Chapter Sixteen
With time, the wrinkled, weathered landscape of age had appeared around Rose’s eyes. But the eyes themselves were the same.
“After all these years, I can still feel it closing around my throat like a dog collar. I can still feel its weight. If you could have felt it, not just seen it...”
“Well, that’s the general idea, my dear.” Lovett was getting impatient.
“So let me get this right. You were gonna kill yourself by jumping off the Titanic?” Bodine guffawed. “That’s great!”
Lovett spoke warningly. “Lewis...”
But Rose laughed with Bodine.
Bodine was still laughing. “All you had to do was wait two days!”
Lovett, standing out of Rose’s sight line, checked his watch. Hours had passed. This process was taking too long.
“Rose, tell us more about the diamond. What did Hockley do with it after that?”
“I’m afraid I’m feeling a little tired, Mr. Lovett.”
Lizzy picked up the cue and started to wheel her out.
“Wait! Can you give us something to go on, here? Like who had access to the safe. What about this Lovejoy guy? The valet. Did he have the combination?”
“That’s enough.” Lizzy spoke sharply.
Lizzy took Rose out. Rose’s old hand reappeared at the doorway in a frail wave good-bye.
*****
As the big hydraulic jib swung one of the Mir subs out over the water, Lovett walked as he talked with Bobby Buell, the partners’ rep. They wove among deck cranes, launch crew, and sub maintenance guys.
“The partners are pissed.”
“Bobby, buy me time. I need time.”
“We’re running thirty thousand a day, and we’re six days over. I’m telling you what they’re telling me. The hand is on the plug. It’s starting to pull.”
“Well, you tell the hand I need another two days! Bobby, Bobby, Bobby...we’re close! I smell it. I smell ice. She had the diamond on...now we just have to find out where it wound up. I just gotta work her a bit more. Okay?”
Brock turned and saw Lizzy standing behind him. She had overheard the last part of his dialogue with Buell. He went to her and hustled her away from Buell, toward a quiet spot on the deck.
“Hey, Lizzy. I need to talk to you for a second.”
“Don’t you mean work me?”
“Look, I’m running out of time. I need your help.”
“I’m not going to help you browbeat my hundred and one year old grandmother. I came down here to tell you to back off.”
Brock spoke to her with undisguised desperation. “Lizzy...you gotta understand something. I’ve bet it all to find the Heart of the Ocean. I’ve got all my dough tied up in this thing. My wife even divorced me over this hunt. I need what’s locked inside your grandma’s memory.” He held out his hand. “You see this? Right here?”
She looked at his hand, palm up. Empty. Cupped, as if around an imaginary shape.
“What?”
“That’s the shape my hand’s gonna be when I hold that thing. You understand? I’m not leaving here without it.”
“Look, Brock, she’s going to do this her way, in her own time. Don’t forget, she contacted you. She’s out here for her own reasons, God knows what they are.”
“Maybe she wants to make peace with the past.”
“What past? She has never once, not once, ever said a word about being on the Titanic until two days ago.”
“Then we’re all meeting your grandmother for the first time.”
Lizzy looked at him hard. “You think she was really there?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m a believer. She was there.”
*****
Bodine started the tape recorder. Rose was gazing at the screen, seeing the live feed from the wreck—Snoop Dog was moving along the starboard side of the hull, heading aft. The rectangular windows of A deck marched past on the right.
“The next day, Saturday, I remember thinking how the sunlight felt.” And the story began again.