Free The Lost Hours by Karen White

out bad news.”
    Lucy looked up at her aunt with eyes dark enough to be called black, and always appearing darker still when contrasted against her pale hair. “That’s not what Mama said. She said bad things happened to good people all the time.”
    Helen blew out a puff of smoke and put her arm around Sara. “Well, then. We’ll just have to try very hard not to be too good, then.”
    “Helen,” Lillian said sharply. “Please.”
    Helen’s smile faded, but not the light in her sightless eyes. “Sara, hand me the ashtray, would you please?”
    Sara did as she’d been asked and placed it in her aunt’s left hand while Helen stubbed out her cigarette with her right before sitting back against the couch with a heavy sigh. “I overheard your conversation with Tucker,” she said to Lillian.
    Helen recrossed her legs and settled her skirt. “I took the phone call from that woman who’s renting the caretaker’s cottage. Her name’s Earlene Smith. Which I think is very odd.”
    “How so?” Lillian shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position where all of her bones wouldn’t ache. She could hear Odella in the kitchen preparing their supper but she couldn’t muster any appetite. She hadn’t had an appetite for a very long time.
    “Earlene is an old lady’s name. And the woman on the phone sounded very young.”
    “It must be a family name. That’s not so out of the ordinary around here, Helen.”
    “Obviously. But most younger people come up with a nickname so they fit in better. Like Tucker, for example. So for this woman to be using that name, well, it struck me as odd, is all.”
    Lillian fingered the charm around her neck. “You’re always seeing zebras when all we have is horses, Helen. Did the woman sound local?”
    Helen leaned back in the couch, a long, slender arm around each of her nieces. Her red fingernails matched her lips and her dress and her high-heeled snakeskin pumps that were made for a night of dancing instead of one playing Chutes and Ladders. “Now, Malily, that’s another thing that struck me as odd. Her accent was Savannah, born and bred, but she said she’s from Atlanta. She did say that her mother was from Savannah, which could explain it. But still . . .” Her voice trailed away, her forehead creased with speculation.
    Lillian shifted her position again. “Did you ask her what her mother’s name was?”
    “It didn’t occur to me. My generation’s not as obsessed with blood-lines as yours was, Malily.” She smiled in her grandmother’s direction. “Besides I was too busy answering all of her questions about the horses here and their proximity to the cottage. Apparently, she’s deathly afraid of them and doesn’t want to have anything to do with them while she’s here. I explained that she’d be able to see them in the pastures from time to time, but that all of the stables and riding rings are behind the house. She seemed okay with that.”
    Lillian absently rubbed the charm hanging from her neck and realized how much her hands were hurting. She glanced out through the narrow slats of the shuttered windows toward the pregnant gray clouds that were moving in from the low lands. Lord knew the pastures and her gardens desperately needed the rain but how she hated summer storms. Maybe, if she were lucky, it would simply be a cleansing rain, nourishing the earth without punishing her with memories she could easily push away except when lightning flitted across the sky.
    “How odd,” said Lillian, “that she would choose our caretaker’s cottage—in the middle of a horse farm—to come do her research if she’s so afraid of horses.”
    Helen nodded. “I said the same thing. So Earlene explained that the Rosses were the core branch of the family she’s researching, so it made sense to her to be here to have access to the family cemetery and any papers we were willing to share with her.”
    Lillian jerked her attention to Helen. “What did you tell