CAL’S PLAN
Chapter Twelve
Rose sat on her bed, fighting
against the tears that wanted to fall. Not yet, Jack. Please, not yet. I
have to be stronger than ever. Please, I can’t cry.
"Miss, are you all
right?" Elizabeth asked.
"Yes, yes," lied Rose.
"I can handle this, Elizabeth. Go see if my mother needs your help."
The maid left the room, but at
that moment, Ruth came in.
"Rose, may I speak with
you?"
"Mother, this isn’t the best
time. I still have to pack a lot of things."
"Please, Rose. It’s very
important." For the first time in almost eighteen years, Rose felt that
her mother was truly concerned about something other than money.
"All right, Mother. What is
it?"
"I just wanted to ask you
what happened on the Titanic."
"What…what do you mean? It
sank. Don’t you remember?"
"I do. But I meant with
Jack. How did you meet him? What did he tell you?"
That was too much. For six
months, Ruth had pretended that the Titanic hadn’t existed, that they hadn’t
been on it. But now, she was asking these painful questions of Rose. She hadn’t
spoken about Jack to anyone, and the last person she would have chosen to start
telling everything to was her mother.
"I don’t understand what you
are talking about."
"All right. Let me put it a
different way. Do you love him?"
"Jack’s dead," Rose
said, and a tear slipped from her eye.
"Please, Rose, I need to
know. You tried to kill yourself, didn’t you? But he saved you."
"How do you know that?"
"What happened?"
Rose still didn’t want to talk
about it, but she felt that her mother knew something very important, and the
only way she would tell her was if she would tell her secret.
So, she did. She spoke about
everything, starting with how she felt about Cal and how she had tried to
commit suicide, and also about her plans to leave him. As she talked, she
couldn’t resist any longer, and her tears began to fall. Once she had finished,
she felt better. Maybe it was time to cry for Jack.
Her mother listened silently. She
just looked at her very differently than how she had seen her for her whole
life. Once her daughter finished her story, she said, "Rose, I wasn’t
honest with you. I have to tell you something very important. After I do, you
may hate me, and, trust me, I won’t complain about it. I was a horrible person.
I should have told you this back on the Carpathia. Jack isn’t dead."
Rose stopped crying. She could
hardly understand her mother’s words. Jack was alive. That was impossible. He
would have tried to find her. He had loved her. He wouldn’t have given up hope.
He had known she was safe in a boat. Why hadn’t he looked for her?
Her mother seemed to understand
what was going through her head, because she started telling her what had
really happened. She didn’t look at her daughter. Instead, she looked through
the window, but when she turned around, Rose could see that she was crying.
"Please, Rose. I hope that
someday you can forgive me. I was more interested in the money than in your
happiness."
"I…I don’t blame you,"
Rose whispered.
A small smile appeared on Ruth’s
face.
"Rose, I have no idea where
the boy is, but if you want, we can search for him. He is using a very
well-known name. It won’t be hard to find out what he had been doing for the
past six months. We can see if he has been receiving Lovejoy’s unemployment
insurance. This means that you don’t have to go to Washington to marry Cal,
unless you want to."
Rose didn’t want to, so the women
went to search for any information related to Lovejoy, but it turned out that
there wasn’t anything to prove that he had survived the sinking. The only thing
that he had done was give a donation to an art school. Ruth realized that it
was the exact sum that she had given him.
They came back, exhausted, late
in the evening. Ruth was very disappointed, but Rose was happy. It didn’t
matter that they couldn’t find him. At least he was alive. They decided that
they should leave Philadelphia as soon as possible, not only because, as Rose
said, Jack had probably left, but also because Cal would surely send someone to
take them to Washington. So, that night they took a train to Boston, where they
kept searching for Jack.