The Lost Hours (35 page)

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.”

Her hands found the stack of read pages and she began to absently thumb through them, pausing when she reached the blank pages in between which I’d placed the newspaper clipping. I watched as her hands touched it, the long, manicured fingers lighting briefly on the clipping before moving to the edge of the page, and then hesitating. She returned to it, then looked up at me expectantly. “What’s this?”

I paused only briefly before answering. “Pandora’s box,” I said. “It’s the newspaper clipping about the baby found in the river.”

She was silent for a moment, and we both turned as Emily reentered the cottage, her arms filled with more bags. “Does Tucker know?” Helen asked.

“Yes, I told him yesterday when I came clean about everything.”

“And you’re still thinking your grandmother might have had something to do with this story.”

“Yes. There had to be a reason why it was in her scrapbook.”

Helen frowned. “Or maybe Josie was involved; she and the infant are of the same race, after all. Have you had any luck researching this?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t had a chance to. I was planning on going to the historical archives this week. You can come along, if you like. I can read to you whatever I find, and maybe you can help me put something together. Or we could just ask your grandmother. I think that’s the real reason why I haven’t gotten further with my research. She knows the answer to every question raised in these pages.”

She picked up the newspaper clipping, holding it as gingerly as a newborn. “I’m going to show her this, and ask if she knows why it was with your grandmother’s pages. I’ll let you know what she says—if she agrees to tell me anything.” Helen stood. “I can’t help but wonder if Susan found out about this, and maybe the truth behind it affected her deeply—deeply enough to start using again.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to tell Tucker that. Not yet. He feels guilty about enough things that I don’t want to burden him with anything more.”

“But what could he feel guilty about? Susan’s unhappy childhood and drug-abuse started long before he even met her.”

She looked startled. “I wasn’t referring to Susan. I was actually referring to myself.”

She started to move away, but I touched her gently on the arm, holding her back. “What do you mean?”

Her eyes darkened. “I caught measles from Tucker, and that’s what made me blind.”

“Measles?”

Helen shrugged. “My parents didn’t believe in vaccinating us. They brought measles back with them from Africa and Tucker got it first. He was in isolation—our dad’s a doctor, too, which is why Tucker was cared for at home—and everything was fine until we had a bad thunderstorm. He came to my room, scared, and I let him crawl into bed with me as we always did. And when I got sick, I tried to hide my symptoms because I didn’t want to get Tucker in trouble. That’s why I got so much sicker, because it was so far along before I got treated.”

“But it wasn’t his fault.” I shook my head, remembering the look on Tucker’s face when I told him that I knew he’d been afraid of thunderstorms as a child.

“Yes, well, you know that and I know that, but guilt is a funny thing. So let’s just wait a bit, see what else we can find out. But first, I’m going to go lie down on the sofa and watch my soaps while you and Emily work. And then I’m going to go find Malily and see if she can save us some research time.”

I helped her to the couch and placed the TV remote in her hands, admiring her silk knit dress and also the way this blind woman seemed to be the least handicapped person I knew.

Lillian fingered a rose bloom as she sat on her favorite bench in Helen’s garden. She’d retrieved the full-bloomed head from the ground, as if it had been so full of its own passion and beauty that it had burst from the stem. The edges had started to brown and furl, and as she stared at it, she wondered if she should give it another day or two of life by bringing it in and sticking it in a glass of water. In the old days, she would have scattered the petals on the ground to enrich the earth; but life seemed so much more fragile to her now. She contemplated the rose in its final, glorious bloom before dying, and wondered what form her own death would take, and if she’d have a chance for one final burst of understanding.

“Malily?”

Lillian turned to see Helen hovering at the gate.

“I’m in here. On the bench.”

Using her cane, Helen tapped her way on the slate path, knowing to turn right when the path turned to brick. Lillian had designed the walkway for just that reason for the granddaughter she loved as a daughter.

Without offering assistance, knowing it would offend Helen, Lillian waited for the cane to strike the line of rocks in the path to indicate she’d reached the bench. She slowly lowered herself onto the bench next to Lillian, then rested her cane on her knees.

“I smell dirt,” Helen said, tilting her nose into the air, her creamy skin glowing in the late afternoon sun.

Lillian eyed the bags of topsoil propped against the garden wall and the pile of it spilled onto the path. “Piper’s been busy. The pansies were getting too leggy, so we decided they needed to go. She’s coming up with a redesign of that section with new flowers.”

She felt Helen looking at her. “I can’t believe you’re trusting somebody else to redesign part of your garden.”

“She was taught by a master—the same woman who taught me everything I know about gardening. Her grandmother, Annabelle O’Hare.”

Helen nodded, not saying anything because she didn’t have to. It had always seemed to Lillian that to make up for Helen’s lack of sight, she was given an extra sound track inside her head, to hear everything that wasn’t said out loud.

Eventually, Helen said, “Piper spoke with Tucker last night. He hasn’t decided yet if she should leave or not.”

Lillian let out an inelegant snort. “He knows what he wants. He’s just afraid to say it. Susan taught him to doubt his own feelings and to hesitate when it comes to getting what he wants. But he’s learning. And I have no doubt that Piper will stay, regardless of whether or not I think she should.”

“And you don’t think she should?”

Lillian looked down at the crimson bloom in her hand, the redness of it making everything else around it pale. “It’s not up to me, is it?” She twisted the bloom, feeling a sense of inevitability, of Annabelle’s part in sending Piper into Lillian’s life to tidy up an unfinished past.

After a few moments, Helen spoke. “Piper gave me pages of her grandmother’s scrapbook to read, and I gave her your pages—the ones we’ve already read. Once we’re caught up, we’re coming to you so we can read the rest of yours. Please don’t be angry. But I think you’ll agree that it has to be this way. You’ve been silent for so long, Malily. And it’s my story, too.”

Lillian raised an eyebrow, remembering too late that the movement would be lost on Helen. With a long sigh, she said softly, “I suppose you’re right. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it for you.”

Helen reached for her hand and held it, and they were silent for a long time. Eventually, Helen turned to her. “Out of curiosity, Malily, when do your pages end?”

Lillian stilled, trying to think of why Helen would be asking, and trying not to imagine the worst. She didn’t pretend to think about it; she remembered the date as if it were yesterday. “September third, nineteen thirty-nine.”

Helen was silent for a moment, and Lillian tensed. “Something else I’ve been thinking about, Malily. You were married the following year, which makes me think that you’d have a lot to write about. But instead you stopped—and so did Lillian—within months of each other. Surely there was a lot more to be said about your lives.”

Lillian lowered her head, shading her face in the shadow of her hat brim. “It was a busy time. I felt that I’d become a woman, and the scrapbook and Lola were childish things to me. I didn’t need them anymore.”

Helen nodded, then reached into the pocket of her knit dress. “Piper found this with her grandmother’s pages. It’s dated September eighth, nineteen thirty-nine.”