Jack

Almost two weeks after my mother-in-law's visit, I still remember her begging me to help her. The husband in me wanted nothing more than to see Ruth suffer for what she did to Rose. The human in me felt compassion for the woman. I had been where she was now. I slept under bridges and in abandoned train cars to get out of the winter air or the summer sun. I was used to it, but for someone like Ruth, who was used to having a lady's maid and caviar at every turn, it was an interesting turn of events. I told Rose that my pop always said “What goes around, comes around” and right now, Ruth was getting hers. In one way, it was satisfying, but in another, it made me feel guilty.

Rose hadn't said much since Ruth's visit and I didn't press her. I made a short run to England, but was back before the week was out. Rose said she and Torie went into town a few times to take the children to play at one of the local parks, but other than that, all things were quiet in the Dawson household.

Still, the thought of Ruth being forced out in the cold was weighing on my mind. Rose had no other family and, as far as I knew, Ruth was an only child. Her parents had died some time ago and with Rose's father also deceased, that left only Rose. As much as I wanted to hate the woman for what she did to Rose for seventeen years, until she and I met, I couldn't. It was because of Ruth that Rose and I met on board the Titanic. If Ruth hadn't been such an evil, conniving woman, Rose wouldn't have tried to jump off of the Titanic and we would never have met. The odds of a first class girl meeting a penniless artist like me weren't in our favor and never would be.

Lacing up my boots, I knew what I had to do. Rose was next door with Harry and Torie, leaving me alone. I scribbled a note on the chalkboard by the door that told Rose I was heading into town to pick up a few things for the house.

It was a long, solitary walk to the part of town where Ruth was staying. I stopped at the clerk's desk and asked what room she was in. Armed with the information, I summoned the elevators and stepped in, knowing just what I had to do.

Ruth answered the door, but looked like she hadn't slept in days. Her hair was neatly pinned back, but something about her facial features told me that she had a lot on her mind. At least we had that in common.

"Mr. Dawson." She held the door open for me and stepped to one side. "And to what do I owe this honor?"

I heard her gently shut the door as she motioned for me to take a seat in the sitting room of her hotel suite. "I need to talk to you about Rose."

"Is she in good health? Is anything wrong?"

"Rose is fine." I wondered how I should approach the subject with Ruth. I was never one for beating around the bush and just decided to tell her what my plan was. "Rose doesn't know I'm here. She's still pretty upset with you over the whole incident at the house the other day, and I can't say as I blame her."

Ruth shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I just expected a warmer welcome than what I got."

"Even after all you did to your daughter, you expected her to welcome you back with open arms? I'm surprised she didn't attack you." I exhaled sharply. "Look, Rose doesn't know I'm here, but I had to check on you and offer you this." I pulled a brown White Star Line envelope out of the inside pocket of my vest. "I know it's not much, but it'll allow you to stay here for a couple more weeks."

Ruth took the envelope from me and thumbed through the bills inside. "I can't take your money, Mr. Dawson." She started to hand the envelope back to me, but changed her mind and let it sit on her lap. "What do you expect me to do? Stay here?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Up to you. There's enough money in the envelope to pay up this hotel room for another couple of weeks, or there's enough money there to buy a train ticket and get out of here. It's up to you."

"What about my daughter?"

"What about her? She's got me. She'll be fine."

"She will not be fine!" Ruth tossed the envelope on a table and stood up. "She's my daughter and she needs me. She can't see it now, but she will."

I crossed my arms across my chest. "And how do you plan on convincing Rose to give you another chance? There are two people in this world she never wants to see again. One is Cal and the other one…well…I'll let you guess who that is."

"Me?" Ruth sat back down in her chair. "Rose never wants to see me again?"

"No."

Looking defeated, she leaned back and closed her eyes. "I really have made a mess of things, haven't I?"

"Yep."

Ruth sighed. "Can you please help me? Help me with Rose?"

"I'm not going to browbeat my wife into forgiving you just because you're homeless and have nowhere to go. If you truly care about Rose, you'll use that money to buy a train ticket out west somewhere and disappear."

"It's not just because I'm homeless, Mr. Dawson." Ruth was on the verge of tears. "I know I haven't exactly been mother of the year material, but if you could only understand that I did what I did for Rose because I wanted her to have the best. I wanted her to have silks and satins and a mansion with servants she could command because I had those things. Her father had those things. It upsets me to know that Rose is living the way she lives now, but she's made her choice and I can't do anything about it except hope she'll forgive me one day and allow me into her new life."

I was having a hard time being convinced of the new Ruth. In my mind, the only Ruth she'd ever be was the one on board the Titanic. The one who, alongside Cal, had me arrested and handcuffed to a pipe in the purser's office. I was torn, though; torn between offering this woman a chance with Rose and telling her to get out of town. I owed her at least a chance to see Rose again. Maybe if I mediated it, things would go better this time. If I involved Torie and Harry, maybe Rose would keep her composure and allow Ruth to stay, if only temporarily. I had to try. I owed this woman something because she was partially the reason Rose and I were together to this day. "Look, I'll take you back to the house to meet with Rose—under one condition."

Ruth stood up. "Anything."

"Rose wants you to leave and you pack your bags. You pack your bags and use that money to buy a train ticket as far away from us as humanly possible. If you want to go back to England, I'll get you on board the next ship I'm on. You will never speak to Rose again if she so desires. Got it?"

"I'll try."

"No." I stood up and stuck my hands in my pockets. "You'll do more than try. I'm taking a huge gamble on bringing you back to Rose, but I owe you this much, at least."

"You owe me?"

"Think about it. If it wasn't for you being the awful, tyrannical mother than you are or were or whatever, I wouldn't be married to Rose. If Rose was happy with the way her life was, she and I would never have met. The stars aligned that night. I do have you to thank for that, and because of that, I do owe you. Consider this your debt paid in full." I opened the door and held it open for Ruth. "Let's go. I know I'm about to regret this, but let's go."

Rose

"You're both getting so big." I was watching Anna and James playing in the playpen in the corner of Torie's front room. The two children were facing each other and were involved in an intense conversation understood only by them. Babbling back and forth nonstop, each child took turns playing with a stuffed animal that was in the playpen, but it was enough to keep them both busy so Torie and I could finish making dinner for Harry and for Jack. "I wonder where he is."

"Where who is?" Torie handed me a spoon and told me to stir the gravy for the potatoes. "Jack?"

"Yes." I stuck the wooden spoon in the thick gravy and began to stir it lightly. "He said he was taking a nap and he'd be over here after awhile, but I haven't seen him and it's been a couple of hours."

"I'll go check." Harry kissed Torie on the neck before exiting out the back door on his way to check on Jack.

Torie and I busied ourselves with the food preparations and listening for the children’s cries, but thankfully for us, they continued to keep themselves busy with some brightly colored wooden blocks that Harry had dumped in the playpen on his way into the kitchen.

I was watching Harry walk up the cobblestone pathway between our houses when I noticed two people walking towards Torie's house. One was Jack and the other was my mother. "No!"

"What?" Torie looked up from the pot of vegetables she was washing. "Who?"

"My mother." I left the gravy spoon in the pot and went to the room to check on my son. "Why?"

Heading back to the kitchen, I looked for anything I could use to defend myself, but the only thing nearby was the wooden gravy spoon. Seeing nothing else, I picked it up and wiped the dripping gravy off the spoon and held it behind my back. Jack had some explaining to do.

When she walked through the front door of Torie and Harry's house, I was more shocked than I thought I'd be. "Mother." I dropped the spoon and heard it hit the wooden floor. "What are you doing here?"

I started to back up. When my mother started to approach me, Harry and Torie both stood between my mother and me.

"I need to speak to you."

"No." I started to turn to leave and head home, but Jack stopped me. "You were behind this."

"Excuse us." Jack took me by the arm and led me up the stairs to Anna's bedroom and shut the door so we could have some privacy. "Look, I know you're mad at me and you've got every right to be, but just hear me out."

"Fine."

Jack sighed. "Look, I know you never wanted to see Ruth again and, quite frankly, neither did I. For the past two weeks after she stopped me at the docks, I've been recalling what she told me about being broke and homeless and it got to me. The husband in me wanted to her to suffer like she made you suffer all those years, but the human being in me didn't want her to. After all, she's the reason we met." Almost as an afterthought, Jack sighed. "Or one of them, if you want to get technical."

Jack had a point, but I wasn't sure if I owed my mother anything. For seventeen years, I was forced to attend parties and polo matches. I was forced to be a subservient young girl, always focused on the next social event and the ever-looming prospect of finding a husband and being married off at the youngest possible age. By the time I reached the age of fifteen, my mother was in full blown panic mode about trying to find a husband. One of my best friends from finishing school was married off at fifteen and after she married one of the richest men in Philadelphia, my mother decided we should move to England to find a handsome and rich man to pawn me off on. It was then that we ran into Caledon Hockley, who was managing the English branch of Hockley Steel at the time, with their main project being the construction of the Titanic. From there, my life spiraled downhill, but there was nothing I could do.

Until now.

"Jack." I hugged him as I buried my face in his shirt. "I…" I was at a loss for words. Even though I despised my mother for the hell I lived through as a child and teenager, part of me wished she was in my life. I wanted James to get to know his grandmother as well as this baby, but I couldn't take the risk of this baby or James being polluted by my mother and her ever scheming ways. I sighed in defeat. "I'll talk to her, but that's it. Tell her to come upstairs and we'll talk in private."

Jack nodded and said he'd be right back with Ruth, leaving me alone in Anna's room to pace until my mother showed up.

"Thank you." My mother stepped timidly into Anna's room. "I appreciate you seeing me. I know it must be difficult."

"Difficult." I moved to the window seat in Anna's room and sat down, facing my mother, who was next to the crib. "Difficult is an understatement, but Jack said something to me that made me change my mind and agree to help you out, or at least listen to him."

"Good." My mother took a seat in the rocking chair in the room after she moved it closer to me. "That's a start."

For the next half hour, my mother and I managed to have a semi-civil conversation. She explained how sorry she was for my childhood and reiterated the point that after my father died, it was either pawn me off on Cal or be forced to leave England and head back to America. "I didn't want you to have to go to work in a factory, working twelve plus hours a day. I wanted the best for you. I still do. Any mother always wants the best for her children, and now that you're a mother, I know you can understand."

I did, but I'd also never treat any of my children the way my mother treated me. I remembered Jack's words right before he left, telling me to keep my temper in check. I took a deep breath and started to speak, but stopped myself. I was a mother now and understood the bond between a mother and a child, even if the child was me and the mother was Ruth. She was my mother and other than Jack and Torie's family, I had no one else. Torie's father treated me like a daughter and Shannon loved me like a sister, but they weren't my blood family. The only blood family I had left was my mother and my son.

"Look, I'm not saying I forgive you, because I don't. I still hold a lot of things against you, but Jack said something to me that made me think. He told me if it wasn't for you, we would have never met, and that's true." I stopped to look at Ruth, who hadn't moved from her position in the chair. I had her full attention. "You know that if I was truly happy with Cal, we'd be married by now. James would be a Hockley and not a Dawson and you'd still be living with a lady's maid and servants to wait on you hand and foot. My life is the opposite of everything it could have been with Cal and I, for one, don't mind. My dream has come true. My cup has run over. I have what I want in life with Jack and Torie and my son."

"The main question I have for you is—are you happy?"

I scoffed. "Why wouldn't I be? I have a family. I have the life I was meant to live. I was never meant to live in a life with an endless string of yachts and cotillions. This is what I was meant to do. I was meant to be a wife and a mother. I was meant to live modestly with a husband who married me because he loved me and not because it was arranged because it benefitted someone monetarily. This is my life and how I've always dreamed it."

"But is there room for me in it?"

"I don't know." I stared at the floor. "Right now, I don't know."

My mother sighed. I had hurt her feelings, but I couldn't help it. The rage I had built up inside of me wasn't helping me any. "I see. I am unsure if you know it or not, but I will be staying at the hotel for another couple of weeks. If you don't change your mind before then, I will understand and will leave you alone." She kissed me gently on the forehead before turning and leaving the room.

I sank back against the wall and stared out the window, watching as my mother slowly walked back towards town. "Now what do I do?" I didn't know whether to cry or start throwing stuff. My mother was my mother, but she was also the person who, right now, I despised as much as Caledon Hockley, and now she wanted back in my life?

Torie knocked on the door and opened it just a bit. "May I come in?"

"Of course. It's your house."

She took the rocking chair that my mother had been in and sat down. "So, I take it that it didn't go well?"

I let out a small laugh of exasperation. "Not quite. She basically begged for Jack and me to take her in, since Cal threw her out. Truth is, I don't know what to do. On one hand, she is my mother. On the other, she's the woman who didn't care about me. She only cared about staying in the elite social circles Cal could get us into. What do I do?"

Torie shrugged her shoulders. "That’s not up to me to decide, Rose. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know." I shook my head and played with my wedding ring. "This is one of those times in life where I need guidance. Like a man on the lawn with a sign that tells me what to do." I turned around to look out the window. "No such luck. No man with a sign."

"Look, I don't want to upset you or anything, and by all means, take my advice for what it's worth, but coming from someone without a mother, it's hard to see you turn yours away." I looked up to protest, but Torie stopped me. "I know what she did to you. I was on board the Titanic with you, remember?"

"Of course I do."

"I can't make up your mind for you, but I'd give anything I owned to see my mother again. To have her meet Harry and Anna, plus this baby, also, but I can't. Your mother is in town at a hotel and is desperate to reconnect with you. Yes, her motivations may be selfish, but she's trying."

"Do you think if Cal hadn't thrown her out she'd still be here?"

"Maybe." Torie started to gently rock in the chair. "The mother in me says that no matter where her daughter is, mothers always want to be in their daughter's lives. My father, though he's not here much, still keeps in contact with Harry and me as much as he can through wires and through letters. It's something. What I'm trying to say is that Ruth may want to reconnect with you, but it’s on her own terms. She may have wanted to wait until she was dying and on her death bed, but Cal, as always, screwed it up when he threw her out. You've got a chance I'd love to have."

Torie's final words left me with a lot to think about.

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