There it was again, oh, God, there it was. That tiny, near-imperceptible twitch.
But it was there. And that's what scared Rose more than anything.
It had been nearly four months since Titanic had gone under, taking the lives of thousands in her wake. Rose was one of the lucky six, six out of fifteen hundred, a whole fifteen hundred people that were stranded in the water, bobbing up and down like buoys in a lake. She was one of the lucky six that lived.
He wasn't.
She was numb and blank when she had stumbled onto the Carpathia, squinting her eyes against the glaring sunlight that streamed like a river through her eyelids. It was strange. That the sun could still shine. That people could still smile. That the whole momentum of the world hadn't stopped.
But it had for her.
Rose had lived like that—blank, like a fired and discarded cartridge, the powder burned through, the fire burned out—for the weeks and months that followed. She stayed in New York City, but far, far away from the water. She would never look at it, winking and gleaming at her like it was picking its teeth, gloating about its new, wonderful meal. Feast more like it, if the sea could have Jack and she couldn't.
Rose worked odd jobs: waitress, clerk, maid; she wasn't very good at any of them. She was good at being prim, and good at being proper, and good at breathing in a corset. She was good at being made up and laced together and polished. She was good at being a doll.
But never at anything practical.
After the first month or so of nothing but a dreary existence, she began to find it harder to climb the stairs leading up to her dingy closet of a flat. She began to find it harder to tie the sash of her itchy work dress, to put up with the mildewy smell of her apartment.
And then she began to put on weight. Weird weight, weight that never used to come in her old life, even after eating five-course meals every evening and then napping or lounging around for the rest of the night. Weight that seemed to stick to her, even though she had scarcely one meal to eat a day. Weight that never waned, even though she vigorously scrubbed floors or dashed between dinner tables or chased after the squealing children of the upper crust.
And then, that day, as she walked past the old bag lady that was omnipresent at her flat, as permanent as the cracking Christ statue in front of the lawn, she heard the raspy old voice croak: "So, who's the lucky fella?"
"Pardon me?"
The bag lady's lizard eyes glinted. "Trust me, lady, that swollen belly ain't because you been eatin' like a queen. I'se knows things."
Rose folded her arms over her stomach and frowned, bustling inside without another word, her cheeks flaming. Emotion, for the first time in months, was threatening to come back to her. And she couldn't handle emotion. Emotion was what would make her hurt. Emotion was how she had met him in the first place. And emotion was how she let herself love him.
Emotion was how she let him die.
The click! of the door behind her seemed eerie and echoing, bouncing through the one-roomed flat. It made her jump. She splashed some water from the washbasin on her face, studying her visage in the mirror. Her once perfectly shaped crimson curls tumbled around her shoulders, prickly like thistles and greasy like bacon. Her cheekbones were more defined, her lips paler, the rosy blossoms in her cheeks faded away to grey, grey like Manhattan cloudy skies. Grey like smoke rising from large, copper smokestacks. And then there were her eyes, her once lively eyes, the exact color of the sea, the clear sea jagged with ice and broken lives.
When she felt it she shrieked. A small little wiggle, almost like a nudge, right behind her belly button. She closed the shutters and lit one of the gas lamps, removing her dress and inspecting the taut skin of her belly. And then it happened again, shuddering her skin and shaking her nerves.
No, no, no.
Please, God, no.
Rose dared a glance beneath her bed. There, carefully folded and gathering dust, was a magnificent creation of chiffon and satin, carrying the echoes of breathless kisses and frozen dreams.
That was enough to do her in. Rose curled there, on the floor, her arms wrapped around her belly, the dress draped across her shoulders. She was doing it. She was letting emotion in. She was mourning the man she loved.
And she cried.
Cried for sorrow, heart-wrenching sorrow that lurked around her mind.
Cried for fright, shuddering fright at what she would do, how she could support herself.
Cried for love, all-encompassing love, because she always had those days, she always had those nights.
Cried for joy, as her warm tears dropped upon her stomach.
She just cried.