RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Seventy-Two

Jack walked slowly into the café, leaning on an intricately carved manzanita walking stick. He had made it himself, taking a long, broken manzanita limb and cutting it into the proper length for a walking stick, and then carving designs into it and varnishing it.

He settled himself onto a bench at the front of the café to wait, holding the walking stick out of people’s way. He didn’t use it when working—it was a nuisance, keeping him from carrying as much as he wanted—but he used it the rest of the time, finding that he walked much more easily with the support. He could walk without it, but not well, and was inclined to trip on uneven ground.

Looking around, he wondered where Rose was. Had she decided not to come after all? It had been she who had suggested that they meet again, but it was 7:05 and there was no sign of her. He wondered if she had been able to find the café. Riverside was a small city, but the streets weren’t laid out in a neat, square-like fashion. They curved around in odd directions, circling around and up the area’s hills.

He hoped she would show up. It had been five years since he had seen her, but she had never left his thoughts. She had always been there, at the back of his mind, and now that he’d run across her again, he was consumed with curiosity as to how she had gotten all the way out to California, and what she had been doing walking down a dusty California highway in men’s clothing, a rucksack slung over her back.

Just as he was about to give up on her and leave, Rose came out of the kitchen. She had changed into a simple but clean dress and pinned her hair up neatly. A slightly food-stained apron was tied around her waist.

She stopped when she saw him. "Jack! You’re here already?" She glanced at the clock. "Oh, my goodness! I completely lost track of the time! I was supposed to get off work ten minutes ago!"

"Work?" He raised an eyebrow at her, looking at her grimy apron.

"I...well, I needed a job, and when I walked down here to find out where this café was, I saw the Help Wanted sign in the window, so I stopped in and asked about the job. They needed another waitress, and I managed to convince them that I knew what I was doing."

"Do you know what you’re doing?"

Rose shrugged. "I’ve been a waitress before, and a bartender."

"A bartender?" Jack shook his head. Rose had done some interesting things over the past five years. He wondered what exactly she had done after she had left Cal and fled to New York. His mind immediately drifted to the things he had done over the ensuing years, but he pushed the thoughts away. There would be time enough to talk about those things over dinner.

A waitress came up to them. "Table for two?" she asked, looking at them with a smile. Jack had come in for dinner on a few occasions, and Rose was one of her co-workers now.

"Right," Jack told her, leaning on his walking stick as he got to his feet. Rose looked at him in puzzlement, as though trying to figure out why he needed it.

When the waitress had settled them at a table and given them their menus, Jack and Rose finally looked at each other, a little nervously. Neither was quite sure of what to say after all the years apart. Neither had ever expected to see the other again.

Rose perused her menu, trying to avoid Jack’s gaze. She looked for the cheapest items on the menu, hoping she could afford dinner.

"I’m paying," Jack told her, watching her scrutinize the menu.

"Oh, no. You don’t have to—"

"I insist. You look to be more down on your luck than me."

"I have a job."

"Rose, come on."

Rose looked at him, finally relenting. "All right." She went back to staring at the menu.

"You really need to relax." Jack watched her clutch the menu nervously.

Rose looked up at Jack. "You’re a fine one to talk."

He wondered what she was talking about, until he realized he was holding his walking stick in a death grip. Looking a bit sheepish, he let go of it, leaning it against his chair. It immediately clattered to the floor.

Rose giggled, breaking the tension. The waitress returned to take their orders. As she pulled out her pencil, she looked pointedly at Rose’s apron.

"That’s excellent dinner garb, Mrs. Calvert," she told her, holding out her hand.

Rose looked down, only then realizing that she was still wearing her apron. Quickly, she took it off and handed it to her co-worker. The woman shook her head as she took their orders and disappeared into the kitchen.

"Where’s your husband?" Jack asked, looking at her hands and noticing that she wore no ring.

"My—my husband?" Rose stammered, wondering how he had known about her marriage. Then she realized that the waitress had addressed her as Mrs. Calvert.

"You are married, aren’t you?"

Rose looked down. "I was, for a short time. He passed away a few months after we were married."

"I’m sorry." Jack looked at her with compassion.

"Are you married?" she asked, wondering if he had a family waiting for him at home.

"I was." He stopped, looking sad.

The waitress returned with their orders, but neither paid much attention to the food.

"Rose—" Jack began.

"Jack—" Rose started at the same time.

The stopped, both looking down at their plates before getting the courage to face each other again. Jack spoke again.

"Rose, what have you been doing all these years? What have you done since...the Titanic?"

Rose took a deep breath, wondering where to begin. "I...I tried to wake you up, when we were in the water...but you wouldn’t wake up. I wanted to die with you—but I remembered the promise I’d made. So I broke the ice that had frozen our hands together and let you go." She stopped, looking at him. "Jack, I’m so sorry. I almost drowned you! I thought you were dead...you were so cold, and you didn’t move..." She put her head in her hands. "I should have checked for a pulse. If only I’d checked..."

"The cold has a way of exhausting your brain—never mind what it does to the rest of your body. You’re lucky you had enough sense left to save yourself. I don’t know if you could have felt a pulse anyway. You were complaining that you couldn’t feel your body, so it’s entirely possible that you couldn’t have found my pulse even if you’d checked for it."

Rose shook her head. "I should have tried harder to wake you...but I let you go. I let you go and swam over to Officer Wilde. He was dead, but I took the whistle from his mouth and blew on it to let the rescuers know I was alive."

"I’m glad you did." Rose looked at him, astonished. "I’m not glad that you let me go, but I don’t blame you for it. If I had been dead, you might have died with me. No, I’m glad that you got the attention of the boat. They’d just picked you up when I resurfaced. If they hadn’t come back for you, neither of us would be alive now."

"But still...I shouldn’t have let you go. I should have held onto your hand..."

"If you hadn’t let me go, I might not have woken up. I think it was the water in my lungs that shocked me back into consciousness."

"Maybe." Rose still felt guilty, but continued with her story. "I didn’t know you were alive when the Carpathia came to pick up the survivors. I was in a daze. I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. I just climbed up the ladder and found a bench to sit on in steerage. I didn’t pay attention to anyone else in the boat."

"I woke up in the ship’s infirmary. I must have been carried on board. As soon as I could, I slipped out to look for you. I’d seen you in the lifeboat, and knew you were alive, but when I finally found you, you were walking back to first class with Cal."

Rose took a bite of her food, staring at her plate without really seeing it. "I tried to hide from Cal, and from Mother, but Cal was determined to find me if I was alive. I suppose that he knew that I would try to hide in steerage, so that was the first place he looked. He found me and demanded that I go back with him. I didn’t want to...but I didn’t know what else to do. In the months that followed, I asked myself over and over why I had gone back to first class with him, but I never quite understood why. I still don’t."

"What did your mother say when Cal returned with you?"

"She was overjoyed that I had survived. She’d thought, after I refused to get in a lifeboat with her, that I had stayed on the ship with you and had been lost with all the other people who died."

"Did you tell her how you survived?"

Rose shook her head. "No. She would have been appalled. She was so happy to see me, that...I couldn’t walk away from her again. I kept remembering the things I’d said to her on the Titanic—unkind things. I felt so guilty that I didn’t make another attempt to get away, even when she insisted that I go through with the marriage to Cal. Where would she have been without me? She was counting upon me to marry Cal and restore the family fortunes."

"But you did eventually leave."

"Yes. On my wedding day, as I dragged myself up the aisle, I kept asking myself why I was doing it. Why was I marrying a man I couldn’t endure? Were the family fortunes that important? When I got near the end of the aisle, I saw Cal looking at me with this little smirk, and I knew that I couldn’t go through with it. I turned and ran back down the aisle and kept going until I was home. I put on my simplest dress and my most practical shoes, stuffed a few things in a small bag, and ran out the servant’s entrance. I kept going until I reached the train station, and took the first train out of the city—to New York."

"And fifteen minutes earlier, I’d been there, catching a train to Chicago."

Rose nodded. "If I’d left just a few minutes earlier..." She shook her head. "What did you do before you left for Chicago?"

He hesitated, thinking. "I went back to the infirmary. The doctor wasn’t happy with me for leaving, but he didn’t have to worry. I stayed there the rest of the trip. I had a really bad cough from inhaling all that water, and from being in the cold water so long, but I recovered. I was luckier than some, who developed pneumonia from the experience. I was healthy enough to withstand the aftereffects of the cold and the water."

He pushed his plate back, continuing. "When the Carpathia docked, I looked for you—only to see you getting into a car with your mother and Cal. I didn’t see Lovejoy, so I walked through the crowd to see if I could catch your attention, but the car drove away before I could get through all those people. Steerage was the last group to be let off."

"Lovejoy didn’t survive," Rose told him. "That was one moment when I almost wished he were there. The reporters surrounded us, shouting, taking pictures, asking questions—and I know he would have fended them off. As it was, we ignored the reporters and just kept going. It took a long time to get out of the crowd, but when we did, there were some cabs waiting for passengers. We went straight to the train station and back to Philadelphia. I was so tired, I didn’t really care where we went, so long as I could rest and be left alone. Of course, I didn’t get much time alone. Mother fussed over me, the servants fussed over me, and both Mother and Cal immediately insisted that we try to get back to normal. From all appearances, things were normal—but at home, they were anything but." She stopped, remembering the struggle to appear happy, to put on the proper expressions and say the proper words about the sinking. Everyone had been curious, of course, but she was forbidden to say more than necessary. Even then, word of her relationship with Jack had leaked out, infuriating both Cal and Ruth. Ruth had been angry at the whispers of scandal, but Cal had been the worst.

"Why didn’t you try to come by my home and talk to me?" she asked, still a little bewildered that he had been alive and had followed her to Philadelphia, but had made no effort to contact her.

"I did try—and was promptly picked up by the police for vagrancy. I was pretty scruffy, even more than before, and they didn’t think I belonged in your neighborhood. I thought about writing you a letter, but I wasn’t sure you would get it—or if your mother or Cal would find it and make sure we never met again."

"All that time, you were so close...if only I had known, I would have found a way to escape. But I didn’t see any reason to try—not until my wedding day, when I took all of Philadelphia society by surprise when I turned and ran down the aisle. It was quite the scandal. I’m surprised you didn’t read about it in the newspaper."

"I wasn’t paying much attention to newspapers at the time. I was concentrating upon finding a place to stay, a way to provide food and shelter for myself." He paused, looking back at her. "What did you do once you got to New York?"

Rose looked a little embarrassed. "Well..." She launched into her story, telling him about her first night in New York, and how she had wound up in a house of ill repute.

Jack laughed at that. "How many propositions did you get?"

"Jack!" Rose looked shocked. "Too many to count," she admitted. "I don’t know why men kept knocking on my door, unless the desk clerk told them that there was someone new in the hotel that they might like. I left as quickly as I could the next morning and went to look for a job. I was lucky—I found a job that morning, selling tickets at the Baker Theater, and I found a boarding house that had no problem with single women. Some of the actors from the theater lived there, too. In fact, that was where I first met my husband, Robert."

"He was an actor?"

"Yes, and a good one. I didn’t trust him at first, or the theater’s lead actress, Alice Cane. We soon became friends, though. She even helped me disguise myself to keep from being found. I dyed my hair black, wore plain clothes, and even changed my last name."

"What did you change your last name to?"

Rose looked a little sheepish. "Dawson. I didn’t think you’d mind."

Jack’s mouth hung open in surprise. She’d taken his name? He was surprised at how honored he felt. "I don’t mind."

Rose nodded, looking relieved. She’d been afraid he would be angry or upset with her for borrowing his name to hide with. Smiling, she continued her story. "I worked in the theater for about two months before one of the chorus girls ran off to California. They needed her badly for the show, so Robert suggested that I take her place. I was reluctant at first, for fear that I would be found, but Norman—my boss, the theater owner—talked me into it. I made a complete fool out of myself the first time, but fortunately to audience was tolerant and thought it was a joke. After that, I improved, and took a small role in a Shakespeare play, Othello, in the fall. I was also the understudy for the lead role, which was a good thing, because Alice drank too much and often couldn’t be relied upon. A recruiter for a traveling Shakespeare troupe was in the audience one night when I was playing Desdemona, and he recommended me to the director. I auditioned...and won. I left New York City on New Year’s Eve, and haven’t been back since." She paused, leaving out the part about Cal’s attempt to murder her in the alley.

"I spent the next year acting with the Shakespeare troupe, going from city to city. We even stopped in Chicago for a while," she added. "We performed three plays—As You Like It, Hamlet, and King Lear. We went from one end of the country to the other in that year, finally winding up in San Francisco, where I met up with an old friend, Deborah Hill. She was Deborah Hutchison by then. I stayed with the troupe until the last performance of the year, and then, after spending a few weeks with Deborah and her husband, I went to New Orleans." It wasn’t the complete story; she had left out her affair with Richard and the fact that she had killed Marietta, but those weren’t things she wanted to talk about.

"In New Orleans, I was unable to find a job, and my money was running out, so finally I became a street performer, working with an elderly Negro that I met one day. He had a banjo, and I had a voice, so we did well enough. People wouldn’t have accepted a white woman and a Negro man working together, so I dyed my hair black again, put on just enough makeup to darken my skin a little, and pretended to be his octoroon granddaughter. I was appalled at the way Negroes were treated, so I decided that we should do something about it. I started singing songs about freedom and rights and such, and even wrote a few songs of my own. Some other people joined our cause, though it kind of fell apart when we all got arrested. Still, this one establishment, the American, took some of the songs and started having them performed. They were strong on equality, and eventually the hired the man I was working with—Tom DeWitt—to play the banjo for them." She looked at Jack. "Yes, Tom DeWitt is a relative—he’s my great uncle. The American didn’t offer me a position—they already had more singers than they knew what to do with—but by that time I had met up with Robert again. Some young thugs attacked me in an alley, accusing me of trying to pass for white, and he drove them off before they could harm me. We were both shocked to see each other—we had never expected to wind up in New Orleans, and certainly not at the same time. We talked that night, and then we got together again soon after. He joined Tom and me in our cause, and got more respect than either of us because he was a white man. I moved into his apartment—as you know, street artists don’t make much money, and I was living in a run-down hotel. I...eventually fell in love with him. After Tom got the job with the American, I wondered what I was going to do. I couldn’t expect Robert to support me, and then he told me that he was leaving New Orleans. I was angry with myself for trusting him, but then he surprised me again—he suggested that I go with him...to Alaska."

"Alaska?"

"Yes. He’d been there before, and wanted to go back. He said we’d live off the fat of the land. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I agreed to accompany him. We left a short time later. We went to California to catch a ship, but we stopped in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, first, to visit with some of Robert’s relatives. While we were there, he proposed to me, and I accepted. We were married in San Francisco. Deborah was my matron of honor." She smiled, remembering. "We had an outdoor wedding, with only a few special people invited. It was so much nicer than my Philadelphia wedding."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you." Rose continued her story. "The next day, we boarded a ship for Juneau, Alaska. I was terrified of being on a ship at first, and spent most of the first day looking for icebergs, even though we were too far south for them. I finally got over my fear of ships, though, and we made it to Alaska in one piece. We bought supplies—I sold Cal’s engagement ring to pay for them—and headed north. We got up above the Arctic Circle, traveling in boats on the rivers and going through part of Canada before we got there to avoid the glaciers, and we staked a gold claim on a river. I don’t even remember which river it was. We decided to stay for the winter, built a sod hut, and laid in supplies." Her eyes grew sad. "We should have left when autumn came. In February, there was a brief thaw, and the ice on the river thinned. We’d been occupying ourselves by ice fishing, and our fishing hole froze over—but not as thickly as the rest of the ice. Robert was chopping a new hole in the ice when he stepped back and found the old hole. He fell right through it. I got him out of the water, but he got pneumonia and died a few days later."

"Rose...I’m sorry. It’s terrible to lose a spouse."

She nodded sadly. "I know. Thank you." She paused, regaining her composure, before continuing. "When spring came, I buried him on a hillock overlooking the river and our sod hut, covering the grave with stones to keep the wild animals away."

"You buried him alone?"

"There was no one to help me, Jack...and I couldn’t go for help. By the time I would have gotten back, the predators would have taken care of him. I had no choice but to bury him myself. I left the next day and never looked back. I traveled back to Juneau, and took a ship back to California. A few weeks later, I took a train to Los Angeles, where I appeared as an extra in a few moving pictures. I was restless, though, and left after a couple of months. I wandered for a while, and then wound up on the ranch of this elderly woman, Esther Henke. She had an airplane, which we repaired. Then she taught me to fly."

Jack smiled. "This time, you really were flying."

"I really was...and it was thrilling. But after a while, Esther got sick, and she died soon after. I left the ranch after that, and have been wandering ever since." She couldn’t bring herself to speak of her experience in Mexico. That sorrow was still too new, too raw, for her to speak of.

The waitress came up to their table and handed Jack the bill. "We’re closing," she told them, looking pointedly at the clock. They had been sitting there for two hours.

After Jack paid the bill, they left the restaurant, walking slowly along the street until they came to a bench. They sat down together, Jack leaning on his walking stick.

Rose finally spoke. "I’ve talked about myself. What about you? What have you been doing these past five years?" She couldn’t quell her curiosity. "Is your...limp from being in the freezing water so long?"

He shook his head. "No. That happened later." He looked at his walking stick, thinking of where to begin. At last, he began his story. "I went to Chicago and spent a while trying to figure out what to do with myself. I did some art, but I couldn’t really make a living from it. I finally took a really boring job in a factory, which lasted about six months before about half of us were laid off and replaced with cheaper workers. There’d been a push to unionize, but I hadn’t seen the point until then. But by that time it was too late, and I was out of a job. I was sick of Chicago, anyway, so I took off again. I took a job in a mining town in Michigan, mining copper. The pay was lousy and it was dangerous, so when someone asked me if I wanted to be a part of the drive to unionize, I joined immediately. The bosses were furious over the workers’ attempts to improve things, and they made that abundantly clear at Christmas. The miners and their families were holding a Christmas party on the upper floor of a building there, and the bosses had the perfect scheme to break the union—using their children against them. One of the hired thugs poked his head in and told everyone that there was a fire in the building. Someone else said that there wasn’t, but a lot of people weren’t taking any chances. One man carried his daughter down the stairs, to try to get out of the building, but the thugs held the door closed. Other people who’d seen him leave panicked and took their children down, too. The thugs still held the doors, laughing, as people piled up against them in a frenzy, trying to escape. Seventy-three children were smothered to death that night."

Rose gasped in horror. "My God! How could they do that? Didn’t they have any conscience? Killing children to break the union—why would they do such a thing?"

"Because they could, and because they had all the power. People were outraged by what happened—but it wasn’t the first time violence had been used to break up unions, and it wasn’t the last. I’m sure it will happen again."

Rose was still shaking her head, unable to understand such callousness. "What—what did you do after that?"

"I left Michigan. I couldn’t stay and work for people who could do something like that, no matter how much I needed the money. I sneaked onto a train and wound up in New York City again. I took up my art again, whether I made enough to live on or not. Sometimes I slept in some odd places—like under bridges or on park benches—but it was an honest living. No one was getting hurt from it. While doing a sketch in Central Park one day in June of 1914, I met a man by the name of Anthony Terkel. He was a union organizer in the city, and he wanted to hire me on to make posters and flyers to promote his cause. Apparently someone that I had mentioned Michigan to knew him, and he sought me out, figuring that I would be willing to help."

"And were you?"

"Of course. I didn’t want what had happened in Michigan to ever happen again, so I was more than willing to do my part. I sketched posters and flyers, and ignored anyone who said I shouldn’t be doing so. Unionization isn’t a peaceful thing, but I tried to stay out of the worst of the violence. One day, however, I was walking past a factory that was trying to unionize, and I saw a young woman handing out flyers to the workers. One of the foremen saw her, too, and took exception to what she was doing, though she was out on the street and away from the factory itself. He told her to get away from the factory, and when she ignored him, he gave her a shove, sending her flying into a puddle. And...well, you know New York. Puddles are filthy, and full of things you don’t want touching you. She got up and smacked him, and he punched her. That was when I stepped in, grabbing him and throwing him into the puddle. The workers who were on their way in thought it was hilarious. He got up to go after us, but a cop had seen me throw him in the puddle, and had seen the woman slap him, so he arrested both of us. The foreman just walked off. Nothing happened to him. At any rate, Mr. Terkel bailed us out of jail. The charge was disturbing the peace, so it didn’t cost him too much, though I think he’d been in jail a time or two himself, and from the sound of it he’d probably bailed more than one person out before. I learned the name of the woman I’d assisted—Amelia Terkel, Anthony Terkel’s daughter. She was twenty years old at the time, and had been involved in unionizing since the age of sixteen."

"You seem good at rescuing damsels in distress."

"I’m not sure how much distress Amelia was in. I think she might have made that foreman sorry he’d laid hands on her if I hadn’t tried to defend her. Her father invited me to dinner to thank me for trying to help her." He laughed at Rose’s expression. "I know. Ironic, isn’t it? I begin to see a pattern here..."

Rose laughed, agreeing with him. It was nothing short of strange that he’d been invited to another dinner by another well-to-do man for helping a woman. "What happened then?"

Jack ran a hand through his hair, not looking at her. "Ah...we hit it off. Amelia was very lively, full of ideas...in short, she reminded me of you. She didn’t look much like you—she had dark hair, and was short, barely five feet tall—but I...took an interest in her. We saw more of each other, and were finally married in June of 1915."

He sighed. "It was a mistake. She reminded me of you, but she wasn’t you. I tried to hide that from her, but I think she knew that I thinking of someone else. I tried to forget you—you were lost to me, after all—but I couldn’t. I tried to be a good husband to Amelia—I never cheated on her, or mentioned you, and I always tried to support her in her endeavors, even when her father objected to her ideas." He looked down at his walking stick, lost in thought. "She knew that something was missing, and so did I, but I wouldn’t abandon her. I’d made my vows, and I stuck to them. ‘Til death did us part."

"What happened?"

"Amelia became pregnant in October of 1915. She was thrilled to be having a baby, and things were better between us. I was looking forward to the baby, too, but early in July of 1916, a polio epidemic struck New York. People fled the city, and I suppose we should have, too, but we didn’t. Amelia caught the disease, the paralytic type. Her case was milder then some, at least initially—she never had difficulty breathing, and she could use her hands—but when she recovered, she was still completely paralyzed from the waist down. Just as she was recovering, I caught it—and it was much worse than what she had had. It started out mildly enough—like having the flu or something—but within a few days it got much worse. I was having trouble moving, and finally I woke up one morning and couldn’t move at all. Even breathing was difficult. Amelia had depended on me to take care of her, but I couldn’t. We hadn’t gotten her a wheelchair yet, so she had no way of getting around. She couldn’t leave the bed." He paused, remembering. "She went into labor that afternoon. She hoped that she might be able to deliver the baby herself—after all, her arms and hands worked—but she had a difficult delivery. She tried not to scream from the pain, but by the next morning she was muffling her screams in a pillow, not wanting to disturb the neighbors." He shook his head. "If she had, she might have lived. Someone might have come to find out what was going on and brought help. I don’t know if it was the paralysis, or if it was something else, but she couldn’t give birth. She struggled for hours, until she was so weak she could barely push, before giving birth to a stillborn son. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and listen. She held the baby, crying and trying to bring him back to life, before she showed him to me. She set him down between us and fainted from the exertion and blood loss and never woke up. Her father arrived that evening to see how she was doing. He found all three of us lying in the blood-soaked bed, Amelia and the baby dead and me struggling to stay alive. He got me to a hospital, and it was several weeks before I was able to try to get around again. My first trip out of the hospital was to visit the grave of Amelia and Anthony, Jr. That was what Mr. Terkel had named the baby. I was in a wheelchair and couldn’t get very close to the grave, but I managed to leave some flowers there, anyway. Amelia loved flowers. She even had them growing in a window box in our apartment."

"Jack." Rose looked at him, sympathy in her eyes. "I’m sorry...about Amelia and the baby. It must have been terrible to lose them that way."

He nodded. "It was. And worse yet was the guilt. I hadn’t given Amelia the love she deserved. She was a good woman, deserving of better than what I could give her. And yet I knew that she never blamed me—and that made it all the harder to bear. She was so forgiving. Right before she closed her eyes for the last time, she kissed me, though I couldn’t kiss her back, and told me she loved me. Those were her last words."

Rose saw the tears glistening in his eyes, though he tried to hide them. "Jack," she whispered, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t say anything for a minute, but instead stared at the buildings across the street, his mind far away. Finally, he looked at her again.

"I recovered...slowly. After a while, I started learning to walk again, using leg braces and special shoes. It wasn’t easy, but I kept trying. Finally, I got to the point where I could walk without the braces and could wear regular shoes again. I still used crutches, but I was walking. Eventually, I got rid of the crutches, to, using only a cane or a walking stick, and then got to the point that I could walk without that, though it’s difficult. I don’t use a walking stick while working because it gets in the way, but the rest of the time I use it. I made this one myself."

Rose leaned over to examine it. "Did you carve it yourself?"

He nodded. "Yes. I got the wood from a broken manzanita branch—I’m sure you’ve seen those in your travels."

Rose nodded. "Yes. They have beautiful wood. It’s a nice walking stick, though it’s terrible that you have to use it."

He shrugged. "Sometimes that’s what happens." He looked at her. "You should get back to your hotel before they lock you out. That hotel closes everything up at midnight, and it’s several blocks away."

"Where do you live?"

"About three blocks from here, down a dirt road a little ways. I can’t walk too far, but luckily Riverside isn’t that big a town."

"Will you show me where you live?" Rose clamped her mouth shut the second she said the words. She couldn’t seem to keep herself from wanting to see him again, no matter how hard she tried.

He looked at her for a moment. "Sure. I’ll meet you at the café after you get off work and show you where it is. Just be discreet. This is a small town, and people might whisper. You just got here, so there’s no use in ruining your reputation right from the start."

Since she had done more disreputable things than she cared to think about, Rose wasn’t overly concerned, but she could see that Jack wanted to protect her reputation. She couldn’t blame him, with all the gossip about her after the Titanic. Her name had appeared in the society columns several times, and Jack might have read them, or heard the gossip somewhere.

"I’ll see you tomorrow, then," she told him, standing and holding out a hand to help him to his feet.

Jack accepted her help, leaning on his walking stick. "Do you need me to walk you to the hotel?"

Rose wanted to spend a few more minutes with him, but didn’t want him to have to walk that far. "No, I can make it. I’ve walked down many a dark street in the past few years, and it hasn’t killed me yet. I know how to take care of myself." Impulsively, she reached out and squeezed his hand. "Good night, Jack. I’ll see you tomorrow."

With that, she walked away down the street, turning back once to see Jack watching her, a pensive expression on his face.

Chapter Seventy-Three
Stories