The Lost Hours (27 page)

“Hey, boy,” I said, rubbing his nose, “what’s wrong? Why the long face?”

Tucker snorted. “That’s the oldest joke in the book.”

I turned to him, trying to keep a straight face. “Then why are you laughing?”

We laughed together for a few minutes until we both seemed to realize where we were and whom we were with. Our smiles gradually faded as we stared at each other. Tucker finally broke the silence. “You really should laugh more, you know. You’re beautiful when you do.”

Embarrassed, I turned back to Captain Wentworth and fumbled for something to say. “My grandmother told that joke to me when we bought my first horse. It was sort of an ongoing joke for a long time.”
Until her presence at events became superfluous and all that remained was my desire to be the best.
Quietly, I added, “I’d almost forgotten it until now.”

I gave Captain Wentworth a final pat and stepped back. “Good night, big guy. We’ll see you tomorrow. And I promise to bring a treat.”

We walked past the other stalls, including those of the new ponies, giving a pat to whoever stuck out a nose, exiting the building on the opposite side. Full dark had fallen, leaving a moonless sky scattered with stars and gathering clouds. Tucker held out his arm. “The path can be rough going at night. It might be best if you held on.”

I wanted to refuse, to ignore my stiff knee if only for one beautiful night and pretend I was the woman with two good legs who everybody believed was headed for great things. I grabbed his elbow and held on, grudgingly thankful.

When we reached my car, he held the door open for me as I got in, then stood back, his hands in his pockets.

“You don’t have to watch me leave, Tucker. I know the way.”

“I know that. I’m just . . . contemplating.”

His tone, usually so remote, welcomed me in this time, as if he wanted me to question him. As if our sharing of laughter over a bad joke had breached a small portion of the wall between us. “Contemplating what?”

His eyes were focused over the top of my car toward the alley of towering oaks. The night was still, the trees keeping quiet. “Whether or not I should go out tonight or stay at home and read a story to my little girls.”

The roll of emotional adviser was a new one to me. Before I’d come to Asphodel, I’d always considered myself to be the most damaged person I knew. My scars were deep, but I was beginning to learn that they weren’t as permanent as I’d once believed, and many of them were self-inflicted. But the loss of a wife and mother was forever, regardless of the circumstances. I got out of the car and stood in front of him. “I know I’m still pretty much a stranger to you, and you probably weren’t even asking a question you expected me to answer, but I don’t feel right driving away without trying to answer you anyway.” I took a quick breath, waiting for him to stop me before I could continue. When he didn’t move, I said,“It would seem to me that Sara and Lucy would benefit more having you here.”

“You think so?” As if remembering that I was there, he shifted his eyes from the trees to me, dark pools of shadow backlit from the lights of the house. “Their mother certainly didn’t benefit from my presence.” He seemed to consider his next words for a moment. “She thought she would be better off dead than living with me.”

I touched his arm, his skin cool and clammy. “You told me that you didn’t love Susan enough. But what about your daughters? Do you feel the same about them?” I waited for him to answer, not completely sure what he would say.

“I love them more than enough. More than I ever thought possible,” he said softly. “But what if Susan was right? That they’re all better off without me?”

I felt his hurt while I grappled with my own shame. Had that been the reason my grandmother had retreated from my life? From reading her scrapbook and listening to Lillian’s stories of their childhood, I had learned that Annabelle O’Hare had once been a strong-minded, independent woman. Had my own selfishness driven her to recede into the shadows? Or had something else happened first, and I’d simply been the catalyst to finish the job?

I leaned toward him. “My grandmother gave me something with a Latin verse on it that means ‘Be patient and strong; someday this pain will be useful to you.’ She was also the person who used to tell me to get back on the horse whenever I fell. It took me a long time to realize that they mean the same thing. And she was probably right on both counts.”

I felt his warm breath on my face as we continued to stare at each other in the dim light. The wind had begun to pick up, the restless oaks behind us beginning their odd whistling as if summoning a storm.

“It’s always a lot easier to give advice than it is to take it, isn’t it?”

I pulled back, stung. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” I said, stumbling toward my car, feeling suddenly embarrassed about my limp. I slid into the car behind the wheel and slammed the door. My chest rose and fell with indignation, even as the realization bloomed that he was right, and that I was angrier with myself than with him.

I thought back on the last six years during which I’d wallowed in my own misery while my grandmother was left alone. How many days had that been? How many hours and minutes had I let pass between us like wind through leaves, not even bothering to look up and see how they glistened when they moved? Without reaching out to the one person who held all the answers long before I ever thought to ask the questions.

Keeping my eyes focused on the swaying moss in the trees, I said, “Just don’t let Susan be right. You’re here, and she’s gone. And those two little girls are upstairs now.” I didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead I turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the house and into the whistling oaks just as the first drops of rain began to fall.

Lillian sat on her garden bench, feeling more tired than she remembered being in a long time. But the garden nourished her, the ninety-year-old magnolias that stood inside of the brick garden wall reminding her of all that they had witnessed since her mother had planted them as seedlings. Despite the turmoil in her own life, the garden had been her constant, a friend who gave her companionship without stealing her solitude. Or making her question the paths she’d walked, or causing her to look back at the road not taken as if it were still an option.

A heavy storm had passed through the night, keeping Lillian awake with her fear and her memories, but it had cleansed the air, leaving behind a cooler temperature and shining crystals of raindrops on her beloved flowers, raising blooms of rain lilies into clumps of star-pointed white flowers earlier in the season than they usually appeared. The leaves of the magnolia shimmered, waving their copper-backed leaves at her in the soft morning breeze.
The garden is the soul of the house,
her mother had told her as she’d knelt next to a young Lillian and explained how to plant an ugly jonquil bulb, promising her that the resulting spring bloom would be worth the work.

Lillian tilted her face back to let the sun warm her, remembering how she’d once planned to share the secrets of her garden with her own daughter, and how Margaret had never liked to come here, had told her that the magnolia frightened her, that the array of colors and scents made her head ache. There was Helen, of course; Helen adored the garden and the work involved, despite her limitations. But even Lillian had to admit that it wasn’t the same, and that the hours she’d spent in the garden with Earlene Smith in the last month had been the most satisfying hours she’d spent in anyone’s company in a very long time. Earlene understood the garden, the annual cycle of colors from brilliant summer, to green fall and brown winter, to the rebirth of the garden in springtime. She spoke of it as if speaking of her own heart, of how the changes echoed her life. And Lillian saw how Earlene seemed to linger in winter, holding back, waiting for spring.

A noise at the gate caught her attention and she turned around, expecting to find Earlene. She came often, although not every morning, deadheading blooms and plucking errant weeds. She’d even remulched the beds with pine straw, annoying Lillian at first because she hadn’t asked for permission, and then making her smile because she’d seen it needed to be done and had taken care of it. Just as Lillian would have done.

Tucker came through the gate, looking thoughtful but less drawn than Lillian was used to him being. She knew from Helen that he hadn’t been going out at night as much so he must be getting more sleep. But it was more than that. She’d like to think it was the time he’d begun to spend with the girls—awkward hours spent reading to them or watching them swim in the pond. He still didn’t attend their riding lessons, but received frequent updates from Earlene. It was an uneasy alliance she’d seen between Tucker and Earlene, like two bloodhounds searching for the same elusive fox, and she wondered if they had also noticed that their unease with each other was because they were so much alike.

“Good morning, Malily. You’re up early.” He leaned over and gave his grandmother a kiss on her cheek. He smelled of the outdoors and of horse and she knew he’d already been riding.

“I didn’t sleep, if that’s the same as being up early.” She rubbed her knuckles, the dampness seeping into the old bones.

“Storm keep you up?”

“Partly,” Lillian said.

Tucker raised an eyebrow in question and Lillian looked into the eyes that reminded her of Charlie’s. “Remember earlier this year when I received that letter from Piper Mills—the granddaughter of an old friend of mine?”

Tucker nodded. “I do. I actually read her name recently in
Today’s Equestrian
—something about how some newcomer was going to try and break a record Piper still holds although she hasn’t competed in more than six years. The anniversary of her last event is this month, so there’s a lot of buzz right now.”

Lillian closed her eyes and smelled the scents of her garden, breathing in the peacefulness and rest that eluded her at night. “I was thinking that I shouldn’t have told her no. That I should have invited her here to talk about Annabelle.”

She felt Tucker stiffen beside her. “I don’t see why. Whenever I hear Annabelle’s name mentioned, it’s always associated with something bad. Twelve years ago when you received the letter from Annabelle’s husband saying that he’d put his wife in a nursing home, you . . . changed. Not that the outside world could see it, but I could. You walked slower, you seemed more aware of your own frailties. And then Susan . . .” He stopped for a moment. “I know her . . . relapse had more to do with her own mental state than anything else, but she became obsessed with the story of your friendship with Annabelle. I just find it hard to believe that you’d want to revisit any of it.”

“I’m getting old,Tuck. And I’m not going to live forever. I suppose it’s natural for the elderly to look back on their lives and see if there’s something that needs to be put right. To undo damage.”

He looked intently at his grandmother. “Damage?”

Lillian shook her head. “I . . . lied to Annabelle about something. Something important and she died never knowing the truth. And since reading Piper’s letter, I’ve come to think that maybe it’s not too late. That by telling her granddaughter I can make amends to Annabelle.”

Tucker was staring at the moonflowers, their blooms tucked tightly inside themselves, the droplets of rain like tears. “Did Susan know about it? This . . . lie?”

“She might have. I’d written an apology to Annabelle that I never sent but kept hidden. Susan might have seen me access it once, but I never thought she’d pry. But when Susan died in the river, I suspected she might have.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked into Tucker’s face, seeing the devastation again, and knew she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Glancing away, she said, “It was just very emotional—you know how girls are. I think that’s why I kept it from her, knowing that even though Susan seemed fine, that maybe it would be too much for her to handle.

“I never gave her my scrapbook—she took it, remember. I thought she’d be content with all the rest of my stories, and my papers. She seemed so happy to have something to make her feel useful. She told me she didn’t need the pills anymore because she was feeling so good. Maybe she did that on purpose so I wouldn’t pay that much attention to what she was doing. So when she found the letter from Annabelle’s husband and was determined to find out more, I didn’t know to stop her.”

His voice was hard. “None of this is new to me, Malily. Except for whatever you lied about to Annabelle. Maybe if you just told me the rest of your story, I could contact Piper Mills and tell her myself. That might satisfy her and then you can stop worrying about something that happened years ago that doesn’t matter anymore.”

Lillian faced her grandson and sighed. He was male, and destined to think of history as only battles fought and won. He could never understand. “I need to tell her myself, Tucker. I think we need to contact her again.”