Page 71 of The Lost Hours
I’ve told my father that I would like to stay for at least another six months—for reasons obvious to us here but not to him. I told him that I’d like to find employment, and it’s easier here in the city. And Annabelle does need me after all, though I could never tell my father why.
Papa tells me that Charlie comes to Asphodel at least once a week on the pretense of visiting my father but everyone knows it’s to find out about me. Papa said that Charlie’s bank is doing well, considering the times, and it’s quite plain to anybody with eyes that Charlie needs a wife and that he’s already decided on who he wants.
Charlie would make a good husband, I know.When I think of him, I remember him at my come-out, and how he danced and made me smile. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels as if it happened in another lifetime, and a part of me wishes that I could go back, that we could all go back and be the people we were before. But that’s impossible now.
Piper stopped and looked across the room to Lillian. “There’s an envelope here that’s come loose from the page.” She glanced down, holding the paper as if it were a delicate flower petal. “Is this the letter Susan found?”
Lillian swallowed, the necklace heavy on her skin. “No. That’s from Charlie. Go ahead and read it.”
With clumsy fingers, Piper slid the letter out. “It says, ‘Marry me, Lily. Come home and marry me. My heart is quite lost to you, and there is nothing you could ever say or do that would cause my opinion of you to sway. I love you, sweet Lily. Come home to me and be my wife.’ ”
“Did he ever come to Savannah to see you in person?” Helen placed her untouched sherry on a side table and sat on the edge of her chair.
“Every week, I think. But I would never see him. Annabelle would have Justine make excuses for us so that neither one of us would have to face him. Sometimes he’d sit on the porch for hours waiting for me to change my mind, but I never did.”
Piper used both hands to swipe her hair from her forehead. “But I thought you loved him. And you did end up marrying him the next year. So why did you make him suffer?”
Lillian leveled her with a stern gaze. “You’re jumping ahead again, dear. Be patient.”
Piper didn’t back down. “I’m not jumping ahead. I’m just trying to fill in the empty places you seem to be skipping over. Like the letter that Susan read that you told Tucker was an unsent letter you’d written to a friend. Was it intended for my grandmother? And is it in here?”
Lillian continued to watch her, wondering who would back down first, and not at all sure of the answer.
Tucker placed a hand on Piper’s arm and she looked at him for a long moment before sliding back in her seat. She cleared her throat and began to read again.
Annabelle shared a secret with me today. She led me up to the attic and made me help her shove an old armoire away from the wall. A locked door had been hidden behind the armoire, but Annabelle had a key. She said she’d found it with her father’s things as she and Mr. Morton were getting his papers in order. Before she opened it, she told me that she thinks she’s found the answer to all of our problems.
On the other side of the door lay a sad little room. A small bed with sparse furnishings was all it contained, but I understood immediately what she meant. A person could live here without the interference of prying eyes from the outside world. If a person wanted to disappear for a period of time, this would be the perfect place.
I feel better now that our predicament has a temporary solution. I might even be able to sleep at night, if only we knew where Freddie was. Josie tells us that neither she nor Justine has seen or heard from him since I’ve come here, and certainly Annabelle and I haven’t either. Unless Annabelle isn’t telling me everything. But I can’t be angry with her. She is being more like a sister to me, and I can’t be anything but grateful to her.
I only added one charm this time: a golden key. It’s to symbolize the key to our sanctuary, and to the locked door of our future. For all three of us that future is a mystery, and I wonder which one of us will be the first to figure out how to unlock it.
Helen had moved to the floor by her grandmother’s chair as if the story being told was theirs together, that anything revealed would be about them. She placed her hand over Lillian’s. “We went into the secret room today, Malily. We believe it was probably built for a little girl born in the late eighteen hundreds, Margaret Louise O’Hare. Piper found a blue knitted blanket there. And she also found a blue baby sweater in Annabelle’s trunk. Whose baby were they for?”
Lillian turned, listening to the sound of the clock, the necklace pressing down on her again as she struggled to find words.
“Would you like us to leave now?” Piper stood, as if she could feel, too, the need to end the story now—now that it still had the chance for a happy ending. Annabelle had been that way to the end, unable to believe that the worst thing that could happen to you could happen twice.
Lillian shook her head, feeling as if the ticking from her bedside clock was louder than it should have been, the passage of time echoing through the still room. “No. Not yet.”
Piper’s hand reached up to the angel charm around her neck. “My grandmother, Annabelle, she was a good friend to you?”
Lillian nodded without hesitation. “The very best. Even when I didn’t deserve it. I was jealous of how close she and Freddie worked together with the movement. I was excluded from helping because of my father and his association with the Klan, not that I think I was so brave back then to be of much use, anyway. So I tried to make Annabelle jealous by flirting like crazy with that boy from the law office. He was a lot younger than us, but I think she had a tender spot for him.”
“Paul Morton?”
“Yes. That was his name. Nice-looking young fellow. I think he had it bad for Annabelle, too. But she never said anything to me. Allowed me to make a fool out of myself without any repercussions.” She smiled to herself, remembering. “Josie and I used to say that we were the stones and Annabelle the mortar. She kept us together.”
Piper and Tucker exchanged a glance. Piper stood and moved to sit on the footrest of Lillian’s chair. “We found the birth records for Freddie and Josie today.”
“Yes?” This wasn’t a direction Lillian had anticipated.
“Did you ever know who their father was?”
Lillian shook her head. “It didn’t really ever concern me. Since I was very little and began visiting the O’Hare household with my father, Justine was there with Freddie and Josie. There was never a father. He simply didn’t exist, and to my young mind it never occurred to me to ask. Why?”
Piper cleared her throat. “Dr. Leonard O’Hare was their father. Josie and Freddie were Annabelle’s half brother and half sister.”
