EPILOGUE
JUNE, 1914
It was a warm day, unusually warm for Wisconsin, even though it was the middle of summer. But the birds were singing their best tunes, the ones they seem to reserve for summery days. The sky ahead was a clear blue, dotted only with puffy white clouds that weren't at all threatening. The lakes sparkled and the grass waved green.
Perhaps the place where the sun shone brightest was on a little wooden house on a lakefront near Chippewa Falls. It belonged to the Dawsons – the only generation left – but they were the kindest and most hospitable of any of the Chippewa Falls neighbors: Jack, Rose, and their one-year-old twins, Tommy and Josephine.
As the sun rose, warm and cheerful, over the lake house, Jack Dawson sat on the porch railing – he rarely used the bench, he preferred railings – with a thick pad of creamy paper and a charcoal pencil in his hands. He'd been trying in vain to sketch a sailboat currently on the lake for the past half an hour, but the darn thing kept vanishing from sight.
The door opened behind him, bringing the smells of talcum powder and Rose's favorite perfume to his nose, and Rose herself joined her husband on the porch. She was dressed in a simple pale blue calico print, dotted with small white polka dots. Jack thought she looked absolutely beautiful; he grinned as she came to lean on the railing next to him.
"Tommy finally drifted off to sleep," she said conversationally, resting her chin on Jack's shoulder and studying his drawing. A few pensive moments passed, and then Jack asked her what she thought of it.
"You know what my favorite drawing of yours is, Mr. Dawson," Rose smiled, and Jack smiled too, but both smiles were sad and wistful. It had been over two years since the Titanic had sunk, and it still hurt to talk about all the people they had lost along with her – Fabrizio and Helga, Tommy, Cora and her family, Thomas Andrews... More and more names came to Rose as she painfully plunged into the memories.
"Would you like me to draw you again?" Jack asked, and seeing the startled look in Rose's eyes, hastily added, "Not like it was. Never again like it was... but I've missed a sturdy subject." He looked over at her, and she nodded.
"Jack... will Tommy and Josephine ever know about it?" she asked suddenly, her voice barely above a whisper. Jack knew his wife didn't mean the drawing, but the ship on which it had occurred. His brow creased.
"Someday... maybe someday," he finally said, and took her hand gently in his own. They walked down to their little flower garden, where Rose was posed on an iron bench beneath an apple tree, already laden with fruit. Jack studied the scene for a moment, then picked up his pencil and began to draw...
Jack and Rose later had another child, a girl they named Cora. When the Great War broke out, Jack volunteered to fly in it, and luckily came back virtually unscratched. They never told their children of their experience together on the Titanic, and it was not until Rose's death in 1985 that Jack gave their youngest, Cora, a box of mementos that she'd saved from that period in their life. Tommy, Josephine, and Cora each married and had children of their own, and when Jack died in 1990, he had eight grandchildren to carry on his legacy. One of them was born only a month before he died. She was named Rose.