Page 81 of The Lost Hours
Without averting her gaze, Lillian said, “Do you really want the truth? Because I could tell you the rest of the story where the ending is the same, but the bad guys are the ones in the black hats. And not the woman who held you as a child.”
Piper slowly sank down in the chair by the bed and Lillian saw that her hands were trembling in her lap, as if she too could hear the cracking thunder and the sound of fists colliding with broken bone.
“I want to know the truth. All of it. My grandmother would have told me herself.”
“If you’d only asked.”
Piper’s eyes flew to Lillian’s face. She jutted out her chin. “Tell me the truth.”
Lillian smoothed the blanket under her fingers, her skin numb. Her eyes didn’t leave Piper’s. “Annabelle was holding Samuel when he started to cry. She’d given him a rag but he didn’t want it. He was so hungry. The storm masked it at first, but his screams were growing more frantic. We had no doubt that we would not live to see the morning if those men heard us.”
She swallowed, her throat dry. She needed another drink so badly, but she didn’t have the energy to ask. “So Annabelle covered his mouth with her hand, to quiet him. He . . . he stopped and we all dared not move as we listened to them beat on Freddie and raid the house. And then they left, taking Freddie with them, but we stayed in the dark room, listening to the rain and the thunder. We stayed there so long that dawn was breaking before we thought to move.”
“Where was Dr. O’Hare? Why didn’t he come back?”
“Oh, he did. Paul Morton found him in the front parlor. They’d hit him over the head with a chair and broken a rib. Paul was the one who came and moved the armoire and unlocked the door for us. He told us there’d been another lynching, that Freddie was dead. They were calling it a suicide. But we all knew the truth.” She closed her eyes for a moment, dreading the act of opening them again. “And Paul was the one . . .”
She looked up, surprised to see that Piper was handing her a tissue and that her face was wet with tears.
“He took Samuel out of Annabelle’s arms and gave him to me.” Lillian looked away, unable to meet Piper’s eyes. “He wasn’t breathing.”
Piper was shaking her head, her shoulders shuddering. “No. No!”
Lillian gazed past the young woman, toward the window, where she could see the brittle ends of the uppermost tree limbs. “She hadn’t meant to. It was an accident.”
Piper stared at her for a long time, horror and recrimination battling in her eyes. “And you’ve blamed her all these years. You could never forgive her, and that’s all she wanted. It destroyed her, that guilt.” She shook her head and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Leaning forward, she said, “She saved you, and Josie. And you couldn’t forgive her?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
Lillian stared at Piper’s bowed head, remembering their conversation about the moonflowers and how she’d called them courageous because they dared show their ugliness in the bright light of day. She almost told her the complete truth then, but hesitated still. She’d never been courageous like Annabelle, and that was why Lillian hid from the truth even now, when forgiveness was so close at hand.
“It wasn’t about forgiveness, Piper. It was about survival. I saw my baby son’s face every time I thought of Josie and Annabelle. That’s why there was never any contact between us. Why we divided the scrapbook and never looked back.”
Piper’s eyes were reddened, and tears for a child she never knew stained her cheeks. “The angel gravestone in the cemetery. That’s where they buried him.”
Lillian nodded, pressing her tissue to her mouth. “My father allowed it, but only if I’d marry Charlie. He still loved me, despite . . . everything. And my reputation was saved because my father turned in Freddie’s friends to the same mob that lynched Freddie.”
Piper stood, her movements stiff.
“Are you glad now that you know the whole story?”
Piper shook her head, agitated now. “But it’s not, is it? What was in the letter that Susan found?” She moved closer to the bed, looking down at Lillian. “And why have you been living in the dark all these years? What aren’t you telling me?”
Lillian watched her chest rise and fall, and thought of Helen. “There’s nothing. I’ve felt guilt because of what happened to Annabelle, which I’ve tried to deal with every day of my life. But I forgave her long ago. I’d hoped she would have forgiven herself, too.”
Piper looked at her oddly. “But she never knew you’d forgiven her, did she? So how could she ever forgive herself?” She looked away, sniffing loudly. “I need to go now. Should I send Odella in?”
Lillian managed a brief shake of her head before sinking down into the pillows. “No. I’m going to rest now.”
Piper nodded and headed for the door.
“Piper?”
She turned around. “Yes?”
“I loved your grandmother like a sister. I never stopped.”
“You had a funny way of showing it.” Lillian thought she saw pity in her eyes. Quietly, Piper opened the door and left.
As Lillian’s eyes fluttered closed, the words she’d been longing to say escaped her lips, spilling out into the empty room the way lightning in a storm diffuses the darkness for one brief moment, and then is gone.
