Eight weeks passed so quickly it was unreal, with only two weeks left before Rose finished her picture. She was headed back to Los Angeles, where she was contracted to begin another picture in just over a month. The days were like heaven on earth for both Jack and Rose. Everything was so perfect. They saw each other as often as they could, taking the children out when they weren't in school—to plays, sightseeing around London, and to picnics in Hyde Park. It was almost a dream. The relationship between Jack and Rose had not been intimate. They had only shared a few passionate kisses, knowing how much they loved each other. Over the last few weeks, neither Jack nor Rose had dared to mention that her time in London was coming to an end. It was a fact neither of them wanted to face, not yet at least. Everything was so perfect. It was Lizzy who asked Jack innocently what would happen when they returned home to Los Angeles in a conversation he would never forget.
It was a late July afternoon when Lizzy had visited Jack at his home. The closeness which Jack felt with Lizzy was unexplainable. He almost felt as though she was his child. He had watched her grow into the person she was right now and he felt Rose had raised her wonderfully. The fact that she was Cal's child had long since disappeared from his mind—there was no trace of Cal Hockley in her, except her surname, which had to remain until she was old enough to decide whether she would like to change it or not. At school, she excelled in history, and he was so proud of her, just like a father would be.
Lilly sat on Lizzy's knee as she fed the toddler bits of her blueberry muffin at the dining table in Jack's kitchen. It was a small kitchen, with just a dining table for four, a small stove, a counter where the sink was, and an icebox in the far corner. Jack smiled at the scene. He loved how Rose's children had taken to his daughter. Poking at the fire in the stove, Jack coughed at the fumes before placing the poker back on the hook and covering his mouth slightly with his shirt sleeve.
“That's what you get for messing.” Lizzy laughed at Jack's poor attempts to mend the fire.
“I guess so.” Jack took a seat beside Lizzy and Lilly gazed at him with her big brown eyes, muffin all around her mouth. Shaking his head, he found his handkerchief and wiped her face gently. She screwed up her face as she always did when Jack wiped her face and both Jack and Lizzy laughed. “So, how was school?” Jack asked, taking his daughter from Lizzy.
“Not so bad. It’s different here from back home. They speak differently, and they teach in different ways.” Lizzy began to chew the inside of her cheek and propped her face up, her elbows resting on the table. “It’s going to be different, though, when we go home, I guess.” Jack's eyes met Lizzy's. “I don't want to go home,” Lizzy confessed. “I like it here. I could get used to school. Charlie likes it here. The kids don't tease him like they do in Los Angeles.”
Jack sat up, concerned. “Tease him? About what?”
“Because of Mom, because she works a lot. They told him Mom should be at home and his father should be out at work. They told him Mom doesn't love him.” Lizzy shook her head. “They're such twerps.”
Jack was stunned. The kids actually said that to him? “Does your mother know?”
“No. We never told her. Charlie doesn't like to say anything about it at home. He doesn't let people know how he feels. Olivia would have told Mom, but Charlie didn't want to. I found him crying once in the attic back home because of it.”
“Lizzy, that's awful. You should tell your mother. The kids shouldn't get away with it.” Jack was serious. Lizzy had never heard this tone to his voice before.
“I know. But I think in their lives it’s what their parents brought them up to be like. Olivia, Charlie, and I have never had a father in our lives, and Mom has always worked to support us. But the kids at school…their moms stay at home all day, cooking and cleaning, while the fathers go out to work.”
Jack was surprised by Lizzy's words. She sounded so grown-up, but he knew it was true. Society still didn't accept single mothers who worked to support their children. It was always something that would be an issue, Jack felt. Now little Charlie was even being tortured because of it.
“But I like that Mom is different. I like that she brought us up to think for ourselves. I would hate to have an entire family who wouldn't allow me to breathe and always wipe each other’s snotty noses. It’s disgusting. People should be allowed to think for themselves.”
“You're right. Your mother has done a wonderful job.” For a girl of just twelve, Lizzy knew a lot about the world and what she wanted. She was so much like her mother. “You don't need your father in your life to be happy.”
Sitting upright, Lizzy thought for a second. Did Jack know anything about her father? “Jack, can I ask you something? Did you know my father?”
Raising his eyebrows, Jack thought of Cal—the evil man he was and the pain he had caused Rose. “Yes. I met him briefly before he married your mother.” He would have to be careful what he told Lizzy.
“What was he like?” she asked, her eyes twinkling. She longed to know about her father, but with her mother the subject was a touchy one.
“Well…I didn't know him very much, Liz. But he was unpleasant to me.”
Looking downwards, Lizzy felt disappointed. Had her father always been so awful? “He never loved me, I don't think. I cannot even remember what he looks like.”
“Hey, Lizzy, he is the stupid one for not wanting anything to do with you. You're the perfect daughter, and you should not feel bad.” Jack touched Lizzy's hand. Jack felt fatherly towards Lizzy, just as he always had done. In a way, he wished she was his daughter. Then she would have grown up with a father. He would never run away from his children. Glancing downward at Lilly, who sat on his lap, he knew he could never leave his child. He loved her so much.
“But Olivia and Charlie have never had a father, either. I remember when Liv was born in New York. Mom was so happy and I asked her if she had a father, too, and Mom said no. We would always be just her children, but she would never love any child more than the other, and she never has.”
“Did your father ever try to contact Olivia after she was born?”
Lizzy frowned, confused. “No. Why would he? She isn't his daughter.”
Jack felt as though he had been hit by a train. Cal wasn't Olivia's father? “She isn't Cal's daughter?” Jack thought back to 1919, when they had met in New York after the war, and Jack had asked Rose why she had gone back to Cal after everything he had done to her and given him another daughter. Her answer had been, “You must never think of Olivia and Lizzy as anyone's children but mine.” Jack’s mouth fell open. Who was Olivia's father, then?
“No. I don't think Mom likes to talk about Olivia and Charlie's father. When we moved from Santa Monica to New York when we first met you, she had Olivia a few months later, and then when we moved to Cedar Rapids with Uncle Robert, she was pregnant with Charlie.”
Jack thought his whole world was going to spin and collapse. Cal wasn't Olivia's father? Robert wasn't Charlie's father? Rose didn't like to speak of the children's fathers? Rose was pregnant when she ran away from Santa Monica and then when she moved to Cedar Rapids. Jack remembered Rose telling him Robert had never touched her once, not even kissed her. Feeling a lump rising deep in his throat, Jack felt as though he was going to lose his grip on reality. Was he their father?
“Uncle Jack, are you all right?” Lizzy asked, waving her left hand in front of Jack's face.
“Yeah. I was just thinking. Lizzy, when you see your mother, would you tell her to drop by sometime today, if she has time?”
Nodding, Lizzy stood and pulled her coat from the back of the chair before putting it on. “I’d better go anyway. Mom will be home soon, and we'll be having tea.”
“Who has been with Charlie and Olivia?”
“Clara, our nanny.” Lizzy smiled. She gently touched Lilly's hand before heading to the door. “Good-bye, Uncle Jack.”
“See you later.” He smiled.
Once she was gone, he allowed himself to think. He could not believe what Lizzy had told him. Her words would simply not sink in. He had to speak to Rose. Could he really be their father? Was that the reason Rose had run from him for so long? Placing his head in his left hand, he gently stroked Lilly's blonde hair and felt as though he would break down. He needed to talk to Rose urgently. He had to get to the bottom of this confusion. If he was their father, what would happen? They were going back to Los Angeles in a matter of weeks. How could he father two other children? His whole head was a wreck.