Page 19 of The Invisible Hour

Mia might not be able to trust anyone else, but she trusted Mrs.Mott and Miss Allen. Even though she had done her best not to have any emotions, there it was, it had happened. Standing in the dark, she realized that her heart had opened because of Sarah and Constance. In the morning, when they sat around the small decorated tree in the parlor to open their presents, Mia was given a leather-bound journal and a cashmere scarf, her first Christmas gifts. In return, she presented each of her rescuers with a copy of the book that had saved her life, paperbacks of The Scarlet Letter bought at the Concord Bookshop and tied with blue ribbon, the color of good fortune and gratitude. Her other gift to them was that she never told them when she saw a leaf from an apple tree on the garden table, or on her desk at school, or on the path to the library.

IN HER LAST YEAR of high school, Constance and Sarah often took Mia to visit libraries. It was a lark at first, but it soon became a mission to see as many as they could. Mia first chose the library her mother had told her about, the Athenaeum in Boston. Next, they went to Harvard’s Houghton Library, which held the largest Emily Dickinson collection in the world, along with nine hand-sewn texts created by the Brontës when they were children. They visited the Salem Athenaeum, said to be haunted by certain patrons who so loved the library they never wished to leave. After Mia was accepted to NYU, they took a trip to Manhattan and visited the main branch of the New York Public Library. Mia was stunned by the beautiful Beaux Arts building, officially opened in 1911. It had been built between Fortieth and Forty-Second Streets where the Croton Reservoir had been, an enormous engineering project that took nearly sixteen years to complete. There were the lions standing guard on Fifth Avenue, Patience and Fortitude, originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox for the men who donated portions of their huge fortunes to assist in the library’s building.

Walking into the New York Public Library was like entering another country. Mia felt as if she could not be farther away from the past she had known, the burning of books on bonfires, the fields worked twelve hours a day, the orchards that turned pink all at once.

Open the door, open the page, and there you are. You hold the fern-seed, and invisible you can slip into a thousand volumes.

In the rotunda, Mia felt moved to tears when she saw the murals The Story of the Recorded Word, four enormous paintings charting the progression of writing. When they entered the Rose Main Reading Room—which was nearly two city blocks long, with a fifty-two-foot ceiling painted with a mural that was surely meant to reflect heaven, with its perfect blue skies and flowing clouds—Mia stood in amazement, dizzy with emotion, then had to sit for a moment to collect herself.

Constance came up beside her. “Are you all right?”

“It’s all so beautiful. I can’t believe I’m here,” Mia said. The best things that happened to you in life were often a complete surprise. “Thank you for everything,” she added, something she had always wanted to say. She owed Sarah and Constance everything. She owed them the life she was living.

Sarah had come to join them. “How lucky we’ve been,” she said.

“How lucky I am,” Mia insisted, and for the very first time she believed it to be true, for standing in the library on Fifth Avenue, she knew where she belonged. This was the world she was made for.

IT WASN’T EASY TO walk away from the past, even when you locked it up in a box for which there was no key. Memories rattle around late at night, they claw at the latch, escaping when you least expect them to do so. Mia still wouldn’t eat apples or tomatoes and her clothes were often simple outfits that might have been issued by the Community’s storeroom. When asked, she said that apples and tomatoes disagreed with her digestion, and that she couldn’t be bothered with fashion and preferred to look plain, except for the red boots, which she’d had resoled. She told herself she didn’t remember standing in the woods in the dark, and in time she didn’t remember begging her mother to leave. She slept easier, for it seemed impossible that Joel would find her in Manhattan, where it was possible to slip into crowds and become invisible, where not even your own neighbors knew your name.

She often thought about Hawthorne and the inscription in the book she’d found. To Mia, If it was a dream, it was ours alone and you were mine. Whenever she went back to Concord to visit, on weekends or holidays, Mia took out her copy of The Scarlet Letter. She had never returned this special edition to the library, nor had she dared to tell Sarah she had taken it. She supposed that made her a thief, just as Joel had always claimed she was. Still, it was the book that had kept her alive, the one that seemed to tell the story of her mother’s life, the one she’d always imagined had been written for her.

By the time she was twenty-five, Mia had succeeded beyond all of Constance and Sarah’s expectations. They shook their heads in wonder, congratulating Mia on all she had accomplished. After completing her undergraduate work, she’d received a degree in library science. Mia had applied for a job at the New York Public Library and was both amazed and delighted when she was hired for her dream job in special collections. Every time she walked into the building she was overwhelmed by its beauty; it felt like a sacred place to her. How lucky she was to be here, in one of the greatest libraries in the world.

There were times when she wondered if spending so much time with books had prevented her from having a proper life. Her co-workers had husbands and wives and children, they went off for summer vacations on Long Island or in Maine and owned condos in Brooklyn and Queens, and here Mia was in the same apartment in Chelsea she’d rented just after graduating from college. She was stuck in the past that she tried so hard to forget. She knew Joel couldn’t find her, but still she suffered from panic attacks. She imagined people were following her when she walked home in the evenings. She didn’t answer her phone. When she was asked out, by a library patron or a neighbor, she said she was busy and then went home to be alone.

Recently, Mia had found she was compelled to use the library database to search the obituaries posted in the Blackwell newspaper. Joel’s name was never among them, and in truth, she still didn’t feel safe, even though years had passed since he’d come to Concord. She supposed that she would never trust the world as long as he was in it.

Research came naturally to Mia and she had searched through the records of Harvard alumni to discover that Joel Davis had never been a student there. She had, however, found that he’d done time at Bay State Correctional Center. Some people are who you think they are. Some people hide the wolf inside of them, but you can hear them howl.

Once, after drinking half a bottle of wine in her kitchen on a dark night, Mia had phoned the office at the Community. Did she imagine that she could call back in time and Ivy would answer? When someone finally did pick up and say hello, Mia recognized Joel’s voice and fell silent, her heart racing. After a few moments he said, “I know it’s you. You can never get away from here. I know where you are right now.”

Mia had quickly hung up. She thought about her mother kneeling before him, taking the blame for Mia’s crime of reading. She thought of her last night in the barn. The past was with her, tied to her feet with black thread. She saw glimmers of it out of the corners of her eyes when she walked down Fifth Avenue or went grocery shopping or simply looked out her window. Because of this, and because she vowed never to have her fate and her rights taken from her, she had kept her promise to herself. She had never returned to Blackwell.

IT WAS A TRADITION for Mia to meet with Constance and Sarah on March 16 at the bar of the Algonquin Hotel, where they would celebrate her birthday. This year a light, sparkly snow was falling on the evening of their get-together. They had taken a table by the window so they could watch as the soft flakes fell. The city was quiet and peaceful. Mia never knew what her birthday would bring, sunshine and greening trees, or ice and storms.

Sarah reached into her bag for Mia’s birthday present and threw Constance a smile.

“You don’t have to give me gifts anymore,” Mia said. “I’m not a child.” All the same, she was clearly delighted as she untied the ribbon. Constance and Sarah’s birthday gift was a tradition.

“Of course we do,” Constance scolded her. “And besides, we want to. What is a birthday without a gift?” This year it was a pair of small gold earrings. Mia had had her ears pierced, but she almost never wore jewelry. Despite herself, Mia thought of such ornaments as vanities, but Constance had always disagreed.

“How beautiful!” Mia was blinking back tears. This wasn’t vanity; it was love. “They’re perfect,” she said as she slipped on the earrings.

There were hugs and kisses and joy all around. But at dinner, Constance barely touched her food, and she soon excused herself to take the winding steps that led down to the ladies’ room. She’d seemed a bit dizzy when she stood up, which she claimed was caused by the strong martini she’d had, for they always drank martinis on Mia’s birthday and on all other happy occasions. It was only when she was walking away that Mia realized how frail Constance looked.

“What is it?” Mia asked Sarah. She knew something was wrong, but she hadn’t imagined just how wrong. Sarah told Mia that Constance had been diagnosed with an incurable form of lymphoma. She hadn’t wished to share this news on Mia’s birthday, but the truth was, there wasn’t much time left.

“We should have told you earlier,” Sarah said. “I suppose we were wishing it away, hoping beyond hope, but of course, that never works, does it?”

Mia burst into tears, then wiped her eyes with a napkin and did her best to pull herself together, apologizing for breaking down. She rarely showed her emotions, but now she couldn’t hold them back.

“You have the right to cry.” Sarah had always worried about the effects of those early years at the Community on such a sensitive girl who’d had to bottle up her true feelings and follow those unspeakable, ridiculous rules. “You’re entitled to your grief, Mia.”

When at last Constance returned, Mia realized she was wearing a wig. She hadn’t noticed before; perhaps she hadn’t wanted to see it. She understood wishing things away. Oh, that she had hold of the fern-seed and could make this sorrow invisible.

When Constance noticed Mia staring, she touched the bobbed hairdo. “What do you think of the style?” She did her best to grin. “Is it me?”

“You’re you no matter what,” Mia said. She had never said a truer thing in all her life. “You always will be the one and only Constance Allen.”