Page 35 of The Missing Pages
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine Hugo like air. That she could breathe him in and out. Everything that had nurtured her when she was his girlfriend. His kindness. His empathy. His love. All of it, now still filling an empty space inside her. If Harry had sent her the book to remind her of that, she was grateful for the gift.
The lamp lights outside Lowell House brightened against the darkening sky. It was nearly dusk. Violet closed the book and looked out at the glass globes that illuminated the asphalt paths. When she was a little girl and she would excitedly wait until her father brought back a reel of developed Kodak film from the camera store, she would always be disappointed when her favorite picture was spoiled by a spot of orange or white light. She remembered one particular photograph of Grandma Helen and her at her tenth birthday. Her father had snapped the two of them standing in front of her birthday cake. She was wearing a cotton-candy pink dress and her grandmother was in a simple white tunic and pants. The shutter of the camera had clicked just as her grandmother kissed the top of her head.
But when the roll was developed, Violet had been so disappointed that the image of the two of them was marred by two dots of white light. One on Grandma’s shoulder, the other next to Violet’s chin.
Clearly despondent, she showed the picture to her grandmother, who took it from her hands and examined it closely.
“Vi,” she said, handing the photograph back to her. “A friend once told me those spots are the spirits of those who love us from heaven. So don’t ever get upset when you see them. It just means you’re extra special.”
She kissed Violet once again on her head. “All I see when I look at this photograph is one thing. I only see love.”
Violet had long felt her grandmother’s presence, and now, the way she started to think of Hugo began to shift, too.
For so many months, she’d replayed the moments between when she’d seen him last acting so vibrantly, to the final moments when she’d glimpsed his lifeless corpse. She couldn’t possibly count how many hours she’d since tortured herself reliving the moment this beautiful, strong body had been pulled from the water.
She had screamed at the top of her lungs for help from the first moment he’d failed to emerge after his dive. She ran down the rocky dirt path of the embankment until she reached the water’s edge and then dove in herself. But she couldn’t find him even as she plumbed the depths of the water.
She ran through the park until she found someone with an old truck, who drove her to the nearest pay phone. The 911 dispatcher assured her help was on its way, but the twenty minutes until the rescue team finally arrived felt like forever.
Violet would never tell anyone—her parents, her friends, the psychotherapist her pediatrician had recommended after Hugo’s funeral—that she could not let go of her last image of Hugo. Blue and bloated, being pulled up on a stretcher by the rescue crew, a bloody gash on his head and his eyes wide open without any sign of life. She had vomited on theground, unable to keep the blanket the paramedics had given her around her shoulders. Soon Hugo’s parents arrived. To this day, she could still hear his mother’s wailing in the back of her ears. It was a sound so excruciating that Violet knew she’d never forget it.
But now after reading Stead, for the first time since Hugo’s accident, the idea that the soul might still live on outside the body started to feel like a possibility to her. That maybe life was not as finite as she originally thought? Of all the things that people had said to ease her pain after Hugo died, none of it had worked. But the words inside this book had truly soothed her.
It felt like a secret to Violet. A knowledge that perhaps she wasn’t supposed to have. Or information that if she shared it with others, she’d risk seeming like she had lost her mind.
When she saw her suitemates at dinner that evening, she merely picked at the food around her plate and didn’t eat more than a few bites of mashed potatoes.
“You okay?” Sylvia asked her. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Violet managed to laugh a little at that. What could she tell Sylvia? “Well, I haven’tseena ghost, but I think I might be in the presence of one at the library.”
For a split second, she thought she might share with her roommates the incident about the book falling in front of her. How it wasn’t even part of the library system, and how she felt it was sent to make her understand that whatever she was feeling when she was in the Memorial Room was in fact real.
“Just a really weird day…”
Jenny put down her fork and raised an eyebrow. “Care to tell us about it?”
“Well…” She knew what their reaction would be as soon as the words came out of her mouth, but she decided to go ahead anyway. “I’ve been having these really odd, almost spooky feelings when I’ve been working at the library. It’s hard to explain. Kind of like someone is there with me.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Jenny said, laughing. “I can tell this is going to make for a good Halloween. Are you saying there’s a ghost in Widener?”
Lara grinned.
“I know it sounds crazy.” Violet shrugged. “I’m just trying to tell you what’s been going on. Today I found this book. It came out of nowhere, literally falling out of the blue at my feet. And the librarian couldn’t find it in the system. It was written by someone who died on theTitanic, so there’s a connection to Harry Widener.”
She slumped a little in her chair. “Trust me, I know it sounds insane. But the book was about the soul and its inability to die even after death robs a person of its body. And reading it was helpful to me. So whatever… Call me nuts.” She took a sip of her water. “At this point, I’m not sure I really care anymore.”
“No one’s calling you nuts,” Sylvia said gently.
“Well maybe some of us are…” Jenny looked at Lara. “But we get it. You’ve had a really hard time with Hugo being gone. So, if it helps you, then that’s great.”
Violet nodded. “Thanks.”
“Anyone want to go to the gym with me?” Jenny asked as she stacked her dishes on her tray and stood up.
“I have an opera meeting,” Lara said as she got her tray ready and began to leave with Jenny.
Sylvia sat with Violet, waiting for her to signal she was done eating.
