I took a cigarette break on the front veranda the afternoon my mother left on her mysterious trip. I was banned from going into anything on exposed part of the house. I was banned from smoking as well.

I started coughing mucus after about ten minutes outside. After that I decided to head down to the hospital and requested a different doctor. I only coughed blood for about a week or so. I'd been getting these mucus attacks for a while now but kept them from my mother; they were also not indicative of a T.B. diagnosis. The disease, or infection, I should say—the doctor told me I had the T.B. infection, not the disease—had been wavering. It would get better, than worse. I didn't understand. It was another eight years or so before penicillin (not that I knew at the time), tuberculosis was practically a death sentence.

This new doctor told me I had chronic bronchitis. I had taken a hit in the chest, which, with the illness, probably caused the bleeding. That and sickness from possible emotional stress mimicked the symptoms of tuberculosis.

"Check the labels on your medications. It says in your record you're being treated for bronchitis."

"I don't believe this," I said, grabbing my head. "Why would they lie? I'm a God damned nurse. Why was I so clueless?"

"You appear to be under a great deal of stress. You said your aunt wanted to keep you indoors and at home, correct?" he said referring to my mother.

"Yes, I, uh, I ran away as a teenager. My family took it quite badly. I'm all she has left now. She's all I have left… Oh, God. I can't believe I was lied to about this. What do I do?"

"Start by being very, very relieved Miss Dawson. You've just gotten your life back."

"I have, haven't I?" I nodded. "But why haven't I improved if it's just bronchitis?" The doctor sighed and took my hand, carefully and paternally examining my fingers. "What?" I asked.

"You've got some stains on your fingers. You still managed to smoke in your condition?"

"My aunt," I said slowly, "causes an undue amount of stress in me."

"I've got your cure, Miss Dawson: stop smoking. Your bronchitis will go away. There may be no definable proof that cigarettes cause any kind of illness, but you're a nurse like you said, do the math. You wouldn't inhale any other burning chemicals if someone didn't sell them to you in a labeled carton, would you?"

Cigarettes could not possibly have made me sick, I thought indignantly. How ridiculous! I was desperate, however, and decided to give quitting smoking a chance.

The first order of business was to get on trolley to some lower-middle or working class neighborhood and grab a strong cup of coffee. Or two. Or five—as it turned out. I began craving another smoke, but resisted the urge.

I needed to confront my mother. I needed to telegram my bank in California and take out all my funds in order to pay for surgery as debris had badly bruised my left lung. I could afford the surgery, but after that I would be utterly broke.

In situations of such frustrations, I would smoke a pack of cigarettes. Instead I drank coffee, perhaps a better vice than liquor, but I spent the trolley ride and the subsequent walk through Fairmount Park home in near agony for want of relieving myself.

Once home, I sat and waited for my mother for the better part of the evening. I decided to leave her and went over the speech in my head countless and even acted it out in my room once I returned, each time growing angrier. I did not know that she went to George that day and could not see through the frustration and feelings of betrayal. I left the last time and now she intended to keep me a willing prisoner through lies?

Mother arrived at about quarter to eight that evening, she remarked I was looking well and was glad to see I was up.

"You didn't go to the front of the house today, did you?" she asked. I sighed. She still regarded me as a child, I thought.

"No," I said, "I went to the hospital."

"You did what?"

"I was beginning to believe my tuberculosis was not behaving like tuberculosis. That's because I have a bruised lung and bronchitis on top of that."

"Why did you leave today? I explicitly told you not to go outside! You could be recognized!"

"I know, Mother. I'm not deaf nor am I a child. You cannot keep me here with lies about my health and then reprimand me for figuring it out."

"I could not trust you to stay. As soon as you recovered, you would go gallivanting off again and out of my life."

"Well, if that's true, you're only option would be to let me do it. Besides, you're refusal to recognize my less severe condition, propagated a worse one. I'm having surgery on my lung; it was damaged during the explosion in September."

"I guess you're staying after all."

"No, after the surgery I will recover elsewhere…if the surgery goes well, that is… If we cannot trust each other, then I cannot stay."

"Well, just have a nurse tell you died on the table, walk away laughing, and you'll have your life again, won't you, Rose?" she said icily.

She walked away and I said nothing. It occurred to me, sometime after she stalked off into the drawing room, that I had been sitting on the bottom step of the main staircase, slumped over with my chin in my hands. I could not recall a time, when I still called myself DeWitt Bukater, that I ever sat on the stairs. I tried to convince myself I'd won a small victory, but it did no good.

Despite the tension and the long silences, Mother got a small tree and decorated it on Christmas Eve. We made Christmas dinner. My cooking was bad; Mother's was worse. We could rot in that house forever, but it would never be home again. We both needed to leave and move on with our lives. The problem remained that Mother had never left any place or any life voluntarily and I was always leaving every home and every life I managed to build with frightening consistency.

I had the surgery just after New Year's and it went well. It was perfect timing as my mother's sister (another one of her benefactors) came to visit while I was under the knife. No one in the family or the public for that matter would be the wiser. The bad news was that I had no money left and even if my mother had any to give I would never have taken it. I stayed with her for one only one month to recover.

Late in the morning on Valentine's Day 1921—a year to the day I had arrived in New York again—I was packing and organizing my things, planning a desperate return to seek out Emily and George. I had not seen nor heard anything from either of them in five months. It was a hopeless venture, but I decided that if I loved them, any chance would be worth. And I did love them.

By now, I was living off the change in my pocket. If Emily was still there, I dared not go back in our old apartment and see if I had left any money behind. Emily might shoot me on sight and if I left anything, Emily had taken it by now. And if she had vacated, I could not enter anyway.

"Rose?" Mother called for a third time. I heard her the first two times, but did not have the energy to answer. She was waiting in the front room while I rummaged around my bedroom. It was at the far end of the hall, but we had excellent acoustics in the old family home. I finally walked out to the top of the stairs.

"Yes, Mother?" I said as a walked

"Well—oh, you're not still wearing those shoes, are you?" Whatever she had been wanting before was forgotten because I was wearing footwear she did not approve of: a pair of old brown boots.

"Yes, I am. They get me where I'm going. I couldn't afford an extra pair of socks at this rate so why do you care about my shoes?"

She let out one of her long, exasperated sighs I had re-learned to hate. The doorbell rang. Mother went to answer it and I walked back towards my room. If it was Holden, I could wait; if it was Cal, I didn't want to see him. And if it was anybody else—I was dead to them.

I had grown so frustrated; I slammed every draw I opened, whirling around the room as I searched for the rest of my belongings. I did not hear who had come to the door and expected that it might be Holden or someone connected to my mother's sister. I didn't have the energy for at the moment.

After a while, when I could hear no conversation and my mother did not come upstairs, I grew worried. Of course, I could not go and check as I was officially dead in this world and could not risk being seen.

"Rose? Could you come down here for a moment?" I had a bad feeling and hesitated to respond. "Someone is here to see you."

Slowly and carefully I walked toward the stairs. My heart pounded faster and faster and visions of George flashed through my mind. I was terrified.

I did not see George waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

"Can we talk in private?" said a surprisingly strong voice.

I stopped, unable to answer or to move. I couldn't believe it.

"Emily?"

"Please" was all she said.

"Oh, uh…yes, I think." I led her to the old drawing room where the furniture was still covered in white sheets. "I didn't even know you were out of the hospital. Well, I suppose you would be by now…"

"Please. I don't know any other way to do this. Don't talk; just listen. I don't know if I trust you anymore, but that's more than I can say for anyone else. I need help. …George left the city a couple weeks ago and he didn't say where he was going and he didn't say he was leaving…" Emily grabbed her hair and began pacing around the room. A few nights ago I got a note on my door with an address for someplace out in Western Pennsylvania. I gathered up all the money I had and put Milton and Sonny in charge of Joe's." Emily threw her hands up. "After I got out of the hospital I just into more trouble. Any of the booze or other some such things that they used Joe's for…Joe's was closed for weeks…I needed the money. I sold some of it. And Calvert had arrested some of Martin's people and they knew we were working together and then the cops started suspecting me…and now Calvert's gone and I got people leaving notes on my door. These aren't just little cartels! This is a big, powerful ring. I just hightailed it outta there…I can't believe I left my friends alone there and had them run the bar for all sorts of criminals…I don't know if you'll help, but I thought you should know."

I said nothing to her and sat down in an old armchair that was still covered in a sheet. She was much thinner, sick from worry and from the miscarriage and her clothes hanging off her body. Her eyes were sunken in. She looked tired and unhappy. George was missing.

"I am to deliver a ransom. But I'm not going to," she said.

"What else can you do? We can't just leave George there!" I said hoarsely. I held my stomach and sat down on the divan. Not smoking had put through withdrawals; I often felt nauseous. The news made me feel worse.

"I'm going to sneak him out. I've already paid an informant that frequents Joe's. Calvert wouldn't want me acquiescing to it."

"How did you pay him?" I asked suspiciously. She had said she was in need of funds herself.

"I can get in and get him out." She didn't answer my question so I knew how.

"With what, Mata Hari?"

"Cunning? A weapon or two if things get messy. I've got some written instructions about who's there. Their routines. If you memorize it, you can come with me."

"Emily, for God's sake, he's cop, where's the rest of the police in this? Do you think at all?!" I asked.

"He's already been caught. They're afraid an attempt to liberate would result in his death and it would look like their fault. They tried, more cops got killed. They gave up. He's got a couple friends still working on it. I need to know if you're coming."

Why did always feel like I was going to my death?

I found myself on a train with Emily that evening, heading for the country. I had said goodbye to Mother, saying that we were going back to New York. Mother, unsure of how to handle the presence of Jack Dawson's family, was almost thankful.

We said nothing for most of the trip, uncomfortable to be in one another's presence. We never made eye contact until Emily decided to strike up conversation and we talked calmly and frankly on our way to our suicide mission.

"So it's Jack's fault you are who you are now?" she asked.

"I wouldn't use the word 'fault,' but yes, if it weren't for him I wouldn't be here or half the place I've been. I would never have done the things I've done."

"He was coming home when he died, you said. He would have surprised us. He talked about us?"

I cringed. His family wasn't the main topic of conversation. But that is to say, neither was mine.

"I saw your pictures in his sketchbook. I knew he lost his parents. I knew about you."

"Are you still in love with him?" She looked directly at me for the first time on the whole trip. I looked directly back at her. She was just like Jack sometimes.

"Well, I say this: you can't replace a person. But you can put someone in their place. I don't really know what would hurt you more: to say that I love Jack and not George or to say that love George and not Jack. Neither is quite true and you clearly want me to stay out of either your real family or your created one so I will."

Emily bit her lip without betraying emotion.

"And just like real family I just wish you'd shut up and go away sometimes."

I didn't understand what she was saying for a moment. I repeated her words in my head.

"I haven't forgiven you or anything," she added, "I just want you to know I feel…I—I still care. And I know there are things you've done, things that I've done, things everyone has done…that are unforgivable. Things have happened that are unfixable."

"What will you do about Cal?" I asked.

"Nothing," she shook her head. "I can't handle it. I will forget or go on as if I have. Besides, I might not have to do that much work for it…"

"I don't understand."

"This will probably fail, this attempt, I mean. The three of us will probably die. If not, I'll be concentrating very hard on fixing all of us. I won't worry about him so much. He made a mistake and we're all paying for it—you and me especially. He'll be suffering for the rest of life and I can't be deciding whether or not I want that to happen or not."

"Emily," I said. "Don't assume you're going to fail. If anyone threatens your life, fight. We live for each other now."

I took in a deep breath as we pulled into our final destination. There was no going back. We were about to take the plunge.