Cal didn't often visit his father, and his father didn't often visit him. Over the years their relationship had evolved from student and teacher to business associates; there was no real warmth between them, but they had a certain appreciation of each other as businessmen first and foremost, family second. This had been particularly true after the untimely death of Cal's mother while he was studying at Harvard ten years earlier.
So he was rather surprised when he heard the doorbell ring downstairs one morning and a servant came to inform him that his father was in the sitting room.
The two men shook hands and Nathan flashed his brightest smile. It was a businessman's smile, one that Cal had inherited and learned to utilize after years of observing it on his father.
"It's been too long, son! How is life treating you?"
"I can hardly complain," said Cal, although it was a far cry from the truth.
A servant entered and set a tea tray on the coffee table between them.
"So, what brings you here?" Cal asked, mirroring the fake smile. "I'm sure you didn't decide to stop by just for the hell of it."
"Come now, Caledon! No questions asked! What father needs an excuse to pay a visit to his own lifeblood?"
Cal smiled again, but something in the tone of Nathan's voice made him uncomfortable.
"And how is your beautiful young Rose? In good health, I hope?"
"She's in the best health that money can buy," said Cal.
"How terrible about her mother. And only a year or two after losing her father."
"Yes," said Cal, "it's tragic."
"I must be upfront," said Nathan. "There is indeed a reason I decided to pay you this impromptu visit. I've been meaning to come see you for a while now, but haven't had the time."
He glanced to the door, as though he were checking to make sure that no one was there, and then pulled a letter from his jacket pocket.
"What's that?" asked Cal, his discomfort heightening as Nathan held it out to him.
"A letter from Rose's dear mother, Ruth. You see, she wrote me shortly after she fell ill."
Cal scanned the letter.
"I didn't want to believe it at first," said Nathan, "but I can think of no reason for Ruth to tell me such falsehoods."
Expressionless, Cal handed the letter back.
"Well?" said Nathan, watching him expectantly.
"Rose had an affair with a boy from steerage on board the Titanic," Cal said after a pause. "I've never touched her."
"It's true then," Nathan replied in a hushed voice. He looked pained.
Cal said nothing.
And then—
"Why did you not prevent this, Caledon? Why did you not control her?"
"Why did I not prevent it?" Cal repeated. He laughed. It was a hysterical sound. "There is nothing I could possibly have done to control her that I didn't try and fail. She was in rebellion and she had become unmanageable."
"If she didn't fear or respect you enough to stay faithful, then you were never clear about your roles to begin with!" Nathan said, standing. Cal remembered times in his childhood when Nathan had towered over him, in a fury over some trivial thing—he had been out climbing trees with the maid's son again, he'd cried like a sniveling little girl after he fell off his bicycle and scraped an elbow, and Caledon someday you're going to be powerful and rich beyond meaning but no one will respect you if you don't learn to act like you deserve their respect.
Thank you, Father, lesson learned.
"She didn't honor you because you never required her to honor you. We've all been aware of that girl's insubordinate streak since the beginning, have we not? A woman like that must be put firmly in her place and made to realize that she can't run around doing whatever she pleases and expect to be rewarded."
Refusing to be condescended to, Cal got up to meet him."I made all of those things abundantly clear to Rose," he snapped. "The harder I tried to restrain her, the further she strayed."
"This is unacceptable! Your wife is carrying a bastard child fathered by a proletariat!"
"And what would you like me to do about it?" Cal demanded.
"Eliminate the problem," said Nathan after he seemed to pause and consider for a moment.
Cal knew exactly what he was insinuating. "That's impossible," he said. "She's five months along. The risk it would pose her is too high, even if we were to find someone who could perform the procedure."
"You ought to have taken her to see someone as soon as she told you!"
Cal struggled to come up with words to express what had gone on in his thought process, words that Nathan would understand. He didn't fully understand himself what had happened to him psychologically; he only remembered having thought of everything all at once and ruling out options for one reason after another until he was left with a matter of yes or no. He would take her as she was, or he would turn her out to fend for herself.
"It wasn't as simple as that."
"However can you see this as a complicated matter? It's quite simple. If it were myself, I wouldn't have taken her back in at all. Do you realize the damage this could do the company if it gets out? We'll be caught up in a scandal. It will ruin us to the media."
"I had realized this. When I spoke to Ruth it was in discretion. But she couldn't keep it to herself, exhibitionist whore that she was—"
Nathan smacked him across the face.
"I did not raise my only son and heir to use such language toward an honorable woman like Ruth DeWitt Bukater," he said in a calm voice. "You corrupt her memory."
Don't you see her? Rose had shrieked, trying desperately to make him understand the things she knew about her mother.
What had Ruth believed she was doing? Was she cleansing a guilty conscience, or did she have some other reason for thinking that she needed to share potentially damaging information?
"What do you have to say for yourself?" Nathan asked in that same calm, cool voice.
"Nothing," said Cal. "I won't apologize for the truth."
The epiphany made him hollow.
*****
Cal lay fully dressed on top of his bed, listening to evening rain hammer against the roof and windows. His father had taken Ruth's letter back with him, but he could remember most of the wording.
I cannot rest knowing that you will never hear the truth about your supposed grandchild, she had written.
Fumbling on the nightstand for his cigarettes, Cal tried to quell the dread that kept rising in him. Unless Ruth had confided in other, less trustworthy souls—and he doubted she had, because her reason for informing Nathan did make sense on some level—there was nothing that could come of it. The true origin of Rose's child would remain a skeleton in the family closet that never saw the light of day.
A knock at the door made him sit up.
"Yes?"
It was Rose. "Are you going to sleep already?" she asked, narrowing her eyes when she saw him on the bed.
"It's 7:30," replied Cal in lieu of an answer.
She hesitated and then sat down at the foot of the bed, careful to keep appropriate distance between them. She was in her dressing gown, had her arms sort of crossed over her body, but the swell of her abdomen had become noticeable and it occurred to him not for the first time that he was going to raise an heir whose life and essence he despised.
"I want you to have this back," she said, holding out her clenched hand. She didn't meet his eyes. "I wish you would sell it so I never have to see it again."
She opened her hand and the Heart of the Ocean fell out onto the duvet.
Cal snatched at it.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm giving it back?" asked Rose.
"No," Cal replied. "It was never yours to give back, only mine to have returned."
"You gave it to me," she said, defiance flashing in her eyes. "It was mine."
"You lost your rights to anything I'd given you when you ran off with Dawson," Cal said as he stuffed the diamond into his shirt pocket.
"I had wanted to explain something to you," Rose said angrily, "but if you're going to be like this, then I won't even bother."
Cal sighed. "Stop."
She looked at him.
"What did you want to explain?"
"That I'm asking you to sell it because there are too many painful memories attached to it for me. And for you, I'm sure." She paused. "I…would like to move on from them, but I see that necklace lying in my vanity every morning and it reminds me of things I'm trying to forget."
"Forget?" he repeated. "Forget Dawson? Your savior?"
That sent her storming from the room.
Cal knew that he had just destroyed an opportunity. Rather than listen to her and try to understand, he had driven her deliberately away. But her words had jarred him and he stopped caring.
What precisely did she want to move on from? Had she at last realized that she would never be able to heal and go on to live her life if she didn't break out of her dreams about Dawson? Or did she want to forget that her relationship with Cal had ever been one of anything more than cooperation and attempted mutual understanding?
He pulled the diamond from his pocket. It glittered cruelly in the lamplight.
It was either a second chance, or a condemnation.
He was too proud to go after her and find out which.