Page 87 of The Lost Hours
He dropped my hands and leaned back in his chair, looking at me intently. “What is it?” I asked, sitting back in my chair.
He didn’t say anything right away and then, “I thought for a long time about whether to show this to you.” A soft smile illuminated his lips. “But then I remembered that you’re Piper Mills. You don’t break that easily.”
“What is it?” I asked again.
“Malily left a letter. It was in her hands when Odella found her this morning. I have to believe that she planned on reading it to Helen today. But she didn’t have the chance.” From his back pants pocket he pulled out a yellowed envelope and I immediately recognized the handwriting on the front as Lillian’s.
“It’s addressed to your grandmother, but it was never sent.”
He placed it in my hands and I took it, surprised at how light and inconsequential it felt. Slowly, I slid it out of the envelope and opened it up. After a brief glance at Tucker for encouragement, I began to read.
February 2, 1949
My dearest Annabelle,
It has been nearly ten years since we’ve last seen each other, but most of the time it seems as if it were only yesterday that we were riding together here at Asphodel or stealing cookies from Justine’s kitchen.We had an idyllic girlhood, didn’t we?You and Josie were the sisters I never had, and I will always be grateful for the friendship we shared. Please know that whatever you might think, I hold you close to my heart. You were and always will be the bravest and strongest person I’ve ever known. If only I could have shared those qualities.
I know you’ve written to me. I sent your letters back, but not for the reasons you’d expect. You think that I hold you responsible for Samuel’s death and that I haven’t forgiven you for the events of that terrible night. But that isn’t true.You see, I should be the one asking for forgiveness. My silence for these years has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own cowardice.
The night after the storm, after they’d taken Freddie away and Paul Morton came to let us out of the attic, he took Samuel from your arms and gave him to me. He lay so still in my arms and we all knew him to be gone from us.You and Josie began to cry and Paul comforted you. But while you were mourning, I noticed a small flutter in his chest, a soft struggle for air.
I was elated at first, but something held me back from telling your father, who may or may not have been able to help. Something dark and hopeless.
You were always the dreamer, Annabelle, and I the practical one. I could see my life with a startling clarity. Freddie was dead, and I was unmarried in the eyes of the law with a mixed-race baby. His life was over before it began, but I still had a chance to make a life for myself.To try and find happiness again.
So when your father came to take the baby, I wrapped him in one of the blankets you’d made for him and placed him in your father’s medical bag. I discovered later that your father placed him in the Savannah River, and I pray every day that Samuel was sleeping with the angels before the waters of the river came for him. But the angels brought him back to us, didn’t they?
I let you believe that you had accidentally smothered him, because somewhere in my weakened mind I thought that was so much easier to bear for both of us than the fact that I killed my own child. I know what I did was wrong, and I don’t expect your forgiveness. All I can do is ask, and pray to God to have mercy on my soul. I pray for you, too, that you might find all the joy and happiness you deserve, and that you will be blessed with a daughter to tell your stories to.
I’m expecting another child now, and am hoping it’s a girl. I want to name her Annabelle if she is, although Charlie is adamant that she be named after his mother. So Annabelle will be her middle name, and she and I will have conversations like you and I used to, and I will teach her the secrets of my garden.
Samuel is buried here at Asphodel. I visit him every day and have planted moonflower vines near his grave. But they will not grow there, regardless of my ministrations, and I need your magical hands to guide them.
I’ve started this letter a dozen times and this is the first time I’ve finished it. I hope I can find your courage to mail it. And that you will see past all of my failings to forgive me. I am not whole without you, and Josie and my precious Samuel. I wonder sometimes how people can meet me and speak to me as if they can’t see that I’m missing part of myself.
I manage to muster on. No regrets, remember? But that doesn’t mean I don’t grieve, or miss you, or wish for second chances.
Forgive me,
Lily
My lungs constricted, sucking all the oxygen out of the air. I stood quickly, bumping the table and knocking over my half-empty coffee mug, but neither one of us moved.Oh, God.I needed air; I needed to breathe in the smells of summer grass and flowers; I needed to pretend that I’d never read that letter.
I’d made it to the front porch before Tucker caught up with me. I began to crumple and he caught me, bringing us safely to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said, cradling me in his arms. “I’m so sorry.”
I tried to tell him that I wasn’t crying for myself; I was crying for the wonderful woman who’d been my grandmother and who’d died believing she’d done a horrible thing. And because of my own self-absorption, I hadn’t known. I hadn’t even thought to ask.
I peered up at Tucker, wanting to blame him because of his association with Lillian. “Did you know? Did you? And how could she say that she didn’t believe in regret?”
He shook me gently, and I realized that I was on the brink of hysteria, feeling as if all of my newly won battles were now poised to begin the slippery backward slide on the slope of self-doubt.
“But it doesn’t mean she didn’t grieve, Piper. She only believed in the impossibility of changing the past and focused instead on moving forward. But she grieved. There were signs everywhere. I even think that her devotion to Helen was because she felt Helen’s blindness was punishment for what she’d done.”
Tucker moved into a sitting position and he pulled me into his lap. “And no, Piper, I didn’t know. If I had, I would have made her tell Annabelle. She wanted to.” He moved my face so I would look at him. “She just lacked your kind of courage.”
He pushed damp hair out of my eyes as I blinked up at him, recognizing the truth in his words but not yet ready to hear them. “Lillian’s last words to me, when I left her last night, were ‘Forgive me.’ ”
