LIFE AFTER JACK
Chapter One
"Opal, wake up," said
Rose, now twenty years old. "Come on, Opal. Wake up. They have just bombed
the city!"
Rose and Opal were getting used
to the fact that they had to get up in the middle of the night because of bombs.
They were living in France at the time. It was 1915, and the world had changed
quite a bit since the night the Titanic sank. Rose still woke up every morning
thinking about Jack, and went to sleep every night thinking about him. If it
weren't for Opal, she did not think she would ever make it through life.
Over the past few months, Rose
had been saving every penny she could get to buy Opal a new doll for her
birthday. Rose could not believe that their little girl was almost two years
old. It seemed like only yesterday she had met Jack Dawson at the stern of the
largest ship in the world at the time. She still could not believe she had
almost taken her life by jumping off of the Titanic.
Rose had tried to court since
Jack died, but she just couldn’t. Every time she started having fun, Jack
popped back into her memory. She did not even have a picture of him. All she
had left was what was still in her memory. Rose knew that Jack would have
wanted her to be happy and find love again, but it was too hard for her.
But Opal was growing up without a
father. What would she tell her when she got older and asked about Jack? She
wanted to get out of the dump she and her daughter were living in, but had no
money. Of course, she had the Heart of the Ocean, but she could not sell that.
It would be like showing the world that she still needed Cal for money.
She had not heard from Cal since
the Titanic sank. She was not even sure if he was still alive. In fact, she had
heard rumors before that he had killed himself, but was not sure what to
believe. If Cal was still alive, she thought that he would have tried to
contact her to see how she was. Maybe he was just too ashamed to think that his
money could not buy her love.