IS THERE LIFE AFTER LOVE?
Chapter Three
1915
Not longer after the dawn of her acting
career, Rose met an actor who was genuinely interested in courting her. Michael
Calvert was shocked at first when he found out that Rose was a young mother,
widowed even. She'd never told him, but he'd never asked.
Over lunch one day she recalled, "My
husband was an excellent artist. His drawings were so real they were almost
like photographs. He could tell everything about you simply by looking in your
eyes." I lost him the night the Titanic sank, she remembered, but
never told anyone. She was also careful not to release too much information
about Jack to Mr. Calvert.
Rose had an interest in Michael, but every
time she accepted a date with him, as innocent as it was, she felt like she was
betraying her love for Jack, and told him so. "Rose, who do you want? The
love of your life who died to save you or a genuinely sweet man who has offered
to fill the void in your heart that you promised me you'd find someone to
fill?" She heard Jack's next words loud and clear in her ear. "Do you
love him?" The inquiry that once referred to Caledon Hockley, and she
thought terribly rude, was now the truth that he wanted her to come to terms
with.
"Yes," she said aloud.
After debating the idea for a year, Rose
agreed to marry Michael in a private ceremony on June 5, 1917. In the chapel,
when it dawned on her that she now had two husbands, she lifted her eyes to
heaven as a tear ran down her cheek. She couldn't ever see him, except in her
dreams, but she always felt him watching over her.
Jack smiled as he saw her looking up at him.
She had fulfilled her promise to find another man to love, but never in the way
she loved him. At the same time, Jack was crushed. "Rose, that should be
my wedding to you. I should be the one exchanging vows and the one who kisses
you and touches you when you crawl into bed tonight!" He added, but not so
she could hear, "You'll have to wait seventy-nine years before I can hold
you like that again, outside of your memories."
The End.