Page 12 of The Lost Hours
Helen blew out a puff of smoke and put her arm around Sara. “Well, then. We’ll just have to try very hard not to be too good, then.”
“Helen,” Lillian said sharply. “Please.”
Helen’s smile faded, but not the light in her sightless eyes. “Sara, hand me the ashtray, would you please?”
Sara did as she’d been asked and placed it in her aunt’s left hand while Helen stubbed out her cigarette with her right before sitting back against the couch with a heavy sigh. “I overheard your conversation with Tucker,” she said to Lillian.
Helen recrossed her legs and settled her skirt. “I took the phone call from that woman who’s renting the caretaker’s cottage. Her name’s Earlene Smith. Which I think is very odd.”
“How so?” Lillian shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position where all of her bones wouldn’t ache. She could hear Odella in the kitchen preparing their supper but she couldn’t muster any appetite. She hadn’t had an appetite for a very long time.
“Earlene is an old lady’s name. And the woman on the phone sounded very young.”
“It must be a family name. That’s not so out of the ordinary around here, Helen.”
“Obviously. But most younger people come up with a nickname so they fit in better. Like Tucker, for example. So for this woman to be using that name, well, it struck me as odd, is all.”
Lillian fingered the charm around her neck. “You’re always seeing zebras when all we have is horses, Helen. Did the woman sound local?”
Helen leaned back in the couch, a long, slender arm around each of her nieces. Her red fingernails matched her lips and her dress and her high-heeled snakeskin pumps that were made for a night of dancing instead of one playing Chutes and Ladders. “Now, Malily, that’s another thing that struck me as odd. Her accent was Savannah, born and bred, but she said she’s from Atlanta. She did say that her mother was from Savannah, which could explain it. But still . . .” Her voice trailed away, her forehead creased with speculation.
Lillian shifted her position again. “Did you ask her what her mother’s name was?”
“It didn’t occur to me. My generation’s not as obsessed with blood-lines as yours was, Malily.” She smiled in her grandmother’s direction. “Besides I was too busy answering all of her questions about the horses here and their proximity to the cottage. Apparently, she’s deathly afraid of them and doesn’t want to have anything to do with them while she’s here. I explained that she’d be able to see them in the pastures from time to time, but that all of the stables and riding rings are behind the house. She seemed okay with that.”
Lillian absently rubbed the charm hanging from her neck and realized how much her hands were hurting. She glanced out through the narrow slats of the shuttered windows toward the pregnant gray clouds that were moving in from the low lands. Lord knew the pastures and her gardens desperately needed the rain but how she hated summer storms. Maybe, if she were lucky, it would simply be a cleansing rain, nourishing the earth without punishing her with memories she could easily push away except when lightning flitted across the sky.
“How odd,” said Lillian, “that she would choose our caretaker’s cottage—in the middle of a horse farm—to come do her research if she’s so afraid of horses.”
Helen nodded. “I said the same thing. So Earlene explained that the Rosses were the core branch of the family she’s researching, so it made sense to her to be here to have access to the family cemetery and any papers we were willing to share with her.”
Lillian jerked her attention to Helen. “What did you tell her about the family papers?”
“I explained that some were private—meaning your scrapbook—but that she would be welcome to most of the rest. And don’t worry, Malily. I wouldn’t ask you or Tuck to get involved. I’ll handle everything.” Helen rotated her ankle, the snakeskin of her shoe glowing softly in the gray light from the almost-shuttered windows. “Besides, I could use a diversion. It’s very hard for a woman my age to consistently lose at Chutes and Ladders. I need something else to focus on to lift my spirits.” She squeezed the girls on either side of her as they giggled.
Odella walked briskly into the room, her soft-soled nurse’s shoes squeaking on the heart pine floor. She was about fifteen years older than Helen and just as thin, but her parchmentlike skin and graying hair made her appear years older. She’d been married and widowed three times and raised eight children, which probably accounted for the weary expression she normally wore. But there was no finer cook in the entire Lowcountry than Odella Pruitt and no softer heart, although she did her best to hide it behind a tart tongue and salty attitude, neither of which Lillian minded. It was a small price to pay for excellent food and a firm hand to help Lillian’s increasingly feeble body.
“Food’s ready and it’s not going to eat itself,” announced Odella as she gently grasped Lillian’s elbow and helped her out of her chair. “Girls, grab hold of your aunt Helen and take her to the dining room, would you please? Don’t want her knocking anything over. Got enough to do as it is without having to clean up extra messes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girls said in unison, their eyes wide. They hadn’t yet discovered the secret that was Odella Pruitt, and that was fine with Odella. Because once they realized what a pushover she really was, they’d have her wrapped around their small fingers.
“I’ll be careful, Odella,” said Helen with a deceptively meek voice. “You know how clumsy I can be.” This made Lillian grin since Helen moved with the grace of a ballet dancer, and except for that first desperate year of Helen’s blindness, she’d never knocked over a single thing.
But Lillian’s smile quickly faded as she heard the first rumble of thunder. She grasped at the gold charm dangling from her neck and allowed herself to be led into the dining room. She kept her eyes focused in front of her and tried not to shudder with each flash of lightning that seemed to throw light into the forgotten corners of her memory, illuminating things she didn’t want to see.
CHAPTER 6
The handheld GPS that I’d stuck to the inside of the windshield in my grandfather’s Buick had long since announced that I was “off-road,” apparently in a place where even satellites couldn’t find me, my destination unknown.
I paused on the old gravel road, knowing from the blank map on the GPS screen that the Savannah River was somewhere to my right and a large golf course was on my left. But somewhere, in the vast dark space on the screen, lay Asphodel Meadows, once the queen of the Savannah River rice plantations, but now operating solely as a horse farm and private residence, its land devoured by development and the encroaching river, its rice beds now a golf course.
Just when I thought I should turn around, I spotted the small marker tucked into the brush on the side of the road announcing my arrival at Asphodel Meadows. It was a brown National Trust sign, but it was hidden so well that I was left to believe that someone had done it intentionally.
As soon as I turned onto the road, I smelled the horses. Not the horses exactly, but their associated smells of cut grass, hay, and leather. Despite the heat, I turned off the air conditioner, trying to block the scent that never failed to rip through me with equal parts exhilaration and terror. I began to sweat in the stifling interior as the gravel crunched under the slowly rotating tires as I followed the drive to where it seemed to stop abruptly, disappearing into a steep green embankment. Finding it hard to breathe, I lowered the windows, hoping to find sight of the road.
To the right of the Buick, at a sharp angle, I spotted the continuation of the road as well as the turnoff I must have missed while staring straight ahead in the hopes of avoiding any sight of pastures. Gripping the wheel tightly, I angled the car and turned, finding myself suddenly enveloped in the canopy of an ancient live oak alley. I stopped the car, looking at the old trees that barely resembled the live oaks of Savannah’s squares despite the generous shawls of Spanish moss. These trees were darkened and withered, despite enough leaves to show that they were alive. But the limbs were bent and gnarled, the knobs at the forks like the bent shoulders of mourners at a funeral.
Gulping the stagnant, humid air, I caught the scent of the river, too, and continued to drive forward through the short line of hulking oak trees toward the cream-colored columned house beckoning me at the end.
