NO MORE 'IF ONLY'S'
Chapter Three
A Day on the Olympic
Rose was entering her room when Jim was
waking up. "Good morning, honey," she said to him. "Are you
ready for breakfast?"
"Did you even sleep last night? I don’t
remember you coming to bed."
"No, dear. I was out talking with Molly.
We had a lot of catching up to do. I came and checked on you around eleven, but
you were already asleep."
"Yeah, well, I got pretty tired
swimming. Give me a few and I’ll get ready to eat."
When Jim got done in the bathroom, he found
Rose asleep on their bed. He decided to go eat breakfast alone and let her
sleep. The breakfast was good, and Jim decided to take a walk afterwards. On
the port side promenade, Jim joined a gathering of passengers. They were all
standing around, and one was holding a wreath. "What’s going on?" he
asked of a gentleman in the back.
"It seems that in a few minutes we will
pass the spot that the Titanic sank. These people want to throw the
wreath over."
"Oh, is that all? I wonder why all the
fuss. The last thing I want to think about is a shipwreck. We don’t want the Olympic
to join her sister."
"I say, we are here to honor the dead,
not the ship herself. I don’t think anyone should mind that. You know, over
fifteen hundred people died that night. I thought about sailing on that ship.
I’m glad I didn’t."
"I didn’t mean to offend anyone. It’s
just that I’m on my honeymoon and talk of a shipwreck always disturbs my wife.
I’m glad she’s still in bed." With that, James left. He wanted to go back
and see if Rose was awake.
*****
James was happy to see that she was awake.
"How was your nap?"
"Lovely. But you shouldn’t have let me
sleep. This is our honeymoon."
"I know, and that means we can do
whatever we want. Like stay up all night and sleep all day. And, hon, they are
having a ceremony up on deck. It seems that we will be passing as close as we
get to where the Titanic sank, and some people are going to throw a wreath
overboard to honor those who died. Do you remember where you were when you
heard the Titanic had sunk? I was still in college, and the whole university
went into mourning."
His words shocked Rose. She never even
thought that they would come close to that same spot. She closed her eyes and
wondered if she should tell him. Talking with Molly had wrung the last little
bit of grief out of her. But no, she wouldn’t tell him unless she had to. As
much as she loved him, she thought he would be upset if he found out about how
much lying she had done. Not just to him, but to everyone.
"Really? That’s interesting. Did you
know anyone on the ship?"
"No. I really never even thought about
it at the time. I was busy in school. I guess it was awful, but anyway…what
would my lovely wife like to do today?"
"How about seeing if lunch is open, then
going for a walk around deck?"
"Sounds good to me. I ate breakfast too
fast, anyway."
After a slow lunch, Rose and Jim went to walk
around the deck. Rose couldn’t help but remember when each class had its own
area of the ship. Now any passenger could go anywhere, provided they had the
money to pay to get in.