The Lost Hours (41 page)

“I’d be happy to.” Piper stood and moved to the desk where Lillian had motioned.

“The pages are stacked in order from the top. Thumb through them to find where you stopped. I didn’t write every time I had Lola, so I don’t have as many pages as Josie and Annabelle.” She took a sip from her glass. “They had a gift for turning the mundane into something exciting to write about. I preferred to live an existence that was a bit more exciting, and precluded the need to share lest all my secrets be exposed.”

Piper glanced at her, then leaned over the desk, and Lillian noticed how her hair fell over her shoulders, the first time she’d seen it loose. It softened her, shadowing the blunt edges and angles of a woman who’d once jumped tall obstacles without blinking an eye.

Sitting back down next to Tucker, Piper cleared her throat and began to read.

 

 

 

Piper was silent for a moment before she looked up. “There’s another entry. Shall I go on?”

With their nods of assent, she continued to read.

 

 

She stopped, looked up at Tucker. “That’s the year Freddie died, isn’t it?”

Tucker nodded, and Piper’s gaze fell back to the book but she paused for a moment, filing away the information, before she began to read again.

 

 

Piper stopped and looked across the room to Lillian. “There’s an envelope here that’s come loose from the page.” She glanced down, holding the paper as if it were a delicate flower petal. “Is this the letter Susan found?”

Lillian swallowed, the necklace heavy on her skin. “No. That’s from Charlie. Go ahead and read it.”

With clumsy fingers, Piper slid the letter out. “It says, ‘Marry me, Lily. Come home and marry me. My heart is quite lost to you, and there is nothing you could ever say or do that would cause my opinion of you to sway. I love you, sweet Lily. Come home to me and be my wife.’ ”

“Did he ever come to Savannah to see you in person?” Helen placed her untouched sherry on a side table and sat on the edge of her chair.

“Every week, I think. But I would never see him. Annabelle would have Justine make excuses for us so that neither one of us would have to face him. Sometimes he’d sit on the porch for hours waiting for me to change my mind, but I never did.”

Piper used both hands to swipe her hair from her forehead. “But I thought you loved him. And you did end up marrying him the next year. So why did you make him suffer?”

Lillian leveled her with a stern gaze. “You’re jumping ahead again, dear. Be patient.”

Piper didn’t back down. “I’m not jumping ahead. I’m just trying to fill in the empty places you seem to be skipping over. Like the letter that Susan read that you told Tucker was an unsent letter you’d written to a friend. Was it intended for my grandmother? And is it in here?”

Lillian continued to watch her, wondering who would back down first, and not at all sure of the answer.

Tucker placed a hand on Piper’s arm and she looked at him for a long moment before sliding back in her seat. She cleared her throat and began to read again.

 

 

Helen had moved to the floor by her grandmother’s chair as if the story being told was theirs together, that anything revealed would be about them. She placed her hand over Lillian’s. “We went into the secret room today, Malily. We believe it was probably built for a little girl born in the late eighteen hundreds, Margaret Louise O’Hare. Piper found a blue knitted blanket there. And she also found a blue baby sweater in Annabelle’s trunk. Whose baby were they for?”

Lillian turned, listening to the sound of the clock, the necklace pressing down on her again as she struggled to find words.

“Would you like us to leave now?” Piper stood, as if she could feel, too, the need to end the story now—now that it still had the chance for a happy ending. Annabelle had been that way to the end, unable to believe that the worst thing that could happen to you could happen twice.

Lillian shook her head, feeling as if the ticking from her bedside clock was louder than it should have been, the passage of time echoing through the still room. “No. Not yet.”

Piper’s hand reached up to the angel charm around her neck. “My grandmother, Annabelle, she was a good friend to you?”

Lillian nodded without hesitation. “The very best. Even when I didn’t deserve it. I was jealous of how close she and Freddie worked together with the movement. I was excluded from helping because of my father and his association with the Klan, not that I think I was so brave back then to be of much use, anyway. So I tried to make Annabelle jealous by flirting like crazy with that boy from the law office. He was a lot younger than us, but I think she had a tender spot for him.”

“Paul Morton?”

“Yes. That was his name. Nice-looking young fellow. I think he had it bad for Annabelle, too. But she never said anything to me. Allowed me to make a fool out of myself without any repercussions.” She smiled to herself, remembering. “Josie and I used to say that we were the stones and Annabelle the mortar. She kept us together.”

Piper and Tucker exchanged a glance. Piper stood and moved to sit on the footrest of Lillian’s chair. “We found the birth records for Freddie and Josie today.”

“Yes?” This wasn’t a direction Lillian had anticipated.

“Did you ever know who their father was?”

Lillian shook her head. “It didn’t really ever concern me. Since I was very little and began visiting the O’Hare household with my father, Justine was there with Freddie and Josie. There was never a father. He simply didn’t exist, and to my young mind it never occurred to me to ask. Why?”

Piper cleared her throat. “Dr. Leonard O’Hare was their father. Josie and Freddie were Annabelle’s half brother and half sister.”

Lillian stared at her for a long moment, not comprehending at first. The ticking of the clock was more insistent now, each tick louder than the last, the sound coming from very far away. She shifted her head. “But Justine . . . She was . . . she was his housekeeper.”

“Apparently she was more than that, Malily,” Tucker said gently.

“Did . . . did Annabelle know this?”

“According to her scrapbook, we think she didn’t find out until her father was so sick with the flu.”

Lillian’s gaze darted around the room.
Couldn’t they hear the clock ticking?
She jerked her hand out toward the sound of the clock, succeeding in knocking it to the floor. She held up her hand to stop Tucker, who’d already stood. “Leave it.”

Piper spoke again. “Annabelle or Josie never told you?”

Lillian stared at Piper for a long moment, seeing her friend Annabelle—the friend whose loyalty she’d taken for granted, who’d taught her how to cultivate tea roses and who’d known how to keep a secret. “I don’t think Josie knew. And Annabelle never told me.” She closed her eyes and laughed, the sound brittle and hollow. “I was jealous of Annabelle. I thought she and Freddie . . .”

Helen leaned forward. “But wouldn’t she have told you? You were like sisters. I would have thought she’d confide in you about her feelings.”

Lillian gasped, the memories of her youth cold and unyielding against the reality of her frail body. “Yes. She would have. I know that now, but back then . . .” She shook her head, still unable to tell the rest of the story. The ticking from the clock, although now muffled, continue to reverberate through her head.