I stood at the Lady Evelyn’s rail and took one last look at the Storstad as she made ready to continue upstream. In the light of dawn, her bow seemed so much smaller than it had coming out of the fog. The steel was mangled, twisted to port and crumpled in. Bits of Empress debris still stuck to it like blood on a blade. Crewmen had laid out the corpses in long rows on the deck of the two steamers. My gaze passed over the hundreds of dead but I didn’t let it linger.
They aren’t there. They can’t be.
I hadn’t seen either of them on the Storstad as Dr. Grant and I did our rounds. Given the odds, it didn’t make sense that Jim or Meg survived. But it made even less sense to accept that they were gone.
I stepped into the crowd of survivors along the rail as the Lady Evelyn and the Eureka gathered steam. Huddled aboard, we shivered in the frostbitten wind, holding tight to one another, holding on to the hope that our lost loved ones were doing the same on the other small ship.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“DRINK THIS.” Steele handed me a crystal glass of amber liquid. Whiskey, I think. Aunt Geraldine’s private stock. He must have poured it from the sideboard where she kept her good pinwheel crystal. I’d never even noticed him getting up. The memories had so completely taken over, I was surprised to find my clothes were dry. I brought the cup to my lips, steadying it with both hands as I sipped. Horrible stuff, just like what Mrs. Andersen had given me, but already I felt its warmth radiating in my core. My heart throbbed in my ears, as though I’d just run ten miles.
“Better?”
I nodded.
He didn’t take a drink himself. Didn’t pick up his notepad.
I swirled the liquid in the glass. Sipped again. “That night was the last time I saw either of them, Meg or Jim.”
I’d seen Meg take her last breath, heard her last word, even though I’d no idea what she meant. As far as I knew, there were passengers by that name aboard. Retelling those last moments together made me face that horrible truth—Meg was gone. My heart knew it, too. The hope had turned to grief.
But Jim was strong, sound when I last saw him. I wanted Steele to tell me that he’d seen Jim since. That he knew something more. But he said nothing.
“It’s funny,” I continued almost to myself, “you never know it’s the last time … until it’s too late.” I paused. “Like with my aunt, I didn’t even know she was ill. I can’t remember what I last said to her. Or even know what I would have said, really.” I shook my head. “But the things I never should have said—those are the ones that I’ll always remember.”
We sat in silence for a few moments.
“I’ve interviewed a lot of sad stories over the years and if it’s taught me anything, Miss Ellen, it’s this: regret is an insatiable sonofabitch. No matter how sorry you feel, it’s never enough, and the more you feed into regret, the hungrier it gets.”
He spoke like a man who’d done his share of feeding. I wondered what his story was.
“The way I see it,” he continued, “a card laid is played. There’s no sense second-guessing. We do what we can with the hand that we have. And sometimes we make stupid moves. And, yes, sometimes we have terrible hands, so grim we just want to fold.”
“Wait—” The ridiculousness, the futility of it all, struck me. “You’re comparing my life to a—a poker game?”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I just think we gotta keep on playing, you know? We’re still in. Who knows what might come on the next flip from the deck.”
His optimism seemed slightly forced and I wondered if he was advising me or himself.
“What do you regret?” I asked, curious. The question caught him off guard and I saw the shadow of his answer ripple behind his eyes.
“This isn’t about me—”
“I’m asking. I’m making it about you.”
He looked away for a few seconds, then, seemingly resolved, sat back in his seat. He met my eyes. “Nothing. I don’t regret anything.”
I studied him for a moment, the jut of his chin, the glint in his eye. “You’re bluffing.”
He smiled slightly and I knew I was right.
“You play your cards very close to your chest, Mr. Steele. Always the one asking the questions. Never revealing anything. But I bet of all the sad stories you’ve interviewed, yours is equally tragic. I’ve read your work.” The man wrote with detailed description, but also great passion. In few words, he got to the heart of it. Though he played the objective reporter, the cold and detached journalist, somehow I knew he wasn’t.
“No one could write the way you do and not feel deeply,” I concluded.
“Maybe I’m just that good of a writer.”
“Maybe.” I finished off my drink and set the glass on the mahogany end table. “But I doubt it.”
Steele’s half-smile crept up his cheek, making him look almost bashful, like a young scamp caught doing something right. “You have a way with words, Miss Ellen. I’m not sure if you are paying me an insult or a compliment.”
“That depends—do you think compassion is a virtue or a flaw?” I paused a moment before asking what I really wanted to know. “Do you care about anyone, really, or are we just article fodder?”
For a second, he seemed stung by my question but he spoke with conviction. “I report the truth. The facts. I learned long ago not to let my feelings get involved. If my mother taught me anything before she took off, it was that.”
He bent and rummaged through his bag, making it clear this conversation was over. As he pulled out Jim’s journal, I hoped that, given all I’d said about the sinking and the rescue, he might tear out a few extra pages for me. I’d given him the story. He owed me more than a scrap of Jim’s. Instead, he handed me the book.
I looked at him in wonder as I took it. “The whole thing?”
He shrugged. “You earned it.”
My heart thudded as I held it in my hands.
Jim’s journal.
I stroked the worn leather cover, now rippled with water damage, and pulled the red ribbon’s frayed end through my fingers. Finally, I’d get Jim’s story. The spine cracked as I opened to the first few pages. But these entries were too blurred, too ruined by the river, to read. I turned to the next. And the next. Only to see they were, all of them, washed out. In a few places, ragged remains of a page jutted from the crease, remnants of entries Steele had torn out. I flipped to the end of the book and my heart sank. Every yellowed page was either illegible or empty. I traced my finger down the blurry entries, skimming through smeared ink and faded lead. Ghosts of Jim. Words lost forever. I’d get no answers in here.
“You knew.” I glared up at Steele. “All this time, you knew there were no more entries and yet you sat there and let me tell my story. How dare you play me like that!” My lip trembled. I was done. With Steele. With hoping. With all of it. Frustrated, I flung the book at him. It hit him in the chest and fell to the floor. “You used me.”
“I promised you the journal,” he said, but he seemed deflated. “And now you have it.”
“You bastard!” I stood and rested both hands on the mantel. I could barely breathe. It felt like I’d lost Jim all over again. I closed my eyes and gripped the wood, inhaling deeply.
“Did you … did you ever even see Jim?” I swallowed and made myself say it. “The body, I mean.” My heart pounded in the silence as I waited for the answer.
“No.”
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
Steele’s voice continued behind me. “I’ve checked and rechecked my sources. His name isn’t on any list of deceased. But you have to realize, Miss Ellen, many were never identified.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“I know you think me cold-hearted—just out for a story. But it’s not like that.” He paused and his voice sounded distant when he continued. “I saw them.”
I turned to see him staring into the fire at the memory burned into his brain.
“T
he Times sent me to be the eyes of the world,” he continued. “And so I went. And I saw. In the Rimouski shed, and again at Quebec’s Pier 27. I walked those long silent rows of open coffins. I looked at every battered body lying half-naked, bloated, and broken in its pine box. Every one of them had a number scribbled on a scrap of paper lying on their chest. Men. Women. Children. Just a number—until some loved one claimed them. Many never were.
“So many mothers,” he said, eyes unblinking, and I knew he saw them still, “corpses still clutching their babies even in death.” He closed his eyes. “I saw what no one should ever see.”
I didn’t remember reading that in his Rimouski article. He hadn’t mentioned those details. Maybe there was some humanity in him.
He looked at me, his eyes slowly returning to here and now.
“I saw them, too,” I said. “In the water, lying on the steamer decks. Jesus, Steele. I knew them. I served them tea. I worked with them. Lived with them. Laughed with them.” I thought of Kate and Gwen, of Matron Jones and Gaade, of Timothy. All gone. I choked out the words. “They were my friends.”
I never did go into the makeshift morgue they’d set up at Pier 27 for people to identify the bodies. I just couldn’t. That day by the pier, I heard two men arguing just outside the door. They were fighting over a child’s body. I remember thinking, How could you?
But I understood it now. Each father needed it to be his son. Because the winner at least got the body, a chance to say goodbye. And the loser was left with nothing but questions and grief.
I looked at Steele. “I need to know what happened to him.
You said you’d give me his story.” I gestured at the journal by the foot of the chair. “And you give me this.”
He stood. “I think we’re done for today.”
“For today?” I scoffed at him. I marched to the dining-room door and held it open. “We are done. Period.”
He slowly walked over, stopped in front of me, and hitched his satchel up his shoulder. “Not quite,” he said. “You still have not told me why you were on that ship. You have not told me your whole story.”
He had some nerve. As if I was going to tell him any of my secrets. Of what I’d done. Of where I was sent. Of all that I’d lost. “Why should I tell you anything more?” I raised my chin. “I have the journal.”
“And I have the story of the man who gave it to me. William Sampson, the chief engineer.” He paused. “I know what happened to Jim that night.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“WILL YOU BE WANTING ANYTHING ELSE, MISS?” Lily asked, setting the tea tray beside me. I had no appetite and no matter how I protested, Bates insisted that she make me something after Steele left.
I felt angry at Steele for manipulating me with this journal, for witholding information. But wasn’t I doing the same—each of us playing the other to get what we wanted? Steele and I, we were more alike than I cared to admit. I didn’t want to see him again, but the truth was, I had to if I wanted to learn what he knew about Jim. He’d said he’d be back in three days’ time to continue our interview.
I picked up Jim’s journal from the floor, absentmindedly fiddling with the ribbon. How unfair that after all I’d said to Steele, the book gave me nothing more, no other insights into the many questions I had about Jim. Not just if he lived—but if he loved. Had there been another woman in his life? Did I mean anything to him? It felt real to me when we were together, but maybe I just wanted it to. Maybe I just remembered it that way.
Jim was like the tide. One look would rush at me so intense and powerful, so overwhelming. Yet, just as I was about to give in or give voice to the feelings he’d stirred in me, I’d feel him pulling back. Retreating to the depths inside himself once more. I never knew whether I was coming or going with him. And even when he seemed withdrawn, on those nights when he wouldn’t say a word, his unspoken need of me pulled fiercely, like an undertow that might sweep me away.
I tugged on the ribbon and was surprised to feel it jam between the two pages. Curious, I slipped my thumb between the stuck papers and carefully wedged them apart. They tore a bit as the book fell open to the ribboned page, each leaving remnants on the other. But through the patches I saw Jim’s writing as clear as the night he wrote it. That night as he stood in the misty light, lost in his words. The last night I saw him.
May 28, 1914
I have to tell her the truth. I can’t keep it any longer. It terrifies me, so it does, because in telling her, I might lose her.
What if she wants nothing to do with me? I don’t think I could live with it.
But I can’t live with this secret between us anymore.
I paused and looked up, my heart throbbing in my chest.
So this is it. He is going to tell her the truth.
I wondered who she was. What dark secret he had—
Was I that secret?
His strong feelings for me always ebbed away in guilt. As though being with me made him feel bad. I flipped the book over on the side table and stood, rubbing my forehead with my palm as I paced the room.
Wouldn’t it be better just to remember things as they were?
I looked back at the upturned journal.
Wouldn’t it be better to have questions than answers I didn’t want to know?
No.
I grabbed the book and turned it over, chewing on my thumbnail as I read his words.
I know she suspects something. How couldn’t she? I’ve been acting a right madman. Hot and cold. Moody. I keep telling myself that she deserves someone better than me. But her eyes. The way she looks at me—into me—makes me feel something I’ve never felt before. A calmness. A hope. She’s the anchor, steadying me when I feel tossed and torn asunder. She’s the lighthouse guiding me home.
Listen to me, going on—she’s making a bloody poet of me!
She’s all I think about. Ever since I first saw her, I’ve just wanted to be with her. To hear her voice. To feel her hands on me. I want to hold her and protect her.
I love her.
That’s the truth of it. I love her, so I do.
So what, you blathering eejit. So what if you love her?
What does it matter? She won’t love you.
Not after all you’ve done.
No, I don’t deserve her and she, she deserves someone so much better than me. Someone who’ll treat her like the fine girl she is. Someone who’ll give her the life a stoker’s wage can never provide. What the hell do I have to offer?
Nothing, that’s what.
—1:30 a.m. —
I can’t sleep. Again. Thought I’d get some air on deck—maybe a smoke or two will settle me. But it’s not the nightmares tonight. I’ve finally made up my mind. I know what I have to do, and so help me God, I’m going to do it.
As soon as we dock in Liverpool, I’m going to go to her and finally tell her the truth. Every dark secret. And if she can still bear to look at me, and I hardly blame her if she can’t, I’m going to get my wages and go into Boland’s and buy her a ring. I’m going to ask her to be mine, so I will.
If she’ll have me.
That last night, he’d said he was sorry. But for what—leaving me in Quebec? Sorry for being a right arse? Or sorry for what he was about to tell me?
I touched my lips, and remembered the passion in that first kiss. The fire. The feeling.
Was he really kissing me goodbye?
I closed the book and set it on the mantel. However he meant it, the truth of it was, our first kiss was also our last.
Chapter Twenty-Six
BATES TOOK ME FOR A DRIVE THE NEXT DAY. Said I needed to get out, that the air might do me some good. I had to admit, I did feel the better for it. Sea air does it for me every time. Scours the soul, Mam used to say. I can see why she came to Liverpool those Julys long ago. It is lovely this time of year with the gardens in full bloom and the sun sparkling on the sea. We drove to the harbour and stopped at the market where farmers’ wives and fishmonger
s hawked their wares in raspy calls, like seabirds themselves.
Bates loaded our bags into the boot of the car. “Shall we walk in the park a bit, miss?”
I nodded.
The path meandered through lush gardens, veering around statues and fountains. It felt peaceful here. A green oasis, hidden in the heart of the bustling town.
“Did Aunt Geraldine know this place?” I asked, looking up at the archway of limbs and leaves. I’d never been here with her, but it seemed familiar, somehow.
“Your aunt …” He hesitated. “She didn’t like to go out much.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it, Bates? She wrote about such exciting adventures on the far side of the world and yet wouldn’t venture out to a park just a few blocks away.” She barely left her study.
He sighed and shook his head.
We crested a small hill as the footpath ran alongside a pond nestled like a large blue egg in the green grass. A paper boat scudded across the water’s surface, caught in the summer breeze. I stepped off the path to stand at the water’s edge, my feet sinking in the thick grass.
“I have been here before.” And I knew I had stood in that very same spot, though I was much smaller then. I looked back up the hillside and, in my mind’s eye, saw a tartan blanket, a picnic, spread on the slope just ahead. I saw Mam there under the oak, laughing at the state of my wet skirt.
“My mother took me here,” I whispered, “those summers when we came to Liverpool, back when I was very young. Before she got sick. Before Father sent me away.”
“My Meggie loved this place, too.” He joined me at the edge of the pond. “I often used to bring her here when she was a girl. She was forever wanting to feed the ducks.”
He pulled a small paper bag from his pocket and opened it. Bread crumbs. He tossed a handful on the water and an emerald-headed mallard paddled over and snapped them up in his rounded beak.
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