Echoes of Titanic Read online

  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)—Fiction. 2. Corporate culture—Fiction. 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 means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except 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

  Contents

  Our Special Thanks To…

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark

  Whispers of the Bayou

  Shadows of Lancaster County

  Under the Cajun Moon

  Secrets of Harmony Grove

  The Amish Midwife

  The Amish Nanny

  About the Publisher

  For our daughters,

  Emily and Lauren.

  Raising them has been

  our greatest collaboration.

  Our Special Thanks To…

  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!

  PROLOGUE

  Lower Manhattan, New York

  April 15, 1913

  The 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 cold—then 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 nights—and 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 forever—just 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.

  She still ached with guilt and shame for what she’d done.

  Only she knew the full reason that she had lived and her cousin had died. She knew because she’d had a part in it herself—a fact that would haunt her for the rest of her days. She rarely spoke of the tragedy, and those close to her had learned not to ask. It was a grief she could only bear alone, a pain that could be understood only by those who had lived through it.

  Yet, perhaps even her fellow survivors could not fully comprehend her pain. Certainly, they all felt the grief, the loss, the sorrow. But she also felt guilt, a guilt that wrapped around her chest and threatened to choke the air from her lungs and the very life from her heart. Was there any justification for her actions? Any chance of forgiveness? Only time would tell.

  She ran her finger along the empty slot in the side of the harp, where the other pin had been designed to fit. Just as this pin set would never be complete without its other half, she would never be complete again, at least not in this lifetime. The best she could do was to live in a way that would honor her cousin’s memory and keep her dreams alive. That would start, she decided, by rejoining the others at the memorial stone now, no matter how difficult it was for her.

  As she neared the group gathered in remembrance, she spotted him among the mourners, his black overcoat blowing in the wind, and a chill went through to her very bones. The narrow brim of his hat cast a shadow across his eyes, but she realized he must have been watching her because he quickly turned his face away.

  Her heart pounded. She knew his secrets from that night, and he knew hers. Would they both remain silent to the end?

  Or would one of them end up breaking their uneasy truce, driven by the cries they had both endured, cries that still echoed across the blackest waters of a deep and unforgiving sea?

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Lower Manhattan, New York

  April 3, 2012

  Kelsey Tate glanced at the clock and then at the stack of files on her desk. It was three p.m., which meant she had thirty minutes before she’d need to start getting ready for the ceremony. She knew she should use that time to work on risk assessments, but something told her she’d be better off getting some fresh air and clearing her head. The assessments she could do later that evening, once the big event was over. For now, she wanted to run through her speech and somehow find focus. Today had been a busy day at the office, and at the moment all she felt was scattered.

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she made the decision. Air. Ceremony. Work. In that order.

  She locked the files away, straightened her desk, and grabbed her Bluetooth headset for cover. The only way she’d get out of here without being pulled into half a dozen conversations en route to the elevator was to clip the device over her ear and pretend she was on an important call as she went. She loved her front office and the view it afforded her of the busy Manhattan streets below, but sometimes it was a pain having to run the gauntlet of a conference room, an administrative assistant area, and three other executive offices just to get away.

  “Is there something proprietary about this?” she asked aloud as she stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind her. “Because otherwise, I’m afraid it’s just a little too early to buy in. At this point, there’s simply not enough data.”

  Pausing at the desk of Sharon, her executive assistant—or “EA,” as she liked to be called—Kelsey told the nonexistent person on the other end of the line to hold on and then said in a low voice, “I’m running out for a few, but I’ll be back by three thirty if anybody needs me.”

  “Got it, Chief,” Sharon replied with a brisk nod, her auburn, precision-cut bob swinging loosely around her face.

  So far, so good. Continuing on toward the elevator, Kelsey spotted one of her more talkative coworkers coming up the hall, so before he could speak, she gave him a quick smile and continued with her faux telephone conversation.

  “Look, we can’t justify a buy-in of that size. You know as well as I do that you’re estimating the value too high. A million and a half for ten percent is ridiculous.”

  The coworker smiled in return and continued past her in the hall.

  She finally made it to the elevator, pushed the down button, and punctuated her wait with several well-timed brief utterances. “Really?…With that price earnings ratio?…I don’t know, I’m not sure about that…How much?”

  Finally, the bell dinged and the doors opened to reveal an empty elevator. She stepped inside with relief and removed the device from her ear as soon as the doors whisked shut again. She hated to admit it, but her nerves were more rattled today than she had anticipated, though she wasn’t sure why. The announcement she’d be making at the ceremony was an important one, yes, and something she’d been working toward for a long time. But she was no stranger to the podium. She had no fear of public speaking.

  It was a more general, vague apprehension she was feeling, almost a foreboding about today’s impending event, though she couldn’t imagine why. Regardless, Kelsey had these thirty minutes to pull herself together somehow. Then she would return, get ready to go on, do her part, and be done with it.

  If only the new public relations consultants hadn’t insisted on combining the two separate announcements into one big celebration, she thought as she reached the lobby and walked briskly toward the front door. Though she usually stopped to chat with her friend Ephraim, the building’s head of security, she moved on past with just a glance and a wave toward the front desk. Once she was outside, she exhaled slowly, grateful for the warm spring sunshine. Weather in April in New York City could go either way, but today was warm and dry, thankfully, with just a hint of a breeze.

  Turning right, Kelsey merged into the foot traffic moving down the wide sidewalk toward Battery Park. On the way, she thought about the important part of today’s ceremony, the announcement of a brand-new scholarship program to be funded by her late great-grandmother’s foundation. Adele Tate had survived Titanic and gone on to become a successful businesswoman in an era when women in business were pra
ctically unheard of. In her later years, she had created the foundation with the express purpose of empowering other women in business. This new program Kelsey would be announcing today was a perfect fit and would provide up to ten scholarships per year to outstanding young females majoring in business-related fields of study.

  Kelsey had been pushing for this for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently, when her family’s firm, Brennan & Tate, had begun taking steps to improve their public relations, that the board was even willing to consider it. The fact that, in the end, the scholarship decision had come down to a PR move rather than any actual altruism didn’t bother her. She figured as long as the money was given out to deserving recipients, the end result was the same, regardless of motive.

  Kelsey ran through her speech as she continued down the sidewalk and was pleased to get through the entire thing without once having to refer to the notes in her pocket that listed her key points. When she finally reached the corner at Number One Broadway, she looked ahead longingly at Battery Park, a fixture of the city for several hundred years and the perfect greenery-filled end cap to the island of Manhattan. More than anything, she wanted to make her way across the street and into the park to seek out one of her favorite spots in all of New York: the old family memorial stone that honored her two relatives who had perished on Titanic. Kelsey loved to visit the memorial, as it always left her feeling connected somehow to her many family members, both living and dead.

  But there was no time for that now. Instead, she turned left, and once the light changed she moved with the crowd across Broadway to the triangular-shaped area on the other side known as Bowling Green. At the foot of the triangle was a sprinkling of vendors, and she took a moment to buy a bottle of water from a pretzel cart. Continuing onward, she tried some deep breathing exercises as she angled across the wide base of the triangle to tiny Bowling Green Park, another of her favorite places to go when she needed a quick breather during the workday. She loved the symmetry of the place and convergence of shapes: a circular fountain inside an oval park on a triangular piece of land. This was a little oasis of greenery in a landscape of cement, its current focal point a ring of vivid red tulips surrounding the fountain.