Page 86 of The Lost Hours
There was a soft tapping on the door and she turned to see Helen enter the room.
“Malily? Are you awake?”
“Yes. I’m by the chair between the windows.” She watched as Helen moved gracefully toward her, her face beautiful even with her drawn expression and reddened eyes.
She stopped a foot away from Lillian, her hand brushing Lillian’s nightgown sleeve, and turned her face to the window as if sensing the light. “Have the trees changed at all?”
Lillian smiled softly. It had been an old joke between them. When Helen had first lost her sight, Lillian had been her eyes, describing everything around her. But Helen, who’d always been fascinated by the legend of the oak trees, had continued to hope that they’d get over their grieving and return to normal. On a nearly weekly basis, she’d asked Lillian if they’d changed back yet. It had been a while since she’d last asked. Maybe Helen had given up on getting a new answer. Or maybe she’d just got tired of asking. “No, not yet.”
Helen handed her something and when Lillian took it she saw that it was a light blue hand-knit baby’s blanket. Lillian’s hand tightened around it, feeling instead Samuel’s soft baby skin, and the thick hair that had covered his tiny head. She closed her eyes, trying to see her son and instead saw Annabelle holding Samuel in the room where he’d been born and where he’d died.Annabelle’s nephew. Samuel had been related to Annabelle by blood.But Annabelle had never told her. As if the knowledge would have added to Lillian’s grief somehow, and her friend had chosen to spare her. Even if it meant Annabelle would have to grieve in solitude, believing she’d killed her own nephew.
Lillian brought the blanket up to her face, trying to smell any trace of the little boy she’d known and loved for such a short time, but smelled only dust and old wool. And something else that she refused to recognize.
Helen reached out her hand and touched the glass of the window, her face registering surprise that the shutters had been opened before dropping it to her side. “Why did you want me to leave the room when you spoke with Piper? Did you think I’d be ashamed of you because you married a black man and had his baby? Or that you couldn’t forgive a close friend? Do you know me so little that you think that any of that would make me forget what you mean to me?”
Lillian looked at her, not comprehending at first. It didn’t surprise her that Helen had eavesdropped. It only surprised her that Helen hadn’t guessed the truth.
“No.” Lillian returned her gaze to the window and the darkening sky, the fading light reminding her of sand through an hourglass.
Helen didn’t say anything for a while. “You didn’t want me here because there’s more to the story and you were going to tell Piper.”
Lillian remained silent.
With a soft sigh, Helen leaned over and kissed Lillian’s cheek. “ ‘Be patient and strong. Someday this pain will be useful to you.’ ” She pulled away. “Whatever it is can only make us stronger, right? So trust me that I’m strong enough to handle it, and that I love you enough now for it not to matter.”
Helen turned and walked carefully to the door.
“How did you learn to be so brave?”
Helen didn’t even turn around or pause when she answered. “From you, of course.”
Lillian stared at the closed door, listening to Helen’s retreat down the long hallway accompanied by Mardi’s paws clicking on the wood floors. Lillian turned from the window and blinked, her vision fading in and out. She moved slowly to her desk with leaden feet. She’d never been this tired before, not even after childbirth. Each breath rattled in her chest; each movement was stiff and deliberate. Even her heart had to be reminded to beat.
She leaned on the desk with both hands, ignoring the pain, trying to catch her breath. The desk had once belonged to her mother, and when her father had given it to Lillian on her sixteenth birthday, she’d hoped that the secret compartments and multiple drawers would contain something from her mother: a note, a letter, a story. But the desk had been completely empty, and Lillian had spent a lifetime trying to fill it.
Mustering all the energy she had left, Lillian pulled open the middle drawer and gingerly slid her hand inside until she felt the release button, and pressed, wincing at the jolt of pain in her hand. She was rewarded with a slight clicking sound and when she reached farther, she felt the false side of the drawer bowing out, leaving just enough room for a piece of paper. Or an envelope.
She pulled out the envelope with her neat and much younger handwriting sprawled across the front, recognizing the address on Monterey Square by heart, even after all these years. The stamp in the top right corner remained uncanceled, but the seal had been torn open, allowing access to the letter inside.
The letter and its envelope had been in the desk almost since the time it was written, until Susan began her research into the Harrington family, and found instead the letter and Lillian’s past. Holding the letter close, Lillian pressed her hands against her chest, feeling each breath as she summoned the strength to make it back to her bed. With faltering steps, she moved toward it, feeling as if hands were helping her onto the high mattress, settling the bedclothes around her.
She’d made her decision. The story belonged to a younger generation now, caretakers of the words left behind by three friends whose lives would always be intertwined. Helen and Piper were strong, independent women; they would understand. They would know how to forgive, and how to move on in a world that didn’t always offer second chances. Curling onto her side, she cradled the letter like a baby. She would read it to Helen tomorrow, knowing now that it was part of the story she was meant to share, and that she’d raised a courageous woman who loved unconditionally, and who could face a darkened world without hesitation.
With a jagged breath she lifted her hand to the radio and turned it on, preset to the jazz station. Her hand fell to the mattress, the skin pale and bloodless. The volume on the radio was set low, and she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Josie singing again.Time is a river, and it ain’t got no banks; I can’t go nowhere but down, down to the place the heart breaks. But then I see your face, and the angels sing, and my soul finds rest again in your embrace.
Lillian smiled, her tiredness overwhelming her, welcoming it as a traveler welcomes sleep after a long journey. She allowed her eyes to close just for a moment, then forced them open again, listening to Josie sing, imagining she could hear Annabelle, too. Although night had fallen outside, the window she’d stood at shone with bright light, and Annabelle’s voice was calling to her. Lillian rose from the bed, her stiffness and tiredness gone, and went to the window to find her old friend. The scent of the moonflowers hovered near as they opened into the night, sharing their secrets with anyone who braved the darkness to see.
Annabelle stood there, reaching out her hand and looking like the young woman Lillian had known. She glanced down at her own hands and they were young and beautiful again, the fingers straight and strong. Annabelle smiled and Lillian moved forward, surprised now that they were walking through the alley of oaks and Josie was there, too, still singing and holding her other hand. And as they walked together, Lillian looked up at the ancient trees and saw that they had finally changed. Instead of the gaunt, blackened branches, the wood was strong and supple again, each limb bearing the bud of new life, each shawl of moss swaying with the promise of forgiveness.
I slept soundly for the first time since my arrival at Asphodel. It might have been because my body needed rest after the physical exertion of riding Captain Wentworth the previous day, but I thought it was simply that my mind, having finally found the answers it had been seeking, shut down to rest, too weary to examine that last evasive question. Tucker and I had talked on the front porch the night before until about midnight, and I told him about Freddie, and the baby, and the night of the storm. There were no recriminations, no excuses or platitudes. We were forever tied to the players in the drama, but their tragedy wasn’t ours—only the lessons learned.
I awoke before dawn, feeling too alert to go back to sleep, and went to the kitchen to go over my notes again. It wasn’t until I was drinking my morning coffee that I remembered that I had dreamed of my grandmother again, but we hadn’t been at my final riding competition. Instead, we’d been in her Savannah garden and we were planting moonflower seeds beneath the kitchen window. I’d looked at her face and she’d smiled at me and there were no words left to be said.
It was still dark when I heard a car pull up and I spotted Tucker’s Jeep outside. I thought of Lucy and her fall the previous day and my heart lurched in my chest. I opened the door in response to his knock, and saw the drawn look on his face, the hollows beneath his cheekbones. “Is Lucy all right?”
He nodded. “Yes, she’s fine. It’s . . . Malily.” He regarded me silently in the shadowy light of dawn, and I knew. “She passed away in her sleep last night. We’re not sure when—she’d told Odella that she didn’t need her anymore after she took her dinner tray.”
I pulled out a kitchen chair for him; then I sat in the one next to his and took his hands. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the weight of loss as if it were a physical thing. I knelt in front of him. “I’m sorry,” I said again, knowing that any of the trite things people are supposed to say wouldn’t fit here, or start to fill the ache in a grieving heart. But being near helped. I had the experience to know, after all.
