Echoes of Titanic
Authors: Mindy Starns Clark
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos © Maxim Ahner / Shutterstock; Bigstock / goinyk; Frank Boston / 123RF
The authors are represented by MacGregor Literary.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
ECHOES OF TITANIC
Copyright © 2012 by Mindy Starns Clark and John Campbell Clark
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mindy Starns.
Echoes of Titanic / Mindy Starns Clark and John Campbell Clark.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-2946-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-4243-0 (eBook)
1. Titanic (Steamship)âFiction. 2. Corporate cultureâFiction. I. Clark, John Campbell. II. Title.
PS3603.L366E27 2012
813'.6--dc23
2011045882
All rights reserved
. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherâexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 / LB-CD / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
For our daughters,
Emily and Lauren.
Raising them has been
our greatest collaboration
.
Nick Harrison, who first suggested we base a book on
Titanic
.
Kim Moore, our talented editor and dear friend.
Betty Fletcher, Becky Miller, Katie Lane, LaRae Weikert, and everyone else at Harvest House Publishers who went the extra mile to make this book happen.
Our daughters, Emily and Lauren, who contribute in ways too numerous to count.
We are also deeply indebted to the following people and places:
Harvest House Publishers; Tracie Hall; David Clark; Jennifer Clark; Joey Starns; Gordon Brett; Dr. Denene Lofland; Lee Lofland;
Titanic: The Experience
of Orlando, Florida; the helpful folks at Cramer, LLC (formerly the Cramer Brothers Safe Company) of Kansas City, Missouri; Susan Page Davis; Vanessa Thompson; Stephanie Ciner; Helen Styer Hannigan; the McMullan family;
Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition
; David Trouten; Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary; ChiLibris; Sisters in Crime; the Titanic Historical Society; and the Titanic Museum in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts.
Thanks also to BMCC, FVCN, and our connect group: Brian, Tracey, Hannah, and Emiko Akamine; Brad, Tracie, and Payton Hall; and Fanus, Mariette, Jacqueline, Marguerete, and Karla Smith. Truly, we couldn't have done it without your love, prayers, and support!
ROLOGU
E
Lower Manhattan, New York
April 15, 1913
T
he figure stood near the bulkhead, a young woman looking out at the Hudson River. The day had grown windier, not to mention cooler, and her silk hat and spring coat did little to keep out the chill. She made no move to warm herself, however, nor to join the others. Instead, she continued to stare out at the water as the wind whipped at her face and body.
To her, nothing compared to the coldness she'd suffered that fateful night one year before, waiting for the help that wouldn't come till sunrise. As her lifeboat had bobbed in the ocean for hours, the bitter chill had permeated her bones. Even colder, however, had been the frigid waters themselves, which her two beloved family members had been forced to endure. Given the torment they had likely suffered before their bodies finally went still, she had no right to complain of coldâthen or now.
More than fifteen hundred people had been left without lifeboats that night and had been plunged into the icy North Atlantic when the ship went down. Would the cacophony of their screams ever fade from her memory? Had her two loved ones joined in with that chorus, their own cries a part of what she'd heard? How long had their misery gone on before they found relief in blessed unconsciousness?
Those were but a few of the many questions that tormented her days and haunted her nightsâand had since the great
Titanic
sunk, exactly one year ago today.
By the time the searches had ended, most of those bodies had not been
recovered. They had either drifted off with the currents or been pulled down with the ship. Her two family members were among those that had never been found; thus, they had not been given a final resting place in any cemetery. Instead, a small memorial had been erected in Battery Park, in the shade of a gnarled old elm tree. The carved stone was tasteful and elegant, yes, but altogether insufficient as far as she was concerned. No bodies, no headstones, no graves.
No peace in the heart of this survivor.
Foolishly, she had agreed to come here today to this memorial service. She'd thought she could endure a brief ceremony, but just the sight of the two names etched in bronze on a plaque affixed to the memorial stone had been far too much to bear. Let others tend to their ritual.
She needed air. She needed to breathe.
Oh, how she missed them!
The dear man, father to one and uncle to the other, yet father figure to both. He'd been a loving and calming presence to the end.
The young woman, precious cousin, so beautiful inside and out. Raised in the same home, just two months apart in age, they had always been inseparable.
Now she'd be separated from the two of them for the rest of her life.
Standing there, facing the water, she felt the wind whipping at her hat, threatening to whisk it from her head. As she placed a hand atop the stiff fabric surface to hold it in place, her fingers grazed the cold metal of a hat pin.
The hat pin.
She pulled it loose to study it. Never mind that the wind made short work of both head covering and hairdo after that. Soon, the hat was skittering briskly across the grounds of the park, and her long brown locks had fallen loose and were fluttering wildly about her head. She didn't care. She merely grasped the pin in her hand, the tiny gold harp at the end sparkling in the morning sun. She brought it to her lips, pressing the cold roughness of the pin's decorative surface against her skin. Originally, there had been two hat pins, designed to wear separately or as a set. The cousins, as close as sisters, had chosen them together in London the day before they set sail for America. While on the ship, they had taken turns wearing each one, both girls trying to decide which pin they would call their own once their journey was complete. That question had been answered, of course, as soon as she'd climbed into the lifeboat. Simply by default, the one she'd been wearing at
that moment had become hers foreverâjust as the one her cousin had been wearing now lay at the bottom of the ocean, probably still affixed to the hat she'd had on when the unsinkable ship went down.
Again running a finger over the pin's unique design, she closed her eyes. In the past year, the nightmares had grown less frequent, less intense, but her daytime torments had not ceased. She still found herself crying for no reason, still spent far too many of her waking hours trying not to think about all that had happened.