Echoes of Titanic

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Neville Williams encouraged Sean to book passage for his family on the maiden voyage of Titanic too. He said he would get together with them on the voyage to show them the new wireless technology in action. Thus, Sean timed his representative’s trip to England just prior to the dates for that voyage. The man was to meet with Rowan and Neville at the Transatlantic Wireless office on April 9, 1912, in London regarding investing in the company, and then he and Rowan and the girls would sail back to America together on Titanic, which was to sail the next day.

  Eventually, the plans were all set. As Rowan, Adele, and Jocelyn prepared for their trip first to London and then on to Southampton, Sean made the decision of who among his employees would make the voyage to England to serve as his representative. He finally decided on a young upstart named Tad Myers. Though Tad was relatively new with Brennan & Company, he was ambitious and eager to take the assignment on.

  All seemed to go as planned—up to the moment Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in less than three hours. Though Tad and Adele each made it onto a lifeboat, Rowan and Jocelyn did not. They perished in the sinking, and their bodies were never found.

  Once the ship that rescued the survivors, Carpathia, reached New York, Sean welcomed the daughter he hadn’t seen for sixteen years and grieved with her as well. Though she’d been devastated by the tragedy, his hope was that in time she would recover and make a new life for herself here.

  What he didn’t expect was the news given to him by Tad Myers one year after the sinking. According to Tad, the woman calling herself Adele Brennan was lying. She wasn’t Adele at all, Tad insisted, but was instead Adele’s cousin, Jocelyn Brennan, just pretending to be Adele. Tad claimed that Adele had died the night Titanic sank and that for some unknown reason, once Jocelyn realized her cousin was dead, she’d taken the opportunity to assume her place.

  Kelsey interrupted Walter to clarify. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me these claims of Jocelyn posing as Adele trace all the way back to nineteen thirteen?”

  “That’s right. Sean had trouble believing it, but this guy Tad put up such a stink that he finally ended up sending Adele away to school at Swarthmore while he tried to sort things out.”

  “Why did it take a whole year for him to say something?”

  “Apparently, he claims he kept waiting for her to admit the truth herself. She had told him she would but never did, so finally he spoke up.”

  “So what happened then?” Kelsey asked breathlessly.

  “That’s where things get a little muddy,” Walter replied. “It seems that Sean decided the best way to answer the question was to write to Oona over in Ireland and ask her. In his letter, he laid out the situation and enclosed a photo of the young woman who was claiming to be Adele. He asked Oona to tell him whether the person in that photo really was Adele or if it was, instead, Jocelyn.”

  “Clever thinking,” Kelsey said, heading back into the house. The wind had picked up and she was feeling chilly, plus she wanted to find pen and paper and once again attempt to jot down a family tree.

  “In the letter Sean wrote to Oona,” Walter continued, “he said that if it turned out that it was a photo of Jocelyn, he would of course confront her about the situation but would do so with sensitivity, considering the trauma she’d been through. He pledged continued financial and familial support for the young woman regardless, whether she ended up being his daughter or his niece. He also promised to continue sending money over to Ireland in support of Oona and Quincy, especially now that Rowan had passed away.”

  “Does the file have a copy of that letter?” Kelsey asked, stepping into the kitchen and pulling the door shut behind her.

  “Yes. It also has a copy of the photo. It’s an old black-and-white of a somber-looking young Adele, posed on the front steps of what I think is the old Brennan house on Liberty Street.”

  Rooting through the kitchen drawers, Kelsey finally came up with pen and paper. She sat at the table, and as they continued to talk, she began again an attempt to sketch out the Brennan family tree.

  “So all we need is Oona’s response to settle this whole matter. What did she write back and say?”

  She could hear more rustling of papers on Walter’s end as he told her, “Well, see, therein lies the problem. Oona saved this letter and photo that Sean sent to her, and it ended up getting passed down to Quincy with her papers. When Quincy died, it came to the attention of his son, Ian, and that was when he first realized that Adele’s identity had been questioned. Call it exhibit A.”

  “Exhibit A? Are you saying this is the proof Rupert was talking about, the proof that Adele was an imposter?”

  “This is the proof Rupert’s father had, yes. But by the time Rupert came back and tried again himself after his father died, he had also managed to unearth a sworn affidavit from Tad Myers in which he officially made those claims against Adele.”

  “But all this letter does is raise the question. It doesn’t give any answers. It doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I know.”

  “So what did Oona write in response? That’s the letter that matters.”

  “Yes, it is. Unfortunately, that letter no longer exists.”

  Kelsey groaned.

  “It’s not that they didn’t try to find it. This report details the extensive search the attorneys made through the company’s archives and through Sean’s personal papers, but Oona’s response letter was never found. They concluded that Sean must have gotten it, read it, and at some point thrown it out without thinking—or maybe destroyed it intentionally, depending on what it said.”

  “Wow. That’s not good. So where does the report go from there? Were they able to find any sort of proof of her true identity?”

  “In a sense. Hold on a sec.” He rustled around some more, and as Kelsey waited she jotted in the various names she could think of for her tree, adding lines to show how everyone was related.

  “Here it is,” Walter said. “I’ll read it to you. ‘It is the conclusion of this researcher that the woman claiming to be Adele Brennan was most likely telling the truth. This conclusion is based primarily on two points of evidence. One, company records show that a Mr. Tad Myers left Brennan & Company approximately six weeks after the date on Sean Brennan’s letter to his sister Oona asking her to identify the woman in the photo. The assumption is that Oona wrote back confirming Adele’s identity, which thus showed that Tad Myers had been the one who was lying. After he left, Myers disappeared for a while but then it was reported that he moved to California. Three years later, he contracted pneumonia and died at the age of twenty-seven.’”

  “Could he have been paid off to keep quiet too?” Kelsey asked, worrying about how far back this conspiracy went.

  “It doesn’t say.” He resumed his reading of the report as she worked on her diagram. “‘Two, the issue of Adele’s identity seems never to have come under question again. See attached documents for numerous references over the next twenty-six years, until Sean Brennan’s death, where he repeatedly referred to Adele as his daughter. He died in nineteen thirty-eight, and she inherited his entire estate.’”

  “That seems pretty clear to me. It was Adele’s word against Tad’s, and she was the one vindicated in the end.”

  “You could interpret it that way.”

  “So why the settlement, Walter? Their ‘proof’ doesn’t seem all that conclusive to me. Why did my father give them money?”

  “Because it was cheaper than going to court, for one thing. But primarily he did it to keep them quiet. You know as well as I do that much of this company’s cachet hinges on the ‘legend’ of Adele, starting with her being a Titanic survivor. Mess with all that, and you might end up messing with the bottom line of Brennan & Tate.”

  “But if Rupert’s father couldn’t prove his claims…”

  “Don’t be naive, Kelsey. Do you think that matters? Just having the question raised in the first place is enough. In the eyes of the world, Adele would be convicted without
a trial. Besides, if it came to a trial, your father didn’t really have any more solid proof than they did, and it is too risky to put a case like that before a jury.”

  Kelsey knew he was right. The decision to pay them off, as infuriating as that must have been, had probably been the right one.

  “Any idea what Tad’s motivation was for lying about it in the first place?”

  “No, but one could speculate. Perhaps he did seek some sort of payoff. Or maybe he was threatened by Adele’s ambition or her business acumen. He was a rising star at Brennan & Tate before she came along. Maybe he just didn’t like all the attention she stole away from him, especially the attention of her father.”

  “Could be.”

  “That would be my guess, but who can say, really?”

  Kelsey hated that they didn’t know why Tad had done it. It’s not as though they could go back in time and ask the man himself. If only Adele had addressed this situation in her memoir! But Kelsey had read that book cover to cover a dozen times, and from what she could recall, the man who came to England as her father’s representative had shown up in all of about one sentence, maybe two at the most.

  For some reason, Adele had chosen to omit this part of her story. Consequently, the facts of what really happened between the two of them back then were anybody’s guess.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Moving on, Kelsey asked Walter if he could explain to her the basis for Rupert’s claims. “I mean, why does he think they are owed some money? He said something yesterday about this having to do with a will?”

  “Yes, with Sean’s will, actually. Hold on.”

  As she waited, Kelsey finished her sketch as best she could then picked it up and studied it. It read:

  “All right, got it,” Walter said through the phone. “In his will, Sean left everything, quote, ‘to my living descendants, and if I have no living descendants, to my brother, Rowan, or, if he is no longer living, to Rowan’s descendants.’”

  Kelsey had him read it again, only this time she traced her finger along the family tree as he spoke. She still didn’t understand how Adele’s true identity could have made any difference, but then she traced it out again, this time pretending that Adele had died on Titanic and Jocelyn was the one who lived. In that case, Sean would not have had any living descendants, so everything would have gone to Rowan’s descendants instead. “Walter, was Oona still alive by the time Sean died?”

  “Uh…let me see…no. Oona died in nineteen twenty-three.”

  “Okay. So if we know Oona was no longer living and we pretend that Adele was no longer living, then according to Sean’s will, everything would have gone to Rowan and Oona’s descendants. That would mean half to Jocelyn and half to Quincy, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Kelsey closed her eyes. “So if Adele was not really Adele but was instead Jocelyn, she would have received only half of Sean’s estate, not the whole thing. When she died and her fortune passed down from her to Grandpa Jonah, he should have received only her half, not the whole thing. Right?”

  “Yes,” Walter replied, “Half was definitely hers to give. But if she was Jocelyn pretending to be Adele, then the other half should not have gone to her. It should have gone to Quincy, and from Quincy down to Ian, and from Ian down to Rupert and Rhonda. That’s the money they want, the money they say is owed them. If Adele died on that ship on April fifteenth, nineteen twelve, then they are correct. They should have received half of Sean’s estate when he died. If Adele—the real Adele—lived to the ripe old age of ninety-six and died in her sleep of natural causes, which is what you and I believe happened, then they are incorrect and are not owed a penny. Does it make sense now?”

  “It does.” She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I appreciate your taking the time to explain all this to me. It’s complicated, but I think I get it.”

  “Good.”

  “Just one more question, and then I have something to tell you about.”

  “All right, but we need to wrap this up. I have a meeting in a few minutes.”

  “Sure. I’m just wondering where DNA fits in with all of this. Aren’t there ways now to test different descendants from the same family line and figure out if and how they are related? Seems to me we should be able to test Rupert and test me and then from that information know if his claims are true or not.”

  “I asked one of the lawyers about DNA testing last night. According to him, it wouldn’t help in this case because of the way DNA is passed down through the sexes from one generation to the next. In this situation, he said the most DNA would be able to prove is whether or not you and Rupert share a common ancestor—which we already know you do. The specifics of who that common ancestor is can’t be determined. That would take an unbroken female line or an unbroken male line, such as mother to daughter to daughter or father to son to son, but you don’t have that. Jocelyn had no sisters to trace through.”

  Kelsey exhaled slowly, her shoulders sagging. Walter asked her to hold on for a moment, and when he came back on the line he apologized but said that the people had arrived for his meeting and he needed to go.

  “I understand, but I just have one more thing, real quick, about the bonds.”

  “The bonds Rupert referred to yesterday?”

  “Yes. You and Lou told me that the bonds were just a myth, but I asked my dad point-blank if they ever actually existed and he said yes, they did. Better than that, I asked him if there are still any left, and again he said yes.”

  She expected Walter to express shock or elation at that news, but instead he merely gave a soft grunt so she continued, explaining that according to her father, Gloria had been the caretaker of the bonds. “I asked him where they were stored, and he kept saying something that sounded like ‘the wonder.’ Do have any idea what he meant?”

  “‘The wonder’? Never heard of it.”

  “He repeated it several times. I’m almost certain that’s what he was saying. The wonder.”

  Walter was silent for a long moment. “Listen, Kelsey, I don’t mean to be hurtful, but I know it hasn’t been easy for you to accept the, uh, reality of your father’s condition. He says a lot of odd things, most of them nonsense. From what I understand, that’s part and parcel with a stroke.”

  Kelsey clenched her teeth. She knew what Walter was saying, but she also knew her father well enough to know when he was spouting nonsense and when he was fully lucid. Just a little while ago, in the living room, he had been utterly, completely lucid.

  “Anyway,” Walter said, “thanks for calling in, and I’m glad to know you’re doing okay. The PR team is here now, so I really do need to go.”

  Just the mention of public relations made her want to shudder.“I hate to ask this, but do you need me in that meeting?”

  “No, though I appreciate the offer. As you can imagine, our PR strategy now has to do a complete one eighty. Just yesterday we were beating the drums far and wide to proclaim the name of ‘Tate’ from the rooftops. Now, the last thing we need is to reinforce the connection between you and your great-grandmother and this company. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stay away completely. I don’t see what choice we have right now.”

  Though Kelsey didn’t exactly appreciate the way he’d phrased it, she knew what he was saying. It was the same issue she’d had to explain to her brother last night, that the fallout from Rupert’s public outcry was going to have a huge impact on the company’s bottom line. A besmirching of the good name of Adele Brennan Tate, even if unfounded, was the same thing as a besmirching of the company that carried her name. And the more the name of Kelsey Tate was promoted, the more people were reminded of that connection.

  They ended their call, and then Kelsey went in search of her mother. She found her in the living room, seated beside Nolan’s wheelchair, almost as if they were sitting together on the couch the way they used to. When Kelsey entered the room, her mother was reading to her dad from a book, an old
favorite of his that Kelsey quickly recognized.

  She told her parents that she needed to go but for her mom not to get up, she would see herself out. Crossing the room, she gave them each a peck on the cheek, but then, as she was standing there chatting with her mother for just a moment longer, her father suddenly spoke.

  “Proud.”

  Both women turned to look at him.

  “What did you say, dear?” Doreen asked.

  He didn’t reply right away, but then Kelsey realized that his eyes were riveted to the new pin on her lapel, the golden “Q” with the diamond center that had been given to her by Lou.

  “Proud,” he said again, the corners of his mouth turning up into a crooked smile.

  Fresh tears immediately filled her eyes.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she whispered, trying to blink them away. “Lou gave it to me this morning. He said that you gave one to him years ago, so now he was giving one to me.” She was about to add that she wished her father could have been there at Brennan & Tate for the ceremony, but considering how the whole event had unraveled so disastrously, she realized now it was a good thing he hadn’t come after all.

  Once the pin had been called to her attention, Doreen complimented it as well, but Kelsey could tell that her mother didn’t really get it. She seemed to think that the significant thing here was the pin itself. Only her father understood that what really mattered was what that pin represented.