Page 58 of The Lost Hours
I jerked my gaze to Helen. “Excuse me? I didn’t schedule anything.”
Emily looked genuinely surprised. “Helen said you were ready to start. I’m sorry—I hope I didn’t misunderstand. . . .”
Helen interrupted. “You didn’t. The girls and I decided that it was time for Piper to begin walking straight again. And Tucker agreed.”
I stared at her for a moment while the blood flooded my cheeks. “You decided? It’s none of his business—or yours, for that matter.”
Helen simply smiled. “Ah, she roars. I thought you could. I knew Piper Mills could but I’d never seen Earlene Smith show any emotion. Glad to know it’s there. But, yes, Tucker and I dared to butt our noses into your business. Sorry.”
I looked at Emily, but she just shrugged and moved to the kitchen counter, where she dumped the bags and began emptying them. They were right of course, but I’d never taken well to people telling me what to do. Which is why I’d been a great competitor: when people said something was too hard, I’d wanted even more to prove them wrong.
“What makes you think that I haven’t already tried therapy and it didn’t work?”
“Because you’re still limping. Badly. It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. If I thought there was something I could do that would improve my sight just a little, I’d do it, no matter how uncomfortable or painful.”
Shame replaced my anger, but I didn’t say anything.
“You need to get riding again, Piper. It’s who you are, regardless of who you used to be. And you need to strengthen your legs so you can do it.”
“I’m not riding again,” I said, sounding less convincing than I’d hoped, but still feeling shame and a desire to make it up to Helen. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll work with Emily today. And hopefully it will only take one day because Tucker might decide that it’s time for me to leave Asphodel.”
“Oh, it will take more than a day,” Emily piped in as she opened the refrigerator to store a gallon of milk.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “If it will get you off my back. But it won’t make me change my mind.” Then I heard Helen’s words again—It’s who you are, regardless of who you used to be—and I realized that being blind must be an advantage when it came to seeing into people’s hearts.
Helen leaned forward. “He won’t make you leave, you know. He cares too much about you. He’s just deeply hurt right now. He’ll get over it.”
I felt my cheeks flooding with color and I was glad she couldn’t see them.
“Are you blushing?” Helen asked.
“How on earth did you know that?”
She laughed out loud. “I didn’t—but you just told me.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t think you’re right, Helen. But I’d like to stay. I’ve become . . . attached. I somehow can’t remember my life before I came here.”
Helen reached for my hand and squeezed. “And we can hardly recall what it was like before you came, too.”
As if she could sense another blush, Helen changed the subject. “Do you have any of your grandmother’s scrapbook pages you could share with me? Odella could read them to me so I’ll know the other side of this story.”
“There’re more than two sides of their story; we don’t have Josie’s pages. She was the third friend, the one who went to New York in nineteen thirty-nine—the year my grandmother’s pages end. Anyway, Josie became pretty famous in her time. There’s quite a lot of information on the Internet about her and her recording career. But I assume she took her pages with her.”
Helen blinked slowly. “So will you let me see your grandmother’s pages?”
I felt a small frisson of panic, as if I were being asked to bury my grandmother again. But I glanced at Lillian’s pages and knew it was a fair trade-off. “Is that the favor you were going to ask?” I blew out a puff of air, oddly relieved that I wasn’t alone in this anymore. “I’m not finished yet, but you can read what I’ve already read and I’ll give you the rest of the pages when I’m done. If I’m not still here, I can drive them over to you and we can make the switch.”
“All right. Or when I’m done with the first batch, you can read the rest of them to me.” She frowned. “Although I have to say that I’m surprised that you haven’t already read everything.”
I stood and took a large bottle of detergent from Emily and stuck it in the cabinet under the sink. “I am, too,” I said, pausing to look outside, where the sun had almost finished erasing the previous night’s storm. Emily went outside again to get another load from the golf cart.
“Pandora’s box,” Helen said softly.
I turned to face her. “I don’t really . . . ,” I began.
“Yes, you do. It’s not your nature to hesitate, I would think. Hesitating before a jump could be disastrous, couldn’t it? But you’ve had these pages for a long time now, and you still haven’t read them.”
I opened my mouth to deny it again, but her next words stopped me. “Every day, I face the unknown. But I refuse to be afraid of it because then I’d be too paralyzed to get out of bed. And that’s a horrible way to live, whether you’re blind or not.” She placed her fingers on the table, the tips touching the scrapbook pages. “But you need to know your grandmother’s story. We both need to know the truth.”
