Chapter 5 #2
Will wandered the labyrinthine hallways of the ship, frustration guiding his steps.
He had no destination in mind, but he had to walk until his brain sorted out his thoughts into something, anything workable.
He thought of returning to Sylvia and telling her what had happened, but turned back before the lounge.
Then he thought of going back to his daughter’s cabin and trying to fix whatever he’d done wrong, but when he was already in front of her door, he paused.
Talking again now wouldn’t do either of them any good. They both needed time to calm down.
Instead, he went back to the cabin he shared with Sylvia.
He picked up the tablet he used to communicate with Emily and sat on the sofa.
A dial with five hands, reminiscent of his pocket watch, was attached to the back; Will used a switch at the side to wind up the hands, setting them to Emily’s time, then pushed the switch in to activate the call.
“Finally!” Emily’s face appeared on the screen. “Tell me you’re on the way back.”
“We’re on the ship.”
She leaned closer to the screen. “I don’t like that expression. What’s wrong?”
He sighed. “It’s Emmeline. We had a fight.”
“Oh, Gramps. What did you do this time?”
“I didn’t—she—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’d been consorting with some boy she met on the ship.”
“And naturally, you don’t approve.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why? She’s bound to meet someone eventually, unless you’d like her to be alone forever.”
“She brought him into her room!”
Emily let out a short laugh. “When I was her age, you spent the night in my room.”
“That was an entirely different situation. My watch broke, and I was stuck there until morning.”
“And my aunt would’ve pitched a fit if she found you.”
“It was your idea,” he argued, though the nostalgic memory had lightened his tone.
“Point is, sometimes, you have to let teenagers be teenagers. And it looks like Blue is in her problematic teenager phase. Not that you’d understand, having never been problematic.”
“I’m trying to protect her.”
“And I believe you. I know your intentions are good, but she won’t see it that way. Besides …” Emily weighed her head.
“What?”
“Not to criticize, since I hardly have the experience myself …” She frowned, but quickly continued, “You and Sylvia aren’t exactly winning the World’s Most Lax Parents Award.”
“We don’t live in your time. There are rules, expectations here.
And on top of it all …” He gazed at the faraway point in the cabin.
“I worry about her pushing boundaries like this. What if one day she gets into trouble she can’t get out of?
What if I’m not there to help her? Imagine someone else discovered her like I did, with that boy. ”
“Don’t I know it.” Emily smirked. “I believe in your time, that’s a forced marriage waiting to happen.”
“I don’t want her to get hurt, to be forced to marry someone who might be all pleasantries on the surface, but underneath, he’s someone like Ross.”
“Just because Sylvia had bad luck with her first husband doesn’t mean any man that approaches your daughter is a crazy, murderous psychopath,” Emily said.
“Of course not. But I still worry.”
“You’re a dad.” She shrugged. “From what I know, dads always worry.”
“Then what do I do?”
“First off, tell me what happened with this boy.”
He leaned back on the sofa. Revisiting the story might help him gain some clarity.
“His name is Leon. I’m not sure when Emmeline met him; I’m not even sure in which port he boarded, since nobody seems to know him. I believe he’s traveling third class—”
Emily arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t figure you for a classist, Gramps.”
“I’m not! The problem is that the sections on the ship are separated by class, and we’re not allowed to mingle. Which means if he’s on the first class promenade, fraternizing with my daughter—”
“He’s a bit of a bad boy. Hmm. I might like him.”
“Emily …”
“Okay, okay, go on.”
“It means he’s breaking the rules. And she might be, too.
I know she did, because they went to the gymnasium while it was closed—which, by the way, also has separate schedules for men and women.
They’ve been doing all sorts of things together.
God knows how many of them were rule-breaking or inappropriate.
” Even thinking about it made heat rush to his head.
“What things?”
“Playing games on deck, sneaking around the ship, dancing together—”
Emily burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
She fanned her face. “Rich girl and poor boy, sneaking around the ship to the disapproval of her family, dancing and partying, having the time of their lives …” She shook her head, still clearly amused. “What are they doing, reenacting Titanic?”
Will frowned. “How do you know the name of the ship?”
“What ship?”
“The ship we’re on. It’s called the Titanic.” He hadn’t told her—he couldn’t have. His last conversation with Emily had occurred before he and Sylvia decided they’d return home sooner.
Emily’s laugh was cut in an instant. “But you said you were coming back on the Lusitania.”
“We changed our plans.”
“B-but, you’re going back to New York, right? What year is it, again?” She flashed a brief smile—one that looked more like she was trying to reassure herself.
“1912.”
“No, it was—I thought Emmeline was seventeen.”
“Yes. She was born in 1894. She’s going to be eighteen in a few months.”
“Oh, foot.” Something clanked, and the screen went blank as Emily dropped the tablet.
When she picked it up again, her face was fraught with worry.
“That damn family tree has the wrong date. I thought it was 1911 for you.” She reached a hand to her forehead as if she was dizzy. “What is the exact day?”
What was going on? “It’s Sunday, April 14.”
Emily looked somewhere to the side, the light of a monitor illuminating her face, then back at him, eyes wide in shock. He knew her for long enough to know something was wrong. A ball of lead formed in his stomach as the dread of something unknown, but unfathomably horrifying, spread from it.
“Emily?” he prompted.
“Will, you need to get off that ship.” Emily swallowed visibly. “It’s going to sink tonight.”
***
Emmeline paced the length of her cabin, clenching her fists.
How dare Father lock her in like she was some misbehaving five-year-old?
He’d never locked anyone in their room, not even Tristan that time he’d rebelled at dinner and didn’t want to eat a single spoonful of his otherwise favorite pumpkin soup.
She strode back to the door and yanked at it again. It stayed locked—not that she’d expected differently, but she still banged on it once in frustration. She huffed and puffed, and finally stopped a few steps away, examining her enemy with narrowed eyes.
She was not staying in here.
A few years ago, her parents took her to her grandparents’ house for a few days while they went on a trip. Emmeline had run into Grandma Fabienne’s arms and asked what they’d do today. “Please, please, nothing boring, like embroidery!” she’d begged.
“I never was much for embroidery myself.” A mischievous grin spread across Grandma’s face. “But I can show you a far more fun use of a sewing kit.”
Led by the memories, Emmeline emptied the contents of her jewelry box on the bed, looking for any pins she could bend into the correct shape.
Finding two good candidates, she kneeled in front of the door.
Grandma had told her one needed to be calm and collected for lock-picking, and Emmeline was anything but, so it took her quite a few tries and a broken pin. At last, the lock fell.
After Grandma had taught her to lock-pick, Emmeline spent the entire summer daydreaming about becoming a professional art and jewelry thief when she grew up. Father didn’t approve. He wouldn’t approve of this, either—oh, well.
Emmeline burst into the empty hallway and, without hesitation, headed to the staircase.
Down and down she went, as the light from the great dome faded: past the deck where they’d entered the ship on the first day, past the inquiry office, past the reception room and its groups of chit-chattering passengers, and down further, as the grand staircase turned into a very regular staircase, and fine wood-paneled walls into simple white-painted ones.
She’d come to the cursed Turkish baths, but instead of turning into the lavishly decorated cooling room, she chose the other hallway and opened the door at the end.
Fury and determination led her, blowing away all worries of being somewhere prohibited to passengers.
She rushed past rooms with shelves full of neatly folded linen and up a narrow iron staircase, finding herself in a surprisingly wide, long hallway, brimming with crewmen.
She took a moment to orient herself. That way to the bow—surely there was a passage somewhere to the third class quarters.
She ducked her head, and her anger helped her assume a brisk pace.
Perhaps thanks to that, or the general preoccupation of the crew, no one stopped her and questioned her.
Stairs, at the end, leading back down again.
Right into that hallway, left, down another narrow hallway.
This area looked like it would have cabins, but she’d lost all sense of direction …
She leaned against the wall, catching her breath.
What on Earth was she doing?
And what was she going to do once she found Leon? Elope with him, even though he’d proclaimed no feelings for her, and she for him, and they’d known each other for all of five days? And they couldn’t escape from the ship either way.
She was so stupid.
She slid down the wall and drew up her knees, hiding her head in her skirt. That’s why you got locked into your room. Because you’re a silly girl.
But still, fury—whether from her perceived injustice, or something else—burned in her chest. She cried out, half in anger, half in despair. It was all pointless. Her life had been decided, and she had nothing to do with that decision.
Something clinked on the floor next to her. The silver locket she’d found on the beach, almost the entirety of an ocean away. She must’ve left it in her skirt pocket.
Emmeline gripped it tight and pressed it to her forehead, seeking a reprieve in the cool metal. She didn’t know who JCB from the engraving was, but she hoped they had a better life than she did.
If only she could be someone else. Be anywhere else, have a different family, a different life. She sniffled as her throat closed up, announcing incoming tears.
But instead of tears, only pain came, sudden and throbbing in her temples, like that day on the beach. Emmeline yelled, tumbling over. The pointer finger of the hand holding the locket had colored blue, the stain progressing from the tip toward the palm.
And then, a breeze. Impossible, in such a tight, enclosed hallway. Focusing through the headache, she glanced toward the source.
A few feet away from her, the air shimmered in a circle.
At first, she thought it was a mirror or a window, but the shape, taking almost the entire height of the hallway, cut straight through the middle of it.
Emmeline got to her feet and approached the bizarre phenomenon.
Another burst of wind—pleasant, warm. She tilted her head.
Was that a beach?
She had to be imagining things, but she reached a hand toward it, anyway.
The hand sunk into the illusion. Warm sun grazed her skin.
Emmeline cast a glance over her shoulder—the hallway was still empty—then looked back, biting her lip.
Whatever this was, it felt real, and she had to see.
She stepped through the passage.