Page 77 of The Missing Pages
“Harry… where can we find out more about Ada?”
The triangle remained static for a moment. Then the lights above flickered. Theo looked at Violet and then the board. Suddenly the planchette dragged toward the letter “K” and then “E,” before landing on “Y.”
“Key?” Theo looked perplexed. “Vi, does that make any sense to you?”
Violet’s eyes widened. “Yes, actually. It does.”
“I know exactly what it means,” she said as they put the board away. “And it confirms my suspicions.”
“Your suspicions about what?”
She knew it was completely forbidden to bring Theo into Harry’s study. He wasn’t a page and the room was off limits to everyone except the library staff. But she had to show him the key.
“I know you said you only had until eight thirty to meet with me tonight, but can you spare a few minutes more? I want to show you the key I think he’s talking about.”
Theo glanced at his watch. “I think my Poli Sci can wait a few more minutes. Show me.”
He followed her down the corridor and to the bank of stairs, winding up until they reached the circulation room.
“Look, here’s the plan.” She pulled him aside. “We’ll head on over to the study now. I’ll go in there and get the key out of Harry’s desk. So just come as close as you can to the velvet rope and I’ll show it to you.” She looked around to make sure they were alone. “In case anyone comes by and questions what I’m doing in there, I can use the excuse that I wanted to check to see if the flowers on his desk needed more water.”
“Got it,” he said. He then followed her toward the marble rotunda where Harry’s study was.
Violet dipped behind the rope and went straight toward the desk. Knowing there were security cameras in the upper part of the ceiling, she went toward the flowers and lifted the vase up and looked at the water level then put it down.
Then she quickly went to the desk drawer and pulled out the fob with the two silver keys. She took the one with the birds and dangled it in the air so Theo could see it and then returned it to its resting place.
“You see how much larger this one is, and how ornate it is with the two birds at its end?”
“Yeah, what’s it for?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Violet motioned him to walk down the main stairs with her toward the exit. “The smaller key is used to wind the watch dial that sits atop Harry’s crystal inkwell. But no one on the library staff knows what the larger one is for.”
“Hmm.” Theo mustered the facts Violet had shared with him. “So… what are you thinking?”
“I think the key unlocks something that’s important to Harry.”
“You think it connects to Ada?” His eyes flashed.
“Yes. And also to what he already told us. Love.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
DEATH CAME TO ME QUICKLY.AS THETITANIC’S ENORMOUSstern lifted out of the sea, the pages of my story hurtled toward its end. My hands could no longer hold on to the deck railing. As my fingers released, I was thrown toward the ship’s midline just as the boat cleaved in half. My body was pulled into the vortex of the frigid water, spinning and twisting me with such violence, I remember nothing else before it all went blank.
What came next, I can only explain as transcendent. I was suddenly above my body, seeing it settle into the dark silt of the Atlantic’s floor. Debris and corpses continued to sink down around my lifeless body.
I can tell you that at the moment I became one of the hundreds lost at sea that night, a peace came over me. I did not observe the remains of my father as my soul rose out from the ocean depths and into the starlit sky. The dead do not concern themselves with the other dead. It is the living—specifically those we loved—that we wish to soothe.
I saw my mother huddled in the lifeboat with many of the same women who had been at her party only hours before. Each of their pale faces was etched in shock and terror as the ship was engulfed before their very eyes.
The wails emerging from those flailing in the ocean were later recalled by a survivor as sounding like locusts on a midsummer’s night. Their torturous cries propelled thoseaboard Mother’s lifeboat to seek out if any of those still alive could be saved.
I knew my mother was desperate to believe my father and I had somehow survived initially, that we might be one of the lucky ones her lifeboat could still pull from the sea. But in the end, their boat only managed to save eight crew members from the frigid waters. As the pleas from the others eventually dimmed, they were replaced by a bone-chilling silence.
Ada and Lolly’s collapsible boat was far more vulnerable than the wooden crafts, as its sides were made of canvas. The waves slapped at it mercilessly, causing it to nearly capsize. At one point, Lolly’s toddler slipped out of her lap and almost fell overboard. It was only when another lifeboat came to its assistance and tethered it to their sturdier one that the collapsible had a fighting chance against the elements.
Five hours later, Mother, Ada, and all the others on the lifeboats would be rescued by the RMSCarpathia.
