Free Promise Me This by Cathy Gohlke Page A

need a looking glass to know it. He’d not meant to speak aloud.
    “Michael?” Owen reached a hand toward the boy. “What is it? What is this pain?”
    Michael could not answer. He could not look at Owen, fearful that what he had done and what he’d failed to do in protecting his sister might show in his face.
    “Whatever it is, Michael, you must leave it behind. Think of it only to forgive or to ask forgiveness. You’ve a new life ahead of you in America. We both have. We are bound to look ahead.”
    As if on cue, Titanic , beauty of the sea and ship of dreams, having secured her full complement of first-class highbrows and second-class working folk, her steerage bowels stuffed with immigrants who dared hope for new work and new lives in a new world, glided from Queenstown Harbor and set her bow for the western sea. Strains of “Erin’s Lament” piped sorrowfully from the stern of the ship—fitting and poignant for the departure, but a sharp contrast to the bustle of newly boarded passengers.
    Owen and Michael leaned against the railing, separated by their own memories. They watched the dance of sunlight and shadow as clouds played across the shrinking hills of Ireland. They watched as Titanic turned and sailed toward the red and gold of the setting sun. They watched until there was nothing but sea.

“Three cups of tea I drank with sugar and cream, and they’d have given me more for the asking! Two helpings of bangers and mash and all the rice and apples I wanted. Can you believe it?” Michael’s spirits had clearly soared since their afternoon on deck, and Owen was glad of it.
    “I brought you some bread and butter, and here.” Michael pulled a mug filled with dry hash and sausages from beneath his coat. “There’s more where that came from.”
    Owen laughed. “I’m sure that’s quite enough.”
    “There’s to be dancing tonight,” Michael confided breathlessly, sounding for the world like a young man about to attend his first dance.
    Perhaps, Owen thought, he is. “You go, then, lad, and I’ll sleep a bit more. When you’ve had your fill of revelry, you can take the bunk, and I’ll see what’s abroad.”
    “You don’t mind?”
    Owen laughed. He’d no desire to dance with anyone but Lucy, and she wasn’t likely to be kicking up her heels in steerage. “Go on with you and God bless you, lad. Just don’t call so much attention to yourself that we’re given the plank to walk.”
    Michael pulled a sober face. “I won’t, sir. I’ll likely just watch, sir.” Then he dashed from the room.
    When Michael had gone, Owen pulled his satchel from its storage. He spread its contents across his bunk, fingering each packet of seeds, each dry shoot carefully wrapped in brown paper. He pulled out the roots of his favorite roses, the double white ones he had propagated and the two his father had developed, naming them for his wife and daughter, the Lady Helen Cathleen and the Elisabeth Anne. They were promises, needing only a bit of earth, a gracious sun, and the bountiful rains of heaven to make them root and grow and flourish. He shook his head to think that a man’s future lay in things so small as those spread before him.
    Owen knew each seed by name and each root, each shoot, for the flower that it was. He knew the Latin and the common names. He understood their weaknesses, their strengths, their susceptibilities. He knew what each particularly craved in nourishment, what made each one flourish. He understood what was spread before him better than he hoped to understand most humans.
    Owen had not labeled the packets. There was no need when a man knew their names and properties as well as he knew himself. But that evening he took a pencil from his pocket and labeled each one. On the back he listed the date he would have sown the seeds in England, the height they were bred to achieve, the amount of sunlight they required each day, the best mix of soil and sand and peat and fertilizer, whether they