Chapter 3

When Saoirse wakes the next morning, she is half-convinced the events of the previous night were a dream. But when she descends to the kitchen and sees the four unwashed teacups in the sink, smells the lingering traces of bergamot and honey, she knows it was real. “What a bunch of weirdos,” she whispers. Dead poets. Transcendentalism. Nature as God, and God as healer of climate. But then she thinks of the way Lucretia and Roberto made her laugh, and how Mia’s softspoken demeanor calmed her inner turmoil. Would it be all that bad to spend time with people from the city? And writers, no less, around her age?

She pushes the question from her mind, relieved that—with their numbers in her phone and not vice versa—the decision to see them again is up to her. She washes the teacups, places them in the drainer beside the sink, and inspects the cupboards. Aside from a few boxes of tea, the honey, and a dented box of shortbread cookies, the shelves are empty. She’ll need to find the nearest grocery store if she wants any breakfast.

She grabs her phone and sees there’s a Trader Joe’s a mile away. She dresses, fishes her keys from her purse, and is out the door in under ten minutes. The morning is bright, but she senses a note of autumn, like a taste of earth, of fallen leaves, on the back of her tongue. Maybe she’ll pass a farmers market on her way and buy a pumpkin for the front stoop.

She’s halfway to the grocery store, enjoying the sunshine and the historical homes, the beech trees awash with brilliant swirls of color, when she’s struck with something like déjà vu. The Athen?um is up ahead. She knows it, though it’s been fifteen years since she last lived in Providence. Fifteen years since she would leave the halls at Brown where her undergraduate classes were held to visit Jonathan at his job in the two-hundred-year-old library. She doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to recall the quiet evenings they spent there, the whispered conversations over lattes she’d fetch from a nearby café. But her feet keep moving— past the corner market, past the Shunned House of H. P. Lovecraft’s famous horror story, past one of the steepest streets in the city—following an agenda at odds with her earlier desire for breakfast, toward the rusticated stone-and-pillared Greek Revival building she already sees in her mind. Toward the ornate granite fountain below the Athen?um’s main entrance. Toward enshrined memories and book-bound secrets. Toward the past.

Saoirse climbs the steps between twin cast-iron lanterns, ignoring the hypnotic thud of her footsteps. Why has everything lately been reminding her of the night she found Jonathan? She passes through the entrance and stares up at the skylighted ceiling, marble busts peering at her like curious owls. It’s only after she spins in two complete circles, marveling at the stacks of books eighteen shelves high, and a voice comes from her left—“May I help you?”—that she remembers she’d been able to visit Jonathan here after he’d secured her a membership.

“I ...,” she begins, already knowing she will hand over whatever amount this librarian states is the cost, despite there being no allowance for pricey library memberships in her budget. She simply knows that, now here, she has to stay. Has to inhale whatever lingering essence of Jonathan remains. Because even after fifteen years, his essence does remain. And in a weird way, that essence helps her understand that he is gone.

Ten minutes later, newly laminated card warming her thigh through the pocket of her jeans, Saoirse wanders through the upstairs stacks, lost in a memory that gives way to another and another and another, memories like dreams that collapse in on themselves and make her dizzy with nostalgia and want and regret. She’d forgotten—until this moment—that she and Jonathan were here when he asked her to “go steady,” a phrase so old-fashioned she’d almost laughed until she saw how terrified he was of her answer. He’d been so unsure of his own charm, possessed of the nonsensical belief that, because everyone at Brown was intelligent, he was unable to claim intelligence as a defining trait, at least for the duration of his time at the university. And he’d been back at Brown then, for a master’s degree in history, having gotten his BA five years earlier. Saoirse found his lack of vanity—lack of confidence, really—strangely attractive. Until twelve years later, of course, when it was anything but. When it manifested as a need for control. For the last word. For power.

Saoirse rounds a corner. There are three shallow steps ahead, leading to a closed door with “The Art Room” carved across a piece of wood mounted above it. She doesn’t see the “By Request Only” caveat taped beneath the wooden sign until she’s pushed the door halfway open. She hesitates, but a glance behind her tells her no one’s watching. Not entirely sure why, she slips inside and closes the door.

The muted teal of the room’s walls contrasts sharply with the white bookshelves. Light fills the space from a large skylight, glinting off the cherrywood conference table beneath it and the books and papers spread haphazardly over its surface. There’s a lattice window along one side, overlooking the main section of the Athen?um below. Across from the window, the subjects of seven gold-framed portraits stare unsmilingly down at her. Edgar Allan Poe sulks from within two of the frames, but Saoirse recognizes none of the others. A taxidermy raven tilts its head, beak open, beneath a glass bell jar on an ebony mother-of-pearl-inlaid table. There’s a joint thermostat-and-moisture-monitoring device mounted to the wall, set to seventy degrees and 50 percent humidity.

It’s vaguely familiar, this space, but less so than the rest of the library. Saoirse guesses she’s been in the Art Room before but only briefly. Perhaps she stuck her head inside once or twice to alert Jonathan to her presence, back in another life. She is about to turn, her empty stomach reminding her of why she left the house in the first place, when she notices the books and papers on the conference table again, how their placement is not as random as she first thought. The tomes are open to places marked with lengths of ribbon. Various velvet-cushioned, glass-front boxes hold ancient-looking letters. Additional photocopied letters are cataloged in binders or piles, the piles delineated with little knickknacks: a ceramic raven, a brass bust, a miniature daguerreotype.

The artifacts are meant for an exhibit. An exhibit someone’s been working on until just recently. And their work is not quite done.

Saoirse should leave before they return. But then she spots the photograph, a black-and-white version of one of the seven portraits on the wall. It’s the same woman who was in the daguerreotype Lucretia handed to her the night before.

The poet, Sarah Helen Whitman.

She leans over, studying the image—the curly hair, the long-sashed bonnet—then transfers her gaze to the stack of letters beside it. The signature on the top page is cut off, but on the next page, a second correspondence begins:

I have pressed your letter again and again to my lips, sweetest Helen—bathing it in tears of joy, or of a “divine despair.”

The letter is signed: “Edgar.” A spidery feeling that’s at odds with the warmth of the room travels up her back. She’s been in Providence less than twenty-four hours and been confronted twice with the tortured, enigmatic writer she hasn’t otherwise thought of since high school English.

“What the hell?” she whispers, placing the photocopies on the table. She is reaching for a small navy book, the spine of which reads The Last Letters of Edgar Allan Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman , when the door to the Art Room swings open. A middle-aged woman with short blonde hair steps inside and looks up. She’s holding a small to-go cup, and when she sees Saoirse, how close Saoirse is standing to the letters on the table, her mouth parts in a little O, and her eyes go almost comically wide.

“What are you doing?”

“I was ...,” Saoirse starts. “I’m ... I found this room and didn’t realize ... is it off-limits?”

“The sign,” the woman says and gestures over her shoulder. “I’m working on something and have this space reserved the entire week.” Her words are clipped, high-pitched. The woman isn’t angry; she is panicked, as if, though everything is as she left it and Saoirse has backed away from the table, she half expects Saoirse to start smashing glass-front boxes and shredding priceless letters with gleeful abandon.

“I’m sorry,” Saoirse says. “I didn’t realize. I just renewed my membership and was getting reacquainted with everything.” Saoirse isn’t sure why she ignored the instruction on the door and why she’s lying now, but she does know she was drawn to the Art Room by the same force that brought her down Benefit Street to the Athen?um.

The fact of Saoirse’s membership registers with the woman; that it was a renewal seems to soften her further. “It’s not a problem,” she says. “I’m sure you can appreciate the historical significance of our exhibits and understand that we must exercise caution while preparing them.” A bit of her earlier anxiety returns, and she leans over the table, surveying its contents. “You didn’t handle any of the artifacts, did you?”

“No, no, of course not. Again, I’m so sorry. Let me get out of your hair.”

Saoirse goes the long way around the table to avoid having to brush past the woman. Before she can get to the door, the woman says, “I’m Leila Rondin. Welcome back to the Athen?um, Ms. ...?”

“White. Saoirse White.”

“Ms. White. If you’re interested in Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Whitman, the exhibit goes up at the end of the month.”

“I’m—” She almost says, I’m living in Sarah Whitman’s house , but decides against it. One veritable team of ghost hunters obsessed with 88 Benefit Street is enough; no need to add another Poe–Whitman enthusiast to the mix. “I am interested,” she says instead. “I’ll definitely come back to view the exhibit.”

Leila smiles. “That’s great.”

“In the meantime,” Saoirse says, and points to the small navy book, “is there another copy of this in the library? I was hoping to read some of their letters.”

Leila perks up. “Of course. Right this way. I’ll show you where all the books having to do with Poe are shelved.”

Saoirse follows Leila, but at the door, the librarian gestures for Saoirse to exit first. She takes a ring of keys from her pocket and locks the Art Room, then returns the keys and spins on the top step, her features arranged in a way that’s meant to suggest the act was nothing more than routine. That’s the last time Leila Rondin runs for a coffee without securing an exhibit prep, Saoirse thinks.

They wind through several stacks, sunlight streaming in from the alcove windows, and cross the dizzyingly narrow aisle separating the right wing of the Athen?um from the left. Leila stops abruptly and runs a finger along the books on the third shelf of the stack before them.

“Here we are.” Leila points to spine after spine displaying titles with all manner of references to Poe and his work. The Haunted Palace: A Life of Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man, Volumes I and II. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe. Then, finally, another edition of the book of letters between Edgar and Sarah.

Saoirse slides the book from the shelf, flips through it, then closes it and tucks it under her arm. “Perfect,” she says. Catching sight of another title— Poe’s Helen Remembers —she points to it. “Who’s Helen?”

“The same Sarah Helen Whitman whose letters you hold in your hand,” Leila says. “She first published poetry using the name ‘Helen,’ a fact that was convenient for Poe when he reworked an older poem, ‘To Helen’—intended to evoke images of Helen of Troy—for Mrs. Whitman during their courtship.”

Saoirse adds the book to the one she already holds. She might as well learn as much as she can about the two figures everyone around here seems to be so obsessed with. “Thank you for your help.”

She expects Leila to bid her farewell and stride back toward the Art Room, but the woman leans in and whispers, “Do you want to see something amazing?”

It hits Saoirse suddenly that she’s past the point of mere hunger. There’s a headache starting behind her right eye and, after spending the morning in this place where so many memories were formed, grief has settled over her shoulders like a shroud. She wants to be alone, to walk home, climb the stairs to her new bedroom, and disappear under the blankets for the rest of the day. Instead, she forces a smile and says, “Sure.”

Leila darts past several stacks and cuts right. Saoirse hurries to keep up. Three more strides and they’re ensconced in one of the alcoves that run along the library’s outer walls. Leila makes a sweeping gesture at the space, and Saoirse stares at the multipaned windows, the bust on the sill, the straight-backed chair pushed neatly against the empty desk. “What exactly am I looking at?” she asks a moment later.

“On December 23, 1848,” Leila says, “two days before their planned Christmas Day wedding, Poe and Whitman were sitting in an Athen?um alcove when an unnamed messenger handed her a note telling her that Poe had been drinking the night before and that morning. Whitman called off the wedding and rushed to her house, where she drenched her handkerchief in ether—she did this often, on account of her medical condition—threw herself on the sofa, and attempted to lose herself in unconsciousness. Despite Poe’s attempts to rouse her, she merely murmured ‘I love you’ before fainting away.

“The two would never see each other again,” Leila continues, “and Poe was dead within a year. Whitman would live for close to another three decades, spending much of her time here at the Athen?um. Did you know the house she inhabited is on this very street, half a mile up the road? And while no one can be certain it was this alcove they were in when Sarah learned Edgar had broken his promise of sobriety, I like to think it was. The morning light is best in this one, and the adjacent shelves used to hold a slew of works by writers Poe admired: Coleridge, De Quincey, Byron, Shelley, Keats.”

Saoirse looks around again, trying to imagine the figures from the Art Room photographs sitting in this very space, flipping through a book of poems by Lord Byron and whispering conspiratorially. “The light is good here,” she admits. “Thank you for showing me. You’re right, it is amazing.” Amazing, and, in conjunction with the last twelve hours, overwhelming.

Leila nods fervently. “It’s my pleasure.”

Saoirse takes a step toward the mouth of the alcove. “I look forward to seeing the Poe exhibit once it goes up. For now, though, I think I’m going to head home.” She refrains from sprinting out of the suddenly claustrophobic space. The more time she spends here, the more she feels as if she’s in a haunted house. “Apologies again for being in the Art Room earlier.”

“It’s all right. Oh, and make sure you take an October brochure on your way out. It includes descriptions of all the events going on at the Ath this month.”

“I will,” Saoirse says. The books feel slick and heavy and—as if a heartbeat pulses from within them— alive under her arm. “Well, goodbye.” She turns and walks away from Leila, sneakers thudding on the shiny oak floorboards.

Just like a librarian to go on and on about a subject they’re interested in, Saoirse thinks. Jonathan, though technically more historian than librarian—at least, before he’d received his JD from Princeton University and become assistant university counsel there—was renowned for it. He could rattle off facts about textile production or the history of Gothic Revival architecture until dinner party guests’ eyes grew glassy. At the thought of it, Saoirse swallows a groan, aware that Leila may still be nearby.

A fly buzzes by her head, and Saoirse stops, goose bumps rising on her forearms. What’s the matter? a voice from inside her head asks mockingly, and Saoirse’s heart rate increases. Unsure if the little buzzy bugger is real or in your head? It’s the first time she’s heard the voice since leaving New Jersey, but she hadn’t held out any real hope that the move would silence it for good.

She waits, refraining from slapping at the air, but the buzzing doesn’t return, and she grows annoyed for succumbing, once again, to paranoia. As she nears the stairs, however, annoyance is replaced by the distinct sensation of being watched. Instantly, she recalls Aidan slinking out from beneath the weeping willows in the cemetery but just as quickly forces the image from her mind. She keeps her head down, but the sensation persists. When she looks across the library, a bust of Poe stares back.

I don’t care what I told Leila Rondin. I’m not coming back for that exhibit. She’s two stacks away from the stairs, and still, the skin along her neck and upper back tingles. Saoirse glances over her shoulder, almost dropping her books in the process. This time, a different pair of eyes meets hers.

Jonathan! So his ghost resides here —not in their home in New Jersey—among the stacks and tomes, where history is held in alcoves and secrets lorded over by silent portraits. Saoirse swallows, resisting the urge to cry out, but as she gapes at the man, adrenaline shooting through her veins, she sees it is not her husband. She’s projected his likeness onto someone who—with his dark hair and dark eyes, a face made slightly asymmetrical by the tilt of his eyebrows and the way he holds his mouth—possesses similar characteristics. Someone who, like Jonathan, though she never noticed, never had cause to notice, looks uncannily like a modern-day version of Edgar Allan Poe.

The man stares at Saoirse across the open air of the second floor of the Athen?um. His gaze is penetrating, stark, and unabashed. It leaves Saoirse feeling exposed and vulnerable and completely unsettled. It’s not just his appearance but his intensity. He’s looking at her as if he wants to gaze upon her forever, to speak to her every day for the rest of their lives, to possess her. As if he already possesses her.

She holds the beguiling—and terror-inducing—gaze another moment, then jerks her head back in the direction of the staircase. She rounds the rail and starts down the steps as fast as she can move her feet. On the last step before the bottom, she looks up again. The man is moving away, toward the Art Room. As Saoirse hurries toward circulation, she sees the man disappear into the stacks.

Unlike her husband—but very much like Poe—the man’s expression never shifted or softened. Saoirse did not see the smallest hint of a smile flash across his face.