Echoes of Titanic (45 page)

“Well, this is definitely proof that the bonds exist,” Cole said once she was done.

“And proof that they were in Gloria's possession late Monday night,” Flash added.

“But if we can't find the actual bonds...” Her voice trailed off.

Everyone was quiet for a long moment as they rode along Battery Place.

“Here's what I suggest,” Cole said, turning to face her. “I know a scripophilist in Chinatown—”

“A what?”

“A scripophilist.” Cole smiled. “That's someone who collects antique stocks and bonds.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, why don't we take these copies and show them to him first thing in the morning? At least he should be able to tell us more about them.”

“Good idea.”

He handed the pages back to her, and she put them with the diary, which she'd been holding tightly to her chest. Cole eyed her curiously, but he didn't ask for it. Kelsey was glad, because she wasn't eager to let it out of her possession, not even for an instant.

She twisted around in her seat. “Flash, did you figure out who was watching us?”

“No. I'll keep working on that. In the meantime, even though we had to cut things short in there, I got a lot of good data.”

“Like what?”

He gestured toward the computer screen. “Gloria Poole's electronic trail for the past two weeks—phones calls to and from her extension, the times she coded in to work, the times she logged onto the computer, what equipment she used and when, things like that.”

“Wow.”

“This data will take some analysis, but you'd be surprised at what can be gleaned from this sort of thing.”

“Other than making copies of the bonds, can you tell about any of her other activities that Monday night?”

He typed on the keyboard and then scanned the screen. “Let's see…for one thing, I see that she googled ‘Transatlantic Wireless LTD' and eventually clicked her way to ‘BAE Systems.' So we know she was researching the bonds.”

“Probably trying to figure out if they still had any value,” Cole said.

“And if so, how much,” Kelsey added.

Thriller turned onto her street and then pulled to a stop in front of the building. Before she got out, Cole suggested they meet up at Columbus Park at nine in the morning. The man he wanted to visit was just a block away, in Chinatown.

“Sounds good,” she replied. “I'll bring the copies of the bonds.”

She climbed out of the van and then turned to look back at the three men inside. “Listen, ‘thank you' doesn't begin to express—”

“No thanks necessary,” Cole cut her off. “We're happy to help. And we're not done yet.”

“Okay, then,” she said, smiling at each one of them in turn. “Thanks for everything so far, at least. You fellows have no idea how alone I felt until you came along.”

At the word “alone” she let her eyes meet Cole's. He held her gaze, and she wondered if he knew what an understatement that was.

Minutes later, upstairs in her apartment, Kelsey heated a quick frozen dinner and ate it standing at the kitchen bar. Though her mind kept going to Cole, she forced herself to focus on tonight's incredible find, the handwritten diary of her great-grandmother Adele. Soon she was ready for bed and under the covers, propped up with pillows, the diary on her lap. She opened it up to the first page and read the inscription that had been written there:

Oh, boy
, Kelsey thought, reaching for the box of tissues on the bedside table. She was on page one, and already she was crying! Smiling at herself, she wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and then turned the page.

The diary's first entry was dated April 8, 1912. It read:

Kelsey read the page several times through, pausing to look up the word “culchie” with her phone. She learned that it meant country folk, though it was most often used derogatorily, something akin to a “hick” or a “bumpkin.” Poor Adele! Here she'd come to London for the first time in her life and felt completely out of place from day one.

Unfortunately, as fascinating as this was, Adele's handwriting was difficult to read. She wrote in a tight but messy script, and to make matters worse, the ink had faded over the years. Continuing on to the next entry and then the next, Kelsey saw that the handwriting only grew worse. It was such slow going that after a while she almost felt as though she were translating from another language.

Still, it was worth the trouble. Kelsey had only known Adele as an older woman. What an amazing treat to meet her on these pages at nineteen. She sounded wise for her years and yet in many ways naive. Several times she referred to America as “the land of opportunity,” but from her entries it was clear she expected that to include opportunities for women in business. What an awakening she must have had once she arrived and learned that many of the limits imposed on women in the United Kingdom prevailed on this side of the ocean as well. At least she would no longer be bound by the class system that had further served to dampen her prospects back in Ireland. In the States she would probably find that a man could become whoever he wanted to be if he was willing to work hard enough for it. She would struggle to make that true for women too, but at least she would eventually prevail, as everyone who was familiar with the legend of Adele well knew.

Kelsey persisted in reading the difficult script. Soon her head was hurting from the strain, but her heart was full with the joy of experiencing Adele's journey in her own words. The entries grew quite expansive, and her first day on board
Titanic
merited the longest entry of all. Near the end of that one, Kelsey turned the page and was surprised to see a folded piece of onionskin paper tucked into the margin. Carefully, she pulled it loose and unfolded it to take a look. She realized it was a note from someone else, written on
Titanic
stationery. At the top left was the logo of the White Star Line, a red flag with a white star at the center. Across from that, on the right, were the words
On board
R.M.S. Titanic
. Below that was a line where someone had filled in the date, April 10, 1912. The note itself was brief and had been written in a different hand, a lovely, flowing script that was far easier to read than Adele's. All it said was:

Smiling, Kelsey returned her attention to the diary entry, eager to see what this was about. She finally came to it near the bottom of the next page, where Adele had written:

Adele's diary went on to a new topic from there, so Kelsey paused to reread Jocelyn's note.
Pay no attention to the opinions of others. Everything will turn out fine
. With just those two sentences, she had provided comfort and encouragement to her cousin in the wake of someone else's cruelty. Adele was right. Jocelyn did seem to be a natural encourager.

On a hunch, Kelsey decided to flip ahead and see if there were any other notes hidden within the pages of this book. To her delight, she spotted quite a few, though of course there were none beyond the date of April 14—the day
Titanic
struck the iceberg.

With a mixture of excitement and dread, she forced herself to wait and read each note in context. She picked up the story where she'd left off and continued reading. Again, it was slow going, but a few pages later, she ran across the next note and soon found its related passage:

This note looked thicker, and as Kelsey unfolded it, she saw that it covered two pages of the White Star stationery, front and back. She was eager to read it, but she paused first to go to the kitchen for a glass with water and some ibuprofen for the headache that persisted. Glancing at the clock on the microwave, she was surprised to see that it was after midnight. As much as she wanted to keep reading, she told herself that she should probably stop after this letter and pick things up again in the morning. She didn't have to meet up with Cole until nine, so she would set her alarm for six, knowing perusing the diary might go faster after she'd had some rest, not to mention once her headache was gone.

Yawning, Kelsey returned to the bedroom, settled down against the pillows, and began to read. Jocelyn's letter was quite heartfelt, filled with lots of underlined words and exclamation points. Already, Kelsey was getting a sense of who young Adele and young Jocelyn were, but this letter opened up another level of understanding for them both. It read: