1931

Santa Monica, California

The transition between the Upper-Class society to a much more down to earth, Working Class status had been surprisingly easier than excepted.

Persuading the children that they were moving two thousand miles from everything they knew had also been astonishingly painless.

The most challenging part of this whole ordeal was trying to explain the reasoning for changing their last name from 'Hockley' to 'Calvert'. Rose and Cal had brainstormed some pretty creative explanations but they decided to go with a half-truth. Never wanting to paint their grandparents in a bad light, they simply said, 'change is important in order to have a new perspective'.

Luckily, the children were more keen on living in a charming craftsman style bungalow with the beach as their backyard than to ask many complicated questions.

Settling into their new life, status, and names had been a manageable task.

Once they decorated the bungalow, it felt more like home. In Rose's opinion, it was more of a home than the brownstone mansion in Philadelphia. There was a perfect amount of room for the family of four, plus a small office and a sunroom, which duelled as Rose's gardening haven and a pottery studio.

Pottery was something new Rose had grown more interested in since arriving at this new chapter of her life. Her interest had been sparked one afternoon when she and Grace were walking through the beach town and they passed a storefront. This storefront had a back studio where visitors could watch the pottery being made. Rose looked at her hands and remembered the conversation she had with Jack on the promenade deck on Titanic.

Finding the art beautiful and therapeutic, Rose began to take lessons in pottery art and found out she had quite a knack for it.

Cal was the biggest supporter of her artistic endeavours. Without her knowledge, Cal took a series of her pottery pieces to peddled them up and down the coast until finding multiple buyers. He took orders from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada.

An idea sparked in Cal's mind and began plans on opening a store on the main part of town selling Rose's pottery art.

Doubting in any interest for her armature pieces of art, Rose was more than surprised when the money had been pouring in despite the nationwide depression. They were getting orders from across the country. One notable customer was Molly Brown herself. Though under their new guise, Molly didn't realise who the artist was right away until Rose placed a small note inside the colourful vase which said:

To making it count.

Molly had been a blessing to the business because soon she spread the word across the Atlantic to Paris, France; her second home.

Deciding not to live as they had before now that they had a moderate fortune, which was growing each sale, Cal and Rose decided to split their earnings into two trust funds for their children.

Cal had been right, this was the life they needed.


The Calverts had hit rock bottom and lost most their vast fortune do to the Stock Market Crash of '29, Cal and Rose got back up and took a major risk in turning back on everything they knew and started over.

Santa Monica was the best decision they had made. Their children grew up happy and unspoiled.

Grace had attended and graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The eldest child of Cal and Rose dreamt of becoming a writer. She had written many manuscripts but the story which was first published in 1947 was loosely based on her parents.

It was a story that had always been in the back of her mind since the one sunset evening sitting outside on the beach in wooden teak Adirondack chairs, Rose told Grace about a man she had fallen in love with named Jack.

Grace scoured the libraries newsreels of articles and documents from April of 1912 but found nothing about her mother's first real love.

The story of Cal and Rose had since been a fascination of hers. Never in her life could she imagine a period when her mother detested her father; who was described as arrogant, narcissistic, and abusive. They had always seemed so much in love, at least that was always the perspective Grace had of her parents.

She tried talking to mother about her past again, but Rose was less forthcoming. Telling her 'not to dwell on the past when the future is so colourful'.

Since graduation, Grace locked herself in her bedroom room with her graduation present from her parents; a 1942 Royal Varsity typewriter and an endless flow of coffee and wrote about a love-triangle filled with passion, anger, and tragedy and it was set on the Unsinkable Titanic.

Ready for her parents discontent for using their story which would become the number one book in the country, Grace was more than surprised. They were nor annoyed, angered, or got the feeling of 'overexposure'. They were proud of their daughter accomplishment and took her embellished loosely based story of them in stride. But still, Cal and Rose rarely talked about Jack or the Titanic. It wouldn't be mentioned again for another fifty years.


The youngest child of Cal and Rose had big dreams of his own.

In December of 1941, James begged and pleaded to his parents to let him join the Army once Congress declared war on Japan and later Germany. Since James was underage, he needed their permission and they refused.

Wanting to serve his country as his father and grandfather had done, James thought of nothing else but the war.

A year went by when Rose entered James' room to pick up his laundry when she found the bed neatly made, the closet door partially opened, and a note placed on the pillow.

James had snuck out in the middle of the night to catch the bus that would take him to Toccoa, Georgia. James had lied about his age and joined up with the United States Army and then decided to volunteer himself to be a paratrooper and be apart of 'Easy' Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division.

Beside themselves, Cal comforted his terrified wife as much as possible until one day she woke up and announced that they needed to their part.

As she had done during the First World War, Rose volunteered where she could and became a member of American Women's Voluntary Services along with Grace.

Now too old to reenter the service, Cal found other ways to show his patriotism. He became a recruiter. Cal travelled up and down the West Coast to colleges and high schools. He talked to the young men into enlisting or how to volunteer.

In June of 1944, James and his platoon had entered the war, dropping into Normandy.

Many of his comrades never made it out the plane, he almost missed his chance as well because just as he jumped as German anti-aircraft shells hit the C-47 into burning smithereens.

Fortunately, he landed unscathed but it this was just the beginning.

Being in the war was one thing, but surviving it was its own beast.

James finally understood what his father meant. The death that surrounded him was unmistakable. He had to keep himself sane and not fall into insanity like the other men.

On V-Day, James sat on a back patio overlooking the Alps at Hitler's Eagles Nest. He drank out of a bottle from Göring's expensive wine collection. He felt self-reflective wondering what the heck he was going to once back to the unfamiliar world in Santa Monica.


After the Second World War, Cal and Rose lived the rest of their days in a relatively quiet existence.

Rose continued making pottery and Cal ran the world-renowned busines that had began as a simple storefront. His son-in-law would take over once Cal finally retired.

Most nights, Cal and Rose sat in those wooden Adirondack chairs watching the sunset on the distant horizon until Cal's dying day in the of spring of 1975 at ninety-three years old.

1997

Santa Monica, California

Calvert Bungalow

"Treasure hunter Brock Lovett is best known for finding Spanish gold in sunken galleons in the Caribbean. Now he is using deep submergence technology to work two and a half miles down at another famous wreck... the Titanic. He is with us live via satellite from a Russian research ship in the middle of the Atlantic... hello Brock?"

The volume was low on the CNN television program in the other room from the back sunroom where Rose sat at her potter's wheel. Familiar red clay covered her age-spotted hands which were still strong and yet delicate.

Not paying much attention to the world around her, Rose hardly noticed her granddaughter, Lizzie walking in and out of the room as she worked.

"Hello, Tracy. Everyone knows the familiar stories of Titanic—the nobility, the band playing till the very end and all that. But what I'm interested in are the untold stories," Rose looked up from the potter's wheel and turned to the small television in the kitchen, "the secrets locked deep inside the hull of Titanic. We're out here using robot technology to go further into the wreck than anybody's ever done before."

The reporter on the television challenged treasure hunter, "Your expedition is at the centre of a storm of controversy over salvage rights and even ethics. Many are calling you a grave robber."

Brock on the television chuckled and replied, "Nobody called the recovery of artefacts of King Tut's tomb 'grave robbing.'"

Lizzie looked up from the sink to see her grandmother walking into the room with her cane in hand. Rose appeared shrunken under a one-piece African-print dress. She was decorated by beaded necklaces. Her once luscious red hair was white and her smooth porcelain skin was wrinkled and aged. Her eyes were still lively and a piercing blue-grey which hinted at the woman she once was.

"What is it?" Lizzie asked with concern.

"Turn that up, dear," Rose requested as she slowly walked closer to the television.

Brock continued, "I have museum-trained experts out here making sure that these relics are preserved and catalogued properly. Take a look at this drawing that we found just today…" the camera panned away from Brock to the drawing, in a tray of water. The image is of a young nude woman wearing the Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace. "… A piece of paper that's been underwater for eighty-four years and my team was able to preserve it intact. Should this have remained unseen at the bottom of the ocean for eternity?"

Galvanised by the image, Rose stared at it unmoving. Her mouth hung open for a moment when she muttered, "I'll be goddamned."

Lizzie stood behind her grandmother wearing a deeply confused frown, "What is it?"

"Write that number down," Rose said as she moved around the counter to an old rotary phone.

Lizzie did as told and wrote the telephone number down on a scrap piece of a paper and handed it to Rose.

Slowly, Rose dialled the number and held the telephone to her ear, patiently waiting.

"This is Bobby Buell," a pleasant-sounding man answered the phone.

Rose struggled to hear the man through the loud machinery sounds behind him.

"Is this Mr Brock Lovett?" Rose asked.

"No, this is Bobby Buell, how can I help you?"

Rose smiled, "Oh, my name is Rose Calvert and I need to speak to a Mr Brock Lovett."

She could hear the man on the other line sigh heavily thinking for a moment of what to do.

"Can I asked what this is about?" Buell asked.

"I have information on the diamond you are looking for; the Heart of the Ocean."

Rose could almost hear the man's heartbeat stop in his chest. She counted to three in her head when Buell cleared his throat and said, "Uh, I'll get him right away. Please hold."

Three minutes went by while Rose was on hold. She could feel Lizzie breathing down her neck wondering just what the heck was going on.

Suddenly the hold line clicked off, Rose straightened up and waited for Brock to greet her.

"This is Brock Lovett. What can I do for you Mrs…" Rose could hear Buell shouting her last name over the machinery to Brock, "… uh, Mrs Calvert?" Brock sounded unenthused and annoyed by this interruption.

"I was just wondering if you had found the Heart of the Ocean yet, Mr Lovett?"

On the other side of the line, Brock almost dropped the phone and looked at his partner Bobby Buell in shock.

Rose could hear Buell's muffled voice in the background, "I told you, you wanted to take the call."

"Alright, you have my attention, Rose. Can you tell us who the woman in the picture is?"

Smiling at this strange turn of events, Rose replied, "Oh, yes, that woman in the picture is me."

The line was silent for what felt like an eternity.

Rose waited for Brock to get past this initial shock and said, "I'm giving you to my granddaughter." Rose passed the phone to Lizzie and said, "Get his information, darling. And tell him…" she paused for a moment, "… Tell him I'd like to tell him about the necklace in person. I'll except nothing less."

"Sure," Lizzie frowned and took the telephone. "Uh, hi…" her eyes followed her grandmother as she slowly wandered out of the room.


Walking down the hallway, Rose turned a corner into the master bedroom.

Closing the door behind her, Rose gently yanked on a thin chain of a desk lamp and eyed the carefully arranged framed photographs:

Rose and Cal on their wedding date two weeks after the Titanic sinking. They appeared solemn and distant, net yet embracing their eventual love that would last more than fifty years.

The photograph behind that was of Cal and the children. They had just arrived in Santa Monica and they played in the sand building a sandcastle.

Beside that photo was one of the families of four much older now. Grace was graduated from college and writing what would be her very famous and critically acclaimed novel based on her parents Titanic love-triangle and James at twenty-years-old, back from the Eastern Front, and deciding what he would do next.

Running her finger over the photograph beside the family photo was of her and Cal. It was taken in 1938, Cal's once dark hair was greying and covered by a tweed ivy flat cap and a brown scarf wrapped around his neck. Wrinkles creased the corners of his green eyes, he was older but still devilishly handsome. Rose herself had just turned forty-three that year. Her red hair still kept its rich hue but the sign of age was beginning to show around her blue-grey eyes. More than ever before, Rose appeared relaxed in the photograph and comfortable to be sitting beside her husband on a bench, his arms lazily wrapped around her shoulders as they watched their children playing in front of them, but they were out of the shot.

Rose picked up a dark wooden frame and smiled down at the image. This was Cal's favourite photo. It was of her twenty-three-year-old self smiling at the photographer sitting on horseback during a beautiful fall day in Cobbs Creek. She knew this was Cal's favourite photograph because it sat on his office desk for the fifty-seven years.

Placing the photograph back in its place beside and behind a myriad of photographs, Rose went to the closet, opening the door. She ran her hand over the soft material of Cal's button-down shirts she never had the heart to get rid of. She missed her husband dearly.

Walking to another closet, Rose opened the door and carefully bent down moving a few folded blouses and shoeboxes placed on top of a much larger box.

Needing a chair to sit, Rose shuffled over to the vanity mirror and dragged the chair over to sit.

She opened the box than removed more folded blouses and photo albums that were older than the bungalow until she found a large black velvet necklace case

Sitting back in the chair, Rose opened the case. She took out the blue 56-carat diamond necklace that Brock Lovett had been desperately in search for.

Eyeing the necklace carefully, Rose thought of everything this expensive but beautiful diamond represented.

Cal had never asked about the fate of the Heart of the Ocean necklace, nor did Rose ever bring it up. He must've assumed that the diamond was lost during the sinking or he didn't want to reopen old wounds by talking about the Titanic.

For eighty-four years, Rose kept the necklace hidden, just waiting for the opportunity to give it back to where the diamond necklace truly belonged; with Jack and the Titanic.