THE HEART NEVER LIES
Chapter Six
Rose
The taxi door slammed. Cal had
pinioned my arm so I couldn’t escape and roughly pushed me into the middle of
the seat with him by the door. And he’d slipped the gun into his pocket.
"Now, Rose, settle down," he said calmly. I wondered why he had
changed tactics and slipped back into his smarmy, dapper façade. Then I
realized why.
"Rose!" a startled,
highbred voice exclaimed. "Oh, my, I cannot believe it." I look
sideways at my mother, to my right, shock on her haughty face. "I thought
you’d...you’d...oh, my goodness!" she said, faltering; she looked as
pristine as ever in her heavy furs and comfy, warm, elegant hat. Her hands
flapped in mid-air, but she didn’t touch me or hold me as a loving mother
should.
Her dead daughter was back from
the icy water!
I looked at her with the eyes of
a stranger. She flinched.
"Mother," I retorted
icily. "You look a fright." She sobbed, brought a handkerchief to her
mouth, and cried refined tears, looking at me. "Yes, Mother." I
squeezed her arm, and she turned her face to look at me. "I am alive, but
only thanks to Jack. He gave his life for mine." My voice broke as I
thought of him. "I can never..." Cal suddenly grabbed the side of my
face and twisted it to look at him. "Cal, please," I said softly. The
car suddenly started its engine and started to go forward. I gasped.
"Ruth," he announced to
my mother, smirking. His gaze still burned into my eyes. "Aren’t we lucky
the gutter rat helped restore our princess to us? We can go ahead after
all."
My mother stopped her weeping, and
replied, "Yes. All is not lost. We can proceed with our plans."
Jack was totally dismissed like a
piece of garbage. Sobs welled up in my throat. At what cost Jack’s death and
our fragile, tender new love?
"Mother, what plans?" I
whispered, my eyes widening. Cal laughed into my face and prodded me hard with
his elbow. I turned away so he could not see the grief on my face.
"Sweetpea," he mocked,
"our wedding, of course. We don’t want anything to stop that, do we?"
he purred silkily, and patted the pocket of his suit where the gun was.
Was my mother so naïve? Could she
not see through his lies? If I became Rose Bukater Hockley, I would disappear.
"Rose, they have you
trapped, and that fire I love will burn out." I heard Jack’s sweet voice.
"Rose will be ever so
cooperative, won’t you, dear?" Cal asked. "She won’t want events to
take a nasty turn, not while I am here to protect you. She has even kept the
necklace I gave her as a wedding gift safe, too."
I whipped my head around to look
into his coal black, narrow eyes. I realized that he did love me, but he was
warped. I was a possession like that dammed necklace, heavy in my pocket. The
honesty, spirit, and goodness of my Jack made this man a monster, money or no
money. Jack’s riches had been his heart and a love that could not be bought.
Tears started to fall down my
face. I turned away and looked at the floor of the moving car.
"We understand each other,
don’t we, Rose?" he demanded.
I slowly nodded my head. My
mother patted my hand. "We’ll live with, Cal, darling, and then have the
wedding as planned." Content, she sat back, silent and relieved. Cal still
had a tight grip on my arm, like a vise.
I felt like I was drowning. What
I could do? I stared blankly ahead as we proceeded to Cal’s father’s brownstone
in a posh area of New York.
Trapped. Back to square one. Had
Jack’s death meant nothing and brought me to this? Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe
he had survived. They hadn’t found a body. God worked in strange ways.
Hope jumped in me. The warmth and
determination I had found in Jack’s arms and in our shared dreams awoke in me.
Having been through hell with the death of the Titanic and leaving behind the
skin of the snake that had been that foul, upper-class girl, I had learnt,
evolved.
I would go on, but not as Rose
Hockley. I was Rose Dawson, and I would get away, but how?