Unspeakable (19 page)

“I've interviewed a lot of sad stories over the years and if it's taught me anything, Miss Ellen, it's this: regret is an insatiable sonofabitch. No matter how sorry you feel, it's never enough, and the more you feed into regret, the hungrier it gets.”

He spoke like a man who'd done his share of feeding. I wondered what his story was.

“The way I see it,” he continued, “a card laid is played. There's no sense second-guessing. We do what we can with the hand that we have. And sometimes we make stupid moves. And, yes, sometimes we have terrible hands, so grim we just want to fold.”

“Wait—” The ridiculousness, the futility of it all, struck me. “You're comparing my life to a—a poker game?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I just think we gotta keep on playing, you know? We're still in. Who knows what might come on the next flip from the deck.”

His optimism seemed slightly forced and I wondered if he was advising me or himself.

“What do you regret?” I asked, curious. The question caught him off guard and I saw the shadow of his answer ripple behind his eyes.

“This isn't about me—”

“I'm asking. I'm making it about you.”

He looked away for a few seconds, then, seemingly resolved, sat back in his seat. He met my eyes. “Nothing. I don't regret anything.”

I studied him for a moment, the jut of his chin, the glint in his eye. “You're bluffing.”

He smiled slightly and I knew I was right.

“You play your cards very close to your chest, Mr. Steele. Always the one asking the questions. Never revealing anything. But I bet of all the sad stories you've interviewed, yours is equally tragic. I've read your work.” The man wrote with detailed description, but also great passion. In few words, he got to the heart of it. Though he played the objective reporter, the cold and detached journalist, somehow I knew he wasn't.

“No one could write the way you do and not
feel
deeply,” I concluded.

“Maybe I'm just that good of a writer.”

“Maybe.” I finished off my drink and set the glass on the mahogany end table. “But I doubt it.”

Steele's half-smile crept up his cheek, making him look almost bashful, like a young scamp caught doing something right. “You have a way with words, Miss Ellen. I'm not sure if you are paying me an insult or a compliment.”

“That depends—do you think compassion is a virtue or a flaw?” I paused a moment before asking what I really wanted to know. “Do you care about anyone, really, or are we just article fodder?”

For a second, he seemed stung by my question but he spoke with conviction. “I report the truth. The facts. I learned long ago not to let my feelings get involved. If my mother taught me anything before she took off, it was that.”

He bent and rummaged through his bag, making it clear this conversation was over. As he pulled out Jim's journal, I hoped that, given all I'd said about the sinking and the rescue, he might tear out a few extra pages for me. I'd given him the story. He owed me more than a scrap of Jim's. Instead, he handed me the book.

I looked at him in wonder as I took it. “The whole thing?”

He shrugged. “You earned it.”

My heart thudded as I held it in my hands.

Jim's journal
.

I stroked the worn leather cover, now rippled with water damage, and pulled the red ribbon's frayed end through my fingers. Finally, I'd get Jim's story. The spine cracked as I opened to the first few pages. But these entries were too blurred, too ruined by the river, to read. I turned to the next. And the next. Only to see they were, all of them, washed out. In a few places, ragged remains of a page jutted from the crease, remnants of entries Steele had torn out. I flipped to the end of the book and my heart sank. Every yellowed page was either illegible or empty. I traced my finger down the blurry entries, skimming through smeared ink and faded lead. Ghosts of Jim. Words lost forever. I'd get no answers in here.

“You knew.” I glared up at Steele. “All this time, you knew there were no more entries and yet you sat there and let me tell my story. How dare you play me like that!” My lip trembled. I was done. With Steele. With hoping. With all of it. Frustrated, I flung the book at him. It hit him in the chest and fell to the floor. “You used me.”

“I promised you the journal,” he said, but he seemed deflated. “And now you have it.”

“You bastard!” I stood and rested both hands on the mantel. I could barely breathe. It felt like I'd lost Jim all over again. I closed my eyes and gripped the wood, inhaling deeply.

“Did you … did you ever even see Jim?” I swallowed and made myself say it. “The body, I mean.” My heart pounded in the silence as I waited for the answer.

“No.”

I let out the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

Steele's voice continued behind me. “I've checked and rechecked my sources. His name isn't on any list of deceased. But you have to realize, Miss Ellen, many were never identified.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“I know you think me cold-hearted—just out for a story. But it's not like that.” He paused and his voice sounded distant when he continued. “I saw them.”

I turned to see him staring into the fire at the memory burned into his brain.

“The
Times
sent me to be the eyes of the world,” he continued. “And so I went. And I saw. In the Rimouski shed, and again at Quebec's Pier 27. I walked those long silent rows of open coffins. I looked at every battered body lying
half-naked, bloated, and broken in its pine box. Every one of them had a number scribbled on a scrap of paper lying on their chest. Men. Women. Children. Just a number—until some loved one claimed them. Many never were.

“So many mothers,” he said, eyes unblinking, and I knew he saw them still, “corpses still clutching their babies even in death.” He closed his eyes. “I saw what no one should ever see.”

I didn't remember reading that in his Rimouski article. He hadn't mentioned those details. Maybe there was some humanity in him.

He looked at me, his eyes slowly returning to here and now.

“I saw them, too,” I said. “In the water, lying on the steamer decks. Jesus, Steele. I
knew
them. I served them tea. I worked with them. Lived with them. Laughed with them.” I thought of Kate and Gwen, of Matron Jones and Gaade, of Timothy. All gone. I choked out the words. “They were my friends.”

I never did go into the makeshift morgue they'd set up at Pier 27 for people to identify the bodies. I just couldn't. That day by the pier, I heard two men arguing just outside the door. They were fighting over a child's body. I remember thinking,
How could you?

But I understood it now. Each father needed it to be his son. Because the winner at least got the body, a chance to say goodbye. And the loser was left with nothing but questions and grief.

I looked at Steele. “I need to know what happened to him.

You said you'd give me his story.” I gestured at the journal by the foot of the chair. “And you give me this.”

He stood. “I think we're done for today.”

“For
today
?” I scoffed at him. I marched to the dining-room door and held it open. “We are done.
Period
.”

He slowly walked over, stopped in front of me, and hitched his satchel up his shoulder. “Not quite,” he said. “You still have not told me why you were on that ship. You have not told me your whole story.”

He had some nerve. As if I was going to tell him any of my secrets. Of what I'd done. Of where I was sent. Of all that I'd lost. “Why should I tell you anything more?” I raised my chin. “I have the journal.”

“And I have the story of the man who gave it to me. William Sampson, the chief engineer.” He paused. “I know what happened to Jim that night.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“WILL YOU BE WANTING ANYTHING ELSE, MISS?”
Lily asked, setting the tea tray beside me. I had no appetite and no matter how I protested, Bates insisted that she make me something after Steele left.

I felt angry at Steele for manipulating me with this journal, for witholding information. But wasn't I doing the same—each of us playing the other to get what we wanted? Steele and I, we were more alike than I cared to admit. I didn't want to see him again, but the truth was, I had to if I wanted to learn what he knew about Jim. He'd said he'd be back in three days' time to continue our interview.

I picked up Jim's journal from the floor, absentmindedly fiddling with the ribbon. How unfair that after all I'd said to Steele, the book gave me nothing more, no other insights into the many questions I had about Jim. Not just if he lived—but if he loved. Had there been another woman in his life? Did I mean anything to him? It felt real to me when we were
together, but maybe I just wanted it to. Maybe I just remembered it that way.

Jim was like the tide. One look would rush at me so intense and powerful, so overwhelming. Yet, just as I was about to give in or give voice to the feelings he'd stirred in me, I'd feel him pulling back. Retreating to the depths inside himself once more. I never knew whether I was coming or going with him. And even when he seemed withdrawn, on those nights when he wouldn't say a word, his unspoken need of me pulled fiercely, like an undertow that might sweep me away.

I tugged on the ribbon and was surprised to feel it jam between the two pages. Curious, I slipped my thumb between the stuck papers and carefully wedged them apart. They tore a bit as the book fell open to the ribboned page, each leaving remnants on the other. But through the patches I saw Jim's writing as clear as the night he wrote it. That night as he stood in the misty light, lost in his words. The last night I saw him.

I paused and looked up, my heart throbbing in my chest.

So this is it. He is going to tell her the truth
.

I wondered who she was. What dark secret he had—

Was
I
that secret?

His strong feelings for me always ebbed away in guilt. As though being with me made him feel bad. I flipped the book over on the side table and stood, rubbing my forehead with my palm as I paced the room.

Wouldn't it be better just to remember things as they were?

I looked back at the upturned journal.

Wouldn't it be better to have questions than answers I didn't want to know?

No
.

I grabbed the book and turned it over, chewing on my thumbnail as I read his words.