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. Abowl 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.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“We’re so sorry about Hugo,” member after member expressed to her at the Owl, each of them relaying their condolences. She had anticipated this when Jenny and Sylvia convinced her to come out with them, but none of it softened the awkwardness or the pain.
“We loved him like a brother,” one of them confided.
“There wasn’t a greater guy in the world,” another one said.
By the time the second keg was opened, Violet could no longer count how many boys had lifted their red Solo cups and toasted their beer to her dead boyfriend. She wanted to leave.
“Come on,” Jenny said, when she told her she was leaving to go back to the dorm. “It’s just getting fun.”
Nothing about the evening had been fun for Violet. From the moment she stepped into the Georgian house, with its pomp and circumstance, its patrician details, the memories she had of being there with Hugo overtook everything else in her mind.
“I’ll go back with you,” Sylvia offered. “I get it. This must be super hard.”
Violet went upstairs to get both their coats.
“Hey.” Theo stood at the top of the upper landing. “I was hoping you’d come.”
“Yeah, I really didn’t think I was up to it yet, but Jenny kind of put her foot down about me being such a buzzkill.”
