Chapter Text
Winter, 1925
Rose was in the bath with a book when she heard the door open. She paused, listening to Jack’s footsteps cross the threshold as he called out for her. Sara normally listened for his footsteps on the stairs and ran down the hall to meet him at the door, but Rose had the apartment to herself for the afternoon and it was much quieter than usual.
“In here,” she said, her fingers leaving droplets of water along the paper as she dog-eared the page.
Wind rattled the glass in the window above the bathtub as Jack appeared in the doorway. He still wore his coat, and his ears and cheeks were red with cold.
“You look freezing,” Rose said. She sat up among the soapy bubbles and tucked her knees as high as her belly would allow. “Want to hop in here? Sara’s with Frances and Clara.”
“You should open this first,” Jack said. Rose saw the two envelopes in his hand as he perched on the side of the bathtub and leaned down to kiss her. The one on top had come from Philadelphia. Rose knew who it was from, and she suddenly felt cold, even though the water was still warm.
“She wrote back?”
Jack nodded, his hand dipping into the water. The stray ink smudges on his skin blurred beneath the soapsuds. “I think so.”
Rose reached for a towel. She had decided to write to her mother three months earlier, after Sara had come home from school asking about grandparents. She’d agonized over the decision, wondering if it would only open old wounds and complications. But Sara had been curious and Jack had been encouraging, and the two of them had a habit of making Rose braver than she felt.
Jack was still holding onto the envelope as Rose climbed out of the tub and wrapped the towel around herself. She shivered as the air hit her skin. “I’ll go make you some tea while you read,” he said.
“Wait,” she said. She looked up as he handed her the envelope, his eyes steady and calm. “Will you sit with me? I’m afraid.”
She felt foolish even as the words left her mouth, but she didn't care. Memory reached out and tugged with an icy grip, and Rose worried it would swallow her if he wasn't beside her.
It had sometimes felt as though she and her mother had always been at odds. But for a while, after her father died and before Cal proposed, they’d only had each other. Then Rose had left her with nothing. She knew that decision had saved her life as much as it had saved Jack’s, but she also knew it may have ruined her mother’s. Rose didn’t know if she was ready to face that knowledge.
“It’ll be alright,” Jack said, unbuttoning his thick wool coat. “Whatever it says.”
Rose had found her address through an old detective friend of Mr. Dalton’s. Ruth had a different last name now, leading Rose to believe she’d gotten married again, but she didn’t know much else other than that she still lived in Philadelphia.
Now, as she crossed into the bedroom and tore at the envelope, Rose could see the familiar looping script. The sight of it squeezed something in her chest. Jack sat beside her on the bed as she began to read.
The letter was honest, maybe more honest than her mother had ever been with her. Ruth wrote about what a shock it was to hear from her, and about the way she’d grieved for Rose. She wrote about the funeral they’d held in the Methodist church on Walnut Street, where Rose had attended weekly Sunday service for seventeen years. She wrote about the candles she’d lit and the tears she’d cried. She wrote about hardship and regret and forgiveness. But, most importantly, Ruth also wrote about the future.
“She wants us to visit for Christmas,” Rose said finally, looking up once she’d finished.
“Us?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes.” She turned the paper toward him. “See? Me and Sara and Lieutenant Dawson.”
“I guess that’s me,” Jack said with a wincing laugh. “Do you want to go?”
Rose hesitated. She knew it would be strange and disorienting to see her mother and sweep up crumbs of an old life. Rose assumed it might feel the way it did to climb out of the sea and onto the rescue ship all those years ago, as though she’d come back from the dead. But there were also things about it that called to her. Wanting her mother to know she’d been wrong about Jack and what their life together would be like seemed childish, but the desire was still there. And there were other things, too. She wanted her mother to meet her daughter, to see Sara’s red hair and the narrow nose she’d inherited from Ruth. She wanted to smell her mother’s gardenia perfume on her clothes and hear her laugh.
“Yes,” Rose said. “I almost can’t believe it, but I do. Is that alright?”
“Of course it is,” Jack said. She could feel his eyes on her as she crossed to the dresser and pulled out a flannel nightgown. “It’ll be an adventure.”
Rose looked over her shoulder. “That’s certainly a word for it.”
Jack grinned. He still looked cold and Rose reached for him. “Are you hungry? I’ve got chicken soup on the stove.”
“That sounds wonderful.” Jack stood up and put one arm around her. His other hand drifted down toward her belly. Rose felt the familiar flutter from inside.
“He’s been busy today,” Rose said.
“He’s a he today?” Jack asked.
“Maybe.” Rose and Sara both went back and forth about what they thought this new addition would be. It didn’t matter much to Rose, but it had become a guessing game sometime that fall.
Rose hadn’t known she was pregnant when she wrote her letter to her mother. She’d lost three pregnancies after Sara, and had all but given up on having another child. But then, sometime in early October, she’d felt that unmistakable feeling. It had presented itself the way it had before, when Rose stood under the moon outside The Porter eight years earlier. But this time, Jack had been there for it.
He’d come running when she called for him, and she’d pressed his hands against herself. The look on his face had been one of surprise and amazement, and he’d spun her around the apartment before lifting her up into his arms and cradling her close.
Jack still worked at the publisher’s, and his drawings now regularly appeared in magazines around the city. He’d even gotten some of his work into a gallery a few years earlier, after his illustrations were published in Rose’s first book. She wrote under the pen name RJ Dawson, since there was so much of herself and Jack in her stories.
They ate soup together in the kitchen, gazing at each other from across the wooden table. Their apartment was cozy and bright, around the corner from Clara and Frances and three blocks from Helena. They’d started traveling again after Sara turned five, and sometimes Rose was surprised that New York still felt like home. She still loved the thrill of exploring someplace new, but now she found that she loved the feeling of coming home even more.
Darkness had settled over the city beyond the kitchen window, but the street below still bustled with movement and activity. Jack washed the dishes in the sink, his sleeves rolled to his elbows as Rose leaned against him. Frances arrived with Sara soon after that, both of them wrapped in Frances’ thick knitted scarves.
“Where’s Clara?” Rose asked, running her fingers through Sara windblown curls. A few golden strands caught the light, peeking out among the red ones.
“She’s speaking at a labor meeting across town,” Frances said. “Organizing a factory strike. So I got Miss Sara all to myself on the walk home.”
“I hope she wasn’t any trouble,” Rose said, watching Sara fling herself into Jack’s arms.
“Oh, she never is,” Frances said. “How are you feeling? Anything you need?”
“I’m just fine,” Rose said. “It’s Jack who gets stuck with all the unpleasant things, like rubbing my sausage feet.”
“You always said he was wonderful,” Frances grinned, catching Jack’s eye.
He offered to walk her home, but Frances insisted he stay. She left the three of them in the warm apartment, Sara already blinking sleepily as she leaned against Jack. She took a bath and brushed her teeth and then asked for a story as she climbed into bed. Rose opted for one she’d never told before, not even to Jack. She settled beside Sara on the bed, while Jack perched near her feet as Sara bundled herself beneath the blankets so only her face was visible.
“When I was a little girl, not even as old as you, there was a great big snowstorm,” Rose began. “There was so much of it that no one in the whole city could do anything. Everyone stayed home by the fire and stayed in our pajamas until it was almost lunchtime. When it stopped, I wanted to go outside and play in it, but my mother didn’t want me to go because she said it was too cold and too deep. But I didn’t listen. When she wasn’t looking, I snuck out of the house as quiet as I could be.”
“Was it fun?” Sara asked.
“It was,” Rose said. “Even with no one to play with. I made big snowballs and dug myself a cave and slid down a hill on a silver serving tray.”
Jack and Sara both laughed, the same sound at different pitches.
“When the snow started again, I tried to catch the flurries but they disappeared the moment I touched them, like bubbles.” Rose touched a fingertip to Sara’s nose. “And when I was ready to go home, I found that my house had disappeared, too. I couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasn’t up the hill or behind the gate or around the bushes.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I closed my eyes, and imagined my house and my mother and father as clear as I could. I imagined it so clearly that after a while, I could hear their voices and feel their arms around me,” Rose said. “And then, when I opened my eyes, I heard my father’s voice getting closer. And then there he was, and the house was there, too. It was right back where it belonged, and so was I. But when we got home, I was afraid my mother would be angry with me. After all, I hadn’t listened to her. But she wasn’t. She put her arms around me, just like I’d imagined. I thought it came true because I had wished so hard for it. And do you know what my mother told me?”
“What?”
“That I wasn’t really lost. I just couldn’t see through the snow.” Rose reached out and smoothed Sara’s hair as it splayed out across the pillow. “She said that you’re never as lost as you think you are. Sometimes you just need to open your eyes and look again, but you’ll always find your way home. And she was right.”
Sara grinned. She liked stories with twists and turns and cliffhangers best, but she seemed soothed by pleasant outcomes. She settled back with her head on the pillow and Rose looked at Jack before she spoke again.
“Do you remember when you asked me about my mother? Your grandmother?”
Sara nodded.
“Well, after you asked me about her, I wrote her a letter. It was the first letter I’d written to her in a very long time. And today, she wrote me one back. She’d like us to go visit her for her Christmas this year.”
“Where?”
“At her house,” Rose said. “She lives in a city called Philadelphia, which is where I lived when I was a little girl.”
“All of us?” Sara asked. She looked at Jack for confirmation. Endlessly curious and perceptive, Sara always seemed to know more than Rose thought she did.
“All of us,” Jack said with a nod.
“Does she know you?”
“She knows me,” Jack said. “Not very well.”
“She doesn’t know me at all.”
“We’ll get to know her together,” Jack said.
“What if she doesn’t like me?”
“That’s impossible,” Jack said. “She’ll love you, just like we do.”
Sara considered this. “What do I call her?”
“What would you like to call her?” Rose asked.
“Beatrice calls her grandmother Nana,” Sara said timidly.
“I’m sure that would be fine,” Rose said, knowing her mother would probably prefer something stiffer but wouldn’t dare complain.
“Christmas isn’t for three weeks,” Sara said. She yawned. “Twenty two days. We've been counting them at school. What if she changes her mind?”
Rose was quiet. What if her mother did change her mind, and she’d gotten Sara thinking about this for nothing?
“Then we’ll spend Christmas together like always,” Jack said, answering when Rose couldn’t. “We’ll make pancakes and chocolate cake and stay in our pajamas all day. Sound good?”
Sara thought about it and then nodded. Rose reached out and smoothed a hand over her forehead as her blue eyes began to close. Jack spread an extra blanket over her bed and then turned off the light.
“You warm enough, Duckie?” he asked, using his nickname for her. When Sara was little, every word she’d said had sounded like quack.
Sara made a noise that sounded affirmative before she turned onto her side.
“Goodnight little one,” Rose whispered into the room. “We love you.”
Back in their bedroom, Rose crawled beneath the covers with a book while Jack sat beside her, his sketchbook balanced against his knees. The radiator in the corner was doing its best, but the room was still cold. Rose shivered her way closer to Jack as the wind seeped through the crack between the window and the sill. He put his pencil down and slid his arms around her, pulling her close.
He’d finally broken down and gotten glasses the previous summer, but he only wore them to draw and sometimes while he was at work. Rose thought they made him look distinguished and handsome, but Jack seemed self conscious about them. Rose felt him reach up and slide them off his nose before he lay down beside her.
Her eyes were growing heavy, and Jack radiated his usual steady warmth. But he was quiet and Rose thought he might still be thinking about the story she’d told Sara. Jack knew what it was like to be lost and find his way home again.
“Did you really go sledding on your mother’s serving tray?” he asked.
Rose grinned. “I did.”
“Is she really going to call me Lieutenant Dawson?”
“She might.”
Up so close, Rose could see the faded scars around the top half of his face. She knew there were more beneath his shirt, but Jack wasn’t so self conscious about those anymore. They served as reminders of all that he’d survived in order to get back to her.
“I guess it’s better than other things she could call me.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Rose said primly.
“You don’t, huh?” Jack asked, reaching down to tickle her. His hand slid down until it found the hem of her nightgown.
“Jack,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Rose shifted closer to him. Sometimes she wanted him so desperately that it ached. Jack’s fingers were buried in her hair as his lips grazed hers. “I want to,” she whispered.
“We shouldn’t.”
He was right. Rose felt the same as she had with Sara, but with her history, the doctor she’d seen had recommended as little stimulation as possible. He probably wouldn’t even approve of the trip to Philadelphia.
“Maybe your mother should come here instead,” Jack said, thinking about it too.
Rose shook her head. It would be awkward with all of them in the apartment, and she didn’t want her mother to feel slighted if Rose asked her and her husband to stay at a hotel. Besides, she hadn’t been back to where she’d grown up since she’d left for that tour with Cal and her mother over a decade ago, and it felt right to be going back now.
“But you’ve never been to Philadelphia,” she reminded him.
“We can go next year,” Jack said. “I’ve managed until now, and this is more important.”
“I feel fine,” she said honestly. “I feel good. It’s different this time. I just know.”
He was quiet for a while. Rose knew what he was thinking about. She could picture herself on the bathroom floor, crying quietly into her hands and hoping Sara wouldn’t hear her. Jack had held her like this each time, his arms trying to take the weight of it.
“At least think about it,” he said.
“I will.”
Her mother had had the same kind of trouble. That was what the doctors called it, anyway. Rose could remember Ruth, emerging from her bedroom scrubbed and clean before Rose’s father arrived home from work. She hadn’t even mentioned it, just sat at her place at dinner like nothing was wrong. Like nothing was different at all. Rose didn’t know how she’d survived it alone like that.
Rose’s hands went to her stomach, just above where Jack’s had settled. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered.
“Me too,” he said. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He kissed her, and warmth spread through her again. She still felt that same magic, that jolt of intoxicating wonder, even though it had been almost fifteen years and he was as familiar to her as anyone had ever been. Even back when she’d thought she’d lost him, Rose knew how lucky she had been to have had him at all.
She felt him fall asleep first, his fingertips still loosely drifting over her belly. Rose knew her parents’ marriage hadn’t been like this, full of the kind of love and devotion that didn’t need to be spoken about, but was anyway. She wanted her mother to see all that she’d found, the family they’d made. More surprising than anything, Rose found that she wanted her mother to be part of it.
When she fell asleep, Rose dreamed of the house where she’d grown up, disappearing and reappearing before her eyes.