RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Seventy-Three

May 20, 1917

Half an hour after she had gotten off work at the café, Rose finally made her way to Jack’s house on the edge of town. She had gotten lost once, turned around in the curving streets of Riverside, and had had to stop and ask if anyone knew where Jack lived.

When she finally found the house, she made her way slowly up the dirt path leading up to it. The small building was dilapidated, hardly more than a shack, but she doubted that he could afford more. Work was probably difficult to find, with his crippled leg, and he was lucky to have as much as he had.

She clutched the bag she had brought from the café. Jack had insisted upon buying her dinner the night before, so she had decided to return the favor. She had enough money from tips—each waitress collected and kept her own tips—to buy dinner for both of them and bring it with her.

Suddenly nervous, she walked up the two steps to the open porch and knocked on the door. Still clutching the bag, she waited, hearing the thump of Jack’s walking stick on the floor and the sound of his footsteps.

He finally opened the door and let her inside. The windows were open, letting the late afternoon light in, so she looked around the small, two-room building. A stove sat in one corner, with a nearby counter running along the wall. Shelves containing food and dishes sat above the counter, and a small table stood in another corner, littered with drawings. An old bench and a chair were lined up beside the table. Through the open door, she could see a cot set up in the other room, a small, rickety looking table beside it. Jack’s suitcase still leaned against the wall. There were no other furnishings.

Jack noticed her looking around. "Welcome to my home," he told her, waving his hand around in a sweeping gesture. "A bit rundown, but home."

"It’s—a place to live," Rose agreed, admitting that in spite of the dilapidated condition of the house, it was clean and looked lived in. A watercolor, obviously Jack’s work, hung above the table, and a few dishes were scattered on the counter, in need of being washed. The floor was a little dusty, but the windows were clean.

"I...ah...I brought dinner," she told him, setting the bag on the counter. "Maybe you could clear your drawings off the table, and we can sit down and eat?"

"Oh, you didn’t need to bring food. I have some here."

"You bought me dinner last night, so I decided to return the favor. I had enough money from tips to do so. Besides, I get a discount because I work there. Since I brought it all the way out here, and even got lost, we might as well eat it."

"You got lost getting here?"

"Yes. I got turned around on these curving streets. Riverside isn’t as bad as San Francisco, but it is easy to get lost if you don’t know where you’re going."

"I know. I did a lot more walking than I planned when I first came here, trying to figure out where I was going." He placed the drawings in his folder, a cloth-covered portfolio, and set it on the bench.

Rose brought some dishes over from the shelves and took the food from the bag. Some of it was cold, but she didn’t trust the rusty looking stove enough to try to heat the food on it. Jack sat down on the bench, leaving the chair for her.

After eating in silence for a moment, Rose asked, "What brought you here to Riverside? Why didn’t you stay in New York?"

Jack shrugged, looking at his plate. "Too many memories. I couldn’t get away from reminders of Amelia, and Mr. Terkel was...well, he blamed me for her death, because she died in childbirth. I could have stayed, but he no longer wanted me working for him, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to stay. I took a train to California and found a job in Riverside. So, I stayed here."

"Do you like what you do?"

"It’s a job. I get to travel some, and make a living."

Involuntarily, Rose glanced around the room. It wasn’t much of a living if he was staying in a place like this.

"I know it’s rundown, but it’s good enough," he told her, a little defensively.

"I guess I can’t criticize. I spent several months living in a slum hotel while I was working as a street performer. I also spent a winter in a sod hut in Alaska."

"It doesn’t sound any worse than this place."

"I think the slum hotel was worse. At least you have some privacy here. I was trying to hide the fact that I was a white woman masquerading as an octoroon without getting caught. I had to scrub off my makeup in an alley before I went home, because they didn’t accept Negroes there. They thought it was too good for them." She shook her head. "If that was too good, I would hate to see the hotel accommodations they are permitted to have."

"You’ve done some interesting things in your life since you left Cal behind."

"I have. You have, too."

"I’ve seen far more than I ever wanted to see."

"So have I." Jack looked at her questioningly, but she didn’t elaborate.

When the meal was over, Rose washed the dishes and swept the floor, despite Jack’s insistence that he could do those things. The room was growing dark as the sun set outside, so Rose lit a candle and sat down at the table with Jack again.

"That’s a lovely watercolor," she told him, looking at the picture on the wall.

"Thanks. I painted it in New York for Amelia. She liked it, too. After she died, I took it with me."

"Your work has improved over the years. It was wonderful before, but this is even better."

"I’m not so sure about that, but thank you."

"Can I see your drawings?" Rose asked impulsively.

"If you like." He picked up the portfolio from the bench and set it in front of her.

Rose pushed it back across the table and sat down next to him, then glanced at him, afraid she was being too forward, but he didn’t object.

She thumbed through the folder, looking at images captured over the years. None of his earlier drawings existed any longer, of course. They had gone down with the Titanic, but over the past five years he had more than made up for what had been lost.

There were drawings of the crowd around the pier where the Carpathia had docked, drawings of various people and places in Chicago and Michigan, drawings from his time in New York City. She paused, looking at a drawing of a young woman with sparkling eyes and an animated face.

"Is this...Amelia?" she asked, looking at the portrait. Jack had captured the woman’s spirit in the drawing. As he had before, he had seen her, had captured her to the life.

"Yes," he told her, looking at the drawing. He hadn’t looked at any of the drawings of his late wife in a long time.

"She was beautiful."

"She was. And full of life. She deserved better."

"Any woman who had you for a husband could count herself lucky."

He shook his head. "She should have married someone who could have loved her as she deserved. I couldn’t. I was still thinking of someone else."

"Me." Rose immediately understood.

Jack nodded. "You. I never could forget you."

Rose looked at him. "I never forgot you, either. You were always my...inspiration to go on, even when things were at their worst. When Robert died, I didn’t want to go on, but I remembered how you had made me promise to go on...and I got up from the snow, and went back to the sod hut. I lived there for the rest of the winter, and in the spring, after I’d buried Robert, I left and returned south. I never wanted to lose anyone to the cold again, as I had lost him—and you."

She turned to another drawing in the portfolio, another drawing of Amelia. She was wearing her wedding dress, posed artfully in front of a piano. Her smile lit the paper.

"She was so happy that day," Jack told her. "We’d just been married a few hours earlier, and I drew that portrait while we were hiding out from all the guests. Her father was well-known, and there were more guests than I had ever expected to see at my wedding. I didn’t know most of them, but Amelia did. After a while, we got tired of socializing and escaped for an hour or so to a small reception room. We didn’t know when we would have to return to the festivities or we probably would have disappeared altogether."

"When Robert and I were married, we just had a small wedding in a park in San Francisco, and the reception was at the Hills’ home. The next day, we set sail for Alaska."

"Was it hard, getting on a ship again?"

Rose nodded. "I kept looking for icebergs, even though we were too far south for them. I was terrified that the ship would sink."

"I haven’t been on a ship since I left the Carpathia."

"Maybe someday you’ll sail again."

"Maybe."

Rose turned to the next picture. Amelia gazed out from the paper, her loose dress barely concealing her swollen midsection.

"I drew that early in July last year, before she got sick. She was about eight months pregnant at the time, and looking forward to the baby."

"You were looking forward to it, too, weren’t you?"

He nodded. "Yes. More than anything. A son or a daughter...but I guess it wasn’t meant to be." He showed her the last drawing of Amelia, of her grieving face as she had shown him the stillborn baby. "I drew that one later, after I had recovered from the polio somewhat. For a while, I could hardly move, let alone draw. I drew that one after I had visited their grave."

"Jack..." Rose shook her head, not knowing what to say. "It must have been terrible to lose them both like that."

"It was. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of them...especially the baby. Mr. Terkel named him Anthony, but Amelia and I had always planned to name a boy Jack Dawson, Jr."

Impulsively, Rose reached out and hugged him, pulling him close against her. She was only half-surprised when he returned the gesture, hugging her back. From the moment they had met, they had been comfortable in each other’s presence, feeling free to act upon their feelings.

After a moment, they pulled apart, slightly embarrassed at the sudden display of affection. Rose quickly turned to the next drawing—and stopped short when she saw the subject of the drawing.

It was her. She was standing at the railing of one of the upper decks of the Titanic, wearing a dress that was now at the bottom of the sea. Her hair was pinned up neatly, and she had a pensive look on her face. She remembered the moment then. It was the first time they had seen each other, across the distance between the decks, between their differing social classes.

"You remembered," she whispered, looking at the drawing. "That was the moment we first saw each other."

"I made several drawings of you over the years from memory or imagination. Look at this one." He turned to a drawing of her riding a horse in the surf near the Santa Monica Pier with the roller coaster in the background.

Rose’s eyes went wide. "How did you know?" she asked, her voice barely audible.

"Know what?"

Rose reached into her purse, pulling out the photographs she always carried there. Unwrapping the cloth she kept them in to prevent damage, she took out the photograph of herself on the horse. It was almost a perfect match to the drawing.

Jack just stared at the photograph, stunned. He hadn’t known that Rose had struck out on her own until the day before, and yet he had drawn her in almost the exact pose she had taken for the photograph. It was nothing short of amazing.

"When was this picture taken?" he asked, looking at her image. She was dressed in trousers and a shirt, and her face was bright and smiling.

"October of 1915. I was working as an actress in Hollywood, and I finally got the courage to visit Santa Monica Pier. A tourist took the picture."

He shook his head. "That was the same time as I made that drawing. How incredibly strange."

"Did you show any of these drawings to Amelia?"

"The ones of you?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "No. I never spoke of you to anyone. You were a part of my past, to be kept locked away. This was the only drawing I made of you while Amelia and I were married. I don’t know why I drew it—it just seemed to be something I had to do. Maybe this is why."

"I never spoke of you to anyone, either—except Molly Brown, the time I saw her in Denver. I never told Robert about you, nor anyone else. Mother and Cal forbade me to talk about you—so I kept your memory safe within myself. I thought about you often over the years, but I didn’t talk about you. I thought you were dead, and I...I suppose I never had the courage to talk about you to anyone who hadn’t known you."

"Did you love your husband?"

"Yes, I did—just as I think you loved Amelia. It may not have been the way you thought you should have loved her, but I can tell, from the way you speak of her, that you did love her, even if there was always something missing. I loved Robert—but there were times when I wondered why things had turned out the way they had, why it was that my life had taken the direction that it did. I still wonder sometimes." She turned to look at him, her face shadowed in the candlelight. "But I made each day count. Every day since I left Philadelphia behind, I tried to make the most of every hour of every day. It wasn’t always easy—but I did it."

"I think I did, too, in a different way. I saw a lot of things and learned a lot about what’s wrong with the world. I tried to help things for the better—and maybe I did, a little bit."

"You made Amelia happy."

He shook his head. "She knew that something was missing."

"But she loved you anyway, and I’m willing to bet that if she had lived, you would have stayed with her, had more children, and learned to love her as deeply as she loved you."

"I don’t know. Maybe." Jack looked out the window. It was completely dark outside. "It’s getting late."

"Yes. I suppose I should be getting back to the hotel." Rose tucked the photograph back into her bag, then turned to look at him again. "I missed you, Jack. I never really stopped missing you."

He looked at her. "I missed you, too." He stopped, as though unsure of what to say. "After the ship sank, and we were in the water, you told me that you loved me."

"I did. I—I still do." She looked away, embarrassed. How could she admit to such a thing after five years had passed? She had only just seen him again the day before, and they had known each other for only three days aboard the Titanic. She was no longer the naive seventeen-year-old girl she had been. She was a grown woman now, twenty-two years old. Too old for love at first sight.

"I never told you then, but I wish I had. I’ve loved you all these years."

"Jack...we...we’re too old too fall in love so fast. We were so young then..."

"I know...but the passage of time didn’t change how I felt about you."

"It didn’t change things for me, either," Rose admitted. "But...it’s been so long...I don’t know where to go from here."

Jack looked at the darkness outside, then back at her. "In a month, my boss wants me to transfer to Los Angeles to work. It’ll be an easier job, one that won’t require so much walking. If things should...work out between us...perhaps we could both go to Los Angeles. That is, if you want to."

"I lived in Los Angeles for a time. I liked it there well enough, and I suppose I could find a job as easily there as here. If things should work out, I will go with you. If not...we’ll think about that when the time comes."

Jack nodded. "Yes...we’ll think about it then."

Rose stood to leave, knowing that she had to return to the hotel before it was closed up for the night. Jack pulled himself up from the bench, leaning on his walking stick.

"Well...good night, Rose," he told her.

"Good night, Jack." She started for the door, but stopped at the sound of his voice.

"Rose..."

She turned, letting him pull her into his arms. The walking stick clattered to the floor, unnoticed, as they shared their first kiss in more than five years.

Chapter Seventy-Four
Stories