PROLOGUE
IDIDN’T GO BACK FOR THE BOOK…
I didn’t go back for the book, despite how many Harvard tour guides have suggested otherwise over the years.
Standing in front of the library bearing my name, the most imaginative student will picture my mother shivering in a lifeboat. Her body making space for me to sit beside her, her eyes pleading with me to ignore the strict rules for women and children to enter the dinghies first. They will stretch the romanticism of my death at only twenty-seven years of age, saying that according to the lore, I went back to my cabin to retrieve one of my most treasured books, never to be seen again.
As with any good story, there is both truth to what they say and there is fiction. And somewhere in between are the pages of my life.
I don’t get angry when I hear one of these guides share this exaggerated tale. In their crimson sweatshirts, their eyes glinting with intellect and possibility, they keep my spirit alive. Even nearly a century later, it’s wonderful to float above a group of prospective students, their youth exuding from every pore, and feel the emotion rising within them as they gaze upon the steps of the edifice that my mother built in my honor and view its dedication plaque inside:
HARRYELKINSWIDENER
A GRADUATE OF THISUNIVERSITY
BORNJANUARY 3, 1885
DIED ATSEAAPRIL 15, 1912
UPON THEFOUNDERING
OF THESTEAMSHIP
TITANIC
The mothers in the crowd will look at this impressive structure, with its Corinthian pillars and marble halls, and their hearts will flicker with pain as they imagine the impossible loss of a child and the magnitude of grief that motivated a woman to build such a vast memorial to her fallen son. They will understand that for my mother, each individual brick laid represented a single word in her elegy to me. A eulogy written not in ink and paper, but in mortar and stone.
The love my mother felt for me will ripple through the crowd, regardless of age, when the tour guide tells an indisputable truth: at the center of the library, above the vast labyrinth of stacks where students have pulled countless texts from over the years, there is a special room created solely for me.
Step inside it and you will see my beloved home study re-created. Each oak panel imported from England. Every carved bookshelf, every leather spine placed with care.
This is my mother’s strength and sorrow, entwined yet again. She stood inside this room, weeks before the library’s unveiling, instructing the men exactly where to place my desk and how many inches across from it to put my chair.
She raised her elegant finger pointing to the wall above the carved mantel, and told them it was there they should hang my portrait.
This is the heart of the building.
The heart of this story.
Where love emerges out of grief.
The tour guides will mention this room with reverence. And all of these details, unlike the other legends, that they say to the crowds will be true.
At my mother’s request, fresh flowers are put on my desk each week, to conjure the sensation that I am just about to walk in, sit down, and begin to read.
This is where my ghost now lives.
This is where I wait for her.
CHAPTER ONE
Harvard College
1992
It had taken nearly all of Violet’s strength to get herself out of bed that morning, but she’d managed to pull on her jeans, slip on a sweatshirt, and tie back her mane of red hair.
Exiting her dorm, the world bristled against her and the sting of the crisp air awakened her senses. Violet had barely looked up from the ground as she walked the narrow path behind Dexter Gate toward Widener Library. As she entered the Yard, the still of morning had vanished and Harvard buzzed with life. Beneath the canopy of autumn foliage and against the stretch of carefully manicured green lawn, students congregated in groups, their heads tilted back in laughter. Athletes rode by on bicycles, and a lone couple kissed before parting for class. She adjusted the straps of her backpack and treaded up the building’s stone steps. Everything felt so heavy it hurt.
