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She stood beneath the dogwood tree in the front yard, one hand absently reaching for the low-hanging branch beside her. Her hair was long and down, face turned to the street as if the picture was snapped the moment she saw someone coming down the sidewalk.On the outside, she looked so normal. So ordinary in the kind of way I’d always longed for. No hint or shadow in her eyes of what was to come.

I slid the photo across the floor, placing it beside the one I’d found in the envelope, and shivered. The two pictures sat side by side, different sizes, one in black-and-white, and one in faded color. But the two women were like perfect symmetry. They weren’t just similar. They wereexactlythe same.

I pulled my hand back, finding the pound of my heart beneath my robe and pressing my hand to it. It couldn’t be her. My mother had been born decades later, and the resemblance wasn’t so strange when you took into account that the woman’s face was turned a little to the side. There was also the age of the photograph. It wasn’t in bad condition, but it wasn’t as sharp and clear as the one I’d taken from the folder.

It wasn’t her, I told myself again. I pulled my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. Of course it wasn’t her, but where did Gran get it? And why had she sent it to me?

I tried to think back to the week before she died, my mind skipping over the days. They’d been ordinary. Runs to the shop and the farm, the grocery. She could have mailed it from anywhere. But why mail it at all? Why not just give it to me? Those were the kinds of logical questions I’d stopped asking the worse her mind got.

The more the years drew on, the more time Gran spent in thatotherplace. She’d be standing at the sink and washing dishes, kneeling in the garden, or sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, but in her mind, she’d slipped away to somewhere else. She’d talk to people who weren’t there. Hum songs I’d never heard. She’d go out to the shed looking for something that didn’t exist. Over the years, she drifted back and forth over that line. For the last six months of her life, she all but lived on the other side of it.

In those last few weeks, Gran was slowing down. Getting quieter. She was sleeping longer and not wanting to leave the house. I’d had a sense she was coming to the end, even though she didn’t say itand neither did Dr. Jennings. But there’d been something different about her.

That single thought is what finally made it click—that maybe it didn’t make sense because it didn’t actually mean anything. How Gran got her hands on a picture of Nathaniel Rutherford, I didn’t know. But she probably thought the same thing I did—that it looked like Susanna—and somewhere in the thick mist of her mind she’d decided to mail it to me.

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. Or maybe it was the wind giving her a gentle nudge in his direction.

“June?”

A muffled voice upstairs called my name, making me jolt.

“June!”

Birdie. I hadn’t even heard her come in. I looked down at the photos on the floor, as if just remembering where I was. The open bin. The basement. My loosely tied robe.

“Shit.” I groaned. The tub. I’d left the water running.

I pushed the folder from my lap, dumping it and the pictures into the bin. My hands clumsily got the lid back on before I slid it against the wall and climbed the wooden steps to the sitting room.

“June!”

When I made it back to the second floor, Birdie was pulling towels from the hall closet. Water covered the tile, reflecting the light coming through the window. The old claw-foot tub was filled to the brim, its surface rippling beneath the dripping faucet.

“I’m so sorry.” I took another towel from Birdie’s hands, crouching to spread it across the doorway before the bath water could spill onto the wooden floorboards. “I forgot it was running.”

“Where were you?”

I sopped up the water on my hands and knees, out of breath.

“June? Where were you, honey?”

“Downstairs,” I answered.

“But I was just down there.”

“In the basement, I mean.”

Her eyes focused more sharply on me before moving over the bathroom. That look was scrutinizing. Almost suspicious. The overflowing tub was exactly the kind of thing Gran would have done. I didn’t know how many times I’d come home to a smoke-filled kitchen or all the windows propped open during a storm. But this wasn’t that, was it?

“I was just changing over the laundry,” I lied, stomach turning when I began to worry that she might go and check.

I didn’t want to tell her about the picture. Maybe because it felt like something I didn’t understand. It had been my name on the envelope; Gran had specifically meant it for me.

It doesn’t mean anything,I reminded myself.She was sick, June.

I got back to my feet, glancing down the hall to my open bedroom door where I could see the edge of the quilt that was draped over my bed. The mail was still scattered where I’d left it, the journal tucked safely under the mattress.

Birdie’s hand lifted, pressing to my cheek. “You’re flushed, dear. Are you feeling all right?”