The Lost Hours (4 page)

“You gave a beautiful eulogy at the funeral, Earlene. You’re a very strong woman, saying those words and not crying at all. I said that to my grandpa Paul and he said that you would have made your grandfather proud.”

“Thank you,” I said stiffly as I stuffed a plastic bag inside another. How could I explain to him that it wasn’t at all because I was strong? To be strong I’d have to feel something.

He stacked the two boxes of Froot Loops on the counter. “Do you really eat this for breakfast?”

A sarcastic comment came to my lips but I bit it back. I simply didn’t have the energy to apologize later. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

He pursed his lips. “I think your doctor would agree that a diet filled with fresh fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains would contribute to your healing process a lot quicker than all these processed foods.”

I gritted my teeth and began folding the plastic bags, knowing what was coming next.

“You know, your accident was close to six years ago. You should be walking with a lot less pain by now. Maybe you need to go back to your physical therapist to go over some exercises. . . .”

“Thanks for your concern, George. I appreciate it. Really. But I can take care of myself.”

His perusal of the kitchen countertops with crumpled fast-food bags made me a liar but I chose to ignore him as I bent under the kitchen sink to throw in the pile of plastic bags.

“Have you thought much about what you’re going to do now?”

I rose slowly, looking out the window over the sink into the bare garden, its beds as abandoned and neglected as a childhood dream. His grandfather had asked the same thing and I think I hated them both a little bit for it. For so long I’d existed with a wall between my present and my future and I had neither the will nor the strength to tear it down. It was so much easier to simply be.

I turned to face him. “It’s really none of your concern, George.”

“You know that I’d like it to be.”

I closed my eyes for a long moment and took a deep breath.

“There’s another reason I stopped by today.”

My eyes fluttered open with dread, half expecting a small ring box.

He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a small manila envelope. “My grandfather meant to bring these to you when he stopped by yesterday. For some reason they were kept separately from the envelope he already gave you. I think it’s because these were given to my grandfather for safekeeping last year, when your grandfather first knew he was ill.” He shoved the envelope at me and distracted himself with storing the frozen food in the freezer, stacking the peas and broccoli with military precision. “I don’t think he meant for you to find them before he died. Which is why he instructed us to give them to you after his death.”

I stared down at the envelope with the law firm’s preprinted return address in the upper-left corner. Only my last name, Mills, was written in an unfamiliar handwriting on the front. I flipped it over and pulled out two letter-sized envelopes followed by a heavy silver key that slipped out of the envelope and clattered to the floor. I stared at it for a moment before picking it up. It was an old-fashioned key, like all the other keys that protruded from locks throughout the old house. None of the doors were missing keys, and as I turned it over in my hand, I wondered what it could go to.

I then turned my attention to the two envelopes, both of them sealed and both of them addressed to a Miss Lillian Harrington at Asphodel Meadows Plantation, Savannah. I recognized my grandmother’s handwriting, but not that of the person who had scratched through Lillian’s name and address and written, “return to sender.” I didn’t know who Lillian was, but I knew of Asphodel Meadows. A former rice plantation built in the early eighteen hundreds on the Savannah River about thirty miles south of the city, it was now, and had been since around nineteen twenty, a horse farm. I’d never been there, although it hadn’t been for lack of interest on my part. Considering my past history with horses, I thought it odd now that my grandfather had never taken me there, or that our paths hadn’t crossed in the nearly incestuous equestrian community of Savannah.

I glanced up at George, who looked back at me with undisguised curiosity. I shoved the key in my jeans pocket and put the letters back inside the larger envelope before tucking it under my arm. Smiling brightly at George, I began to lead him back to the front door. “Thanks so much for the casserole and for helping me with my groceries. I really do appreciate it.” I yanked open the door. “I’ll be sure to call you if I need anything. I promise.”

His mouth jerked open and closed like a goldfish who’d sought sanctuary outside of his bowl as he tried to come up with something that would get me to invite him back inside. I put my hand on his arm and gently guided him through the doorway.

He put a hand on the doorframe, overly confident that I wouldn’t shut the door with his hand in the way. “You have my cell number, right? Call me anytime. Day or night. You hear? If you need anything, please call me first.”

I nodded. “I will, George. Promise.” I began to close the door and was grateful when I saw him yank his hand away.

I carried the envelope into the study and emptied the contents onto the mahogany desk and sat down. With my grandfather’s ivory-handled letter opener, I sliced open the smaller envelope. Carefully unfolding the heavy stationery, I read:

I read the letter three times, trying to hear my grandmother’s voice, the one I remembered from my childhood, but couldn’t. Who was this Lillian? And Josie? And what had my grandmother done that was so horrible that she was begging for forgiveness? If I hadn’t recognized her handwriting, I would have denied it was written by her. This young woman in the letter was passionate and forceful. The grandmother I knew was neither.

Slowly, I slid the opener into the second envelope and pulled out the letter and began to read.

My eyes stung with tears I couldn’t shed for a woman I thought I had known. I caught sight of the little blue sweater I had left folded on top of the desk. I lifted it up to my face, smelling nothing but dust and old secrets, and for the first time in my life I realized that my sad, quiet grandmother might have a story to tell me after all.

I hated the smell of nursing homes: the mixture of antiseptic cleaners, stale cooking odors, and old dreams. I hadn’t learned to hate it until my long stay in the hospital six years before when I’d begun to associate those same smells of the hospital with all of my own lost dreams.

The nurse on duty greeted me as I signed in and escorted me to the Alzheimer’s wing, where she had to use a code to open the door. My grandmother had a private room, as private as living in a nursing home could be, and it was at the end of the corridor at the back of the building, giving her two large windows to look out and see the gardens. This was what my grandfather told me when we had moved her in, and I never thought to mention to him that every time we visited she sat facing the wall.

She was asleep when I entered, so I sat in a chair near her bed and watched her sleep. She slept on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek like a child, and her long white hair tied back in a braid that lay on the pillow beside her like a remnant from her past life. My grandmother had always been old to me. I’d seen pictures of her when she was younger, of course, but I could never quite reconcile those pictures of the beautiful bride or young mother with the sad old woman of my childhood.

She stirred, a word lost on her lips as she struggled between sleep and wakefulness, awaking from dreams she couldn’t remember or share. I often wondered what she dreamed of—if she were reliving happier times before the smiling woman in the photos became the old woman, or if her dreams were as blank and empty as her mind had become.

I waited as she opened her eyes and gradually came awake. Her gaze settled on me and I held my breath wondering if she would recognize me today. But her eyes continued on to the window behind me as if I had been nothing more than a piece of furniture.

“Grandmother?” I said quietly, not wanting to startle her.

Her brown eyes shot back to me and widened, but I knew that she still did not know who I was.

“Grandmother,” I said again. “It’s me. Piper. I’ve come for a visit.” I stood and helped her sit up, then fluffed her pillows.

“Yes, Piper,” she said, repeating my words without comprehension. “Where’s Jackson? He said he would come.” She looked at me suspiciously. “Have you seen him?”

“No, Grandmother. Granddaddy is dead, remember? We buried him on Saturday, at Bonaventure Cemetery, where Mama and Daddy are. You wore your black dress with your mama’s cameo at the neck.”

Her eyes blinked slowly as she continued to stare at me silently. Eventually her gaze traveled back to the window behind me. “Jackson brings me flowers. He knows that moonflowers are my favorite.” She suddenly turned her head to face me. “Have you seen Jackson? He always brings me flowers.”

I stood, trying to see the grandmother who’d taught me to garden inside this woman who didn’t know who I was. I felt sorry for this old woman, yet I didn’t know her. Her presence in my life had become like a soft wind that moves your hair and then is forgotten by your next breath. I walked to the window to stare down at the pretty garden somebody had hoped would resemble an English one with geometrical patterns and precisely pruned hedges. Pink roses dotted large green bushes bordering the small square space, highlighting the trellises with climbing wisteria and white wooden benches for weary spectators. I felt sad, recalling the beautiful garden my grandmother had tended in our backyard that now lay sleeping under tired dirt.

I remembered the small blue sweater and the manila envelope in my shoulder bag. Turning back toward the bed, I pulled out the sweater. I would wait to ask her about the key and the letters until later as I had learned that she could only absorb one thing at a time. I wasn’t really expecting her to recognize the sweater or even to reveal anything to me. But when I had been standing in my grandfather’s study the previous day, it had finally come to me how very alone in the world I was—how many years had passed since my grandmother had written that last letter. And I had to at least try.

“Grandmother? I found something yesterday in the house, in your trunk in Granddaddy’s study, and it looks like something you might have knitted. Do you recognize it?”