The Lost Hours by Karen White Read Free Book Online Page B

that I’d read at least a dozen times, my disappointment having now morphed into full-out anger. I relished the emotion; it was the only emotion I’d felt in a very long time.
    Holding the crumpled paper in front of me, I read it again, curious to see if maybe reading it in the light of day after a night’s sleep might change the way I felt.
    Dear Ms. Mills,
    It has come to my attention that you have been trying to contact my grandmother, Mrs. Lillian Harrington-Ross, in the hopes of talking with her about your late grandmother, Annabelle O’Hare Mercer.
    Unfortunately, my grandmother is now very frail and bedridden, and she is not receiving visitors. On your behalf I did ask her about your grandmother and it took several moments for her to even recollect that she had once known her.
    I’m afraid that even if my grandmother were healthy enough to meet with you, she wouldn’t be able to answer any of your questions at all.
    My deepest condolences on your loss.
     
    Regards,
William T. Gibbons
    My gaze traveled from the letter to the newspaper on the bedstand. I hadn’t yet canceled my grandfather’s subscription and I found myself reading it from cover to cover as if to make up for my own lack of involvement. It was folded open to the front page of the people section—written the same day as William Gibbons’ letter—where a large photograph taken at a charity horse event was the main feature. The photograph focused on an older woman, looking neither frail or bedridden—her only seeming nod to her age being a beautiful ebony cane—and a younger man flanking a young girl tricked out in equestrian garb and holding aloft a gold trophy.
    The caption read:
    Mrs. Lillian Harrington-Ross of Asphodel Meadows Plantation and her grandson, Dr. Tucker Gibbons, award the winner’s cup to Katharine Kobylt of Milledgeville at the Twin Oaks Charity event.
    I slapped the letter on top of the newspaper, welcoming the new wave of anger. I’d still only skimmed through the scrapbook pages, not completely understanding why I hesitated to read them thoroughly. But I’d seen the name Lillian Harrington on practically every page and from what I could tell, the pages spanned nearly a decade of my grandmother’s life, beginning around the age of thirteen.
    And then there was the picture of the three girls sitting atop a pasture gate, grazing horses visible in the background. Their arms were thrown around one another’s shoulders, their identical expressions of joy, mirth, and friendship plastered on eager faces. I shut my eyes, having finally accepted that my anger was aimed at myself. I shifted uncomfortably on the perch of my bed, realizing that all the answers to my unasked questions were now buried along with my grandmother under the alluvial soil in Bonaventure Cemetery.
    I felt something else, too—an undercurrent that wasn’t anger or disappointment. It was what I imagined I’d feel if I looked up into the sun to find all the answers and found instead only blindness. I wasn’t naive enough to assume that any answers I’d discovered would be what I wanted to hear.
    Stumbling to the bathroom, my back and right knee aching with the sudden movement, I hurriedly showered and dressed, pulling my jeans out of the bottom of a pile of laundry I hadn’t yet found the energy to wash. The burst of energy I’d discovered with my newfound purpose of contacting Lillian Harrington had fizzled, then gone flat like a bottle of Coke left open too long. William T. Gibbons’ terse letter had taken care of that. My eyes stung as I pulled my hair back into an unforgiving ponytail and tried to think of anything else to get excited about beyond the arrival and departure of the Goodwill truck.
    After limping down to the kitchen and rummaging through the cabinets to find large plastic garbage bags, I returned to my grandfather’s room and opened his closet. Not allowing sentiment to cloud my progress, I dumped suits, ties, slacks, and belts