Page 86 of The Missing Pages

ONCE A BOOK HAD COME INTO QUARITCH’S SHOP THAT had several blank pages in the middle of it. According to the experts, this particular printing mistake had made the volume more valuable.

Ada was only weeks into her job at the store. Fresh from her graduation from university.

“There’s no other volume of Tristan and Isolde that has its eighth chapter missing like this.” Quaritch turned page after blank page. “That is part of this particular book’s story.”

But now, as Ada lay alone in the recovery room, the pain between her legs excruciating, her abdomen no longer filled with the movements of life, her mind returned to that unique printing.

Perhaps, she considered, there are moments in a story that are too painful to be written down or recorded. She wished this part of her life’s narrative could be wiped clear from her memory because the pain of it was just too much to bear.

When the nurse came to give her ice for the swelling down below, Ada lifted her head from the pillow.

“Was it a girl or a boy?” Her voice broke.

“It is better to let only God know,” the sister said. “It’s easier that way.”

“Please,” she asked again. “I need to know.”

“A girl,” the woman revealed, her words hushed.

“Is she healthy?”

“Very,” the sister said.

“Can I hold her?”

“It is not recommended.”

“Please,” she begged. “Just once.”

The baby was swaddled in clean white cloth. Her face was a rosy pink. Ada held her in her arms as her newborn daughter searched her breast for milk. As the child’s tiny mouth latched on, Ada clung to each minute that they were bonded skin to skin.

“I will be back soon,” the nurse said and closed the door.

Her daughter had auburn fuzz, light eyes, and a tight little grip as her finger reached out to grasp her own.

“Little one,” Ada said, now finding her baby’s foot. It was so small, like the little bird she loved to sign her name with. “Let mama tell you a story.”

And so in the colorless room, in a home far from where her own childhood had begun, Ada told her daughter the story she had always loved the most.

“The Happiest Fairy,” she began, “was born with wings as bright as the moon, her skin shone like the light of fireflies, and she possessed a smile as radiant as the sun.”