Page 15 of The Lost Hours
To change the subject, I blurted, “I was admiring your garden out front. What were those tall, yellow flowers?”
The old woman took a long sip of her sherry. “Those are asphodels—the flower this plantation was named for, which is why I cultivate them here.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.”
“It’s doubtful that you would have. They’re generally found in Greece, where they grow wild. They’re mostly associated with the dead.” She took another sip of her sherry, her eyes shifting from me to the shuttered window. “Do you know Greek mythology, Earlene?”
I swallowed, my throat tight and dry. “No. I’m afraid that I don’t.” I shifted uneasily in my seat, watching the shadows as they seemed to unfold and stretch themselves into the room. This old woman and her house made me feel as if I were pushing on the screen of a second-floor window, not sure when it would give way and send me tumbling to the ground below.
I shouldn’t have come. I watched the dust motes float across the window and thought of the scrapbook pages waiting in the car. On one of my brief perusals through the pages, I had paused long enough at yet another mention of the names Josie and Lily and a new one, Lola. And there, in my grandmother’s girlhood writing,Best friends forever.But there was no connection now to the cold elderly woman sitting in front of me and the petite blond girl sitting next to my grandmother and another girl on a pasture fence in a faded picture with curling edges.I shouldn’t have come,I thought again.
Lillian continued. “According to Greek mythology, Asphodel Meadows is where the souls of people who lived lives of near equal good and evil rest. It’s a ghostly place and a less-perfect vision of life on earth.” Her lips turned up with what resembled a smile. “Not quite hell, but not exactly heaven, either.”
“The flowers are beautiful,” I said, afraid I’d blurt out the truth if I didn’t say something else. I glanced at the doorway, hoping Helen would return with the key so I could leave.
“My ancestors had a sense of humor,” Lillian continued as if I hadn’t spoken. Her words were slightly slurred and I wondered if the old woman was almost drunk. “Or maybe they thought that living in purgatory here on earth would shoot them directly to heaven when they died.”
My knee hurt and my head was beginning to.I shouldn’t have come. I wondered why I hadn’t let George talk me out of it or why I’d felt the need to come in the first place. I’d told him everything, even showed him the scrapbook and newspaper clipping, but he’d still come up with a dozen reasons why my coming to Asphodel was a bad idea. Even I’d had my doubts. Knowing my grandmother’s past wouldn’t bring her back or give me another chance. And maybe the attic room with the empty bassinet and blue baby blanket had nothing to do with her. Or maybe they were never meant to be found.
I opened my mouth to excuse myself, to apologize for taking up their afternoon and to thank them for the tea before leaving as quickly as I could, when my gaze caught a flash of gold appearing in the neck fold of Lillian’s silk blouse.
It was a small gold angel with outstretched wings and holding a book, pierced by two holes to allow a chain to pass through the charm. It was unremarkable, really, except that it was identical to the one I now wore around my own neck, safely tucked inside my shirt.
Helen finally appeared and I stood abruptly, finding it suddenly hard to breathe in the dark, stuffy room. “I’m sorry, but I really must leave now. If you’ll just tell me where the cottage is, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble finding it.”
Without moving, Helen held out a key ring with a single key dangling from it. “That’s fine. I’ll call or have somebody stop by later on to see if you need anything.”
I took the key, trying not to snatch it from Helen’s grasp in my haste. After listening to Helen’s directions, I said a quick word of thanks and my good-byes to both women, then left, ignoring the pain in my knee and quickly forgetting my doubts about why I was there. It wasn’t the fact that Lillian Harrington-Ross had an angel charm identical to the one my grandmother had left for me; instead it had everything to do with the reason why an old woman who claimed not to even remember my grandmother would be wearing it around her neck.
Dum vita est, spes es.Where there is life, there is hope. With a grim determination I hadn’t felt in years, I limped down the steps of the old house toward the garden with its uncanny familiarity. The scrapbook pages in the backseat fluttered as I pulled open the door, the sound like a whisper from the dead.
I put the car in gear and headed toward the front drive, my tires spinning on the gravel as I felt the cool gold of my angel charm pressing against my skin like an old memory, just as cold and twice as persistent.
Impatiently, I wiped my sleeves across my cheeks as I moved beneath the spiky shade of the old oaks, glancing at the GPS and seeing again that I was still out of satellite range, and that my grandfather’s car and I were just a little blip on a huge screen of vast emptiness.
CHAPTER 7
The scratch of cricket wings chirped outside the casement window in the small living room of the caretaker’s cottage. The setting of the sun had done little to ease the heat from the day and the only air conditioner was the window unit in the single bedroom. I pulled the damp pink knit camisole away from my skin one more time before focusing my attention on the marred surface of the coffee table and the scrapbook pages that lay on top of it.
My arm swept down the top page, a magic wand to peer into the past, my eyes moving over the handwriting of a young woman with precise A’s and dotted I’s. The letters were neat and tidy, just like the grandmother I’d known, yet I still couldn’t quite picture the young girl bent over this scrapbook, her pen scratching against the thick paper.
I glanced up at the photo of the three girls I had perched against a table lamp I’d placed on the coffee table for better light. They seemed to be staring at me expectantly, waiting to begin their stories. With a deep breath, I turned back to the scrapbook pages, lifted the torn cover off of the first page, and began to read.
February 4, 1929
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.That’s what Josie tells me anyway, and with her being more creative than I am, I’m going to borrow her words for this first page of our Lola album. The name and this scrapbook were all Josie’s idea, but I get to go first because I’m the oldest.
We met Lola today in the window of a little shop on Broughton Street. It was supposed to be just Josie and me running an errand for Justine, Josie’s mother, but little Lily Harrington tagged along, too, on account of my daddy needing to discuss some horse business with her daddy. I tried to pretend I wasn’t listening, because I’m pretty sure I’m getting a new mare for my thirteenth birthday next month.
There were two mannequin busts in the window, right next to each other. I don’t know what made the three of us stop at one time in front of the window. Maybe it was the way the sun hit the necklace on the first bust, making it sparkle like diamonds, or maybe it was the necklace on the other bust that was filled with gold charms. Josie was the first to notice that both necklaces were exactly the same except the second one was filled with charms. And that’s why I think it caught our attention—the completely bare necklace made us all see the possibilities.
Josie had to wait outside while Lily and I went inside to ask about the price. I just about fainted when they told me. I knew it wasn’t high-quality gold so I thought it would be cheap.We had all wanted it so badly that I guess it just didn’t make sense that we didn’t have the money to buy it.
It was Josie—of course!—who came up with the idea of naming the necklace Lola. And it was also her idea that we pool our money together to buy it, and then share it three ways, each of us having possession of it for four months out of the year. Lily tried to tell us that because she was an only child she’d never been expected to share anything and wasn’t sure she could start now. Her father has the money to purchase it for her, so I got down on my knees like my mama always did when she had something important to say to me, and told her that this was about friendship and loyalty. And that this necklace would bind the three of us together forever, like the old-fashioned blood oath that warriors used to make with each other.
Being Lillian, she felt the need to argue. This habit of hers gets on other people’s nerves, but I respect her for it. It’s how she makes sense of a world I can tell she doesn’t always agree with. She told me that we didn’t need a blood oath or anything like that because we’re only girls, and we’re not expected to go out into any battles.
And that’s when I shared with her the last thing Mama told me before she died: that our battles were the stories we kept inside the part of our hearts that men couldn’t see, but that our loyal friends, sisters, and daughters would cherish forever.
