“I found the journal in the pocket,” he added. “And I knew then he was the man you asked me about on the train.”
I ran my fingers down the coarse wool. Speechless.
Steele flipped back through his notes. “The Farrows live at number six Gerrard Street. I was going to take it there tomorrow.”
“Let me do it,” I said. I wasn’t sure who I’d find at number six. His mother. His wife. But I’d come too far not to see it to the end. And whoever opened the door deserved to be given such grief by someone who loved him, too. Not Steele.
He hesitated. Probably thinking of a lost interview opportunity.
“You can’t use any of Jim’s story in your article anyway.” I raised my brow at him. “That was our deal.”
Eventually, he agreed. With all I’d said these past days together, he had more than enough for his damned article. Jim was always so private, so secretive, I wouldn’t let Steele turn him into a headline.
“Well, I guess that’s it then.” He seemed reluctant to leave. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
I nodded.
“I can stay if you want … until Bates comes back.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
He seemed unsure. Almost deflated, somewhat. He was not the cocksure journalist who’d hounded me on the train, who’d bribed me with a dead man’s diary, who was about to sell my story, my secrets, for a chance to make the front page and score a promotion to editor.
“Don’t you have an article to write?” It seemed harsh, but I just wanted him to go. I needed to be alone. To grieve.
“I suppose I do.”
We’d fulfilled the terms of our deal, traded our stories, and yet in a way, I felt emptier for it. I wondered if he did, too.
Jim’s coat in hand, I followed Steele to the hall. He stopped on the threshold. “I’m sorry, Ellen.”
For all he’d made me say? For all he was about to write?
He looked at me, his dark eyes sincere. “I’m so sorry for all you’ve lost.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, my chin trembling. “You know, you are the only person who has ever said that to me.” I only realized then how much I needed to hear it.
Unsure of what else to say or do, Steele nodded and left.
I shut the door behind him and rested my head on the wood. The last of the dying day’s light spilled through the transom window in a skewed rectangle down the hall. Stepping into it, I slipped Jim’s coat around a hanger and hung it on the empty coat stand. The broad shoulders spanned at eye level and it felt as if Jim himself were standing before me. I’d pictured him here a thousand times. How he’d look. How he’d feel. How he’d take me in his arms.
I slipped my hands along the coarse woollen shoulders and rested my face on the lapel. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply. But it didn’t smell of him anymore. The memory of Jim was long washed from it by the waters of the St. Lawrence. I ran my fingers down the arms and up the chest, its emptiness making me ache all the more.
This isn’t Jim. He isn’t here.
And will never be.
I saw myself in that instant, clinging to an empty coat in the dim hall of a house that wasn’t mine to own, pining for a love I’d lost, a love that was truly never mine to keep. The absurdity of it, the unfairness, welled inside. As I stroked the fabric, a button came loose in my fingers and I looked at it sitting in my palm. A disc of blue-black pierced with four small holes. It had survived that dreadful night, ships colliding, boiler rooms flooding, men scrambling. It had clung to this coat through the madness of sinking and saving only to fall off at the slightest touch in this shadowy hall. Here in this moment, it let loose.
And so did I.
I cried for Jim. For Meg. For Aunt Geraldine. For my mother and father. For all our time that I’d wasted, for all I hadn’t told them. That I loved them. That I needed them. That I missed them terribly. I cried for my daughter. For the time we never got to have. The tears finally came, unrelenting like a winter storm, and I buried my face in the lapel, wetting the wool of Jim’s jacket with wave after wave of loss.
I don’t know how long I stood there. But by the time I lifted my head, the day’s light had died. In the dark of the cold hall, I turned my back into Jim’s coat and wrapped the arms around me.
Both of us nothing but empty shells.
Chapter Thirty-Two
EXHAUSTED, I WENT TO THE KITCHEN to make myself some tea. Ever since I could remember, tea was how we welcomed, celebrated, or sympathized. For in any situation, even when we had no idea what to do, the best response was always: I’ll put on the kettle.
I suppose there was something to be said for the ritual of it, that sense of doing something: boiling, steeping, pouring. I stirred in the sugar, tapped the silver spoon on the rim twice. Even now—the heat cupped in my hands, the fragrant steam, the sweetness and radiating warmth as I swallowed—it was far more than a hot drink, it was a cupful of comfort.
I took another sip and sighed, resting against the counter. As my hip touched it, something rustled in my pocket and I pulled out Aunt Geraldine’s letter. In all the drama of the interview, what with telling of Declan and my daughter, and then reading about Jim’s last night, not to mention the rush of emotion at touching his coat, I’d completely forgotten about the envelope I’d found on the windowsill.
As I opened it, I was surprised to see that she hadn’t typed it. She rarely wrote anything by hand but our to-do lists, long inventories of orders and expectations for Bates and Meg. For me. God knows I’d been given enough of those. I’d know her flourish and strong slant anywhere. Her double lines under things for emphasis. It figured that even death couldn’t keep her from ordering me about. I sighed.
My dearest Ellen,
This was different. Not a list, no, but a letter. ’Twas by her hand all right, yet even the loops and list seemed smaller, somehow. Feeble and frail.
I don’t know how to begin. Imagine that. After all the words I’ve penned, all the novels I’ve written, I have writer’s block … now that it matters most.
This wasn’t the aunt I knew. She was never at a loss for words—and if she was, she’d never let it be known. My heart pounded as I read on, unsure of what I might find.
Before I say anything, I have to tell you that everything I did, I did with your best interests at heart. Please believe that. I know right now that might not seem true. Perhaps you think me a heartless old witch, and rightfully so, given all that I’ve put you through. But I do have a heart and you’ve always had a special place in it.
I never told you I was ill. I didn’t see the point in burdening you, but the doctor tells me I’ve only a few weeks left, if that. I had hoped to finish this blasted novel (you know how I hate leaving plots unresolved, and now I’ve left poor Garrett in the worst kind of peril), but more than that, I had hoped to resolve things between us. When you left this morning, I should have got up and seen you off, I should have told you all of this in person. I owed you that. But I am a weak old woman, Ellen. I am sorry. I just couldn’t say goodbye knowing it was our last.
I watched you from the study window, saw you and Meg walking arm in arm down the path. It pained me to watch you go, but you were smiling. You seemed happier. I took comfort in knowing you’d changed.
I paused. So I had meant something to her. More than I realized. It warmed me to know it and I was thankful she’d voiced it—even if it came in a letter long after the fact.
You are not the same girl who stood shivering and desperate on my doorstep. Not the same one who came back raging from the asylum last November.
You are no victim.
If only she knew. That now I was also a victim of a shipwreck. Of a broken heart.
Every character learns his true strengths by facing those things that might kill him. And if he doesn’t die at the hands of those dragons, he emerges stronger.
I made you face your dragons, Ellen. Even as I shied from my own. Hidden away in my tow
er, I wrote the adventures I longed to have. And though I know I’m no lion hunter like Garrett Dean, I do wish I’d had the courage to go there—to feel the hot African sun on my cheeks, to run my fingers through the red earth, to taste the sweetness of a fresh-picked mango and let its juice run down my chin. Things I read about. Things I imagined. Stories I never lived.
Yes, I made decisions for you—but they were not made lightly. The Magdalene Asylum. The Empress of Ireland. After much discerning, I put you into those situations because I believed you had the inner strength to face them. I knew you would overcome because you have not only your father’s grit but also your mother’s spirit. Her resilience. Her ability to find a glimmer of hope in a thick fog. You do have your mother in you. And I am so sorry if I ever let you think otherwise.
I thought of our argument the day she told me I was going on the Empress. Of the way we’d both used the memory of my mother to hurt each other; it would’ve saddened my mother to see it. But I took comfort, now, in knowing that I did carry her spirit with me.
I know you may have felt somewhat like a character that I manipulated and, in truth, I did, to some degree. But I want you to know that I do not write your story, Ellen. Neither does your father, nor the men you will love. You and only you write it.
And Steele, I thought, frustrated that I’d given so much of it to him. Who knew how he’d spin it—what level of detail he’d include. He had the power over how the world saw me now. And there was nothing I could do about it. The deal had cost me everything—and given me nothing, really. It had given me some answers, some details, but it hadn’t given me what I really wanted. It hadn’t given me Jim.
And now, it comes to this.
My solicitor, Mr. Cronin, will take care of my estate business, but I have one more thing I must do before my strength fails. I ask your forgiveness, Ellen. Yes, I took away your freedom when I put you in the asylum and again when I put you on the ship. For that I do not apologize. But I should not have taken your child.
She didn’t die, Ellen. Your daughter lived.
My heart pounded as I lifted my eyes from the page. I reread it, just to be sure.
Your daughter lived.
I held her for a while the day she was born. She looked just like you did, with her thick, dark hair soft about her head, her tiny fists ready to take on the world. Maybe your mother would have made a different choice for you, but not ever having had children, I did what I thought best. I sent her to an orphanage. I wanted a fresh start for you both. Good Lord, you were only a child yourself. But I always wondered if I did the right thing. Even now, I don’t know.
Hers is a story you are not a part of and will never know, so imagine one that gives you peace—that she is happy and healthy. That she is loved.
I debated whether or not I should tell you any of this. I feared knowing might make things worse for you. But after a long life dedicated to fiction, I now know the value of fact. Of truths. It’s hard to tell and often difficult to hear, but it’s part of your story and you deserve to know it.
You’ve grown into a strong woman, Ellen. Your father may not see it, but I do. You’ve made me proud. Your mother, too. And even though you’ve changed, somehow, you are the same little Ellie who perched on my windowsill, head full of dreams.
Write your story, Ellen, but more than that—live it, live every chapter. Don’t be afraid to turn the page to new adventures. There are sure to be more dragons ahead, but as you face them, remember the ones you’ve already overcome. Know that you are so much stronger than you think. And years from now, when you reach my age, when you reach your life’s satisfying conclusion, may it be with no regrets.
With much love,
Aunt Geraldine
I looked up from the pages into a different world. For now, it was a world where hope and my daughter lived.
MY HEAD WAS ABUZZ the next few days. I could hardly think straight as I sifted through all I had learned and sorted out what to do next.
I had a daughter! She lived—but where? Aunt Geraldine had neglected to tell me which orphanage. And even if I knew, my daughter might well have been adopted by now. How would I ever find her? Where did I even start?
And then there was Jim.
Knowing that he hadn’t gone down with the ship rekindled the flicker of hope that he’d survived. My greatest fear had been that he went into the hold that night and never came out. Now I feared that he had drowned after saving William Sampson. But there was still a chance, a slim one, that he had survived, that he had lived. Dare I hope that he loved me, too?
I wandered the silent rooms, sat in front of meals but didn’t eat, lay in bed but didn’t sleep. Poor Bates and Lily didn’t know what to do with me or for me. Though I hated our deal at first, I had to admit I missed Steele, I missed his analytical mind. He knew how to ask those incisive questions. Surely he would’ve been able to help me figure this out, to find the answers within me.
And then put them in his article.
Who was I fooling? Steele had used me. He wrung my story from me. He wasn’t coming back. He didn’t care about me. All that mattered now was his article. His byline. His promotion. I’d traded my story for what—more questions?
I still didn’t know where Jim was, whether he’d lived or died, or who he loved. No answers, really, just Sampson’s transcript, a diary, and a coat.
I looked at it hanging where I’d left it in the front hall. At the button I’d left sitting on the end table next to me. And my aunt’s dying words beside it.
What now? I wondered. What now?
Chapter Thirty-Three
“HERE WE ARE, GERRARD STREET. That’s number six there.” Bates stopped the car in front of a housing row, a great long stretch of brick broken up by a door, a window, a door, a window, all the way down to the corner. A low wall ran the length of them, with wrought-iron gates rusted half-shut. The yards were dirt, no scrap of grass, never mind gardens. Battered by the sea and the cost of life eked out upon its swells and shore, everything this side of town seemed weatherworn and tired, even the people walking past. An old man eyeballed the car that clearly was not from around here.
Bates turned to me, resting his arm across the front seat. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go, miss? These are the dockyards. The place, the people … they’re a bit sketchy, if you don’t mind my saying.”
The old me would have cowered in the car, but after life on the Empress, I saw them for what they were. People. Sure, they’d been roughened by hard work and hard times. Coarse, perhaps, but sturdy and purposeful. Like the coat I held in my hands. I knew these strangers, for they were stokers and firemen, like Jim, sailors and stewards, like Timothy.
“I’ll be fine,” I reassured him, sliding out of the car. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”
I stepped through the gate and up the stone path, forcing myself to reach the front door. To raise my knuckles to it. It had taken me a few days just to get the nerve to come. But I had no idea what to say. What was there to say, really? I hoped it was his mother I’d find here and not his wife. But either way, that woman deserved his story. Not my part in it, perhaps, but at least what he did for Sampson.
I knocked, then gripped my hands together under his coat draped over my arm. I’d put the journal back in its pocket, along with all the pages Steele had torn and the copy of Sampson’s interview tucked between its warped covers. None of it was mine to keep. I’d even sewn the button back on this morning. It helped me keep my mind off Aunt Geraldine’s letter and my daughter and the ache of wondering where she was—what she looked like. If she was all right.
“Yes?” A young woman my age opened the door. Tendrils of russet hair hung by her face from where they’d fallen free of her faded head scarf. She held a toddler on her hip, a girl whose chubby legs straddled the woman’s apron. The girl peeked at me shyly from behind her blanket and my breath caught, for she had Jim’s dark curls. His ice-blue eyes.
“Is this …” I swallowed. “Is
this the home of Jim Farrow?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t, yet knowing it was.
“It is.” The young woman’s eyes searched mine, curious. “I’m Elizabeth.”
“And I’m Penny,” the toddler added. “Penny Farrow.”
My heart sank. So it was true.
Elizabeth continued, “But he’s—”
“I know,” I cut in. I wouldn’t make her say it. Bad enough she had to live with the loss. And I wouldn’t steal what memory she had of him either. She could read the journal herself. Know that she was on his heart and mind that last night. “I worked—” She wouldn’t have believed me a stewardess, not in these fine clothes, with my driver and car at the bottom of her lane. “I was on the Empress. They asked me to give you this.” I handed her the coat and all its contents. “We just thought you’d want it. That you’d want to know.”
“Oh, all right then.” She took it in the crook of her arm, seemingly confused.
I stood awkwardly on the step of Jim’s house.
“Umm …” She looked at me expectantly. Then stood aside, opening the door a bit more. “Did you want to come in for some tea? Jimmy—”
“No, no,” I interrupted. “Thank you … but I can’t stay.” A part of me longed to sit at his table, in the heart of his home. To touch the things that mattered most to him. To hear her tell me of the man she knew. But I knew I couldn’t do that to her. To me. I peered over her shoulder into Jim Farrow’s life one last time, stopping my gaze at the toddler. I reached out and stroked her round cheek with the back of my fingers. “You have such a lovely smile.”
Her eyes sparkled as her cheeks dimpled. So like Jim.
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