The birthday party was wildly successful. Sarah, returning from one of her frequent strolls on one of the upper decks, saw Ada dancing an energetic fox trot with Captain Dolman-who was an excellent dancer, but still seemed very nervous. Ada, she noticed, had spent a great deal of time with Captain Dolman. Although Sarah had been dreading another encounter with Senator Hastings, she had not seen him since the first hour of the party, when he had been talking to Robert. Surprised that he would pass up an opportunity to work a crowd this wealthy and influential, she was, nevertheless, pleased that she had been spared another round of quizzing.
She hadn’t seen much of Robert, either. She had danced with him once, but he had seemed so preoccupied that she had difficulty holding a conversation with him.
“I’m terrible company tonight,” he said as the dance ended. “May we try this again, another evening? Just the two of us?”
Telling him she would consider that a promise, she resolved not to make a nuisance of herself to him.
Now, several hours later, she strolled near Ada’s table. Although the invitations had said, “No gifts,” a few of Ada’s friends had ignored these instructions. When her grandmother returned from the dance floor, Sarah offered to take the packages to her room.
“Thank you, Sarah!” she said, “How very thoughtful of you.” She gave Sarah the key to the room and turned to accept an offer to waltz with one of her other guests. Captain Dolman offered to help Sarah, but as there were only five boxes to be carried, she politely declined his assistance.
As she came down the stairs, her arms full, she was surprised to see Robert leaving his suite, his face set in a forbidding frown. He did not see her, however, and quickly moved off in the opposite direction, toward the elevator. She nearly called to him, to ask what was troubling him, but decided not to delay him, as he was so apparently in a hurry.
She managed to open the door to Ada’s suite, only to discover that she had entered through the servant’s door, rather than the main door, which opened into the sitting area. This part of the suite-this small room, and beyond it the bathroom and large bedroom, were closed off from the sitting room, and except for the light from the hallway behind her, it was in darkness. Sarah tried to reach for the old-fashioned light switch, but couldn’t manage it with her arms full of boxes and holding the key. She decided to lay the boxes on the twin bed. But as she stepped inside, the door closed behind her with a loud click. The small room was plunged into nearly total darkness. Panicking, blindly rushing back to the door, Sarah whirled and stumbled over something. The boxes went tumbling from her arms as she fell, and she heard the flutter of papers, felt them raining down on her. She scrambled to her knees, ran her hands wildly over the wall, and found the switch.
For a moment, she could only catch her breath and wait for her heartbeat to slow. Gradually, she noticed that she had knocked over an old leather briefcase. It had opened, and its contents had spilled across the room.
Gathering the gifts first, she was relieved to see that none of them were damaged. She placed them on the bed. She then went to work on collecting the scattered papers.
Most seemed to be old letters bearing three-cent postage stamps. Among them, she saw an old photograph; the smiling young soldier in it looked familiar to her, she thought, picking it up. The back of the photo bore an inscription in a neat masculine hand. “Give me a kiss goodnight, Ada-I’ll return every one with interest when I come back home to you! Love, Elliot.”
Her grandmother, Sarah realized, had brought a photo of her first husband taken on this ship, where she had last seen him. Moved by this, she carefully returned the photo to the briefcase. But it was as she gathered the scattered envelopes that she received a shock. The letters, postmarked during 1942, were addressed to Mrs. Elliot Parsons.
Parsons. Elliot Parsons.
Robert was related to Ada. He was her grandson. She knew it as surely as she knew anything. Her mind reeled. Robert was Sarah’s cousin-her adopted cousin, at any rate. And all this time-all this time!-Ada had made a guessing game out of her grandson’s identity. Why?
Mechanically, Sarah began putting the letters away. She came across one other item, a drawing. A cartoon. The subject of the cartoon had aged, but he was easily recognized. The Adam’s apple was exaggerated of course, and so was the blush. “Capt. Dolman, our fearless leader,” was scrawled at the bottom of one corner of the drawing.
The room seemed to be closing in on her and she stood up and made her way into the sitting room. She turned the light on, and moving to the portholes, opened one, and took a deep breath of the cold air. She sat down in a nearby chair. She was glancing at the carpet, noting a pair of parallel lines on it. Wheel marks from a dolly or handcart, she thought to herself, just as she heard a key sliding into the lock.
She braced herself for a confrontation with Ada, but it was not Ada who opened the door. Robert Parsons stood before her.
“Sarah? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Ada’s worried about you,” he said, closing the door behind him, crossing the room to sit near her. “She’s been waiting for you to bring her key back. Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, glancing at the open porthole.
“I’m fine, cousin.”
He stiffened. “She told you-and apparently didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“No, I found out quite by accident. By being clumsy. I knocked over a briefcase full of letters from your grandfather. I didn’t mean to snoop, but… well, I didn’t read the letters.”
“Sarah, I’ve never wanted to hide anything from you. Ada insisted, and I let her talk me into it. I never should have gone along with it.”
“Why? Why didn’t she want me to know?”
He hesitated, then said, “For two reasons. The first is that she didn’t want you to get hurt. She was afraid-after the way the Milingtons treated you-she didn’t want you to feel as if I were more important to her than you are. I’m not Sarah-honest to God, I’m not.”
When she didn’t reply, he said, “You’ve been her granddaughter for years. If you don’t want to share her, I’ll understand.”
“Oh, it’s not that!” she said. “It’s just-just a lot to take in.”
“Yes, it’s a lot for me to take in, too, and I’ve had a year to get used to the idea. She didn’t even know I existed. I managed to track her down when I was trying to learn more about what happened to my grandfather-to Elliot Parsons. Ada and my father were estranged.”
“Because of his stepfather? Ada’s next husband?”
“Yes. So you know about that?”
“Not much.”
“When my dad died, I wanted to learn more about his side of the family, and meet this grandmother of mine. I also wanted to know more about my grandfather. At first, I just wanted to find out if my father’s story was true, that his father had died aboard the Queen Mary, while on the passage to Europe. I learned much more. And I told Ada what I had learned.”
“About his murder?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the second reason she didn’t want to tell me?”
But before he could answer, there was a knock at the door of the suite. “Robert? Sarah?” they heard Ada’s voice call.
Robert opened the door to admit Ada and Captain Dolman.
“Here’s your key, Grandmother,” Sarah said.
Ada studied her as she took the key, then rounded on Robert. “You told her!”
“No,” Sarah said, and explained how she had learned that Robert was Ada’s grandson. “And he is just about to tell me the second reason you didn’t want me to know about it.”
“Nonsense!” she said firmly. “Now, although the party was wonderful, I’m completely exhausted, so all of you will please leave my room. All except Sarah.”