Page 75 of The Missing Pages
“It will be a miracle if we can get this one out!” he hollered. “I can’t tell if there’s any more room!”
I scanned the boat one more time looking for a patch of space. Anything. The stern was lifting dangerously higher and higher. There was now nearly no time left at all. A terrible cracking sound was reverberating throughout the entire vessel.
In the last second, I saw a young woman pull her young child from its seat beside her and bring the little boy onto her lap. Two other passengers moved themselves tightly together, also making a little more space on the boat. If Ada and Lolly each held one of the children, there might just be room for them. Barely.
“Get ready to swing her out!” Lightoller hollered to the crewman.
Ada’s hand was still in mine. I pulled her toward me, my lips finding hers. I kissed her. Filling her with my breathand inhaling hers into my soul. Like ink onto paper, my love imprinted on her.
I took off my jacket and put it around her shoulders. “Take this, I don’t want it to be cold. Think of it as having my heart with you.”
“Harry,” she said. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You never will,” I said as I lifted Ada into the boat. “I love you.” I handed her Lolly’s daughter, and then made sure Lolly got in with the baby.
Seconds later, Lightoller and his crew managed somehow to launch the boat into the sea, now rising toward the officer’s deck.
The last thing I remember on my final night alive was that violent rush of water approaching the bridge. I looked up and saw the stars, blinding and bright. I took my final breath as the water came over me, pulling me down.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Ever since Hugo’s death, Violet had a recurrent dream that she was drowning. It came in different forms of the same nightmare. Sometimes she was in the water with Hugo after his body had plunged into the lake, the two of them sinking like stones. Other times, she was alone, floundering beneath the blue-green surface, searching for him before she too was drawn down into its murky depths.
Some mornings she would wake up with the inexplicable taste of brine on her tongue, which made no sense to her since Hugo had drowned in fresh water, not salt.
The therapist her family had insisted she go to after his death had told her it was normal to dream about drowning after the trauma she had experienced.
“Your mind is trying to make sense of all the emotions. It’s a tremendous endeavor to process losing someone we loved,” her therapist had said. “Your dreams are a reminder of that.”
Although she understood the psychology behind what her subconscious might be trying to tell her, it made the dreams no less upsetting.
It had been several weeks since she’d had one of her nightmares, but the night before she’d run into Sylvia, Violet had dreamt that she was on a boat that had snapped in half.
When she entered Widener, her head swung in the direction of the marble dedication plaque at the left of the entrance.
HARRYELKINSWIDENER
A GRADUATE OF THISUNIVERSITY
BORNJANUARY 3, 1885
DIED ATSEAAPRIL 15, 1912
UPON THEFOUNDERING
OF THESTEAMSHIP
TITANIC
She’d passed by this plaque hundreds of times. She knew Harry Widener had perished on theTitanic. She’d even read a letter from Quaritch to Rosenbach in the days following the ship’s tragic demise indicating that Harry had informed him he had no intention of ever taking the Little Bacon off his person. “Perhaps it could help with the identification should a body be found with a book inside its dinner jacket,” the bookseller had written.
But what seemed different about this last dream was the fracture of the boat. It wasn’t a new thing to learn that theTitanichad broken in half before it sank to the Atlantic’s floor. But in Violet’s dream, her body had fallen between the parts and become stuck there.
“Did you bring the Ouija board?” Theo had found her in their spot in the stacks. She had not yet taken it out from her bag, just in case he didn’t show up.
“I have it,” she said. She withdrew the box from her tote and laid the board down.
“I almost didn’t come. I have so much work before break.” He looked at her. “But I didn’t want to let you down.”
