They settle on either side of the porch swing that overlooks the back garden plot and in the distance, what had been the wreckage of the old barn and workshop— the site of the accident that separated them, and also the site of the graves, one of which is apparently unoccupied.
Julia's gaze follows Jack's, settling upon the site. Jack had spent the past month cleaning it up, so it was no longer full of debris and brambles, but was starting to instead sprout wildflowers and grasses again, with only the buildings' foundations suggesting what may have once stood there.
"There is so much I need to say, and so many question I want to ask, but I don't even know where to begin," says Julia quietly, accepting the mug of coffee that Rose offers before returning inside. Despite the warmth still hanging in the summer evening air, the hot drink in her hand is comforting and gives her something to do with her restless fingers. Like her brother, Julia is always somehow in movement, never quite settling.
Jack stays quiet, letting her talk in her own time as his eyes settle on the sun lowering to the horizon as the sky is painted pink and gold. Soon the fireflies will be out, and the frogs and cicadas starting their chorus in the trees.
"I guess the first thing you gotta understand, Jack, is that when everything happened I was hurt. I was injured physically, and i was grieving, but I was also hurt and scared, and I think that's ultimately why I ran away. The last conversation we had was an argument. You had said you wished you were an only child. When I ran I was still angry, and I though in a way that it would mean you got your wish."
"Jules," he says, using her childhood nickname, "You have to know I never meant that, even then." he begins, but she cuts him off, asking to finish.
"I know, Jack. You don't even have to say it. I know you never meant it, and the older I've gotten the more I've realized how young we really were— we didn't understand the world yet, and both of us were just beginning to rebel and fight for our freedom, both from the way of life here, and from each other. Don't think you were the only one of us at the time who wanted to be alone every now and then— we're twins, Jack. By nature, we were always together in everything, and that was exhausting sometimes. I just wanted to be my own person. Just like you wanted time with your friends, I had only wanted to go with you that day to get off of the farm and out of the house for a while, but it was frustrating to never be given the same freedom to do as I pleased simply because I was a girl. I just remember feeling like everything was so unfair. You could go as you pleased but I wasn't allowed."
Jack considers this. It's a perspective he had never really thought about before, although now he's kicking himself a bit for it. How many times had he heard much the same argument from Rose, or even his young daughter about the unfair nature of society when it came to being a woman?
"What really happened?" Jack asks, unsure if he's ready to hear it.
"It all happened very fast," she tells him. "I was in the workshop with Pa, reading a book while he worked on one of his commissions, and we heard a horse bray from the barn where Ma was tending the stables, and then a crash. It got quiet quickly so we didn't think much of it until we smelled the smoke. The fire caught fast, Jack. I think Ma had been kicked by the horse whose shoe she was picking, which caused her lantern to smash into the hay and catch light. Pa ran in to get her— she was having trouble standing, and was disoriented,— I think she had hit her head when the horse bolted, but she got out alive, and then I had to go and be an idiot."
"You ran in for the animals." Says Jack knowingly. "That's what the sheriff told me."
Julia bows her head. "All I could think about was how scared the animals would be. I didn't want them burning to death. I thought I'd have time."
"I probably would have done the same," says Jack, not wanting her to blame herself. He knows that at fifteen, his first thought would have been to save their animals as well, and he would have disregarded his own safety to do it. Hell, at twenty he hadn't given a single though to his own safety aboard Titanic if it meant Rose lived, and same for his brothers-in-arms during the war.
"Ma and Pa ran in after me, and knowing they couldn't stop me, they started helping to open the stalls as quickly as we could. I thought we were gonna make it and we were headed out when one of the rafters fell."
He watches Julia, and her expression is far away, as if she's seeing the events unfold, her eyes getting misty, and hoping it doesn't cross a boundary, he reaches over, taking her hand in his.
"Ma and Pop were both trapped, and unconscious. I tried all I could to get it to move but I just wasn't strong enough."
She removes her hand from Jack's and unbuttons the cuffs of her dress sleeves, rolling them to the elbows. Beneath the sleeves her skin is scarred heavily from burns, and Jack can see that it starts at her palms, extending possibly farther than her elbows, and he winces, thinking of his own burns from the war and the pain they had caused.
"I couldn't get the beam to budge, and their clothing had already caught fire. I knew they weren't gonna make it, and I panicked. I knew if I didn't get out of there I'd be a goner too, so I ran. I panicked. I'm so sorry, Jack. I should have stayed. I should have found you, but I was too afraid to face you, and I was in such as state of shock. I kept on thinking about what you said that morning and thought you'd be better off on your own, without the burden of taking care of me."
They both have fresh tears in their eyes, and Jack reaches out again, taking her empty hand in his once more. He takes a gulp of his coffee, more-so to clear his throat of the lump of sadness that has welled up than anything else.
"Devastated can't begin to cover how I felt when I got home," Jack tells her. "The sheriff found me out at the lake and brought me back but wouldn't tell me what happened until we were here— just that there had been an accident. I think they were trying to keep me from making a scene in public. That night, I panicked too. I couldn't stay here in this house knowing that the three of you were gone, and I was so torn up with guilt at how I should have listened to Ma and let you come along that day. I should have been a better brother."
Julia sighs, and leans her head onto Jack's shoulder. "We're both so similar in our reactions. I should have known you'd run too."
"Where did you go?" Jack asks. "You were hurt. You had nothing— how did you—"
"I went into the house and grabbed all I could see that might have value— grabbed the cash Pa left in his office drawer, and tried to bandage my hands best I could, and then I ran the opposite way of town. I thought if I was found that I would be blamed. I was so scared. A few miles up the road I found an old farmer and his wife who were willing to let me ride to the next town with them where I caught a train east, first to Philadelphia, and then to England, and then Washington DC. I got lucky. I befriended a woman in her twenties on the train, who helped me more than I can ever repay. Her name is Alice. She's still one of my very best friends."
"That figures," says Jack. "You went east, and I went west."
"Where?" she asks, curious.
"Anywhere, at first," he says. "I passed through a lot of mining towns, and did odd jobs until I made it to the coast. Wound up in Washington first, near Seattle, and then headed south all the way until Santa Monica. Have you been in D.C. all this time?" he asks, wanting to know her story, and not talk about himself.
"No," she says, drawing her legs up beneath her, settling in. "Its a very long story."
Jack shifts as well, drawing his bad leg up onto the small table in front of them, and he fishes in his shirt pocket, drawing out a cigarette and lighting it. "Well, unless you have somewhere to be, we have all the time in the world." The coffee Rose had made had done wonders to shake the weariness he had felt after the long time behind the wheel. He glances in through the screen door to his left to see Rose pass through the kitchen with a load of laundry in her arms, heading for the washroom down the hall. Through the screen he can hear that she has the radio on, and is humming along. He can also smell food cooking, and wonders what she has prepared.
"You got another?" Julia asks, nodding to the cigarette, and Jack holds the pack out for her to take one before lighting it for her, the image of his twin sitting here smoking something he couldn't have imagined if you had suggested it a day ago. Fleetingly, he recognizes the urge to draw her— picturing how she would look in one of his cigarette ads and commits the image to memory for later.
She's quiet for a moment, savoring the tobacco before continuing her story. "The woman I befriended on the train— her name is Alice Paul," says Julia. "At the time, she was returning to Philadelphia to finish her master of arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She told me she had a spare room if I wanted to come along. I got some work at the University in the library, and began studying myself for free from the materials I had access to. We became such good friends that by the time she finished her studies we decided to stay together, and I accompanied her to England where she was continuing her studying. She helped me to enroll in college there on a loan, and so we were in classes together, and at that time I was beginning to write more seriously."
"You always did want to be a writer," says Jack, glad that she had gotten the opportunities she's telling him about.
"While we were there was when everything changed," she tells him. "I don't know if you were following along with the women's suffrage movement at all, but Alice and I both got caught up. It was a cause I believed in so fully, Jack. I still do. At the time, I felt it gave me purpose— something outside of myself to focus on, and unlike the other women, I had nothing to lose. Alice and I were both arrested three times before returning to America in 1910."
Jack's eyebrows rise, impressed.
"We joined NAWSA when we got back, and moved to DC in 1912. For years, all we did was work towards getting the vote."
"I passed through DC in 1913," Jack tells her. 1912 had apparently been pivotal for the both of them. "I remember seeing the suffragette parade in the papers. Were you there?"
Julia nods. "That was when the protesting here really began. After that we were outside of the white house for months, rain or shine. That is, until we were carted off to the work house."
Jack frowns. He had also heard about that before he had left for the war. "You were part of the hunger strikes, weren't you?" he asks, now realizing where he had heard the name Alice Paul before. She nods.
"It was the only way we could get our message across," she tells him. "I don't regret it. We wound up with the vote, didn't we?"
He nods, smiling at her stubborn streak. For a moment his sister reminds him of Rose, and he's grateful for the strong, principled women in his life. He knows that his twin and his wife are going to be great friends. "And what has happened between then and now?" he asks, sensing that her story isn't over.
"Well, around 1918, after the strike, Alice and I began to have disagreements. They were all personal, nothing to do with the cause, but it seemed better if we stopped living together. Another woman within our circle had continually been telling me that she could swear I looked related to a family she had met in Boston, who had the same name, and convinced me to go on a trip with her to meet them. You wouldn't believe it, Jack, but we have family there— real blood family, and they're very well off."
A pang runs through Jack as he's reminded of a moment aboard the titanic— J.J. Astor asking him if he's of the Boston Dawsons, and he glances over his shoulder to the kitchen to see if Rose may be listening to any of the story through the screen, but she's clear across the room, still humming to herself.
"You're certain?" Jack asks. "But how?"
"Ma and Pa seem to have had a more involved story to tell than we ever knew," she explains. "They have pictures of Pa as a kid— it was unmistakably him. Apparently, Pa met Ma during the civil war, but his parents hadn't approved since she was from a poorer background and originally from the south, and so he married her anyway, and when land went up for grabs in the west they headed out here. James Dawson, who is our uncle, is a very nice man. He saw right away that we were related, and I've been living there for the past few years, continuing my studies and trying to publish my first novel. He never married or had children of his own, and so he says he's happy for whatever family he may have. He was so sad to hear about Pa and Ma dying."
"And that brings you up to today," Jack guesses. "How did you end up back here? Did you know I returned?"
"While I was in Boston I continued with the suffragette work. There's still a lot to do. I met a woman there recently named Molly Brown. I think you know her," she tells him.
Jack can't help but chuckle at this. "Oh, yeah," he says, nodding. "I know her well."
She kept telling me I reminded her of someone she knew on a ship once, and then a few months ago she mentioned your name, talking about a trip she had recently taken to Wisconsin. I think the moment she said it was when she put two and two together and realized our relation, and so she's the one who told me you're still alive, and how I could find you. I confess, I didn't believe her at first, but then I saw your name registered on the list of Purple Heart recipients that was published in the newspaper, and she told me the story of all that had happened on Titanic. I can't believe you were on that ship, Jack. It's horrible."
Part of him is relieved that she knows he was on Titanic and that he had been to war. It meant two painful parts of his story that he wouldn't have to fully explain. "It's not a time I particularly like to remember," he explains, "but it is where I met Rose, so there's that hidden blessing. In the sinking we got separated for years, each of us thinking the other had died. It's only by chance that I returned here after the war and found her raising our child. In all that time I had never stopped looking for her, or given up hope that she was still alive somewhere. I shouldn't have given up that hope for you, either, and I'm sorry."
She shakes he head then. "You couldn't have known, Jack. They thought I was dead. I know they told you as much."
He nods. "You have a grave, right over there," he points across the field. "Not that I stuck around for the funeral. That was too much."
"We've both had full lives, haven't we?"
Jack nods. "Full lives, and we've only just hit thirty. We're still young with a lot of life left to live."
"Always the optimist," his twin intones, teasing him. "I see that hasn't changed."
Jack grins, then. "And why should it? I've had my share of hard times, but especially now, its apparent that good things can still happen. Here I am, sitting in this home with the love of my life right inside, one child, another on the way, a career staring in art just like I've always wanted, and now, against all odds, my sister is back from the dead."
Julia nods. "I can't say everything has worked out that peachy for me, but I am glad to be back with you, Jack."