Page 19 of The Missing Pages

Violet kept all the mementos from her time with Hugo inside an old shoebox.

The ticket stubs from the first movie they saw together.

The key chain with the rower’s oar that she’d plucked from his junk drawer.

The purse-sized memo pad that had the beautiful John Singer Sargent portrait on the cover that he’d bought for her at the MFA bookshop.

But the postcards he’d written to her during the winter break of sophomore year were what she treasured most. His parents had taken him to London for the Christmas holidays, and he’d written her a new one almost every day.

Violet was reminded of them when Madeline mentioned that she had more of Harry’s letters to Rosenbach to be transcribed, the ones he wrote just before he left for England.

The box was on the top shelf of her wardrobe, next to her sneakers and boots.

She reached up and took it down, then placed it on her bed.

She hadn’t looked at those postcards since Hugo’s death.

When she opened the lid, a layer of dried rose petals greeted her, the fragile, desiccated flowers a reminder from their last Valentine’s Day together.

In her grief, she’d nearly forgotten about that evening.

The bouquet of red roses that he’d had delivered to her dorm.

The party at the Owl Club with all the members in formal dinner jackets and she had to borrow one of Jenny’s black velvet gowns.

She’d felt like she was playing dress-up in her roommate’s clothes.

She was probably the only girl at the party wearing costume pearls and clip-on earrings, because she’d always been too scared to have hers pierced, but Hugo still proudly displayed her on his arm.

Despite her constant feeling of imposter syndrome at Harvard, Hugo had made her always feel like she belonged with him.

They’d had a running joke between them ever since they took that Art History class together, that she looked just like Elizabeth Siddal, the red-haired muse to many Pre-Raphaelite painters, a woman who, despite her working-class roots, had become an artist in her own right.

“You’re her modern-day doppelganger,” Hugo had told her as they studied for their midterm together, trying to memorize the several hundred paintings that could potentially be on the exam. “It’s not just the red hair, it’s your eyes and mouth, too.”

She had laughed and told him he was crazy, but secretly she’d seen something else they shared.

Like Elizabeth Siddal, she was thrust into a circle where her humble roots were an anathema.

That night at the Owl, Hugo had held her hand snugly in his and navigated them through the room full of older oarsmen and rugby players.

He didn’t seem impressed by the walls packed with portraits of earlier members who’d gone on to achieve distinguished careers—the ambassadors and senators—although he did get a kick from seeing all the rowers in their varsity uniforms over the years.

She remembered her suitemates were so happy she’d gotten them all an invitation, and they’d spent the evening playing drinking games by the fireplace. Jenny had nearly passed out.

While the roses from that evening had long since turned brown and their edges crisp and brittle, the postcards looked as fresh as if she’d received them only the week before.

A few of them showed the river Thames or Big Ben.

Another one that he’d sent a few days later was of a Beefeater standing guard at Buckingham Palace.

But her favorite had been the exotic blue tiled interior of Leighton House, the former residence and artist studio of Sir Edward Leighton who’d also painted Siddal.

On one side of the postcard, he’d written, “Wish you were here. I saw two paintings that remind me of you!”

And on the other side, he’d written her address:

Violet Hutchins

3013 Frankford Avenue

Philadelphia, PA

19121

USA

She stared at Hugo’s handwriting. She imagined him sitting at his desk in the hotel room. Even when he was in a new city and on vacation with his parents, he had been thinking of her. She pulled out another letter from his trip. This one was written on a sheet of hotel stationery.

Vi-

Missing you loads today. Mom and Dad spent the day at the National Portrait Society and I was lucky enough to head off to Reading to meet with one of the boating clubs.

Too rainy to go out on the water, though.

Hoping to get back here in June for Henley.

Dad’s boat took second place there back in the day, so he’s been reminiscing a lot about his Harvard rowing days.

Hope you’re enjoying the break with your parents.

There are so many old bookshops around here.

One day we have to come back, just the two of us. Miss you.

Love,

H.

The Harvard Book Store was just a few steps away from Widener. If you circled around the back of the library, past the back entrance and through the small arched gate that led out to bustling Massachusetts Ave, you’d be there in just a few, short minutes.

Violet had been inside several times during her first weeks at Harvard.

She loved wandering past the tables of new books and losing herself in the fiction stacks in the back of the store.

It reminded her of the bookstore on South Street in her hometown, with its indie music playing in the background and the staff in their T-shirts and horn-rimmed glasses.

But it was Hugo who first showed her the store’s often-overlooked downstairs level, with its shelves of used books and remaindered titles.

On one sunny day in September, they’d bought coffee and chocolate croissants at the Au Bon Pain in the Square and then wandered up the street toward the shop.

She’d been so charmed by his romantic nature, gently guiding her down the interior steps, his fingers still buttery from the croissant as he held her hand.

“They have a great poetry section,” he said, grinning as he led her toward the far corner.

She felt like she was in her own movie. A handsome boy, well over six feet tall, with strong arms and a Colgate white smile, showing her a hidden spot where books and words comingled with the pheromones lifting off their skin.

Hugo reached for a book, opening a dog-eared volume to a random page.

“Let’s see what we have here,” he said playfully. He looked down at the poem, then at her.

“Should I read it to you?”

“Yes.” She giggled. “This feels like opening a fortune cookie at the end of a meal. What does it say?”

“Well, this one is by Hafiz. A Persian poet who lived in the fourteenth century, apparently.”

“Go on,” she urged him.

“All right then…” He shook the curtain of chestnut brown hair from his face and began slowly:

“I am full of love tonight

Come look into my eyes, and let’s go off

Sailing, my dear, on a long ocean ride.

This world will not touch you,

I will keep you snug upon my seat.

Let’s plot

To make the moon jealous

With a radiance leaping from your cheek.”

“How’s that?” He beamed.

Violet could hardly believe she was on a date with a good-looking athlete who wasn’t embarrassed to read poetry. Even more incredible was that he actually seemed to like it and be moved by it.

She hadn’t had the chance to answer him, as Hugo had already put the book back on the shelf and then taken her into his arms and kissed her.

That night when he finally walked her back to Lowell House, the full moon shone in the dark sky.

He pointed it out to her as he stood outside the main door of the stately brick residence hall. “I think we made the moon jealous tonight, Vi.”

She looked up at the white orb with its rings of bright light.

“I think we absolutely did.” She gripped her fingers around his.

Now, on the floor of her junior-year dorm room, those memories of Hugo seemed to coexist in her memory between something in the past and something ever-present.

She found another postcard from his trip to London.

A snapshot of Portobello Road, with its pastel-colored storefronts.

Pink. Powder blue and lemon yellow. The sunlight hitting off the windows and iron balconies.

A shiny red teakettle hanging from one of the exterior facades.

On the back, Hugo had simply written, “Miss you. See you in ten days. Love, H.”

He’d come back a few days before they had to return to school and she’d visited him at his family’s home in Connecticut.

That’s when he’d given her the lilac-colored scarf and a box of Cadbury chocolates he’d bought for her in England.

It was all pressed into her mind like a permanent snapshot etched into her brain.

She began putting the keepsakes back in the shoebox when Jenny knocked on the door.

“Hey,” she said, peeking her head into the room. “Theo invited us all to a party tonight at the Owl. You want to come?”

In her soccer gear, her blonde hair pulled tight in a ponytail, the sight of Jenny pulled Violet immediately back to reality.

Jenny must have sensed Violet’s reluctance. “You know if you don’t ever show up to these things, people will move on. They’ll invite other girls who they know appreciate it more.”

“Sorry that my boyfriend died and now I’m such a downer, Jen.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Not really,” Violet said as she stood up and put the box back on the shelf. She pushed the wardrobe door closed.

“Look, I don’t think the invitations to the parties are going to stop coming just because I don’t show up.

I’m not dating a rower anymore. Those guys probably never even liked me to begin with.

I don’t have a summer house on Nantucket.

I didn’t know all of them from the boarding school circles, like you did. ”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “All this outsider shit is getting really old, Vi. No one treated you any differently when Hugo was alive, and they’re not going to now when he’s gone. There’s no invisible hierarchy here. It’s just a regular party at the Owl. Not a freakin’ cotillion.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Violet shook her head. “When you fit in somewhere, it doesn’t feel like work.”

“This is all in your head, you know that? Just come out tonight. Hugo wouldn’t want you holed up in your room every weekend, looking at some old postcards. He’d want you to live your life.”

Hugo flashed through her mind. He was pulling off his Henley-T, his chest bared in the blinding sunlight.

She was laid out on a blue and white picnic blanket, wearing a bikini top and shorts, her legs sunburned from the first days of summer.

The patchy green grass near the gorge was filled with clover.

She’d spent the past hour searching for a four-leaf one to give to him for luck.

She’d finally found one and was just about to give it to him, when he had already started running toward the water. She held the luck clover in her hand, careful not to break its green leaves. She remembered that exact moment he began running.

The sun was hot on her bare shoulders, the breeze had stopped, and the chicken salad sandwiches they’d prepared lay half-eaten on checkered napkins.

She was so pleased with herself that she’d insisted they leave his parents’ home for the afternoon and have some private time with just the two of them.

Kent, Connecticut, was full of hidden spots she was curious to explore.

All she wanted was to have an afternoon where there was no small talk, no pressure to have lunch with Chip and Ginny, no pressure on her to prove that she was worthy of their only son.

She had to pry him off the porch chair that morning.

A bowl of cornflakes was on his lap, fresh blueberries floating in the pool of milk.

“Let’s get away for a few hours, just the two of us,” she said as she tried to pull him up from the chair. He put the cereal on the wicker side table and grinned. “Do we get to skinny-dip then?”

She had laughed and promised him that she’d think about it if they could find someplace secluded. They packed a wicker basket, took a bottle from his father’s wine stash, and set off to a place Hugo promised would steal her breath away.

How many times had she replayed in her head those moments after they’d just finished their lunch? A fragile four-leaf clover cupped in her right hand. She wanted to be careful with it. It had been as light as paper; she feared the wind might blow it away.

“Come on!” Hugo said, waving to her to join him, as he ran across the mossy earth. “I’m already lucky, Vi. I have you!”

She put the clover carefully down on the napkin and placed a plastic wine glass over it. He was right. They had all the luck they needed.

“Vi!” Hugo called out to her again.

He was running in zigzags, turning around every few steps and flashing his wide boyish grin at her.

His laughter rippled in the air.

She was trying to keep up. Her bare feet galloping on the mossy ground.

Violet had never been a fast runner. She became breathless easily. Her legs were so much shorter than Hugo’s. He was already several yards ahead of her.

At the water’s edge, when she had nearly caught up to him, she lifted her hand to brush the hair that had swept across her face.

He moved his palms briskly together, preparing to dive. At that exact moment, he was exuberant. Full of life in every possible way.

His body jumped up, the balls in his calves straining; the muscle of his back rippling as he dove forth, perfectly poised as an arrow. He had lifted off the ground as elegantly and effortlessly as a Greek god.

His body struck the water’s surface, the water ricocheting into the air like fireworks.

Violet, now at the embankment’s edge, looked down, inhaling the brackish air, waiting for him to emerge.

When the water remained perfectly still for several more minutes. It was only then that she began to scream.