It is so cold. Everything seems to play out in slow motion before her eyes, women and children and even several men, all coming and going and for the longest time she is almost convinced that everything is as it once was. That those last crucial hours were just a horrible dream; these are the lies that she tells herself, hour after hour, each second spent in trying to imagine that he is sitting beside her. Eventually, after hours of sitting there—or had it been mere minutes? She doesn't know—she sees Cal stroll by, looking frantic and lost as he searches beneath every hood and every ragged blanket that he can find. Perhaps he is looking for her mother; perhaps, for her. She doesn't care.
Her mother. Some part of her wonders if the older woman survived, if she is somewhere out there looking for her daughter. She doesn't really care about that, either. She loves her mother, really she does—it's just that should her mother ever find her here, everything would become about thank-goodness-you're-alright, and where-is-that-John-boy-or-whatever-his-name-was, and darling-why-are-you-still-dressed-that-way-it's-not-proper-for-a-lady-of-your-position. It would be so easy just to go back to all of that, to expensive dresses and manners and meals with far too many forks, but doesn't think she can live that way; not anymore; not after everything.
So when a haggard man in a neatly pressed uniform comes around the bend asking for her name, she says, "Dawson. Rose Dawson."
She has made her choice.