Unspeakable (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

I LOOKED AT STEELE
. But I couldn't ask.

“When he heard I was returning to research in Liverpool,” he said, “Sampson gave me Jim's coat and asked me to see it safe home to Jim's family along with Sampson's story and gratitude.” He pulled the coat from his satchel and handed it to me. A woollen, double-breasted navy peacoat. No different from the hundreds roaming the Liverpool dockyard, really. Except this one was Jim's.

“I found the journal in the pocket,” he added. “And I knew then he was the man you asked me about on the train.”

I ran my fingers down the coarse wool. Speechless.

Steele flipped back through his notes. “The Farrows live at number six Gerrard Street. I was going to take it there tomorrow.”

“Let me do it,” I said. I wasn't sure who I'd find at number six. His mother. His wife. But I'd come too far not to see it to the end. And whoever opened the door deserved to be given such grief by someone who loved him, too. Not Steele.

He hesitated. Probably thinking of a lost interview opportunity.

“You can't use any of Jim's story in your article anyway.” I raised my brow at him. “That was our deal.”

Eventually, he agreed. With all I'd said these past days together, he had more than enough for his damned article. Jim was always so private, so secretive, I wouldn't let Steele turn him into a headline.

“Well, I guess that's it then.” He seemed reluctant to leave. “Are you sure you're going to be all right?”

I nodded.

“I can stay if you want … until Bates comes back.”

“I'm fine. I'll be fine.”

He seemed unsure. Almost deflated, somewhat. He was not the cocksure journalist who'd hounded me on the train, who'd bribed me with a dead man's diary, who was about to sell my story, my secrets, for a chance to make the front page and score a promotion to editor.

“Don't you have an article to write?” It seemed harsh, but I just wanted him to go. I needed to be alone. To grieve.

“I suppose I do.”

We'd fulfilled the terms of our deal, traded our stories, and yet in a way, I felt emptier for it. I wondered if he did, too.

Jim's coat in hand, I followed Steele to the hall. He stopped on the threshold. “I'm sorry, Ellen.”

For all he'd made me say? For all he was about to write?

He looked at me, his dark eyes sincere. “I'm so sorry for all you've lost.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, my chin trembling. “You know,
you are the only person who has ever said that to me.” I only realized then how much I needed to hear it.

Unsure of what else to say or do, Steele nodded and left.

I shut the door behind him and rested my head on the wood. The last of the dying day's light spilled through the transom window in a skewed rectangle down the hall. Stepping into it, I slipped Jim's coat around a hanger and hung it on the empty coat stand. The broad shoulders spanned at eye level and it felt as if Jim himself were standing before me. I'd pictured him here a thousand times. How he'd look. How he'd feel. How he'd take me in his arms.

I slipped my hands along the coarse woollen shoulders and rested my face on the lapel. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply. But it didn't smell of him anymore. The memory of Jim was long washed from it by the waters of the St. Lawrence. I ran my fingers down the arms and up the chest, its emptiness making me ache all the more.

This isn't Jim. He isn't here
.

And will never be
.

I saw myself in that instant, clinging to an empty coat in the dim hall of a house that wasn't mine to own, pining for a love I'd lost, a love that was truly never mine to keep. The absurdity of it, the unfairness, welled inside. As I stroked the fabric, a button came loose in my fingers and I looked at it sitting in my palm. A disc of blue-black pierced with four small holes. It had survived that dreadful night, ships colliding, boiler rooms flooding, men scrambling. It had clung to this coat through the madness of sinking and saving only to fall off at the slightest touch in this shadowy hall. Here in this moment, it let loose.

And so did I.

I cried for Jim. For Meg. For Aunt Geraldine. For my mother and father. For all our time that I'd wasted, for all I hadn't told them. That I loved them. That I needed them. That I missed them terribly. I cried for my daughter. For the time we never got to have. The tears finally came, unrelenting like a winter storm, and I buried my face in the lapel, wetting the wool of Jim's jacket with wave after wave of loss.

I don't know how long I stood there. But by the time I lifted my head, the day's light had died. In the dark of the cold hall, I turned my back into Jim's coat and wrapped the arms around me.

Both of us nothing but empty shells.

Chapter Thirty-Two

EXHAUSTED, I WENT TO THE KITCHEN
to make myself some tea. Ever since I could remember, tea was how we welcomed, celebrated, or sympathized. For in any situation, even when we had no idea what to do, the best response was always:
I'll put on the kettle
.

I suppose there was something to be said for the ritual of it, that sense of doing something: boiling, steeping, pouring. I stirred in the sugar, tapped the silver spoon on the rim twice. Even now—the heat cupped in my hands, the fragrant steam, the sweetness and radiating warmth as I swallowed—it was far more than a hot drink, it was a cupful of comfort.

I took another sip and sighed, resting against the counter. As my hip touched it, something rustled in my pocket and I pulled out Aunt Geraldine's letter. In all the drama of the interview, what with telling of Declan and my daughter, and then reading about Jim's last night, not to mention the rush of emotion at touching his coat, I'd completely forgotten about the envelope I'd found on the windowsill.

As I opened it, I was surprised to see that she hadn't typed it. She rarely wrote anything by hand but our to-do lists, long inventories of orders and expectations for Bates and Meg. For me. God knows I'd been given enough of those. I'd know her flourish and strong slant anywhere. Her double lines under things for emphasis. It figured that even death couldn't keep her from ordering me about. I sighed.

This was different. Not a list, no, but a letter. 'Twas by her hand all right, yet even the loops and list seemed smaller, somehow. Feeble and frail.

This wasn't the aunt I knew. She was never at a loss for words—and if she was, she'd never let it be known. My heart pounded as I read on, unsure of what I might find.

I paused. So I had meant something to her. More than I realized. It warmed me to know it and I was thankful she'd voiced it—even if it came in a letter long after the fact.

If only she knew. That now I was also a victim of a shipwreck. Of a broken heart.

I thought of our argument the day she told me I was going on the
Empress
. Of the way we'd both used the memory of my mother to hurt each other; it would've saddened my
mother to see it. But I took comfort, now, in knowing that I did carry her spirit with me.

And Steele, I thought, frustrated that I'd given so much of it to him. Who knew how he'd spin it—what level of detail he'd include. He had the power over how the world saw me now. And there was nothing I could do about it. The deal had cost me everything—and given me nothing, really. It had given me some answers, some details, but it hadn't given me what I really wanted. It hadn't given me Jim.