Unspeakable (24 page)

My heart pounded as I lifted my eyes from the page. I reread it, just to be sure.

I looked up from the pages into a different world. For now, it was a world where hope and my daughter lived.

MY HEAD WAS ABUZZ
the next few days. I could hardly think straight as I sifted through all I had learned and sorted out what to do next.

I had a daughter! She lived—but where? Aunt Geraldine had neglected to tell me which orphanage. And even if I knew, my daughter might well have been adopted by now. How would I ever find her? Where did I even start?

And then there was Jim.

Knowing that he hadn't gone down with the ship rekindled the flicker of hope that he'd survived. My greatest fear had been that he went into the hold that night and never came out. Now I feared that he had drowned after saving William Sampson. But there was still a chance, a slim one, that he had survived, that he had lived. Dare I hope that he loved me, too?

I wandered the silent rooms, sat in front of meals but didn't eat, lay in bed but didn't sleep. Poor Bates and Lily didn't know what to do with me or for me. Though I hated
our deal at first, I had to admit I missed Steele, I missed his analytical mind. He knew how to ask those incisive questions. Surely he would've been able to help me figure this out, to find the answers within me.

And then put them in his article
.

Who was I fooling? Steele had used me. He wrung my story from me. He wasn't coming back. He didn't care about me. All that mattered now was his article. His byline. His promotion. I'd traded my story for what—more questions?

I still didn't know where Jim was, whether he'd lived or died, or who he loved. No answers, really, just Sampson's transcript, a diary, and a coat.

I looked at it hanging where I'd left it in the front hall. At the button I'd left sitting on the end table next to me. And my aunt's dying words beside it.

What now?
I wondered.
What now?

Chapter Thirty-Three

“
HERE WE ARE, GERRARD STREET
. That's number six there.” Bates stopped the car in front of a housing row, a great long stretch of brick broken up by a door, a window, a door, a window, all the way down to the corner. A low wall ran the length of them, with wrought-iron gates rusted half-shut. The yards were dirt, no scrap of grass, never mind gardens. Battered by the sea and the cost of life eked out upon its swells and shore, everything this side of town seemed weatherworn and tired, even the people walking past. An old man eyeballed the car that clearly was not from around here.

Bates turned to me, resting his arm across the front seat. “Are you sure you don't want me to go, miss? These are the dockyards. The place, the people … they're a bit sketchy, if you don't mind my saying.”

The old me would have cowered in the car, but after life on the
Empress
, I saw them for what they were. People. Sure, they'd been roughened by hard work and hard times. Coarse, perhaps, but sturdy and purposeful. Like the coat I held in
my hands. I knew these strangers, for they were stokers and firemen, like Jim, sailors and stewards, like Timothy.

“I'll be fine,” I reassured him, sliding out of the car. “Wait here. I won't be long.”

I stepped through the gate and up the stone path, forcing myself to reach the front door. To raise my knuckles to it. It had taken me a few days just to get the nerve to come. But I had no idea what to say. What was there to say, really? I hoped it was his mother I'd find here and not his wife. But either way, that woman deserved his story. Not my part in it, perhaps, but at least what he did for Sampson.

I knocked, then gripped my hands together under his coat draped over my arm. I'd put the journal back in its pocket, along with all the pages Steele had torn and the copy of Sampson's interview tucked between its warped covers. None of it was mine to keep. I'd even sewn the button back on this morning. It helped me keep my mind off Aunt Geraldine's letter and my daughter and the ache of wondering where she was—what she looked like. If she was all right.

“Yes?” A young woman my age opened the door. Tendrils of russet hair hung by her face from where they'd fallen free of her faded head scarf. She held a toddler on her hip, a girl whose chubby legs straddled the woman's apron. The girl peeked at me shyly from behind her blanket and my breath caught, for she had Jim's dark curls. His ice-blue eyes.

“Is this …” I swallowed. “Is this the home of Jim Farrow?” I asked, hoping it wasn't, yet knowing it was.

“It is.” The young woman's eyes searched mine, curious. “I'm Elizabeth.”

“And I'm Penny,” the toddler added. “Penny Farrow.”

My heart sank. So it was true.

Elizabeth continued, “But he's—”

“I know,” I cut in. I wouldn't make her say it. Bad enough she had to live with the loss. And I wouldn't steal what memory she had of him either. She could read the journal herself. Know that she was on his heart and mind that last night. “I worked—” She wouldn't have believed me a stewardess, not in these fine clothes, with my driver and car at the bottom of her lane. “I was on the
Empress
. They asked me to give you this.” I handed her the coat and all its contents. “We just thought you'd want it. That you'd want to know.”

“Oh, all right then.” She took it in the crook of her arm, seemingly confused.

I stood awkwardly on the step of Jim's house.

“Umm …” She looked at me expectantly. Then stood aside, opening the door a bit more. “Did you want to come in for some tea? Jimmy—”

“No, no,” I interrupted. “Thank you … but I can't stay.” A part of me longed to sit at his table, in the heart of his home. To touch the things that mattered most to him. To hear her tell me of the man she knew. But I knew I couldn't do that to her. To me. I peered over her shoulder into Jim Farrow's life one last time, stopping my gaze at the toddler. I reached out and stroked her round cheek with the back of my fingers. “You have such a lovely smile.”

Her eyes sparkled as her cheeks dimpled. So like Jim.

“Oh, she's the spit of her father, aren't you, poppet?” Elizabeth said. Then her voice dropped. “We lost him. At sea.”

I nodded, surprised she was telling me what we both
knew. But grief had its ways. Perhaps she had to say it aloud, as I did to Steele. Perhaps this was the first time.

“How old are you, Penny?” I asked, changing the subject.

She held up two fingers. A year older than my daughter. I wondered what she looked like.

Does she have my eyes?

I don't even know her name
.

“Do you have children, ma'am?” Elizabeth asked, noticing my expression.

I pulled my hand away and cleared my throat. I'd done what I'd come to do. There was no point in lingering.

“It was nice to meet you, Elizabeth,” I lied as I turned away.

“I didn't catch your name,” she called after me.

“Ellen,” I said at the gate. “Ellen … Ryan.” It surprised me that I gave Elizabeth my ship pseudonym. Though I suppose it was the name of the stewardess who loved Jim. Of the girl I was before ships and lives and loves collided.

I stumbled into the car and Bates eagerly drove away.

It's what you wanted—to know for sure
, I told myself as I leaned my head on the window.
Well, now you know
.

But finding out had hurt me more than I thought possible. Reality had, like the
Storstad
, burst through my fog. It pierced me at the heart, driving deep in my chest as the ache of cold truth rushed in.

He never loved you. No matter what you thought you felt or knew about Jim—it wasn't true. It wasn't real
.

You are such a fool
.

The only thing I knew for certain was that I never wanted to feel this way ever again. And as we drove down Gerrard
Street past the long row of anonymous doors, moving farther and farther from number six, I forced myself to let go of a lot of things. Jim's coat. His journal. His story. I'd left them all behind.

And Ellen Ryan, the girl I was, along with them.

Chapter Thirty-Four