Page 47 of The Missing Pages
My neck grew warm around my collar. “Since New York, really,” I said with a laugh.
Her gloved hand lifted to cover her mouth, but I still caught the edges of her smile. “Me too.”
Joy engulfed me. Her words rang in my ears. Love. This is what it felt like. I’d read about it on countless pages. I’d heard it in the lyrics of songs, the stanzas of poems. But now I finally understood.
I ran my arm down the length of her sleeve, feeling the limb beneath the cloth. Even that which I couldn’t see struck me as beautiful.
“I wish we had the park all to ourselves,” I said.
“It almost feels as though we do,” she said, her head now bowed, her voice a whisper.
“You feel like my very own secret.” I touched her gloved hand again.
“Do you have any others?”
“Just one other,” I confessed. “I had a secret drawer created in my desk back home. On the left side, a small ridge just beneath the top lip opens it. You just need to find it with your fingernail. No one knows it exists but me.” A cool breeze rippled over us. “And now you.”
She seemed delighted to learn something no one else knew about.
“And what do you keep in it?”
“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”
“I won’t. I promise. Tell me.”
“A copy ofTreasure Island.”
“Ah… Jim Hawkins,” she teased.
“Did I tell you in another life I want to be him?”
“But why keep it there? Even if it’s a first edition. Surely there are rarer, more expensive books to hide away?”
I shook my head. “It might sound absurd, but it’s the book that captured my heart. It made me want to be a collector. The edition I keep in the drawer is not a first edition or even a rare copy. It’s just the first copy I read as a little boy.”
“Ahh,” she said and her smile dazzled like sunbeams on water. “You keep your heart inside that drawer.”
“A different part,” I insisted. We had stopped walking. I took her hand in mine again, this time grasping it tighter. “My heart is very much here now with you.”
Her eyes answered for her. Without any more words between us, I sensed she felt the same way. I let the silence envelop us.
We strolled deeper into the park, and anyone else who crossed our path faded away.
We came upon a stone bench and decided to sit down. Soon our conversation returned to the Rossetti book.
“You must be anxious to get back to Miss Barrington?” I asked. I knew that in the past, it would have been difficult for me to leave a book I wanted on the negotiating table like that.
“It’s Saturday, and the acquisition of a book of Rossetti poetry is not important enough to disturb Mr. Quaritch on his weekend. It is something I know that will have to wait until Monday.”
“Very well,” I said. “So then there really is nothing else you can do now besides being with me?”
“There is always work to be done, Mr. Widener,” she said playfully.
“But surely you must be hungry? Neither of us has had lunch.”
“Are you offering to take me somewhere?” Her eyebrow rose.
“Well, you’ve already accepted my dinner invitation for this evening,” I said, smiling. “Would it be too bold to also ask you to lunch?”
