RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Seventy-Eight

Jack and Deborah watched Rose run down the sidewalk, heading in the direction of the beach. Jack started to go after her, but Deborah caught his arm.

"Let her go. She needs to be alone for a while."

"It’s starting to get dark. She really shouldn’t be alone in the city at this hour."

"Rose can take care of herself. She’s been doing so for years." At Jack’s expression, Deborah added, "I know where she’ll probably go. There’s a spot on the beach where she likes to sit and think. She went there a lot after her husband died and she came back here for a few days. I went with her once."

"In that wheelchair?" Jack asked, then realized what he was asking. "Sorry. I guess if you can get it across the sand..."

"I’ve taken my wheelchair across more than one stretch of sand. It can be done if you’re strong enough."

Jack leaned tiredly on his walking stick. "You’re right. You can. Mrs. Hutchison..."

"Deborah."

"Deborah. Do you have any idea what she’s so upset about?"

"She didn’t want you to know she was here. She thinks it’s a betrayal that I told you where to find her."

"Why did she leave in the first place? I mean, everything seemed fine, and I’d never thought of her as a person to hide whatever was bothering her..."

Deborah looked at him. "You really don’t know, do you?"

"What is it I don’t know?"

Deborah motioned to him to sit back down on the bench. "She said she hadn’t told you why she left, but I wasn’t sure if that was true or not."

"Did she tell you?"

"Yes." Deborah took a deep breath, hoping that telling him wouldn’t get her into more trouble with Rose. "Mr. Dawson..."

"Jack."

"Jack. The reason that she left is that she’s pregnant."

"That was why she left? But why? Did she think I would throw her out or abandon her?"

"Just the opposite. She was sure you wouldn’t."

"Then what was the problem?"

"She didn’t want to put any kind of burden on you." When Jack started to speak, she held up her hand. "She knew how difficult it was for you to find work, and thought that if you knew, you would want to support the baby yourself instead of letting her do so."

"I don’t mind that she works."

"She realizes that, but she knows that one or both of you will have to find work that pays better to support the baby. She thought it would be too hard for you, so she left to take of the child herself."

"Just like that? Without a word?" Jack tried hard to keep the anger and confusion out of his voice. He had already lost one child. Where did Rose get the idea that she should deprive him of another?

"She thought that it would be easier if you didn’t know, so that you’d never try to help take care of the child. She doesn’t think you can."

"What do you mean, she doesn’t think I can?" Jack was growing angrier. "Does she think that just because I have a little trouble walking, I’m incapable of working to support our child, incapable of being a good father?"

"I think Rose doesn’t know what she thinks, so she came up with an excuse."

"And what do you think? Do you think a crippled person can be a good parent?"

Deborah looked at him evenly. "I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk at all, nor have I been able to in eleven years. And yet I have a daughter, who I love very much. Yes, I think a crippled person can be a good parent. And so does Rose. It’s your financial situation she was worried about, not your ability to be a good father."

"She’s right, work can be difficult to find...but then, it always was. That’s just the way life is. I see no reason not to help support the child, to be a part of its life."

"Would you marry her?"

"Of course."

"Out of love or duty?"

Jack looked stunned for a moment. No one had ever asked him that before. Finally, he answered. "Out of love." His voice was steady. "I would never have taken up with her as I did if I didn’t love her."

"She thinks you would marry her out of duty."

"No. Not out of duty. I love her. But how can I tell her that without her walking away again?"

"I think you should propose to her without letting her know that you know about the baby. Let her tell you, and pretend to be surprised. She’ll think much more favorably of your proposal if she knows that you want to marry her because you love her."

"Do you think she’d accept?"

"I don’t know, Jack. That’s something you’ll have to work out with her."

*****

Rose ran down the sidewalk, her feet pounding on the pavement. How could she? How could she? The thought rang through her mind over and over. How could Debbie betray me this way? She’s my best friend. She knew that I didn’t want Jack to find me. Why did she tell him where I was?

But at the same time, another thought made itself known. I’m glad she did.

Rose kept running until she reached the shore, then walked across the sand and sank down on a piece of driftwood. She hadn’t wanted to leave Jack. If she hadn’t become pregnant, she would have stayed with him—at least until something went wrong, or she felt that they were becoming too close.

Alone on the beach, she could acknowledge that her pregnancy wasn’t her only reason for leaving. While it was true that she didn’t want to put the burden of a child on him, it had been an excuse to leave before she could be hurt again. Everyone she had loved had left her—or she had left them. Her very presence seemed to bring trouble. Sooner or later, everyone she loved would be hurt by her.

Deborah’s words from the previous day came back to her. What are you going to do when trouble finds you again? Are you going to abandon your child and flee again? Will you drag the child with you while you try to escape from whatever it is that haunts you? What are you going to do, Rose?

What would she do? She couldn’t simply leave her child behind when things got rough—but what would happen to it? Would she be able to care for it? Would having her for a mother bring misery upon the child? She wanted the baby; she had wanted a child for years. But she wasn’t sure that having a child of her own was a good idea. What if she really was cursed?

It was ridiculous to believe that she was cursed, she knew. But somehow, that didn’t make any difference. Logic told her that there was nothing wrong with her, nothing about her that inevitably brought harm to those she cared about. But her emotions told her something different, and for that reason she had run blindly for five years, settling only briefly when a glimmer of hope presented itself. And when the hope had vanished, when her reason for settling was gone, she ran again. Eventually, she had come to believe that she had to run, in order to keep from bringing her own bad luck down on others.

And yet when Jack had come back into her life, she had been shaken up by it. Maybe she wasn’t really cursed; maybe she didn’t bring bad luck down on those she loved. She had thought him dead; for five long years she had mourned his death. And then, suddenly, he had been there, alive and well, driving a wagon down a California road. Her presence hadn’t destroyed him before, and she had been willing to take a chance on staying with him again.

But she had been running for too long. Always, in the back of her mind, was the nagging thought that something could happen, that something could take him from her. And so, to avoid being hurt by his loss, she had run from him.

She couldn’t go back to him now. She had almost killed him once, letting him sink into the dark, icy Atlantic, and then had compounded her error by almost marrying Cal. Fate had brought them back together, but she knew there wouldn’t be another chance.

It was for the best, anyway. If she never allowed herself to get close to anyone, there would never be any pain.

*****

Jack and Deborah sat in the Hutchisons’ car as the chauffeur, Mitchell, drove them through the darkened city streets towards the beach. Jack was glad not to have to walk; he didn’t know his way around San Francisco, and had no idea where Rose might have gone. The coastline in the area was extensive, and Rose was capable of traveling a considerable distance in a short time.

Deborah knew where she was likely to have gone, though. Mitchell parked the car on the street near the beach, then brought Deborah’s wheelchair around and lifted her out of the car. Jack waited, leaning against the vehicle, as Deborah got comfortable in the chair and wheeled herself around to face him.

"Thank you, Mitchell," she told him. "Just wait for us. I don’t know how long we’ll be, so if you want to find something to do, go ahead. There’s plenty of places open around here."

"Yes, Ma’am." Mitchell tipped his hat, striding off towards some of the brightly lit buildings.

Jack looked at Deborah. "Where might she be?"

"Just follow me."

Deborah wheeled her chair down the walkway and onto the sand, struggling to move it. After walking slowly beside her for a few minutes, Jack handed her his walking stick and got behind her to push the chair himself.

"Just give me directions," he told her, scanning the dark beach for any sign of Rose.

"She’ll probably be around that cliff there." Deborah pointed, glancing back at Jack as he struggled to push her through the fine sand. "Do you need some help?"

"I’m okay. Besides, this gives me something to lean on."

Deborah laughed. "I wish I could walk. You’re lucky that you still can. Rose said that you had polio last summer."

"Yes. I was in New York City during the epidemic last year."

"You seem to have recovered better than many. I read in the newspaper that some people died, and others were permanently crippled, some worse than me."

"Yes." Jack thought of Amelia. "That’s true. It was a bad time. I was lucky to survive." He changed the subject, not wanting to talk about it. "What happened to you?"

"I was injured in the earthquake here in 1906. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?"

"I heard about it. It was in all the newspapers. Even though I was living in a small town in Wisconsin, I still heard about it. I didn’t pay much attention, though. I was only fourteen, and an earthquake in some far-off city I’d never seen didn’t interest me much."

"I was eleven when it happened. I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention, either, had I not been there and been injured. We’d only been living in San Francisco for about a year. Before that, we lived in Philadelphia. That’s how Rose and I know each other. When did you leave Wisconsin?"

"I left in 1907, after my parents were killed in a fire."

"I’m sorry."

"It’s okay. It’s been a while, now."

"When did you first come to California?"

Jack thought about it. "I think it was about 1910. I was in Northern California first, and then came to Southern California, to Santa Monica. Why?"

"You look familiar for some reason, like I’ve seen you before."

"So do you, a little. Maybe it’s the wheelchair. I once drew a picture of a girl in a wheelchair at the Santa Monica Pier."

"With her hat tilted on her head?"

"Yes! That was her." He stopped, surprised. "Was that you?"

"That was me. I still have the drawing. I figured you would be a famous artist someday."

"Well, I haven’t gotten that far yet, though I keep trying."

"You’ll get there. You have a gift."

"That’s what Rose said the day after we met."

"On the Titanic?"

"She told you about that?"

"Two days ago. She’s been through a rough time over the years, but she’s strong. She’s survived a lot."

"She’s told me about what she’s been doing these past few years."

"All of it?"

"I don’t know. She does seem to be hiding something sometimes."

They rounded the cliff that cut off the heavily visited beach from the more rugged area that Rose favored. Scanning the beach, they saw a hunched figure sitting on a chunk of driftwood, so lost in thought that she didn’t notice their presence.

"Rosie..." Deborah called as they approached her.

Rose looked up, startled, surprised to see Jack and Deborah coming towards her. She hadn’t expected them to follow her. Didn’t they understand that she wanted to be alone?

"What are you doing here?" she asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

"We need to talk to you," Deborah told her before Jack could speak.

"No, you don’t. You’ve said enough already—to him!" Rose pointed to Jack.

"Rosie, shut up." Deborah’s voice was harsher than it had ever been. "I had my reasons for contacting him—and they were because of you. You’ve been running for too long. It can’t go on forever."

"It’s a free country, Deborah. I can do what I want."

"But do you really want to keep running?" Before Rose could answer, she went on. "You’ve been running for over five years, Rosie. Isn’t it time to stop?"

"Don’t tell me it’s time to stop. That’s for me to decide."

"When? When you’ve run out of places to run to? When you’ve abandoned everyone who cares about you? When is it going to end?"

"I’ve never done anything without a reason. And my life has not just been running away. Don’t you dare say that it has been. I’ve done a lot of things, many of which I’m proud of, some of which I’m not. I’ve been an actress, and fought for civil rights, and married a good man. I’ve seen places I never thought I’d see. I even got on a ship again and learned to fly a plane. I’ve met a lot of good people, and a few who weren’t so good. And I’ve survived. I’ve survived everything that life has thrown at me, and I’m still here." Rose was trembling with the force of her emotions. "I’ve made it count."

"Yes, but Rosie, you’ve also run from a lot of good people. You run when things get uncomfortable, when people get too close. You’re missing a lot of good things in life by refusing to let people get close, by leaving whenever trouble arises. You keep running from everyone, good or bad. Rosie, it’s time to stop. I don’t think you’re happy."

"Don’t tell me how I feel, Debbie. Only I know how I feel."

"I think you feel confused and unhappy."

Rose glared at her. Deborah had cut right to the heart of the problem, but Rose wasn’t about to admit it. Turning, she began to stalk off down the beach.

"Rose!" She heard Jack calling after her, but didn’t stop.

"I’ll find my way back to the car, Jack," Deborah told him. "I think you two need to sort out your differences alone. I’ll have Mitchell wait until you’re ready to come back to the house."

"Will you be able to find him?"

"He knows to check back every so often to see if I’ve returned. He’s been our chauffeur for several years."

"All right. I don’t know how long this will take, though—or if it will even work."

"If anyone can help her, you can. She’s loved you for years, even when she thought you were dead. Talk some sense into her, Jack. It’s time for her to stop running."

*****

Jack followed slowly after Rose. She had stopped in the shadow of another cliff that marked the boundaries of the beach at high tide, and was waiting for him. She stared out to sea as he approached.

"Rose." She turned to look at him. "Rose, I..."

"Why did you come after me? Didn’t you find my note?"

"I found it. Why don’t you think things will work out? Is it because I’m crippled?"

Rose hesitated. Maybe she should just tell him that was the reason, and let that be the end of it. He wouldn’t want to be around her after she rejected him. But she couldn’t lie to him.

"I couldn’t stay, Jack. I would have hurt you, or you would have hurt me."

"No, I wouldn’t have. And I don’t believe you would have hurt me, either."

"Not deliberately, no. But a lot of things happen that just can’t be avoided."

"And so you run before anything can happen."

"I’m not running."

"Yes, you are. You’ve been running for a long time." He paused, working up his courage. "Rose, I want you to come home with me to Los Angeles. I want you to be my wife."

"No." Rose shook her head. "I’m not coming back."

"Then I will stay here with you."

"That won’t work, either. I won’t marry you, Jack."

"Why?"

Rose turned to look at him. "Because it wouldn’t work. Because I don’t want to hurt you, and even if I didn’t hurt you, you wouldn’t want to stay with me for long."

"Rose, I missed you for over five years. Why wouldn’t I want to stay with you?"

Rose turned away again. "You don’t know me, Jack." Her voice was barely audible. "You don’t know what I am or what I’ve done."

"Why don’t you tell me?"

Rose turned to face him. This is it, she thought. This will kill it. He’ll never want to see me again after he learns the truth. As painful as it was, she had to tell him.

And she did. "I’ve done a lot of terrible things in my life, Jack. I’ve killed two people. I’ve been a whore when it was necessary to survive. I promised a dying old woman that I would bring back her grandson to inherit her property, and then crashed the plane we were flying in. I abandoned my mother to the tender mercies of the Hockleys, knowing that she didn’t have many survival skills, and I haven’t seen her since. I don’t know if she’s even still alive." Her voice broke on the last word. "That’s why things won’t work, Jack, because of what I am. I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess. I’ll always love you, but I can’t stay with you." She turned to walk away. "Good-bye, Jack."

"Rose, wait." He reached out to grab hold of her arm, but she was already walking away. He followed her, limping through the sand as quickly as he could.

Just as he caught up to her, he tripped on the uneven ground, falling against her and knocking them both down in the sand.

"Get off me!" Rose’s voice was panicked. "You’ll hurt it!"

"Hurt what? The baby?"

"How did you know?!"

"Deborah told me."

"I’m going to kill her!"

"Haven’t you killed enough people already?"

At that, Rose burst into tears. "I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t."

"What happened?"

"I accidentally killed a fellow actress in the Shakespeare troupe. She had been picking on me for months, and we got into a fight, and I shoved her against a cabinet and broke her neck. I didn’t mean to. I was in jail for several weeks after that, but the verdict was not guilty by reason of self-defense. Then, out in the Mexico desert, after the plane crash, I was captured by the bandits who had shot the plane down. I only wanted to escape before they killed me, so I gave myself to three of the men, hoping that they would trust me enough to leave me untied. They did, but I felt so sick inside afterwards…I had sold myself in exchange for my freedom. I knocked the guard unconscious, and tried to escape, but the leader of the group of bandits, who hadn’t taken me, caught me trying to escape. He was trying to stab me when I got hold of his gun and shot him. I didn’t want to kill him. It was self-defense. I hated myself for doing it. I still hate myself."

"You didn’t have a choice. He would have killed you."

"And Marietta? I didn’t have to kill her. I should have done like my friend Evelyn said and ignored her, turned the other cheek. She wasn’t well-liked anyway. She might have been fired eventually."

"Rose..." Jack got up, helping her to her feet. They walked together back to the piece of driftwood, Rose crying hysterically the whole way.

"Rose," he began again. "You couldn’t have known how the fight would turn out. You didn’t kill her deliberately."

"I hated her. She was always looking for an excuse to pick on me, to get me into trouble. She wanted my position in the company, and the man who was my lover." She looked at Jack. "Yes, I had a lover. What I did was not whoring. I went to him because I wanted to. I never loved him, and he never loved me, but we still had some good times together. Things finally ended between us, and Marietta won his attention, but she still hated me. And I wound up murdering her."

"It was an accident."

"I still should have been punished."

"You’ve been punishing yourself."

"It’s still not enough."

"Rose, it’s over and done with. You can’t change it, and you didn’t mean for it to happen. Isn’t it time you stopped tearing yourself up over it?"

"I can’t. She’ll haunt me forever. So will Guerrero."

Jack knew without asking that Guerrero was the man she had killed in the desert. "That may be, but you have a long life ahead of you. You can’t put your life on hold because of them. They don’t deserve that kind of sacrifice. It would have been better if you hadn’t killed them, yes, but you didn’t do it on purpose, and you feel enough guilt to punish you forever. It shows that you have a conscience."

Rose wiped her eyes with her skirt, wanting to believe him. Maybe she should stop hating herself over something that she hadn’t meant to do, and couldn’t change. But it was a hard thing to do.

Jack went on. "I don’t think you’re a whore, either. Those men you took on in the desert—you didn’t have a choice. Your freedom was more important than anything else, and you went after it the only way you could."

Rose shook her head in denial. "It wasn’t the first time I’d sold myself. I sold myself before—to Cal, in order to get the money my mother wanted. She may have arranged the marriage, but I went along with it, until the day that I turned and ran back down the aisle, leaving Cal, Mother, and everything I’d ever known behind. Cal was my first man. I was never willing with him, but that didn’t matter. He had an unbelievable amount of power over me, or so I believed. I never really thought I had a choice until the day I left him. That time in the car, with you—it wasn’t the first time for me. Cal had me first—but I wish you had been the first."

"I knew you weren’t a virgin."

"How did you know?"

"You lacked a...ah...a maidenhead."

"I wasn’t a whore for you." Rose’s voice was defensive.

"No, you weren’t. You were a warm, loving woman, the first I’d ever shared that with."

Rose stared at him. "I was?"

"You were."

"I didn’t realize that. I wish that I had been able to wait—but Cal was convinced that he had a right to my body, whether I liked it or not. I couldn’t say a word without having my reputation ruined. He was so well-respected—no one would have believed what he was doing to me. I only stayed with him after he found me on the Carpathia for Mother’s sake. And then I abandoned her."

"Would you like to go back and see her again?"

"I can’t, Jack. It’s been too long. I don’t even know where she might be."

"We could go to Philadelphia and look for her."

"But what about your work?"

"I think I’m out of a job, and so are you. You boss at the restaurant told me to tell you not to come back, and your director was furious that you'd disappeared."

"Oh, God." Rose buried her face in her hands. "I’m so sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble."

"With no other place to go, really, and nothing better to do, why don’t we take the time to go back east and look for your mother? I think you’ve been carrying around the guilt of abandoning her for a long time now."

"Since I left," Rose agreed. "I don’t know if she’d even want to see me, after the way I ran from her."

"But can it hurt to try?"

"No, I guess it can’t. If she wants nothing to do with me, then...then maybe my mind will be at peace. And if she does...maybe I can help her in whatever situation she’s found herself in." Rose thought about Cal’s words about his father being in love with her mother, but she didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He hated redheads, had wanted to kill her, and his story about her mother might have been a figment of his crazed imagination.

"Maybe, if we can find her, she can attend a successful wedding."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I’m not marrying you, Jack. I’ve already said that. I’m not going to burden you with this child."

"It wouldn’t be a burden. Yes, work is hard to find sometimes, but that’s the way it’s always been. And whether you marry me or not, I will still contribute to the care and feeding of this child. It’s a part of both of us. I’ve lost one child, but I won’t allow you to run away and take this one from me. Even if you want no part of me, I still want to know where you are, and how you are doing, so that I can do my part to keep a roof over your heads and food in your stomachs, and so that maybe, one day, I can be a part of our child’s life."

"I won’t have you marrying me out of duty. You wouldn’t be happy, and neither would I."

"It isn’t duty. I’ve loved you for a long time, Rose. On the day I left Philadelphia, I wished it was me you were marrying instead of Cal. After we met again and moved to Los Angeles, I always hoped that once life was settled for us, we might marry and start a family. Now, that family has been started sooner than I expected, but I still love you, and it’s for that reason that I want to marry you. Not just to give the baby a name, but to have you at my side for a lifetime."

"Jack..." Rose flung her arms around him. "I don’t know. I just don’t know. I love you, but everyone I’ve loved has suffered."

"Not everyone, Rose. Loving you has never made me unhappy—except for when I thought you were marrying Cal. And now you’re free and clear..."

"Yes."

Jack went on, not understanding her response. "And you are an independent woman who can take of herself. But I still want you at my side, because I love you."

"I love you, too, Jack. Yes."

"What?"

"Yes, I accept your proposal. I’ll marry you."

"Rose..." And before she could say a word, he took her in his arms and kissed her as though he would never stop.

Chapter Seventy-Nine
Stories