Page 69 of The Lost Hours
The phone book was where it had always been, on the top step of the kitchen stool tucked beneath the ancient princess phone with the long, tightly curled cord in mustard yellow. My grandparents had been frugal; despite their being comfortably off, spending money to replace something that worked perfectly fine had never been on their agenda.
I flipped the thick book open and found the Js, rapidly moving my index finger down to the top of theJoneslist, saying the names quietly to myself, and simultaneously searching for Tattnall Street. The listing, when I found it, seemed innocuous enough, a singleJones, A.but my heart began to pound a little louder in my chest.
Lifting the receiver from the cradle, I held it away from my ear for a moment, listening to the dial tone as if it were a voice from the past. Then I slowly dialed the number. The ringing sounded unusually loud, and I let it ring five times before an answering machine picked up. It was an electronic voice, so I was unable to determine the gender or anything else about the person I was trying to reach. At the sound of the tone, I left a message explaining that I was the granddaughter of Annabelle O’Hare and that she and Josie Montet had been close friends growing up. I asked that if I had reached the home of Josie’s daughter, Alicia, to please call me back. I left my cell phone number, then hung up, my hand lingering on the receiver for a long time, listening to the quiet of my grandmother’s kitchen, and feeling her presence.
When I rejoined the others, they looked at me expectantly. “I got an answering machine, so I left a message. I guess I’ll just wait and see if she calls back before I decide what to do.”
“And if she doesn’t call back, you’ll hire on as your housekeeper to find out what she knows that way?”
Tucker’s face was deadpan, but when Helen began to laugh he smiled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” He stood. “I guess we should head back. Malily hates eating alone.”
Helen pulled out a card from her purse and handed it to George. “Call me.”
I moved toward the doorway again. “Give me about fifteen minutes, okay? I have something I need to do.”
I went out to the Jeep and pulled out the rose clippings Malily had given to Helen, wrapped in damp paper towels. I brought them back to the desolate garden, where the empty soil waited, trying to decide where to plant the roses. I chose the back wall, where they could grow wild, just as my grandmother would have done, untamed and unruly; her garden was the only place in her life where she allowed herself to revisit her past.
The door to her garden shed stuck tight, but I managed to dislodge it by tugging. I found my grandmother’s tools, her trowel and her gloves. Even her large-brimmed hat. I left the hat behind, but put on the gloves, feeling my grandmother’s hands on mine as I pulled them over my fingers that were shaped like hers. I attacked the soil with the trowel, scraping off the hardened topsoil and digging deeper to moist earth, exposing its secrets. I placed the clippings far enough apart so that when they grew they wouldn’t crowd one another, then tightly packed the earth around them to keep them upright.
I knew I wasn’t done. They’d need more nurturing, more direction. I might even have to move them once I determined where the sun would hit them. As I sat back on my heels and studied the tightly closed buds that reminded me of a newborn’s eyes, I knew I’d done something good. Like learning to trot before cantering, it was a place to start. My grandmother had been a horsewoman and a civil rights-crusader, and she had once wanted to be a doctor, but her garden was her story, and I made a silent promise to her that it wouldn’t be forgotten.
I replaced the trowel and the gloves, gently touching the hat before I tugged the door shut. I exited through the garden gate, pausing long enough to take in the lonely rose clippings against the back wall, the late-summer sun casting giant shadows like a bridge from one life to another.
CHAPTER 20
Lillian sat in her chair by the window as night fell, listening to the whippoorwill calling out to the darkening sky. She pushed aside the tray of uneaten food that Odella had brought up, tossing a bite of chicken to the waiting Mardi, who’d been sitting patiently as they’d both waited for Tucker’s Jeep to return.
Tucker had called earlier to let her know that there’d been an accident on the highway, so they’d turned around and had dinner in Savannah. It hadn’t mattered. It had been a long time since Lillian had had an appetite, and now she just used food as a buffer against the medications and alcohol that seemed to be the only things getting her through her days.
Leaning forward, she rubbed her swollen knuckles, feeling the shifting of the seasons in her bones. Like the weathered oak trees in the alley that never alternated colors or dropped their leaves, they showed the approaching autumn in more subtle ways—a change in pitch to their nightly cry, and an almost imperceptible change in the angle of their arch. It was almost as if the oncoming cold of winter alerted them to hover closer to the earth and to one another to help face whatever came next.
Lillian sighed, missing Charlie again. He’d been the one who’d protected her, who’d sheltered her from the storm even when she thought she didn’t need it. She’d been thinking a lot about him lately, and she didn’t know why. He’d been gone for almost fifteen years, and in the time since he died, she had only thought of him with the same nostalgia one might feel for a favorite dress that no longer fit. It was the scrapbook, of course, and all of the memories it brought forth—the good and the bad. And all the things that weren’t written on the pages, but were inscribed instead on the years themselves, as permanent and irrevocable as surviving beyond everyone you’d ever loved.
She turned her head, hearing the sound of a car approaching the house, followed eventually by the front door closing and footsteps climbing the stairs. Despite her sense of foreboding and inevitability, she smiled. Piper with her bad leg wouldn’t take the elevator any more than Annabelle would have.
Mardi ran to the door before anyone knocked, then launched himself through the opening crack as soon as Lillian called out her permission for them to enter. Tucker, Helen, and Piper stood clustered in the doorway like children sent to the principal’s office, and it made Lillian want to laugh, realizing how very reversed their situations really were. She was the one who should be afraid, after all.
Lillian indicated the sofa and wing chair near her and they found seats, Tucker and Piper together on the sofa and Helen in the chair with Mardi’s head propped on her lap. Piper handed her more scrapbook pages. “Here’re more of my grandmother’s pages. I’ve got one more left. I haven’t read it, but I’ll give it to you as soon as I’m done.”
Lillian regarded Piper with surprise. “You’re prolonging it, are you? Afraid of what you might find?”
Piper’s eyes met hers with a question, but she didn’t look away. “No. Not anymore. I think I’m hesitating now because I don’t want to say good-bye. It’s the last thing I have of hers.” She reached behind her neck. “Well, almost.”
Gently, she unclasped the chain, then held the necklace in front of her, the gold charms seeming overly bright as they reflected the lamp-light. “I think Lola belongs to you.”
Piper stood, then waited in front of Lillian until the older woman realized what Piper was trying to do. Lillian bent her head forward and waited for Piper to clasp the chain behind her neck before stepping back and sitting down again.
“I’ve made a list of the charms along with when they were added and by whom. There’s still quite a few I’m unsure about—although I assume most of them are Josie’s since we haven’t read any of her pages—yet.”
“Yet?” A butterfly settled in Lillian’s stomach, beating its wings against her past.
“I think we’ve found Josie’s daughter. She lives in Savannah. If it’s her, she might have Josie’s pages.”
Lillian sat back in her chair. “Alicia,” she said.
“You know her?” Helen asked.
“No. I just know of her. I followed Josie’s life. Knew she had a daughter, and that Josie had named her Alicia.” She smiled to herself, remembering when she’d read the birth announcement. “Alicia is my middle name. I always thought that was Josie’s way of telling me that she hadn’t forgotten me.”
