RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Eighty-Three
August 23, 1917
The next morning, Jack and Rose decided to visit
Cal’s grave. Neither had liked him; they had in fact hated and feared him,
especially Rose, but they felt that it was only right that they visit the
grave.
After breakfast, they walked slowly through
the streets of Philadelphia to the cemetery. Jack walked slowly beside Rose,
leaning heavily on his walking stick. The strain of traveling for the past few
days had worn him out, and he was slower than usual this morning.
They stopped only once, to buy flowers from a
street vendor to put on Walter Bukater’s grave. Rose selected a variety of
carnations and violets, flowers that her father had favored. He was buried in
the same cemetery as Cal, and Rose wanted to visit his grave once more before
confronting that of her ex-fiancé.
The couple stopped at Rose’s father’s grave
first. Rose knelt down, laying the flowers on the still slightly raised mound
of earth. The grave was well cared for, but few people ever placed flowers on
it anymore. Walter Bukater had largely been forgotten.
Rose’s fingers traced the words carved on the
marble headstone.
Walter Bukater
1860-1911
There had been little money left when he had
died, and he had been given only a simple headstone, in stark contrast to many
of the more elaborate ones that were placed on the graves of members of Philadelphia
society.
Walter had been just a month short of his
fifty-first birthday when he had died suddenly from a heart attack, brought on
by too many years of stress, smoking, and rich food. Had he taken better care
of himself, he might have lived longer, but neither he nor his doctor had
understood such things.
Rose knelt before the grave, remembering. It
had come as a shock when he had died suddenly—he had seemed to be in excellent
health. Her mother had been angry and embittered over his sudden death,
something that Rose had never understood. It had not been long after he had
died that Ruth had arranged the marriage with Cal, at last driving Rose to
leave home.
She spoke softly. "Hello, Daddy. I’m
finally home again, after wandering for five years. I’ve seen a lot of things
in that time. I think you would have liked some of them." She stood,
taking Jack’s hand. "This is Jack Dawson, my fiancé. We’ll be getting
married soon. This will be my second marriage, and Jack’s second marriage also.
You would have liked Jack, I think, and also Robert. But then, maybe you know
Robert, since he’s there with you now." She paused. "Daddy, I’m going
to have a baby. You’re going to be a grandfather. I know that I’m not married
yet, but I will be by the time the baby is born."
She went on, talking quietly about her
mother’s remarriage and her new baby brother, while Jack watched and listened,
his expression pensive. Her words, and her visit to her father’s grave, brought
back memories of his own parents, buried ten years ago in Chippewa Falls,
Wisconsin. With a start, he realized that he, too, had left home and never
returned.
Rose straightened, wiping her eyes. She
looked at her father’s grave one last time, then slowly moved on. Jack walked
beside her, still deep in thought.
They followed the neat cobblestone paths
around the outer edge of the cemetery. Nathan had told them that morning where
Cal’s grave was located, in the northeast corner of the cemetery next to the
wall.
Within a few minutes, they had found the
grave. A large marble headstone read:
Beloved Son
Caledon George Hockley
1882-1914
The nearby cobblestone path was undergoing
repairs, so Jack stepped carefully around the stones piled beside it, watching
as Rose looked at the headstone.
Rose stared at the headstone that marked
Cal’s final resting place, remembering how he had abused her, how he had nearly
shot herself and Jack on the Titanic—and his attempt to murder her in the
deserted alley in New York City. Thoughts of the others he had killed ran
through her mind, and suddenly she was filled with grief and rage.
Before she thought about what she was doing,
she bent down and picked up a handful of cobblestones, throwing them with all
her strength at the headstone. One bounced off, chipping the fine marble. Hardly
aware of what she doing, Rose screamed out her pain and anger.
"Bastard! Worthless, unimaginable
bastard!"
"Rose!" Jack hurried forward,
grabbing her arm before she could throw another stone. Rose dropped the rest of
the rocks and fell to her knees on the path, sobbing.
Gently, Jack helped her to her feet. Pulling
her close to him, he whispered soothingly, "It’s all right now. He’s dead.
He can’t hurt you anymore."
Rose pulled away, her rage not yet spent.
"I hate him! He killed my best friend! He killed my baby!"
"Rose! Rose, it’s all right. He didn’t
kill them. Deborah is all right. She’s in San Francisco. He never hurt
her."
"Not Deborah. No. He never hurt her, nor
would he have. She’s not a redhead, and he had no reason to dislike her. He
probably didn’t even remember her. No, it was Alice Cane, my best friend after
I left home, that he killed."
"Rose..."
"Alice was a beautiful, talented actress—with
hair as red as mine. Cal romanced her to get to me, taking advantage of her
drinking problem and her emotional instability. Once he’d gotten what he wanted
out of her, he killed her, leaving her body in an alley. I never even had a
chance to say good-bye. He tried to murder me that night, and I fled New York,
joining a theater troupe and traveling around the country. It was more than a
year before I found out that she had died."
Rose sat down on a bench, suddenly exhausted
from the force of her emotions. Jack sat down beside her, putting an arm around
her.
"Rose, I’m sorry about what happened to
Alice. But you don’t know that Cal killed her—"
"I do know. She was strangled, the same
way as I would have been if I hadn’t gotten away. He told me how he’d used her.
It didn’t take much to put two and two together once I found out she’d been
murdered."
"Oh, Rose." Jack didn’t know what
to say. "He’s gone now. He won’t hurt anyone ever again. And he didn’t
hurt your baby. It’s fine, growing inside you."
Rose pulled away, shaking her head. "Not
this baby. My first baby."
Jack stared at her, stunned. "You...you
had another baby? When?"
Rose buried her face in her hands, sobbing,
for a moment before she answered him. "In 1912—a couple of months after
the Titanic sank. The baby never lived to take a breath. One day, early in June,
Cal got mad at me and punched me in the stomach. I miscarried that night."
"Did Cal know about the baby?"
Rose shook her head. "No one knew, not
even me. I didn’t realize that I was pregnant until I lost the baby." She
shuddered. "It hurt so much—at first I didn’t know what was happening.
When I finally realized what was going on, I couldn’t go to anyone for help.
Mother would have been shocked and ashamed if she had known that I was
pregnant, and I was afraid that a servant would tell her what was going on. I
spent the night alone in the bathtub, wondering if I was going to die. I was
weak and shaky for weeks afterward. Mother was so afraid that I was sick and
wouldn’t be able to go through with the wedding. I couldn’t go through it,
though—not after all that had happened. I could never forgive Cal for killing
my unborn child, or for the harm he had done to me. I ran from our wedding, and
I’ve been running ever since. He never knew about the baby, or what he had
done. The only person I ever told was Deborah."
Jack pulled her against him, rocking her
gently as she cried. He could sympathize with what she had gone through, losing
her child alone. It had been almost the same for Amelia—but he had been beside
his wife when the baby was stillborn, though he couldn’t move to help her or
comfort her, while Rose had been all alone. And Amelia had died, while Rose had
survived.
He hesitated a moment, another question
entering his mind. After a moment, he asked her, "Who was the baby’s
father?"
Rose shook her head. "I don’t know. It
could have been Cal—or it could have been you. I lay with both of you at about
the right time. I always hoped that it was yours—I would rather have carried
your child than Cal’s. At least if it was yours, it was conceived in love. With
Cal...it was nothing but violence."
Rose put her head on Jack’s shoulder. He
pulled her closer, stroking her hair. He felt her grief and shared it, knowing
that the child she had lost might have been his.