The Lost Hours (45 page)

Lillian looked down at the soft blankets covering the bed, wondering whose old hands were resting there.

“Do you want Piper to read it to you, or would you like to read it yourself?”

Lillian’s lips wouldn’t move even as she saw Piper take the envelope from Helen and begin to read. She kept her head down until Piper had finished, absently wondering where the wetness came from that spotted the blanket and the pale mottled skin stretched over arthritic knuckles.

“What did you name the baby, Malily?” Helen’s voice sounded removed, as if she didn’t want to be there anymore than Lillian wanted her to be.

“Samuel. I named him Samuel Frederick Montet. After his father.”

Piper stood, ready to ask another question, but Lillian managed to raise a hand, searching for a way to stall the inevitable, yet knowing it was like trying to stop a baby from crying. “You’re jumping ahead again. I’ve got one last entry in my scrapbook. Don’t you want to read that first?”

Piper hesitated before nodding, then reached over to plump one of the pillows behind Lillian’s head and to smooth the blanket over her knees.
Just like Annabelle.
Lillian reached out and touched Piper’s wrist. “Stop.”

Piper pulled back and sat down, wearing a wounded expression, misreading her actions. Lillian wanted to laugh, because of what she’d wanted to say.
I don’t deserve your care and concern any more than I deserved Annabelle’s.

“Go ahead, Piper, and read. Even with my glasses on, I can’t seem to focus on the words anymore.”

Piper picked up the pages Lillian indicated, then began to read.

 

 

 

Slowly, Piper lowered the page. “That’s the last page. But that’s not the end of the story, is it?”

The murmur of voices began again, the river of words that seemed to travel around Lillian and through her, too fast for her to understand them. But she thought she could hear Annabelle, telling her to breathe, that it would help take the pain away, and that one day the pain might be useful to her.

Lillian turned her head, the fine linen scratching her cheek, the bed now seeming to be a small, iron single bed instead of the mahogany rice poster. “No, it’s not,” she said, closing her eyes so she couldn’t see the ghosts anymore.

Helen’s voice came close to her ear. “What happened to the baby, Malily? Was it stillborn?”

“You need to leave,” Lillian whispered, hoping Helen would understand it was for her own good.

“Was he?” she repeated.

Lillian’s eyes fluttered open and rested on her granddaughter. “If I tell you, will you promise to leave?”

There was a brief pause while Helen considered this. She nodded. “And Piper?”

“She wouldn’t leave, even if I asked her.”

Helen nodded. “Tell us, then. Was the baby stillborn?”

She closed her eyes again, remembering. “No. He was born healthy and strong, with all ten fingers and toes. He was perfect.”

“Then tell us what happened, Malily. How did Samuel die?”

Lillian heard Josie’s voice now, from behind her, mixing with Annabelle’s like a chant.
Tell her.
She shook her head, trying to erase the voices. “Somebody turn on the radio. Please.”

Piper stood and moved to the nightstand and flipped on the radio, the volume loud and pulsing. Josie’s voice came through the radio, clear and sweet and full of all the hours lost between truth and regret.
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.

Lillian jerked her arm from the blanket and slammed her hand down on the radio, shutting it off, the silence a solid presence in the room. “I need you to leave, Helen.”

Piper and Lillian watched as Helen made her way to the door. She paused with her hand on the knob. “Did you ever love Grandpa Charlie?”

“I did. He was good to me, and I grew to love him.”

“But Freddie was your true love. The one you really never got over.”

She didn’t want to answer, but she had no more time for secrets and lies. “Yes, he was.”

Helen nodded. “I love you, Malily. Nothing I’ve heard so far and nothing you can say will change that.” She rested her forehead against the door. “And I’m going to find out anyway. You were the one who used to tell me never to hesitate when it comes to what I want, remember?”

Lillian closed her eyes again. “You don’t want this.”

Helen opened the door and Lillian briefly glimpsed Odella standing and taking Helen’s arm before the door closed.

Piper stood at the window, peering out at the alley of oaks, her body rigid with tension.

“You’ll want to sit down.”

Piper shook her head. “No, I want to stand.”

The corner of Lillian’s mouth turned up. “Annabelle didn’t like being told what to do, either. Her only weakness was when she thought those she loved needed her. Always to her detriment, I’m afraid.”

Piper returned her gaze to the window. “So what happened? After Samuel was born.”

Lillian stared at the radio, still hearing Josie singing.
Time is a river. . . .
She didn’t turn away this time, knowing there was no escape from the voices anymore.

“I need a drink.”

Without pausing, Piper moved to the armoire and poured Lillian a sherry and brought it to her before returning to her position by the window. “Tell me.”

Lillian drank the sherry in one gulp, and she felt the heat seeping into her veins, calming her. But the numbness evaded her, as if she were intended to feel every last word. She placed the empty glass on the nightstand and it fell over, but neither of them moved to right it.

“Samuel was born healthy. I’d known it was a boy. And not just because Josie told me she could tell because of the way I carried him in my belly. I felt him in my bones, the way a mother does.” She smiled at the memory of her roundness, the swell of her belly and tenderness in her breasts. She’d been proud of the changes to her body. They’d made her feel older, more like a woman. Beloved.

“It was his body they found in the river, wasn’t it?”

The warmth of the sherry made her limbs feel weightless, like she was floating in water, carried downstream. Her eyelids drifted closed and she was once again in the attic room in the house on Monterey Square, the window closed, locked in the stale, sweltering heat of the Savannah night. Her sweat had drenched the clean sheets Annabelle had put on the bed, the warmth of the baby tucked up next to her burning her skin. She spoke as if in the middle of a dream, feeling the heat and the damp sheets, the terror that gripped them when they’d heard the footsteps on the stairs.

“The baby was fussy. My milk hadn’t come in yet, and I couldn’t feed him. He kept crying because he was hungry, but he wouldn’t suckle. Annabelle thought to let him suck water from a soaked rag, and that worked for a spell, but he’d get tired of that and start crying again.”

“Did Freddie make it back that night?”

Her voice seemed to come from far away. “No. And not the next night, either. Things were bad right then. Two of Freddie’s friends and a white man had been found shot to death in a car in a field over in Summerville. They’d been called agitators, going around to small towns and speaking out about their liberal views on the voting system and segregation. Views that back then could get a man killed.”

The late-afternoon sun had begun to drift down the horizon, its orange light peering through the blinds that Piper had opened. It outlined her profile against the window, making her appear as if she’d been etched in glass, so fragile to look at, but how deceiving.