to make.” “It doesn’t have to be we,” I whispered. He waited for me to look at him, and when he spoke, he didn’t hesitate on the words. “It’s always been we.”

“You’ve seen the door, haven’t you?” The trembling stopped then. I felt a cold stillness bleed through me. “What?” This time, I did hear myself say it.

I could see that there wasn’t a clear-cut pattern to the plots, and the fields were mostly wild, an old tactic that relied on native species growing between the plants to help with drainage and pests.

Time is like a rope, made of many fibers, and when they’re bound up together, they make one strong timeline.” She stared at me, waiting to be convinced

Smoking crops was an old method, but I’d never seen it done before. It had different applications, and in my time, it was really only employed by primitive practice farmers. I’d heard of it being used to control pests, but it also helped control moisture on the plant. In this case, I guessed Eamon was using it for the latter.

This isn’t a tear in the fabric. It’s more terrifying than that. This is a hidden seam, and the longer I am still and let it unwind, the clearer it becomes.

and I was broken into two pieces—one that was ashamed of her and one that was envious of her.

Eamon was the kind of handsome that was carved from forests and rivers. He had the look of someone who’d spent his life in the sun, hands in the dirt. Every color, curve, and angle of him was shaped with it.

“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.

Margaret was right that Eamon was a quiet creature. He spoke only when he had something to say, and he didn’t lace it in false meaning or palatable words.