The Lost Hours

by Karen White

  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.

  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 hi
m 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.’ ”

  He nodded and placed a kiss on my forehead. “And you might not realize this now, but Annabelle also tried to live in the present, to move forward. I think that’s why she tried to contact Lillian, and why she married your grandfather to start a new life. She was just less sure of how to make her heart believe it, too.”

  I leaned my head against his chest and stared at the horizon, where the sun had begun to rise, the yellow glow of dawn like melting butter on an open-faced sky, and thought of all the hours I’d spent with my grandmother in her garden and the lessons I’d learned without realizing. “Yes, she was,” I said, my voice stronger. “It just took me a while to figure it out.”

  Feeling calmer, I faced him again. “What about you? That letter must have been what Susan found. What skewed her reality in the end.”

  “It’s devastating for us to hear, but for Susan . . . she took it to heart as only a person as damaged as she was could. I think that’s why she chose the river. Because of Samuel.”

  I pressed my face against his chest, wanting sleep, but knowing I’d still have to wake up eventually. I remembered the hours I’d spent sleeping following my accident, hoping I wouldn’t wake up. But I wasn’t the same person anymore. I was Annabelle O’Hare Mercer’s granddaughter. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Tucker tucked my head against his chest. “When I saw Lucy yesterday up on that horse after you convinced her that she needed to, I think I finally realized that whether or not we discovered the letter, it didn’t really matter anymore. Susan chose her own path a long time before I ever met her. She was always beyond my help, but I kept seeing her failure as my own. I think I’d begun to feel that my success in life depended on whether or not I could make her better. And when she died, I blamed myself, believing it had been my fault.”

  He rested his head against mine, our eyes focused on the bright glow on the horizon. “But then I saw Lucy, how brave and determined she was, and Sara, how silly, and warm and charming, and I realized that somewhere along the way of me believing I had failed at something big, I’d managed to help create and nurture these two amazing people.”

  He tilted my face toward his, the pads of his thumbs rubbing away the tears on my cheeks. “And regardless of how angry I am with Malily for keeping her secrets for so long, I finally understand what she meant by not believing in regret. I think that to her life was about finding the extraordinary in every day. It was how she could sit in her garden on a rainy day and see the beauty in it. It’s what got her out of bed every morning. That was her courage.”

  He brought his face closer to mine and I placed my hands over his. His breath brushed my cheeks as he spoke. “I wish I could change things for you, make it so this all doesn’t have to hurt so much. But that’s the point, isn’t it? That one day we’ll find that the pain we suffered was worth it. Your grandmother had that written on the angel charms, so she must have believed it, too.”

  I pressed my lips against his. “Thank you,” I murmured, remembering my grandmother’s wild lantana, untamed and unpredictable, just as life was meant to be. “Thank you,” I said again, knowing that what he said was true, and hoping time would help me to accept it.

  His arms came around me as we turned to watch the sun rise over Asphodel Meadows, illuminating its secrets as the moonflowers in Lillian’s garden closed themselves against the bright light of day.

  EPILOGUE

  The sun glinted off of Lola around Sara’s neck, illuminating each charm like chapters in a book. There were two new charms added on the gold chain: yet another horse, as a nod to Lucy’s new mare, Jane Austen, and a tiny trophy for Sara, who’d learned to swim across the pond without her floaties not once, but twice. It was Lucy’s turn to wear Lola, but I’d told her any jewelry visible to the judges would mean an instant deduction. With great fanfare and seriousness, she’d placed Lola around Sara’s neck, extracting a promise that Sara would return Lola as soon as Lucy finished her three equestrian events.

  The crisp fall air exaggerated the steam from our coffee mugs as Tucker and I sat with Sara between us in the bleachers in front of the beginner’s ring, trying to ignore the wistful looks Lucy kept giving to the nearby covered ring, where the advanced riders conquered impossibly high fences and barriers. I nudged Tucker with my elbow, drawing his attention to the six people approaching the bleachers from the snack stand. George was using the cold weather as an excuse to place an arm around Helen’s shoulders, and Mr. Morton was helping his wife negotiate her path between mud and horse droppings in her plum-colored suede ankle boots. She kept brushing away Mardi, who loped beside her, churning up red clay dirt like a small child in a mud pit.

  Alicia was there, too, chatting with Helen and holding the hand of one of her granddaughters. The little girl pointed at horses and tried to pet each one as they walked by. I smiled to myself, knowing that was just the beginning, and wondered how long it would take before I’d hear from Alicia about riding lessons.

  They sat down beside us and Mr. Morton gave me a kiss on the cheek. We’d shown him Lillian’s letter and he’d nodded once as if to set things into their new order, then moved on to the next topic of conversation. But he’d made a great show out of coughing, bringing out a handkerchief, and wiping his eyes. I’d patted his hand but looked away.

  I’d read the letter to Helen, and she’d been silent for a long time. I thought then that I’d made the wrong decision in sharing it with her. But then she’d smiled and asked if she could place the letter on the back page of the newly reconstructed scrapbook containing Lillian’s and Annabelle’s pages. Sara and Lucy will be able to read it when they’re older, after they’ve had the chance to learn on their own that disappointments are never permanent. And the large bouquet of tulips on Lillian’s grave had been from Helen—white for forgiveness.

  Mr. Morton came to the Asphodel cemetery for Lillian’s funeral and for services for Samuel and Susan. The dark earth beside Charlie’s obelisk was moved aside for Lillian, and Samuel’s remains were exhumed and placed in the coffin with his mother. We moved Susan inside the enclosure, welcoming her into the family’s stone garden, where her daughters could visit and place the flowers that they’d nurtured since seedlings. The girls and I like to visit at dusk and wait for the moonflowers that have begun to bloom finally on the vines Lillian planted. She has the perfect vantage point to witness the blossoming of the delicate flowers, courageous enough to open only at night without a guarantee that anybody will see.

  The judge over the loudspeaker announced the equitation class, and I turned to Tucker. “That’s Lucy. Wish us luck.”

  He kissed me soundly on the mouth, then took my coffee as I stomped down the bleachers in my mud-spattered boots and jeans and found Lucy already mounted on Jane and talking with another rider.

  “You ready?” I asked, feeling the lurch of excitement in the pit of my stomach. She was only competing in the flat classes, but I couldn’t still the thril
l of being here again among the horses and the riders, the smell of horse and leather heavy in the air. But I was here only as a spectator and a cheerleader for Lucy, and for me it was enough.

  “Yep.” She said good-bye to her friend and then I led Jane toward the ring.

  I patted her on the leg. “You remember what you need to do?”

  She nodded and rolled her eyes. “Smile. Keep my shoulders back and my heels down. But when do I get to jump?”

  I reached up and straightened her competitor’s number, which had been tied around her chest. “Soon, I promise. But we’re going to take it slowly, remember? I want you to enjoy riding—not just winning. That’s the deal if you want me to be your trainer.”

  She rolled her eyes again, but this time she smiled. “But I wouldn’t mind taking home some blue ribbons today.”

  “That’s my girl,” I said, tightening the yellow bows at the bottom of her pigtails as she gathered her reins and approached the ring.

  The woman announced the class again over the loudspeaker, and Lucy and Jane entered the ring at a measured walk with the rest of the riders in her class, then pulled to a stop as they waited for the judge’s signal to begin.

  A trace of perfume wafted past me as a woman walked by, turning my thoughts to my grandmother’s garden. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the house, but I’d begun to restore the garden. The first frost was still ahead of us, and I’d mulched and tilled and planted my spring bulbs, and made plans for the lantana, smilax, and tea olives that my grandmother had loved so much. I’d started taking classes in landscape architecture at night, filling my time between the gardens at Asphodel and Monterey Square. It gave me more time with Tucker, too, as he’d returned to his medical practice in town.