“Dean, what are you talking about?” his grandmother asked.
“The photograph of the two of you taken just before you got married, when you were pregnant with my father. Why does Mack think it’s Rose?”
“Because she is Rose. Rose Elizabeth Degan, Eliza,” Mack answered Dean’s question. She’d woken up and heard the end of Dean’s question. “Am I right?”
“There were only two pictures taken, we have one—” Eliza said quietly. Her voice trailed off.
“You gave the other one to Thomas, which is how I saw it.”
Sitting down, Eliza looked at Mack. “How do you know this?”
“You’re Rose?” He was having a hard time getting his head around the fact that Rose was his grandmother.
He saw his grandmother slowly nod her head. “She found the diary that you wrote when you met my grandfather. Also, Thomas and Richard helped fill in the blanks.”
“Thomas?” Eliza whispered.
“Your brother,” Mack told Eliza.
“No . . . no, no, you’re wrong. Thomas died in 1953 in Korea . . . didn’t he?” Eliza asked, barely able to finish. Jacob was now sitting next to her, his arms around her.
Mack asked them the one question that she needed to know the answer to. “Why? Why pretend you were dead? And what do we call you now?”
“I’ve been Eliza longer than I was Rose. Please use Eliza . . . Can you tell us about Thomas? Then we’ll tell you our story.”
Mack clung to Dean. “Thomas is the owner of Rose Cottage, which I rented for the summer. It used to be known as the Degan House. I found your diary and started reading it. All this time, Thomas had no idea about the photograph or the message you had written to him. After he thought you died, he couldn’t bring himself to read the comic until I read about it in the diary. It was only then that he found the photograph and message.”
“But he’s dead. How? I don’t understand,” Eliza said.
“Why do you think he’s dead?”
“Mack, I took Eliza back to see Thomas in 1955. She missed him terribly, only to be told by her father he’d been killed six months earlier in Korea,” Jacob answered.
Mack wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Your parents knew?”
“Yes, or rather, my father did,” Eliza whispered with tears in her eyes, “Please tell me about Thomas.”
“He did serve in Korea, but he didn’t die. In fact, he has become a good friend to Dean and me. He loves to fish and taught my six-year-old nephew. I would say he still gets up to trouble with Levi, who we’ve met briefly.”
“All this time wasted,” Eliza cried.
“Will you tell us your story now?”
Eliza wiped her eyes. “I will. You already know about everything up to that night, yes?”
“Yes,” Mack replied.
As Eliza collected her thoughts together, Mack took a good look at her. She still looked beautiful at eighty-seven. She wore her silver hair pulled back into a bun and it emphasized her high cheekbones, small button nose, and her skin that looked to have aged well. She wore a deep purple dress on her slim figure with low-heeled black and purple ballerina pumps. Very stylish, and both Rose and Jacob still looked so much in love, after all these years together.
Dean pulled Mack closer into his arms and sat back further into the cushions. “We might as well get comfortable. Are you okay, Mack?” he asked, kissing her briefly, but tenderly.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Everything always is with you in my arms.”
“Good answer,” she whispered, snuggling into him. He always made her feel loved and cherished with his concern for her wellbeing.
“Okay.” Eliza sighed. “I was on my way to meet Jacob. I’d taken the path along the cliffs when Richard came running up to me. He begged me not to go and kept grabbing me, begging me to stay and marry him. I told him about the baby, thinking he would let me go then, but no such luck. I started getting worried because I didn’t want Jacob to think I’d changed my mind if I wasn’t there by eleven.”