Page 61 of The Lost Hours
“Yes. Please do.”
“And when we get back, we’ll come see you and we can read more of your scrapbook. Because that’s the real story, isn’t it?”
Lillian nodded, feeling weak.Because I know you. More than my own mother, I know you in my heart.“Does Piper have Lola—the necklace—with her? I’d like to see it again.”
“I’ll tell her to bring it.”
They sat for a moment, immersed in the night sounds and the sighing oaks, breathing in the heady scent of the blooms that surrounded them.
Helen sighed. “I love the way it smells in here. I think it will always be my favorite place in the world.”
“Mine, too,” said Lillian as she stood, her bones screaming in protest. She picked up the small garden shears that had been next to her on the bench and approached the rosebush, its crimson blooms glowing softly in the last light of day. She searched for stems holding buds without color, wanting ones that weren’t expending energy required to sustain a vibrant bloom, then neatly clipped them off at the bottom.
After removing the thorns, she returned to Helen and opened her hand, placing the clippings gently inside. “Keep these wet with damp paper towels and give these to Piper, if you would. They’re for her grandmother’s garden. I’d always meant to give these to Annabelle and never had the chance.”
Helen closed her fist around them, then tilted her face up to her grandmother. “Why not? Why didn’t you have the chance?”
Because I didn’t have the courage to tell the truth,she wanted to say. She shifted her gaze to the moonflowers, which had begun to unfurl their petals, opening up to the growing darkness. “Because I saw too much of myself in Annabelle. I needed to separate myself from her. So we parted ways.”
Helen was silent for a while. “But what was she asking forgiveness for in her letters—the ones you returned unopened?”
Night edged its way into the garden, falling softly over the roses and sweet autumn clematis, bleaching the colors from the flowers and replacing them with shadows. “I don’t know,” Lillian said, her answer fortified by the first lie, making it easier. “I suppose I never will. She must have thought that she’d done something to sever our friendship, but there’s no way of knowing. Poor Annabelle.”
Helen stood, too. “Is it dark yet?”
“Yes. The moonflowers have bloomed.”
Helen stepped forward and Lillian guided her hand to the milky white petals, the same way she’d guided her through her first months of blindness and every pivotal moment in her life since then.The daughter of my heart.
Helen smiled. “I can still see them, you know. I haven’t forgotten.”
Lillian looked at her but didn’t smile back. “There are some things that should never be forgotten.”Like the worth of an old friendship, and a secret to take to the grave.
Lillian took Helen’s hand and tucked it into the crook of her arm, then led them both out of the garden guided by the glow of the distant moon and the sound of the old oaks crying for old friends and to a river that flowed over a bed of silt and secrets.
CHAPTER 18
I awoke early, eager to head downtown. I hadn’t heard from Tucker, and I was using the reprieve to do as much research as possible. Because I had another hour before I had to pick up Helen, I reached for my grandmother’s scrapbook pages, impatient now to get through them. I had a sense of urgency that had eluded me before, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was Lillian’s increasing frailness, or maybe it was the sense I’d had ever since pulling Sara from the pond that I still had the potential to be more than ordinary.
I’d left the scrapbook pages and my grandmother’s box out on the table, since I didn’t need to hide them anymore, and turned to the page where I’d last stopped. I looked at the photo that had been stuck at the bottom that I’d barely glanced at before if only because I assumed I wouldn’t know anybody pictured in it. But as I sat down to resume reading, something about it caught my eye again and I lifted the page closer to see it better.
The photo was of a small group of men. I recognized Freddie immediately as the tall, handsome man in the back row. The rest of the men were black except for one white man, and all were dressed in three-piece suits and hats, a few of them sporting pocket watches. I scanned the anonymous faces, and my gaze paused on the white man, wondering why he looked familiar to me.
He was very young, the shade of his hair in the black-and-white photo hidden by his dark fedora. But then my gaze fanned down to his clothing and my eyes caught on his watch chain and the golden key fob that dangled from it. I squinted my eyes to see it closer, trying to recall where I’d seen it before. And then I remembered. On his last visit, I’d seen Mr. Morton pulling out his old watch, and had seen the key fob. I smiled to myself, recalling what I’d read in my grandmother’s scrapbook, about how he’d been sweet on her. I tapped my finger against the photograph, thinking. He knew a lot more about my grandmother than he’d let on, and he fully expected me to figure it all out on my own.
Shaking my head, I leaned forward and began to read.
December 30, 1938
It’s been nearly two years since I last wrote in this book. I haven’t had the heart to. So much has happened, and most of it nothing I wanted to record, so I left the book under my bed, hoping to forget about it. Even Josie and Lily seem to have forgotten about it. But I feel as if this last vestige of our youth must not disappear, and so I pulled it out this morning, and dusted it off so that I can continue with our story.
Father has never fully recovered from his bout with pneumonia. His doctor thinks it might have settled in his heart and he is in a weakened state. Any exertion exhausts him, although I help him practice walking around his room three times a day. But it is obvious to all of us that he will not be able to work again. We are all devastated. We’d never thought that he could be reduced to such circumstances. He was always so strong, and such a presence that when he became ill, it never occurred to us that he might not fully recover.
I was at his side through much of his illness, when he passed through delirium and mumbled things that didn’t quite make sense. But there was one feverish utterance that shook me, and for a moment I knew it had to be the high fever. But he said it again, and squeezed my hand, as if to make sure I understood, and I was made to understand that he thought he was about to die and had to unburden himself to me. I sat next to him for a long time after he collapsed into an exhausted sleep, pondering his words, knowing them to be true. So much made sense suddenly—things I should have seen but hadn’t. I’d been blissfully unaware of all of it, ignoring the clues that had been right under my nose for as long as I could remember.
I was angry at first, angry at his cowardice. He’d only told me because he expected to die and wouldn’t have to live with the repercussions his confession would cause. How unfair to me, and to everyone else, that we were not given a chance to come to terms with the new order of things, or to prepare ourselves for what must follow.Whatever that was to be.
The only thing that is certain is that Lillian will be pleased. She has made assumptions that weren’t true—thankfully—and now she will know that she was wrong and I can be exonerated.When Lillian takes possession of this scrapbook and reads it, she will ask me what I’m referring to. I might even tell her. And hopefully we can both laugh at our misunderstanding and resume being as close as we once were, before matters of our hearts took precedence in our lives. Or maybe I’ll make her wonder.
