Page 22 of The Lost Hours
I hadn’t gone far before I heard him jogging up behind me, then felt him pulling me gently to a stop with a firm hand. “You’re limping. You must be hurt.”
I turned to glare at him, an angry retort on my lips, but paused. I could see his eyes clearly now and wondered how I’d missed it before: the darkness that hovered there that spoke of grief so fresh he hadn’t yet learned how to hide it.
Looking away, I gently disengaged my arm, feeling blood rushing to my cheeks. “It’s from an old accident. I’m fine.” I began walking away again, conscious of my limp and feeling his eyes on me.
He called after me. “If you’re trying to find the drive, you’re going the wrong way.”
Defeated and robbed of my noble exit, I turned toward him. He was trying very hard not to smile as he pointed me in another direction. As I began to walk away again, the man said,“If it makes you feel any better, that’s the first friendly overture I’ve seen that horse make since I rescued him more than a month ago.”
“It doesn’t,” I called back over my shoulder. “But thanks for trying.” I considered for a moment asking him for help in extricating my car but quickly dismissed the idea. I had no desire to extend my humiliation by engaging him in more conversation and furthering our acquaintance.
I continued walking toward the fence without glancing back, and it wasn’t until I was safely on the other side of the fence that I remembered the brief moment when I’d looked into the horse’s eyes and seen the horrible scar, and felt for the first time in a long while that I was no longer alone in the world.
I ended up walking all the way back to the caretaker’s cottage. My knee ached so much that I had to wrap it with ice and rest for a whole hour before finally calling Helen, who sent for a tow with apologies about the map. It had been drawn by Susan, she explained, when she’d first devised the idea of renting some of the outbuildings, but the road that I’d been on hadn’t been in existence since the seventies when the golf course was built. We were both silent for a moment, wondering why Susan might have included a road that led to nowhere.
Setting my laptop on top of the pine kitchen table, I flipped it open, having resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to wait until the next day to head to the library. I had a wireless card, so at least I could do preliminary Internet research on my grandparents’ house as well as a search for any more news articles on the baby found in the Savannah River.
Still, my finger hesitated over the power button, my attention diverted to the scrapbook pages and tattered front cover that I’d placed in the corner of the table, an ever-present reminder of the real reason I was here. I’d had more than ample time to go through all the pages, but I resisted like a dieter contemplating fruitcake, desiring the sweetness but not sure if it would be worth the calories. I couldn’t help but wonder if by continuing I’d be opening Pandora’s box. But, I reasoned with myself, that box had been opened the moment the armoire had slid across the attic floor and exposed the hidden door.
After closing my laptop with a firm snap and sliding it away from me, I reached across the table, dragging the pages toward me before opening them up to the place I’d stopped the day before. I studied the drawing of the necklace again before flipping the page, staring at a sketch of the now familiar angel, and recalled that I hadn’t seen an angel charm on the necklace in the box. And then I began to read.
March 29, 1929
I was right. My father did buy me a new mare for my birthday. She’s a dun, with black zebra stripes on her legs and I named her Lola Grace.The Lola part was an inside joke for me, Lily, and Josie, but I’ll call my beautiful horse just Grace. I always wanted a sister and that’s the name I would have chosen, but I’ll have to make do with using the name for my horse since Mama’s been gone for so long and I don’t think Papa has any plans to get married again.
We board Lola Grace at Asphodel, which is hard for me because I have to wait until somebody can take me there to ride. Papa is always seeing patients and can only take me on Sundays unless he’s helping with a birthing, but most days it’s Josie’s older brother, Freddie.Their mama, Justine, has been taking care of the house and doing her best to raise me since my own mama passed, and seeing how Freddie is working at Asphodel while he’s home from boarding school in England for the summer, it seems to make sense.
Freddie didn’t seem too happy with the arrangement at first until he learned that I could keep a secret.The first few times he drove me in Papa’s old cart—now that he’s got that fancy new automobile he doesn’t use it anymore—Freddie took me directly to Asphodel Meadows. But then he started to make a few stops on his way, in neighborhoods my papa would have had a heart attack if he ever knew I’d been anywhere near them, to visit friends. I don’t see how these people could be called friends. Firstly, they’re all Negroes and Freddie’s as white as I am although Justine and Josie are the color of my morning coffee with lots of milk.You can hardly tell they’re black except there’s plenty in this city who seem to make a big deal out of separating people and in their eyes Justine and Josie could never pass as white. But Freddie can, which is probably why he gets to go to school in England.
Anyway, he began to make these little visits to his friends on our way out to Asphodel, and sometimes he brings them things in bags or just papers and such. I haven’t told Justine or Papa because I remember them telling Freddie to drive me, and technically didn’t say to take me there without stopping. And I somehow know that Freddie is testing me, and I don’t want to disappoint. Freddie’s grown into a real handsome young man and he’s got beautiful manners that he must have learned in England and I guess it’s natural for me to want to impress him.
Sometimes Josie comes with us and I’ve noticed that when she does Freddie takes us right to Asphodel. I guess because she’s his little sister the rules are different. And maybe if she spilled the beans to their mother it would mean an end to his visits. So don’t say anything, Josie, when you read this!
But I get to ride nearly every day and I’ve become a really good jumper. Mr. Harrington, Lily’s father, said that if I got any better he might feel compelled to start the first female equestrian team for the Olympics. I know he’s just teasing me because that will never happen, but I like to dream about it sometimes and I like the compliment just the same. I like being good at something, and when I’m on the back of Lola Grace, I feel as if I could do anything and the world is open to a million possibilities.
For the first charm I’m adding to Lola, I’ve chosen a horse for Lola Grace and all the horses at Asphodel for all the joy they bring us.
My eyes scanned to the bottom of the page. Two yellowed photographs, curled at the corners like a baby’s finger, were glued to the paper. I leaned forward over the first one. I recognized the dun with the striped legs as Lola Grace. Astride her in breeches and tall boots was a girl with a long blond plait peeking out of her riding helmet. I recognized my grandmother but only from other pictures I’d seen of her. This girl had nothing in common with the grandmother I’d known. From her open-faced smile to the light in her laughing eyes, this girl was foreign to me.
She was laughing and looking down at the young man holding the reins. He was very tall and lean, with straight oiled hair parted on the side. His face was smooth and olive-skinned and I wondered if that was Freddie. He was smiling at the camera, but his eyes were looking up at the girl as if he were trying not to laugh, too.
The next portrait was of the same horse, but this was a different rider. I recognized Lillian with her straight, elegant nose that even as a very young girl made a person look twice at her. Her eyebrows were raised over an impish smile as if she’d just said something outrageous but was trying to pretend that she hadn’t. The young man—Freddie—was also holding her reins, but he was closer to the horse and had his hand on her boot as if to make sure that the tiny rider wouldn’t get hurt. And underneath the two pictures my grandmother had writtenBest Friends Forever.
A drop of moisture landed on the first picture and I wiped at it absently with the hem of my shirt. It wasn’t until I’d closed the pages and shoved them away from me that I realized my cheeks were wet. I placed my hands over my eyes in surprise, until I remembered what it was that had made me cry. My grandmother had loved to ride and had her own horse named Lola Grace. And in my sixteen years atop the back of a horse, she had never mentioned it to me. And I had never thought to ask.
CHAPTER 9
Helen swayed in the golf cart as Odella took a turn, listening as Mardi’s claws struggled to find purchase on the vinyl-covered backseat. Odella drove the golf cart like she did everything else: full speed ahead, using a straight line because it was the quickest, and not paying any attention at all to curves in the road.
Odella jerked to a stop in front of the caretaker’s cottage, then came around to assist Helen from the cart and up the front porch steps to the door. Helen didn’t need the help but she’d long since discovered that Odella’s need to do for others stemmed from a questionable youth spent in places too far from home with people her family didn’t approve. She’d once told Helen that she’d woken up one day next to her second common-law husband in a squatter’s flat in Berkeley and decided it was time to go. Odella had returned to her roots in Georgia, finding Jesus and husband number three along the way and had been making amends for her misspent youth ever since.
It took Earlene a long time to finally answer the door, and when she did, she was out of breath. “Sorry. You’re a bit early and I had to . . . clean up a bit.” Mardi brushed past her and into the house.
“Get back here, boy,” shouted Odella.
“He’s fine,” said Earlene. “I like dogs.”
Helen listened to the frantic click of his paws as he searched from room to room. “He’s looking for Susan. She used this house as her office space when it wasn’t rented out and would bring Mardi with her.”
