Page 45 of The Lost Hours
She felt Tucker stiffen beside her. “I don’t see why. Whenever I hear Annabelle’s name mentioned, it’s always associated with something bad. Twelve years ago when you received the letter from Annabelle’s husband saying that he’d put his wife in a nursing home, you . . . changed. Not that the outside world could see it, but I could. You walked slower, you seemed more aware of your own frailties. And then Susan . . .” He stopped for a moment. “I know her . . . relapse had more to do with her own mental state than anything else, but she became obsessed with the story of your friendship with Annabelle. I just find it hard to believe that you’d want to revisit any of it.”
“I’m getting old,Tuck. And I’m not going to live forever. I suppose it’s natural for the elderly to look back on their lives and see if there’s something that needs to be put right. To undo damage.”
He looked intently at his grandmother. “Damage?”
Lillian shook her head. “I . . . lied to Annabelle about something. Something important and she died never knowing the truth. And since reading Piper’s letter, I’ve come to think that maybe it’s not too late. That by telling her granddaughter I can make amends to Annabelle.”
Tucker was staring at the moonflowers, their blooms tucked tightly inside themselves, the droplets of rain like tears. “Did Susan know about it? This . . . lie?”
“She might have. I’d written an apology to Annabelle that I never sent but kept hidden. Susan might have seen me access it once, but I never thought she’d pry. But when Susan died in the river, I suspected she might have.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked into Tucker’s face, seeing the devastation again, and knew she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Glancing away, she said, “It was just very emotional—you know how girls are. I think that’s why I kept it from her, knowing that even though Susan seemed fine, that maybe it would be too much for her to handle.
“I never gave her my scrapbook—she took it, remember. I thought she’d be content with all the rest of my stories, and my papers. She seemed so happy to have something to make her feel useful. She told me she didn’t need the pills anymore because she was feeling so good. Maybe she did that on purpose so I wouldn’t pay that much attention to what she was doing. So when she found the letter from Annabelle’s husband and was determined to find out more, I didn’t know to stop her.”
His voice was hard. “None of this is new to me, Malily. Except for whatever you lied about to Annabelle. Maybe if you just told me the rest of your story, I could contact Piper Mills and tell her myself. That might satisfy her and then you can stop worrying about something that happened years ago that doesn’t matter anymore.”
Lillian faced her grandson and sighed. He was male, and destined to think of history as only battles fought and won. He could never understand. “I need to tell her myself, Tucker. I think we need to contact her again.”
Tucker stood, then reached over to shake the moonflowers, their drops raining on the brick walkway. “What about Helen? She told me you’ve been sharing your scrapbook with her. Isn’t that enough?”
Feeling agitated, Lillian stood, leaning heavily on her cane. “No. No, it isn’t. Helen doesn’t need any life lessons from me; she’s never once looked back on her past and wished she’d done something differently.” She shook her head. “I need to tell Annabelle’s granddaughter. I need Annabelle’s forgiveness.”
“She’s dead, Malily. It’s too late.”
His eyes were dark with terror and pain and Lillian wished she could make it go away with a kiss as she’d done when he was small. She knew he wasn’t referring just to Annabelle, but that the ghost of his wife’s suicide lingered near him still, his guilt and regret unwilling to let her remain buried.
She touched his arm. “Until you bury me, it won’t be too late. ‘Where there is life, there is hope,’ remember?”
He shook his head. “I think you’re making a mistake, but if you want me to contact her, I will.”
She looked into his face and saw the boy he’d once been: the wild, reckless boy full of mischief and practical jokes. Lillian refused to believe that the boy was gone forever, hidden inside this sad shell of a man. Her lasting hope was that the revelation of her secrets would set all of them free—free from lives spent looking backward and wrestling with past mistakes.
Lillian stood on her toes and reached up to kiss him on his cheek. “Yes, I’d like you to.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and she looked up into his eyes, feeling much shorter than she remembered. Had he always been so tall? Or was she just shrinking? Becoming smaller and smaller until she would simply cease to exist? Perhaps that was what death would be like for her: a crumbling into dust, where pride and old wounds didn’t matter anymore.
A corner of his mouth lifted before he spoke and Lillian caught a glimpse of the old Tucker. “You’re really a big bully, you know. Always managing to get your own way. I don’t fall for this old-lady act at all. I never have.”
She smiled back, relieved to see his smile again. “I know. You’re much too smart for that. You got that from me.”
He grinned again, revealing his elusive dimple and her heart didn’t seem to ache as much. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he said, “I’ve got to go to the stables, see if today is the day Captain Wentworth is ready for a rider.”
“Captain Wentworth?”
Tucker dug the tip of his boot into a crack in the brick walk. “The new rescue horse. I let Earlene name him. After the Jane Austen character. I figured we wouldn’t be keeping him, so it didn’t matter.”
Lillian watched him closely. “So what do you think of this Earlene?”
He grew still for a moment, his eyes focused on the coppery waves of the magnolia leaves. “I can’t really put a finger on it, but there seems to be something . . . missing. I mean, where are her family and friends? She doesn’t talk about her past at all, and is here to study somebody else’s life. She reminds me of a college buddy of mine who was lost a leg in a hunting accident. He acted shell-shocked, barely able to focus on what was going on around him, sort of living those last moments before the bullet hit him again and again. Like he was afraid to move forward in life in case something like that happened again.”
She didn’t say anything, wondering if he realized how much he’d just described himself.
“What about you, Malily? What do you think?”
Lillian sat back down on the bench and stretched out her legs, willing the aching in her feet to stop. “She loves my garden.”
