HEARTS ARE BROKEN, LIVES ARE SHATTERED
Chapter Seven
"Jack! Emily's having her baby!"
Rose called out to Jack. Her now best friend Emily Calvert was a month overdue
and finally in labor. Joseph had died a month before, killed when he was hit by
a car. Emily was devastated but slowly recovered. The next six hours, Rose and
Jack sat in the parlor. When the doctor came out, their worst fear came true.
"Mrs. Calvert has lost too much blood. The
babies are fine, but I'm afraid she won't make it." Rose raced into
Emily's room.
"How are they?" a very weak Emily
asked.
"They're fine. How are you?" Rose asked,
trying not to cry.
"Lucas, Zoë, and Michael will watch
them, and when they are old enough, tell them about me and Joseph," Emily
said, slowly drifting away.
Rose started crying, and suddenly had an idea.
"Name your baby girls."
"Name the one you are holding Clarissa
Nicole Calvert, and this one Felicity Meredith Calvert," she said. Rose
held the babies tightly and Jack walked in.
"Jack is fine. You know that he and Rose
will be wonderful parents to our babies and one day we will all be
together," Emily said in a daze.
Rose and Jack held the babies and sang
together, "Come Josephine in my flying machine going up she goes up she
goes."
"Good-bye Jack, Rose, Felicity,
Clarissa, Lucas, Michael, and little Zoë. Remember me," Emily said. With
that, she closed her eyes as if she was asleep, only she would never wake up
again.
Twelve Years Later
"Mom! Will you fix my hair?" twelve-year-old
Felicity asked Rose.
The past twelve years had been hard for both
Rose and Jack. Emily and Joseph never left their thoughts. Clarissa and
Felicity had blossomed into fine young ladies with brown hair and eyes. Lucas
and Michael had Jack's blonde hair and blue eyes. To Rose, they looked like
Jack's long lost twins. As for Zoë, she had blonde hair with Rose's curls and
blue eyes.
Clarissa came down the stairs for Jack, and
asked him, "Daddy, will you come here? I have to ask you something,"
she said. When she brought him upstairs, she showed him a picture of Emily and
him.
"Who is this? It looks like you and some
other person," she said.
That night, after dinner, the truth came out
about Felicity and Clarissa. "So, that lady in the picture is our
mother?" Felicity and Clarissa asked.
"Yes," Rose answered.
"So, we're not related to Filly and
Clare?" Lucas asked. The nicknames he and Michael had picked out were the
names they had called them when they were little and didn't know how to say
their names.
"You’re distant cousins, but no dating
until we get their last names changed to Calvert," Jack said warningly.
"Felicity Meredith Dawson Calvert. Swell!"
Felicity said.
"Ditto! Clarissa Nicole Dawson Calvert!"
said Clarissa. A few weeks later, Jack and Rose had their last names changed
and Lucas asked Felicity out. Rose and Jack laughed and wondered to themselves
what Emily and Joseph were thinking right now.