When Emily looked up between the shelves she was stocking, pausing in her inventory count of the newly delivered Titanic Heirloom Music Boxes, her first thought was that maybe she'd seen a ghost.
But when she stood up to get a better look, the face she thought she saw staring back at her on the other side of the window was gone.
They'd warned her about taking the Monday night shift at the Titanic Artifact Exhibition museum.
You know this place is haunted, right? They'd said.
But Emily Amberflaw was a rational person who believed in rational explanations for rational things.
And it wasn't until she took the job at the museum that she ever needed to worry about the shenanigans of quote-unquote "ghosts" on the night shift.
Sure, there were weird feelings she couldn't always explain.
She'd felt them her first day on the job. The little prickles dragging across her bare skin under her hand-knitted cardigan whenever she was cleaning alone in the dimly lit museum.
It happened the most when she was busy mopping the replica first class promenade. Sometimes, she'd stop and look out the glassless windows of the reconstructed deck, contemplating the little white lights that mimicked a starry night at sea. Emily knew it was just a star projector behind the white and teak wooden railings. She had been the one to replace the burnt-out lightbulbs in them several times.
But every time it was her turn to polish the wooden flooring of the deck, something about the simulated sea breezes and the audio-loop of a whispering night ocean felt...rueful...As if it hadn't been the first time she'd looked out at a starry night sky like that before...
She had, in fact.
Several times for the last 1 year and 3 months working there.
And she knew those chilling "cold spots" that always seemed to happen on the promenade deck was just a big industrial fan attached to the ceiling, and obviously nothing paranormal. It was even posted on a sign at the door of the model deck, "Here on the 1st class promenade, experience the frigid temperatures felt on that fateful April night when Titanic struck an iceberg. The air was a chilling 28 degrees Fahrenheit, -2 degrees Celsius."
But, even as she could explain away the perpetual cold in the museum, nothing could quite explain those eerie feelings she got in the photograph exhibit.
Millie wouldn't call herself a history buff, exactly. Apart from knowing that the ship sank, and the band played on, she'd probably never spend her Friday nights drinking tea over a game of Titanic Trivia Pursuit.
So, on her first day working there, she had wandered around the museum getting herself acquainted with the ins-and-outs, studying the faces in the photographs projected against the dark walls. The famous key people everyone knew came down the line first: J. Bruce Ismay, John Jacob and Madeleine Astor, Thomas Andrews, Margaret Brown, Isidor and Ida Strauss...
Eventually, Emily strolled on by the black and white photographs of the ship's officers.
Captain Edward J. Smith, Chief Officer Wilde, First Officer Murdoch...
Scanning over the names of 3 senior officers, and 3 juniors, until she came to one.
Officer James Paul Moody.
And slowly, without fully realizing it, her feet came to a stop.
At first, it was just curiosity.
For a grainy early 20th century photo, Moody was unexpectedly handsome. With a soft symmetry to his full lips and nose, and his pale frost eyes drawing slightly down at the outer corners, giving him a dreamy wistful gaze that gave away his gentle disposition. A charm that only complemented his White Star cap, and his neatly pressed collar and necktie. His square shoulders were dressed smartly by his uniform, hinting that he might've been taller than his counterparts. His attention appeared to be drawn by something off camera, though he was careful to keep his noticing of it subtle. But Emily felt as if she almost knew that look personally, and the unspoken thoughts hidden behind it. The words for it being just out of her reach, as if her heart intuitively guessed Moody's exact feelings in that moment, but her mind had rightfully rejected that bizarre theory.
Emily couldn't tell what it was about him that inspired in her something vaguely remembered. Like he belonged to a distant dream she had long ago forgotten. After all, hadn't she heard once that the almost-remembered faces in your dreams were just reflections of strangers in passing from your waking life?
Moody was a stranger to her, 100 years removed from the year she was even born. Belonging to an entirely different world from hers. And yet, the softness in his gaze begged her to imagine an alternative. What if, somewhere in her unremembered past, before forgetting was all her body knew how to do to protect her after the accident, she had known someone a lot like James Moody before?
Someone intimately hers, who was home to these wandering feelings of melancholy and strange ideas of attachment she didn't understand?
How else might she explain this indescribable yearning invoked from such a random historical photograph?
Who was that person she had left behind in all her lost memories, which this photograph reminded her so much of now?
Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for that too.
'James Paul Moody was an English sailor from Scarborough, who served as Titanic's 6th officer,' the mini bio next to his portrait read, 'He was the only junior officer to die in the sinking at the age of 24. His exact fate is a mystery, but he was presumed lost at sea, as his body was never recovered."
And knowing the officer was only a year older than she was, how could she not mourn in some way over James's tragic fate?
Millie couldn't help but wonder what Moody had been thinking in his last moments on the Titanic.
Or what she herself might've been thinking, had she been there too, facing the same fateful decision he had in choosing to stay or go?
And unable to stand that profound heartsickness that overwhelmed her whenever she gazed into James Moody's photograph, Millie quickly walked on from the photo exhibit.
Though now and again, on slower days in the museum, she couldn't help but take the long way back to the gift shop on occasion. Detouring through the photo exhibit with her mop and bucket, as her eyes inevitably found their way back to the 6th officer's portrait.
'It's kind of sad, isn't it?' one of her coworkers had caught Millie studying Moody's photograph again. 'The way they brought this stuff up from the wreck site out of nothing but greed...These were real people...Everything in here belongs to some dead person who probably died on the Titanic. It's like literally someone's grave down there, and these rich people make a circus out of it? Like, damn, I'd be mad too, if I was a Titanic ghost. I mean, is it really a Monday night if you don't run into one of them spirits floating around here, pissed off about their shit being disturbed?'
The day Emily Amberflaw found herself unwittingly caught in said "ghost story" happened to be on the Monday of April 15th, 20 minutes before she was supposed to clock out of her shift.
And by that time, the end couldn't come soon enough for her.
Having spent the last hour of her shift cleaning up an "artsy" surprise left behind in the men's restroom, Millie rushed to finish her closing duties.
Standing on tip-toe as she sprayed and dusted all the top shelves she'd just stocked with the new shop deliveries.
Her stormy gray hand-knitted cardigan falling in asymmetrical grace around her long white apron, white lace collar, and black stewardess uniform.
It was tradition at the museum.
A little like working at Disney World.
Every April, around the anniversary, the staff cosplayed someone from the James Cameron movie, and the customers got a kick out of taking pictures with them. It was a long anticipated social media promo, and the customers always tipped her well after.
This year, Millie had picked the maid costume again, because no one else wanted it. The other cashiers were more interested in wearing the beautiful but fussy gowns of Rose Dewitt Bukater, or Madeleine Astor, or the Countess of Rothes rather than the simple black frock of an obscure Titanic stewardess.
Apart from loving how easy it was to change into her dress, Millie felt a deep pride representing the unsung Titanic maids, whom despite not being born as women of status and money, had just as heroic a story to tell as the others.
And so enmeshed did she become with her character, that when she hung the dress back up and became Emily Amberflaw again, she felt a little heartbroken for leaving it behind. For the passing of time, really. For the loss of such a gilded age that would never be seen again. Like she was locking away an important piece of the past, which could only ever be remembered when she took it out of the closet again on her next shift.
The customers noticed it too.
There was just a "comforting" charm about Millie's presence as the maid that made patrons feel as if they "were really there" while checking out their keychains and refrigerator magnets at the end of their museum tours.
At least, that's what they wrote in the Facebook reviews.
The natural grace she carried as a woman in domestic service rarely failed to turn heads. The hem of her dress and petticoat always flowing to her feet in perfect neatness and plain dark elegance. Her black stockings modestly covering everything down to her ankles, as was the expectation for a modest lady back in that day.
But the formality of her cosplay stopped at a pair of white Converse High Tops, which Millie refused to trade in for the Oxfords that came along with the package.
A pair of breathable Chuck Taylors being much more practical for standing on her feet all day at a cash register, as opposed to the standard black heels a real Titanic stewardess might've worn.
But no one had bothered looking at her feet anyway, as the cleverest of them were too busy snickering remarks behind her back like, "Tea, Trudi."
It didn't stop there, as the rest of her conversations with customers included imaginative little questions like,
"Are you sure you're not a time-traveler?"
"Damn, I literally saw you slide down a whole ass ship in the movie. How did you survive?"
"Can I record you for my Youtube channel? I'm trying to get the word out about how the government is using cloning experiments to slowly replace the population with mind-controlled copies of real people."
"Tell Murdoch I said s'up."
"Do you know anybody who sailed on the Titanic? I swear, you look just like the maid I saw in one of those pictures back there."
"Some people just got that look for period drama. You should try out for Bridgerton."
"See? This is proof that the Olympic and Titanic were actually switched as an insurance scam. Which means all the crew on Titanic actually survived in the end."
"You can come fluff up my pillows any time, boo, that's all I'm saying."
Needless to say, Millie was relieved to finally be allowed to hang the "Sorry, We're Closed" sign on the gift shop door to finish cleaning the store in peace.
Of course, working in a Titanic museum, she'd already heard it so many times in a day, she couldn't get it out of her head.
"Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you. That is how I know you go on," Millie sang along softly with Celine Dion on the store radio as she worked. "Far across the distance, and spaces between us, you have come to show you go on."
Reaching over for the Windex on the register counter, she began spraying the jewelry case where she'd finally cleared off all the inventory boxes.
Watching the aqua blue droplets shimmer in the overhead lights every time she sprayed the jewelry display case.
Little glittery stars of Windex reflected off a perfect mirror, matching the Heart of the Ocean necklaces she'd just stocked inside. Sapphire Swarovski heart crystals, each trimmed around the edges with white faux diamonds climbing up the chain. Promiscuous beauties that were flirtatious with every angle of light in the store, giving away their 'plasticy' nature. Their only real value being to look valuable. The more bling, the better.
"The Heart of the Ocean" the lid on the box read. "A Collector's Edition to commemorate the 110th Anniversary of Titanic's tragic sinking. $49.99. Made in China."
The gift shop's best sellers for Birthdays-For-Her and Valentine's Day gifts.
And having checked the jewelry case off her list of cleaning duties, Millie grabbed the paper towel roll as a microphone to serenade her heart out to Captain Wentworth, who was curiously batting away a keychain display by the register.
"Once more, you open the door, and you're here in my heart and, my heart will go on and on."
And so engrossed in passionately declaring her undying love to her cat paramour, Emily didn't hear the chiming ding-ding of the shop door as it admitted one last customer.