“My editor has asked me to be the paper’s war correspondent.” His eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m doing it, Ellen. It’s not Africa—but it’s my own adventure. I leave for the front tomorrow.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?” We both knew it was. I suppose every soldier did, too. But they wouldn’t let fear stop them. And neither would Steele.
“If I survived your driving lesson,” he teased, “well, then I guess I can handle just about anything.”
He stood and picked up his bag, and I remembered the large envelope I’d brought.
“Wait, I got you a little something, too.” I gave it to him.
Steel slipped out the thirty typed pages, his eyes widening as he read the title. “The Hero’s Journey: A Garrett Dean Adventure by G.B. Hardy.” He met my eyes. “Is this …”
“Aunt Geraldine’s latest manuscript.” I smiled at the reverence he had for it. If anyone would cherish this, it was him.
“I can’t take this,” he said, holding it out to me.
“I’m not asking you to take it.” I stood and gently pushed it back, leaving my hand on his. “I’m asking you to write it. You know the characters and the voice. You love adventures. Hell, Steele, you even look like Dean.”
Now it was his turn to be speechless.
“I’ve already talked to Cronin; my aunt’s legacy is mine to manage. And I want the best. I want you. Who knows, maybe in this adventure he’s a war correspondent.” Already, I could see the seed of an idea sprouting in his mind. “Take as long as you like, but you’d better have at least one chapter by the next time you’re in Liverpool.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, breathless.
“Say yes.”
He grinned like Harry with his paper boat. “You have no idea what this means to me—to be given a chance to tell this story.”
I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Yes, Steele, I do. I know exactly how it feels.”
Chapter Forty-Six
I WALKED THE SHORELINE, shoes in one hand, skirts held up with the other. It probably wasn’t fitting for the lady of Strandview Manor, but it was exactly what Ellie Hardy would do. And that was how I’d decided to live from now on. To be true to myself, now that I knew her. Stopping, I picked up a handful of smooth stones and, tucking the ends of my skirt in my waistband, waded into the water. Leaning to one side, I pitched the pebble across the sparkling surface, counting the skips. Six … seven … eight. Circles rippled out from each place where the rock touched, but never stayed. That was the trick to skipping stones, to stories, to life, really—to keep moving forward.
“So that’s where she gets it.” Jim’s voice came from just behind and I turned to see him standing on the shore. Just the sight of him, the sound of him, the nearness of him made my heart ache. After the way things had been left, I wasn’t even sure I’d ever see him again. And yet, here he was.
But he didn’t smile or meet my eyes. Instead, Jim took off his shoes and rolled up his pant legs and, after picking up a few stones, waded in beside me.
I had so much to say. To ask. So much I wanted to know. But my time with Steele had taught me how to listen. How to let someone speak his story. And so, hard as it was, I let the silence hang between us and skipped another pebble.
Jim grunted as he forcefully threw one stone and then another. Each sank on the first splash. “I can’t do this,” he grumbled.
“Get low to the water. It’s all in the wrist—”
“No, not that.” He dropped the stones and plodded back to sit on the shore.
Unsure what to do, I followed and sat by him in silence for a moment, letting him find his words.
“You can tell me, Jim. Anything,” I said, as though he needed permission to unload that heavy secret on my shoulders. Whatever it was, I could take it. I could carry it with him. I could lighten his burden, as Steele had done for me.
Jim breathed deeply. “I don’t know what to say. It’s too late, anyway. What’s done is done. Why dwell on it?” His voice was low, barely a whisper. “Talking about it wouldn’t change what happened.”
He may never have spoken it, but clearly, he did dwell on it, whatever it was, for he’d been brooding over or burdened under whatever it was he carried in secret silence. I’d felt the same way when Steele first approached me. But he’d gotten it out of me, and after the painful telling I’d felt purged, relieved. I felt forgiven.
“Nothing will change what happened,” I conceded. “But you can change what happens next.”
His eyes searched the horizon, floundering in his dark thoughts, and after a while I threw him a line. Like Steele would. “Is it about your father?”
“Yes.” He hugged his knees and burrowed his feet deeper into the sand. “I never told you … he worked on the Titanic.” Jim stopped and looked at me for a moment, unsure if he wanted to go on. “And so did I.”
Titanic? It made sense, then. Jim’s unwillingness to speak of it. His obsession with the Empress’s life-saving standards. “Oh, Jim, that must have been horrible.”
He stared off into the horizon and I knew he was there now. Reliving that night.
“That girl from my journal—it’s not what you think, Ellie. She was only a child. Four, maybe five.” He turned his attention back to the stones in his hands. “A passenger on the Titanic. One of hundreds that died”—he paused, his next words barely a whisper—“because of me.”
“What do you mean?” I knew that sense of shame for not saving others, of guilt for surviving when they had not, but surely he had to be exaggerating.
He shrugged, jaw clenched.
“Were you a stoker?” I asked, coaxing him onward.
He shook his head. “Bellboy.” A smile haunted his lips. “God, Da was proud to see me in that uniform. Said I’d be chief steward in no time.”
His smile faded. “Even when Captain Smith ordered the men to launch the lifeboats, I still didn’t think we were in any danger. Not really. She was unsinkable, after all.” He shook his head. “But I overheard Murdoch say the engine room was flooded and most of the bow, pulling her down by the head. Compartment by compartment. I knew then she’d founder, for once the sea got a taste of her, it wouldn’t stop until it had swallowed her whole.”
I nodded, remembering that sense of shock, disbelief, and terror when the Empress had been hit.
“I found Da,” he continued, “at his post—lower level by the third-class stairwell. Him on one side of the gate and a mob of steerage passengers on the other. Some of them had life vests. Most did not. But what did it matter with that black metal gate shut across the top of the stairs? They were crushed against it by the others pushing up from below. I’ll never forget their pleas for help. Terror sounds the same in any language.”
He paused and I knew he was hearing them still. I could almost see them surging against the rail, arms and hands stuck through the black bars, grasping for his father to save them.
“I ran up to Da and pulled on the steel grill.” Jim mimed the action with his fists. “Maybe together we could do it, but it would not budge. When Da shoved me aside, I saw the key hanging round his neck. I knew the truth even before he told me he’d locked them in.”
Jim dropped his hands. “‘Captain’s orders,’ Da said. Like that explained it. And I looked at them, all those people, mothers, children. I looked at the terror in their faces. There was a little girl of four or five, down in the bottom corner in a white nightdress, a red ribbon knotted at the end of her hair. God, I’ll never forget her—the way she reached out to me.” He paused and rubbed his eyes, but I knew it wouldn’t get rid of that sight. “I begged Da to see sense and let them out. But he wouldn’t listen, so I lunged for the key. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, we struggled, he must have hit his head. Da fell, splashed into the water flooding the alleyway hall, and just floated there face down, arms sprawled, blood blooming in the water around his head.”
Jim stopped, his breath laboured.
“It was an accident, Jim,” I said softly. I rested my hand on his arm. But he wasn’t with me. He was still there, still in the hold of the sinking Titanic.
“He was alive,” he continued. “But neither of us would be for long if we didn’t get out of there. I hauled Da to the stairwell and up a few steps as the water rose behind. The passengers cried out to me. But what could I do? I couldn’t save them all, so I took the key chain from around Da’s neck, threw it at their grasping hands, and hauled him out. I didn’t wait to see if they caught it. I didn’t care if they lived or died. All that mattered in that moment was saving my da. And in the end, I couldn’t even do that.”
Jim hung his head, gasping, labouring under the weight of his guilt. He’d shouldered it along with his father’s lifeless body. Carried it every step since. Borne it two long years.
No wonder he seemed so burdened.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“THEY GOT OUT,” I SAID, suddenly recalling where I’d heard this story before. “The third-class passengers—they opened the gate, Jim!”
“You can’t know that.” He wouldn’t be so easily comforted.
“No, it’s true. I read it in an article about the Titanic.” It was one of the stories Steele had given me when we first met. “No one could have told the reporters about the gate being locked … if they hadn’t lived to tell.”
I paused to let that truth settle. “You saved them, Jim. Maybe not your father. But some of them, at least.”
He sat with that knowledge for a few moments. “It should have been me, Ellie,” he finally said, lips trembling. “I should have died.”
I knew his pain. Hadn’t I felt the very same about Meg? But I saw things a little differently now.
“I know the guilt of surviving,” I said. “I wanted to die, too. How could I live with myself, how could I live a happy life knowing Meg never would?” I paused and thought of all I’d learned these past ten weeks since the sinking. “But a life of regret and shame is no life at all. They wouldn’t want that for us. Not Meg. Not your da.”
He clenched his jaw, afraid to speak. But he nodded and I knew he understood.
“It was an accident, Jim. The iceberg. The Storstad. Each one a stupid mistake that ended in horrendous tragedy. But the captains, the crew, your father, you, me … we each did what we thought best in that moment.”
I thought of my aunt, of my father, of everyone who’d ever hurt me, and realized I needed to accept that truth for those situations as well.
“We need to forgive them,” I said. “We need to forgive ourselves.”
“But it’s just so”—his voice hitched—“so unfair.”
“You’re right.” I paused. “A tragedy is exactly that—tragic. But dwelling on its senselessness, wallowing in our grief and regrets will only sink us to deep, dark places. If we let it.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled; I could almost see the weight easing from his shoulders. But it wasn’t just about letting go. We had to look forward. To skip on to the ways we’d make ripples in the next parts of our lives.
“Jim, we survived—asking why will only drive us mad. We need to ask what for? What are we living for now, here, today?”
He picked up a stone and discarded it. Then another and another. Something still weighed upon his mind.
“Knowing about what happened, what you did on the Titanic, doesn’t change how I feel about you,” I said, treading into new waters.
He chucked the last pebble and stopped. “What does it matter anyway? It’s too late for us. You’re with him now and—”
“With who?”
He looked at me sideways. “The man from the park. The one at your house?”
“Who? Steele?” I said, surprised.
“The day my ship docked, I came looking for you at Strandview Manor. You were the only thing that kept me going in the hospital in Quebec. They said I kept calling your name, even when I didn’t know my own.” He paused. “And this Steele fellow answers the door and tells me you don’t work there anymore. And I wondered how I’d ever find you. How I’d live without you.”
“That was you?” I remembered that day. “We thought you were a reporter. That’s what he is, Jim. He’s writes for the Times. He was interviewing me for a story on the Empress.”
“He’s not Faith’s father?”
I shook my head. But it did nothing to ease his mind.
“I saw you with him a few times, Ellie. You didn’t seem to miss me all that much, then.”
“Of course I missed you.” If only he knew. “Jim, there is nothing between me and Steele,” I said, as if convincing myself as much as him.
“Really?” He looked at me accusingly. “So you kiss all the reporters?”
I wanted to defend myself, to push back at his hostility with some of my own. What did he know? Where was he, then, when I needed him? Had he been spying on me? Instead, I reached for his hand, taking that chance, risking that pain of having him get up and walk away from me once more. Knowing it might kill me if he did.
But Jim was worth it. We were worth it. And I had to speak my truth. I owed him that. I owed it to myself so that, whatever else happened, at least I’d know I’d left nothing unsaid.
“It’s you I want, Jim,” I said, my fingers taking his. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
His eyes softened.
“Losing you,” I continued, “thinking you were gone forever, only made me realize how much … how much I love you.” I’d found my voice and I would no longer be silent. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost Faith—they told me she’d died when she was born. And yet, here we are.” I took a deep breath, my heart pounding in my chest, and kneeled beside him. “Lots of people have tragedies, Jim. We have all faced incredible loss. But we’ve been given a second chance. Let’s focus on that. Let’s not waste it.” I gripped his hand. “I want you in my life, Jim. In Faith’s.”
He knew how I felt. What I wanted. The choice was his now.
Jim looked at me, searched my eyes, and found truth. As I did in his. No secrets. No shame. Just acceptance. And love.
“God, Ellie, you don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.” Squeezing my hand, he leaned in and slowly brought his lips to mine. His mouth warm and reassuring. Familiar. Like we’d done it a thousand times before, even though this was only our second time. We breathed our souls into each other in that moment, knowing this was the first kiss of forever.
“I love you, Ellie,” he whispered. “I love you.”
I smiled and circled my arms around him, rested my head against his chest. Jim kissed my forehead and I felt hopeful, safe, comforted by his warmth, his breath, the beating of his heart. No matter what the future brought, we had each other. We had our love to buoy us up through any storm. Nothing else mattered.
It must have been so hard for him to confess his secret, to risk losing me. And to voice his fears about Steele. I sat up and looked into his eyes once more.
“Just so you know, Steele is leaving,” I said. We’d be in touch about the novel, as friends, but nothing more. I wanted to reassure Jim of that. The kiss on Steele’s cheek meant nothing. “When you saw us, that was goodbye,” I said. “He’s going to war.”
A sad smile tugged on Jim’s lips and on my heart. And I knew what he was going to say even before he spoke the words. “So am I,” he said. “I enlisted this week.”
A NEW DAY
September 1914
Strandview Manor, Liverpool
Chapter Forty-Eight
SETTING MY TROWEL ASIDE, I dug into the rich, black earth with both hands. Bates was right, there was something so peaceful about gardening. A connectedness. A rootedness. A sense of time—of season. Jim had left for his training with the King’s Liverpool Regiment last month and I had no way of knowing when he’d be back, for how long, or where his duties might take him next. I couldn’t change the past or jump ahead to the future any more than I could change the seasons. M
y life no longer revolved around the number of days since a past loss or in anxious countdown to a future worry. I’d finally learned that life was now. This moment. To feel the sun on my shoulders and the cool, moist earth on my fingers. And to sow hope for tomorrow.
I lifted the plant from its pot beside me and shook the dirt off its hairy roots. Among the green leaves bobbed dozens of tiny flowers, each one a brilliant blue, its five petals buttoned to its stem by a bright yellow centre. I gently set the plant in the hole I’d dug between the rose bushes.
“That’s the perfect place for it,” Bates said to me, as he and Faith came down the front steps. She ran over to me and, picking up the trowel, patted the earth I’d mounded back in the hole.
It had been Bates’s suggestion that I add a plant of my own to the garden. Something meaningful to me. At first I’d picked this one simply because I liked its vivid dots of blue and yellow. Learning it was called forget-me-not made it all the more fitting, not just because I wanted to remember my mother, Aunt Geraldine, and Meg—they had flowers of their own here—but because now that I knew her, I never wanted to forget who I was.
“Ducks! Ducks!” Faith said, running back to Bates. He handed her the small paper bag full of the crusts they’d saved from their morning toast.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us today?” he asked, as they opened the gate.
“No, no.” I waved my dirty hand at them. “Go off with yourselves. I’ll come next time.”
I washed my hands at the kitchen sink, smiling as my ring rinsed clean and caught the sunlight. I hadn’t taken it off since he’d put it on my finger the day he left, over a month ago. A band of gold with two hands clasped around a crowned heart. A claddagh, a traditional Irish ring. But more than that, a promise of friendship. Loyalty. Of love.
“Will you be my girl, Ellie?” he’d asked, almost shy as he slipped it on my right hand, heart facing in—a sign that mine was taken.
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