Chapter Two
Two days later, Violet moved past the protective rope and walked into the Widener Memorial Room clasping a glass vase filled with yellow freesia and white roses.
The bouquet had been ordered by Madeline a few days earlier, just before she’d handed over the responsibility to Violet.
With all of the concern surrounding the book slasher, Madeline had specified that Violet be the one responsible for picking the flowers up at the main desk and bringing them up to the Memorial Room.
Violet had been happy to oblige. Now, as she placed the flowers down on the desk, she felt her body relax as she glanced at all the beautiful books that filled the space.
Violet had not felt well that morning, as she’d slept poorly yet again.
She had stayed up late staring at her computer screen trying to finish a paper on the impact of Emily Dickinson and Feminist theory, only to spill coffee on it after she’d printed it out.
She had to rush to print another copy early this morning at the science center, dropping it off at Professor Gupta’s office before racing to the library to make sure she would be able to retrieve the early-morning floral delivery and get the bouquet to Harry’s desk before Madeline arrived for work.
Violet felt something spiritual about entering the room. It wasn’t just the intimacy of being in a space that was created to evoke an Edwardian gentleman’s private reading room; it was all of the details that had been placed there with such consideration and care.
Behind the reflection of glass, the shelves were alight with different-colored leather bindings, a patterned rainbow of oxblood red, cognac, and pine green.
Above the black marble fireplace hung an oil portrait of its namesake, Harry.
Forever twenty-seven in his finely cut suit; his dark hair carefully parted in the middle; his gaze prescient and calm.
Framed by oak panels and decorated by a frieze of gilded laurel leaves with a female head at its crown, the painting was a focal point in the room.
The artist, Gabriel Ferrer, had rendered Harry sitting in the comfort of a chair upholstered in claret-colored silk.
One hand tipped to his cheek and the other held a book with a single finger between its pages, as if the painter had just caught him taking a momentary break from his current read.
Violet looked up at the portrait and a bittersweet feeling came over her. Here was yet another young life cut short. A tragic death, just like her Hugo’s. Every day she now spent at Harvard seemed like she was walking around without a key part of herself.
“A phantom limb,” her therapist had called the sensation. The way an amputee might feel after having lost a part of their physical self.
But, honestly, Violet felt she’d lost more than a limb.
A missing appendage she could have dealt with, but losing Hugo was not an ancillary loss, it permeated her whole being.
They had been inseparable. Gone were the conversations where she and Hugo argued who had the best rocky road—J.P.
Licks on Charles Street or Emack this time she was certain it had come down through the fireplace. It traveled eerily through the study, moving across the room to Harry’s desk, where the vase of fresh flowers seemed to shiver. A few petals fell to the desk’s wooden surface.
Violet’s eyes traveled up once more toward the portrait of Harry. She knew it sounded absurd, but she felt as if he were looking right at her.