December 1986
Fiona Garrity didn’t believe in magic. Yet here she was three days before Christmas, crossing Harvard Yard in search of a magic book, because a snowstorm had grounded her flight home and she was tipsy and possibly in love.
“Normally, the professor locks the book in a safe in her office,” Luke had explained while they were sharing the bottle of Maker’s Mark in his room in Dunster House. “But last class, she got distracted and left it out. I bet it’s still there.”
Luke had been taking a seminar so special you had to be invited to it, taught by an imperious Frenchwoman named Odile Vernet on the top floor of Boylston Hall. The daunting granite slabs of the old building rose above them now, black against the whirling snow. At nearly midnight, with most of the students already gone for winter break, the white paths through the Yard were undisturbed by footsteps. The unearthly glow of snow and sky made the night seem unreal.
Magical, Fiona teased herself as they stepped from the frigid outdoors into the warm silence of the building. This could only be a joke to her, a funny story to tell later.
Luke, though, was so sweet and suggestible, with his barrel chest and sensitive eyes and perpetual five o’clock shadow. When Professor Vernet insisted her Library of Fates had the power to “choose” books that would guide him through his life, he chose to believe it. Even when the professor claimed to possess a magical tome crafted by an eighteenth-century witch, he gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe it’s his poet’s soul, Fiona thought. They were both English concentrators, but Luke never seemed to question his choice the way she did — which was odd, when you considered that his dad was a baker and Harvard was giving him the full need-based aid package. Unlike her, he had nothing to fall back on.
But that was part of what she loved about him — the excitement of getting caught up in his flights of fancy. While her previous boyfriend, a law student, had described her studies as “taking the path of least resistance to a dead end,” Luke embraced all her quirks as if they only made her more alluring.
They had to climb three long flights of stairs to the library, and she was out of breath at the top. “This better be good.”
The dark room felt different from the rest of the building — warmer, with a subtle hum in the air. When Luke switched on a lamp, Fiona saw an upscale Harvard version of coziness: tall bookshelves everywhere, moss-green carpet and curtains, a long seminar table in the center.
“What if the professor put the book back?” she asked, wondering if the carpet was soft enough for a make-out session.
“Bet she forgot. She flew to Paris that same night.” Luke was perusing a shelf between two bay windows. “Aha!” He tugged out a volume and brought it to the table. “She said we’re not supposed to try this until we truly know ourselves. Do you know yourself, Fiona?”
Fiona chose to ignore the question. “Navel-gazing” was her dad’s term for self-examination. Anyway, she was fascinated by the book itself.
It looked centuries old, bound in black with gilt bands around the spine. When Luke swept his fingertips across the cover and opened it, she shuddered without knowing why.
The book’s frontispiece was decorated with symbols of fate: constellations and women with spindles. “The Book of Obscure Nights,” Fiona said, tentatively translating the French title.
“The Book of Dark Nights.” Luke was starting to look a little worried, despite the hectic gleam in his eye. He leafed through the pages, which were covered with handwriting — different on each page, none of it legible.
“It’s some kind of journal?” Fiona asked.
“No, it was created for a parlor game of divination. Louis Quatorze’s granddaughter supposedly played it.” He pointed to a page that was blank except for a single printed line: Laissez-moi vous lire.
Let me read you.
The words sent a chill creeping under Fiona’s sweater. She didn’t want to be “read,” but she never refused a game or challenge. If there was a way to win, she’d find it. “What do we have to do?”
“Write a confession on a page. Something bad we did.” The furrow between Luke’s brows deepened. “Then, supposedly, it tells us our future in the form of a literary quotation.”
Fiona sat down and pulled the book to her. After 12 years of Catholic school, she could do confessions. “Won’t the prof notice if we deface her antique?”
But she didn’t hear what Luke replied. Something about that empty page called to her, with its rough, yellowed texture. She wanted to make her mark there.
She whipped out a pen, shielding the page from Luke’s view, and wrote: When I go home for break, I’ll tell Dad I won’t be applying for law school. Luke wants to study creative writing in Iowa after graduation, and I want to go with him.
Fiona knew it was her imagination that the book vibrated between her hands, as if electrical currents were trapped in there. It had to be.
She hadn’t even voiced her plan to herself until that moment — hadn’t dared. But the book had yanked it out of her, and there it was in black and white. Her greatest sin: taking the path of least resistance, or so her old boyfriend would have said.
She hoped Luke wouldn’t peek, because she didn’t want him to be too sure of her feelings for him. But he just stared into space, still frowning. “Now close the book and open it again to the same page.”
Fiona obeyed. She knew it was her imagination that the book vibrated between her hands, as if electrical currents were trapped in there. It had to be.
When she opened it again, the sight of the page tore a gasp from her.
Words had materialized there — written in her own hand, each letter shaped in her distinct way. Yet she was sure she hadn’t written anything else. And certainly not this:
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
A gust of wind buffeted the windows and wailed around the building. The lamp flickered. Fiona sat frozen, not breathing. The sight of that page was taunting and violating, as if a supernatural force had seen into her heart, stolen something deeply personal to her, and twisted it into an ill omen.
The words rang a bell. Shakespeare, maybe? But she didn’t doubt the quote had been repurposed just for her, because it hit home. She was wasting time — with her studies, with Luke, and certainly with her plan to follow him to the middle of nowhere so he could get a degree in poetry, for God’s sake. Who does that?
She closed the book gently and handed it to Luke, suddenly aghast at her own foolishness. With his kindness and whimsy, he had intoxicated her and lured her to the edge of an abyss. Now she was cold sober.
The world was brutal, the job market cutthroat. If she wasted time in youthful self-indulgence, time would waste her, sooner or later. Her dad had been telling her so since she was old enough to understand, but she hadn’t listened. It had taken this freaky book (she refused even to think the word “magic”) to make the veil fall from her eyes.
This was a college romance, something to feel nostalgic about someday, not her real life. How could she ever have thought otherwise?
Luke was scribbling in The Book of Dark Nights. Fiona told herself she couldn’t afford to care about his confession or his prediction — he was no longer her concern. But when he closed the book, reopened it, and glowered down at the page, she couldn’t help asking, “What does it say?”
Luke practically slammed the book shut. He went to the shelf and returned it to its former spot. “You didn’t tell me yours.”
Fiona wondered why he was so angry. Had the book informed him she’d returned to her senses? She switched off the lamp and then danced down the stairs after him, consumed with curiosity, nagging him to come clean. By the time they emerged again into the fiercely blowing snow, she had revealed her own prediction, though not the confession that precipitated it. She couldn’t let him know how close she’d come to devoting her life to him.
The Square twinkled with festive lights, improving her mood, and she slung an arm around Luke’s waist. She’d distance herself gradually, so as not to hurt him.
It bugged her that he was being so secretive, though. He’d always been an open book before.
“Tell me, tell me!” she chanted. But when he only shook his head, she tired of the game and broke free of him. “Have it your way. I’m going back to my room — early flight tomorrow, remember?”
As she was about to leave, Luke stretched his right hand out toward her, an unreadable look on his face. She waited for him to ask her to stay. But he just stood there, his hand grasping nothing, until she rolled her eyes and walked away.
December 2016
The falling snow was so thick on the roads that Fiona Calder struggled to make it up the hill to the ski lodge.
“Why do you need the car today, anyway?” her daughter, Cress, complained from the passenger seat, annoyed at having been hurried out of the restaurant. “Where on Earth are you going?”
Fiona herself wasn’t sure she wanted to go anywhere during a snowstorm, but she couldn’t back out now. It was her whole reason for choosing Stowe this year over Aspen. “I told you, I’m seeing an old friend.”
“From Harvard?” Cress always looked sour when she spoke the name, as if her parents’ alma mater represented everything she disliked. Now she was in an especially foul mood, because they’d spent lunch arguing over whether she would apply to Harvard early decision next year, or at all.
Fiona slammed the gas pedal, making the rental Chevy Tahoe fishtail, but the burst of power carried it the final few yards into the parking lot. She pulled up to the lodge, where Stephen and Ian were waiting. This was supposed to be a family getaway, no work or other distractions — Stephen had lectured her about that — but she had something to do tonight. She should be allowed to have something to herself.
“Harvard students can be poets and artists and foolish dreamers,” she told Cress. “You can have your fun and still get the right diploma. Remember that.”
Cress opened the door and stepped out, still scowling. She’d been such a sweet, innocent kid, with her hand-knitted scarves and paintings and collages, until she’d made some equally artsy friends who liked to rant about the evils of capitalism. Now Cress was determined to go to art school in San Francisco or skip college entirely. And ever since the presidential election, she’d been treating her mother like a mortal enemy.
Typical teenage logic. Fiona hadn’t voted for him, but her practice had clients whose corporations had contributed to the campaign, and apparently that was enough to damn her to the ninth circle of hell in her daughter’s mind. Meanwhile, Stephen, who had voted that way, somehow escaped the brunt of Cress’ wrath. Her husband and daughter adored each other, so each of them blamed her for whatever they liked least about the other.
It wasn’t fair, but what was? “See you this evening, sweetie!” Fiona called stubbornly to her daughter, who was halfway to the entrance without having said goodbye.
Her nightmares had begun after she wrote in The Book of Dark Nights. Sometimes she was back in that creepy library.
Cress, short for the Shakespearean name Cressida, because the girl owed her existence to the Bard. The name was one of the few true whims Fiona had allowed herself since becoming a real adult.
She would have a spa day with Cress tomorrow, she vowed as she inched the Tahoe down the hill again, squinting to see the shoulder through flying flakes. Buy her a fancy set of paints for Christmas. Mend the rift, make it up to her.
Maybe she could persuade her to apply early decision to Brown. Stephen had his heart set on Harvard, but Fiona had her own private reservations. She didn’t like to imagine her impressionable daughter wandering into the library on the top floor of Boylston Hall.
Cress might get her hands on The Book of Dark Nights, and who knew what it would tell her?
Fiona’s destination was a small town several miles from the resort, accessible only on winding country roads. The snow was slackening. But the wintry blue dusk cast a pall over bare woods and fields, reminding her of her nightmares.
They’d begun after she wrote in The Book of Dark Nights. Sometimes she was back in that creepy library, and the book was lost and she had to find it. Sometimes she was in a crowd of people, all trapped in a dark place. Luke was there, but she couldn’t reach him, only hear his frightened voice calling out to her.
They hadn’t been close since that December night at the library, and she hadn’t seen him at all since graduation. Back then, without email or texting, it was easier for people to drift apart. Later, she hadn’t looked him up on social media, restricting herself to updates in the alumni bulletin.
The Tahoe crested a hill, and the village appeared below her: a single street outlined by wan holiday lights. She couldn’t imagine living in such a desolate place.
As she rolled past the bakery-café, though, she thought it looked welcoming. According to the alumni bulletin, Luke had bought the place after returning home to care for his aged parents. He was locally renowned for his crusty sourdough and apricot tarts, but he had never published poetry or married, as far as she knew.
She pulled into the driveway of a handsome fieldstone Victorian decorated with fir boughs — the local Quaker meetinghouse. To her surprise, the lot was nearly full.
So were the folding chairs inside. People were milling around drinking coffee from a dingy carafe, talking in low voices. No one seemed to notice her, and why would they?
When Fiona saw the photo of Luke on the easel, she was surprised by the tears that flooded her eyes, breaking through her careful defenses. He looked older, of course, with a full beard. But the wistful gaze was the same.
Dead at fifty-one due to a faulty heart valve, after such an uneventful life. When she saw the announcement in the bulletin, the sad meaninglessness of it all had gripped her. That was when she’d resolved to attend the celebration of life, because she owed Luke that. She’d had strong feelings for him once, and in some small way, that made him part of her.
The room quieted. And as people started coming up to the podium to speak, she realized Luke’s life hadn’t been quite as uneventful as she’d imagined.
The manager of the food pantry called him an “angel” for his weekly donations. Bakery regulars said he’d helped them through tough spots, offering fresh coffee and a sympathetic ear. He’d given jobs to people who were considered unemployable, taught cooking to the community, and volunteered with troubled youth. People had traveled more than an hour to praise his kindness with tears in their eyes.
How very Christmassy, Fiona thought. Her initial tears had dried, and sentimental outpourings always brought out her cynical side. But she couldn’t deny that her old boyfriend had turned out more successful than she’d expected, if one chose to measure success by the ability to draw a bunch of tearful townsfolk to one’s memorial. It was all very Dickens, and she was well aware of her own Scrooge-like qualities.
If I’d stayed with him, would I still be this person? Who would I be? So many times over the decades she’d asked herself the forbidden questions.
Forbidden because she wouldn’t change anything. She loved her life and her children, who owed their existence to her choices. And yet…
Of course, there was no “magic” in The Book of Dark Nights. Waking the morning after their trip to the library, she’d realized she must have been confused. Clearly, she herself had scribbled the Shakespeare quote in that crumbling book. Her subconscious had warned her away from Luke. It was the only explanation a rational person could entertain.
But the words rang differently to her now. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
Fiona had tried so hard to make good use of her brief time on Earth, to spend it sensibly. Yet she could feel time wasting her, day by day, eating away at her youthful sense of invincibility. Sooner or later, she would follow Luke, perhaps into the same dark place she’d seen in her nightmares. There would be no coming back.
On the podium, a woman with wild gray hair, wearing too many scarves, was rhapsodizing about a guest lecture Luke had given in her poetry class. He recited Keats so soulfully, etcetera.
Fiona wondered if the eulogies at her memorial would be as heartfelt as these. Maybe not, because she’d held back so much of herself. The parts that weren’t sensible: the part of her that had loved Luke, the part that had scribbled a confession in the book, the part that had teased him to reveal his own prediction.
Now, for the first time, she grasped why she’d been so eager to know. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, she’d wanted to believe they were destined to be together. She’d wanted his prediction to be something that would force her to reinterpret hers.
But he hadn’t told her.
The woman with too many scarves just kept talking. “In his will, Luke asked for a particular Keats poem to be read at his celebration,” she said, hooking a pair of glasses on her nose. “To my mind, it’s a touch morbid, but I think it conveys the almost unearthly power of love in Luke’s life.”
Fiona braced herself for something boring, her gaze wandering to a window. A flame-red sliver of sunset hovered on the horizon, supernaturally vivid against the snow-shrouded evening, like a promise of brighter days to come. Luke would have appreciated her metaphor, she thought.
The woman was reading:
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights…
Fiona remembered this poem fragment from her long-ago studies. Keats had died so young that it seemed like an actual message from the tomb. Some said he’d written it to the love of his life, Fanny Brawne, to make her feel guilty after he was gone.
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again
And thou be conscience-calm’d…
And suddenly Fiona knew. She remembered the strange look on Luke’s face as they parted that December night, and how he’d stretched out his hand to her. This living hand.
This poem, or some part of it, had been his prediction from The Book of Dark Nights. That was why he’d chosen it to memorialize him. Perhaps he hadn’t understood its full meaning then, but she did now: He was dead early, and she was forever haunted by what might have been.
Red life would never stream in his veins again, and her conscience would never be calmed. Not quite.
But she would do what she could. As Fiona stared at that fleeting bit of sunlight, resolutions formed in her head: She would give her kids more freedom to choose their paths. She would stop nagging Cress; she would make Stephen accept that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you imagined.
She’d thought life was a game to be won, so she’d collected plaques on her walls and daily planners full of meticulous annotations, but life was … sitting here, yearning after that last bit of sunset. It was grasping that she had wasted time, but it wasn’t too late to change. She was sure Luke would have wanted her to know that.
The final two lines of the poem rang in her head, sealing her fate, as she remembered how the man she loved had stretched out his hand to her in Harvard Square so long ago, reminding her they wouldn’t have forever:
… see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
This article appears in The Reading Issue 2025.
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