Page 24 of The Lost Hours
“Sounds like a plan,” Odella said as she took Helen’s elbow, then led her out the door and down the porch.
While Earlene was putting the bags inside, Helen turned to Odella on the seat, still curious over the comment Odella had made earlier. “So if it’s not my blindness, why is it that you think I can get you to do things you normally wouldn’t?”
Odella grunted deep in her throat. “Because you’re too much like your grandmother. It’s not worth telling you no.”
Helen smiled distractedly, her mind on something Earlene had told her in the cemetery.You should talk to your grandmother now, before it’s too late. Ask her to tell you her stories.Her words had been nagging at her like poison ivy every since. Her grandmother’s life had always been a taboo subject, one Helen had been warned about by her own mother. And now, as Helen thought about the scrapbook and the pictures of the three girls, she wondered if her grandmother’s unwillingness to share her past had nothing to do with privacy, that the darkness Malily sought in her house mirrored something from her past.
Earlene returned and settled herself in the rear-facing seat of the golf cart next to Mardi. As they jostled side to side on the bumpy road, Helen thought of the scrapbook on the table that had her grandmother’s name and picture on it, and why Malily’s Latin words had reappeared in a place she least expected.
“Thanks for offering to bring me to dinner. I could have walked.” I held on to the side of the cart, trying to press my teeth together so I wouldn’t chip them. The movement didn’t seem to bother the dog, whose large head was resting on my pink floral skirt, his nose making a wet spot on my thigh. With no place for my other hand, I let it rest on Mardi’s neck.
Helen turned her head, her beautiful dark green eyes reflecting the golden sunset behind her, matching the color of the silk shantung dress she wore. On anyone else, the dress would have looked out of place on a golf cart. She smiled. “It’s no problem. We had the supplies to bring to you anyway. But I have to confess to an ulterior motive, too.”
I stiffened, and Helen raised a brow as if she sensed my wariness. “Really?” Even to my own ears, my voice was too casual.
“My brother, Tucker, will be joining us for dinner with his two girls, Sara and Lucy. If you wouldn’t mind, please don’t mention Susan. He hasn’t . . . well, he doesn’t talk about her. Especially in front of the girls.”
I tried to hide my relief. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Helen faced forward again and we rode the rest of the way in silence, as if to pay homage to the watchful oaks as we passed under their hovering branches, a canopy of old men protecting what was theirs.
Odella jerked to a stop in front of the front garden I’d noticed before. “If you don’t mind, Miss Smith, could you take Helen inside? I got to run to the kitchen to stick my corn bread in the oven.”
“Of course. Don’t let me keep you.”
I helped Helen out of the golf cart and put her hand on my arm. She held up a finger and we waited until Odella had disappeared around the corner. “Thank you, Earlene, but I’m fine. It makes Odella feel better if she’s babying me so I let her. I don’t have my cane, so if you’ll just take me to the bottom step, I’m good to go. Unless you’d rather take the elevator inside?”
My chin seemed to jut out of its own volition, just like I remember doing whenever I was told I wasn’t expected to win a ribbon at an event. “No,” I said. “I’m fine with the stairs.”
I tried to set a slow pace as we headed toward the steps but I found myself almost jogging to keep up with her long strides. She pulled away as soon as we reached the hand railing.
“I love your dress,” I said as I executed a lopsided jog up the stairs behind her. We reached the landing and I was panting from the exertion, my knee beginning to complain. “I’m curious about how . . . well . . .” I stopped, realizing that I might be treading in sensitive territory.
“I shop by touch. If I like the way the material feels, I’ll ask a sales-person or whoever I’m with to describe the color and design. But it has to feel good first.” She headed up the last flight but went slower this time and I had a strong suspicion that she was doing it for me.
“Malily will be waiting in the parlor, where you saw her before. If we’re lucky, she’s already had a couple of drinks. And if Tucker’s already there and he’s playing bartender, definitely ask for a martini. He makes the best.”
I nodded as I followed her into the darkened foyer and then down the dim hallway beyond the stairs to the room I remembered from before. When I entered I had the impression of a queen and her court. Lillian Harrington-Ross was seated in the same gilt chair she’d been in before, but on the floor flanking her were two blond girls, their hair the color of moonlight. They wore matching yellow sundresses and were each playing with a gold-and-diamond bangle bracelet. The younger girl was holding her small arm up to the light, watching the stones reflect the greedy ray of sun that had strayed into the room, the diamonds throwing drops of light onto the walls and furniture. The older girl simply stared at hers, as if willing it to do something more useful than just be beautiful. I noted Lillian’s arm was bare at the same time I noticed the man standing by the open armoire.
I paused behind Helen in the doorway, wanting to back out of the room unnoticed, and suddenly aware that my skirt didn’t completely hide the scars on my knee. I felt Helen pulling me forward and I inwardly groaned as she propelled me into the room. We greeted Lillian first before Helen introduced me to her nieces, Lucy and Sara, and then she turned toward the man.
“Tucker, I want you to meet Earlene Smith. She’s the genealogist I was telling you about who’s renting out the cottage for a few months. Earlene, this is my younger yet less good-looking brother, Dr. William Tecumseh Gibbons—otherwise known as Tucker around here.”
His eyes held the same haunted expression I remembered from the horse pasture, but his lips were definitely twitching themselves into a smile. “We’ve met, actually, although I didn’t catch her name before. She was making friends with the new horse.” His lips broadened into a smile and his skin seemed strained from the effort.
Helen turned to me. “I thought you were afraid of horses.”
I flushed with annoyance and mortification, remembering how I’d lain supine on the ground as the horse had searched my pockets for a treat. “I wasn’t ‘making friends.’ It was after my car got stuck and I was trying to find my way back to the house to get help by crossing through the pasture. The horse . . . surprised me and I tripped.”
“And Tucker didn’t offer to help you?” Lillian asked, leaning forward, her fingers tucked tightly around a sherry glass.
Without meeting anyone’s eyes, I said, “I didn’t think to ask. My only thought at the time was to get away from the horse.”
Helen raised two fingers to Tucker and he pulled out two martini glasses. He spoke as he mixed the drinks. “Although, as I told her at the time, she’s the first person he’s shown any interest in at all. Either he sensed your fear or . . .” He handed me my drink. “Or it was something else entirely. Maybe a familiarity with horses, even.” He walked over to Helen and placed a drink in her hand. He returned to the armoire and picked up a double old-fashioned, the bottom filled with amber liquid.
I realized that everyone was looking at me, expecting an answer. I took a large gulp of my drink, my head already spinning. “I used to ride—a long time ago. But I fell off and I haven’t had the need or desire to get back in a saddle again.” I took another sip of my drink, alarmed that I was at the bottom of the glass already, and forced a smile. “Like every young girl’s horse obsession, mine ended and I grew up.”
The younger girl, Sara, had scooted over to sit by my feet. I was wondering what to do with my empty martini glass when I felt a small hand on the bare skin of my leg. “You’ve got a big boo-boo.”
