Read Chapter 5: A Locket's Secret

The third-class promenade was a narrow strip of iron and shadow, half-covered by the boat deck above, and Élodie had learned in two hours that it was the only place steerage passengers were permitted to breathe salt air. She stood at the rail, the cracked locket warming in her gloved palm, and watched a stream of faces pass—women in shawls, men with caps pulled low, children chasing a wooden top that clattered against the boards.

“Marie?” she called, for the sixth time, holding up the locket like a talisman. “Has anyone seen a girl named Marie? Young, dark hair, traveling with a little boy named Louis?”

A woman carrying a bundle of laundry paused, squinted at the locket, and shook her head. A man with a pipe muttered something in Swedish she could not parse. A boy no older than ten tugged her sleeve. “Louis? There’s a Louis in C-deck berth forty-two. Coughs all night.”

Élodie’s heart lurched. “With his sister? Marie?”

The boy shrugged and was gone, swallowed by the crowd. She pressed the locket to her chest and pushed deeper into the passage, past a cluster of men arguing over a card game, past a mother nursing an infant, past the smell of steam and unwashed wool. The door to C-deck berth forty-two was ajar. Inside, a narrow bunk held a boy who was not Louis—blonder, thinner, asleep with his mouth open. A man beside him looked up with tired eyes.

“Looking for someone?” he asked, in accented English.

“A boy named Louis. Dark curls. About five years old. His sister Marie.”

The man shook his head. “Plenty of boys. Plenty of sorrow.” He turned back to his bunk.

Élodie retreated to the corridor, frustration coiling in her chest. Two hours. She had climbed three decks, crossed a smoking room that smelled of cheap tobacco, and asked a dozen strangers. Nothing. The locket felt heavier now, the weight of a promise she might not keep.

She found a quiet corner near a lifeboat davit—a spot where the wind cut sharply but no one bothered her—and sat on a folded canvas tarp. The locket was warm from her touch, and for the first time she examined it properly. It was cheap tin, not gold, the kind sold at portside markets for a few pennies. The crack ran along the hinge, and with a gentle twist, the lid gave way.

Inside was a photograph, creased and faded, the edges soft from handling. A woman—young, broad-cheeked, with dark braids pinned in a crown—held an infant in a white christening gown. The baby’s face was a blur, but the woman’s smile was clear, bright enough to cut through the sepia fog. Beneath the photograph, tucked into a folded groove, was a strand of hair. Fine as silk, the color of wet straw.

Élodie’s breath caught. Louis had sandy hair—she remembered the way it had flopped over his brow when he’d pressed the locket into her hands. The woman in the photograph had dark hair like Marie’s. But this strand was neither. It was the baby’s, perhaps, or the father’s. Someone missing. Someone the locket was meant to remember.

She turned the photograph over. On the back, in pencil, a name had been scratched and faded nearly to nothing. She angled it toward the last of the daylight. *An—* Something. *An—na? An—toine?* The letters dissolved into damp paper.

A shadow fell over her.

Élodie looked up. A steward in white livery stood over her, arms crossed, his face a mask of professional disapproval. “Second class isn’t permitted in this section, miss. You’ll have to return to your deck.”

“I’m looking for someone—a child who came down here yesterday. He gave me this locket.” She held it up. The steward glanced at it without interest.

“We have a manifest of every passenger aboard. If you’ve lost a child, you’ll want to speak to the purser, not wander steerage.”

“It’s not my child. It’s his sister. Their mother is missing. I’m trying to—“

“Miss.” The steward’s voice hardened. “Third class has its own officers. You’re out of your depth. Please.”

Élodie rose, pocketed the locket, and walked past him without another word. But his dismissal burned. She was a woman, a foreigner, a second-class passenger who, in the eyes of the crew, existed only to be politely deposited on the other side of the Atlantic. A poor man’s distress was not her business.

She climbed back toward the second-class deck, the locket thumping against her ribs. The air grew warmer, the carpet thicker, the voices calmer. She passed the library, where Rose sat alone at a table, a book open before her but her eyes fixed on the window—on the darkening horizon where the water had turned to slate.

“Rose.” Élodie stopped. “Where’s your uncle?”

“He’s talking to a man in a green vest again.” Rose frowned. “He does that a lot. He thinks I don’t notice.”

Élodie’s stomach tightened. The green-vested man. Radio room. She had not forgotten the look on Tom’s face when they’d parted—urgent, unreadable, a door closing behind his eyes.

She found Tom outside the purser’s office, leaning against the wall with a cigarette between his fingers, half-smoked. He straightened when he saw her, dropped the cigarette, and crushed it beneath his heel. “Any luck?”

She shook her head. “I asked everyone I could reach. No one knows Marie. But the locket opens.” She pulled it out, careful with the damaged hinge. “There’s a photograph inside. A woman holding a baby. And this.” She lifted the strand of hair, so fine it nearly vanished in the dim light.

Tom leaned in, studying the photograph. His brow furrowed. “That christening dress—the lace pattern. It’s Irish, not French. I’d bet my tools on it.”

“You know lace?”

“I know my mother’s wedding dress. Same weave.” He said it simply, without weight, but Élodie saw something flicker in his eyes—a grief that had become familiar. “An Irish mother. That narrows it.”

“The name on the back is too faded to read. But if I can find Marie and show her the photograph, she might recognize it.”

“She’s not in steerage, you said. You asked.”

“I asked. That doesn’t mean everyone I asked was listening.” Élodie’s voice came out sharper than she intended. She saw Tom’s jaw tighten, and she softened. “I’m sorry. I’m tired of being dismissed.”

Tom was quiet a moment, then said, “I can read the purser’s list. The names are alphabetical, and I have a reason to be in the office—I’m the engineer who fixed the watertight door seals at Belfast. The purser owes me a favor.”

Élodie blinked. “You did the watertight doors?”

“Said the seals would hold through anything the Atlantic threw at them.” Tom’s smile was thin, brittle. “Let’s hope I wasn’t lying.”

He reached for the locket. Élodie hesitated, then placed it in his palm. Their fingers brushed. His hand was warm, calloused, steadier than his voice.

“I’ll ask for the manifest at dinner,” he said. “If Marie is on this ship, the list will say so. And if she isn’t…” He trailed off, and the locket caught the light between them.

“If she isn’t, then her mother never boarded,” Élodie finished. “And we’ve been hunting a ghost.”

Tom held her gaze for a moment too long. “We’ve hunted worse,” he said, and pocketed the locket.

Behind them, a steward announced the first dinner seating. The gong rang twice, a sound like a struck bell, clear and final. Élodie watched Tom walk toward the dining saloon, the locket a small bulge in his coat pocket, and she thought of the faded name on the photograph, the strand of hair, the woman’s smile. Somewhere on this ship—or beneath it—was a mother who had held her children close and let them go.

She did not know if the list would give them answers. But she knew, with sudden clarity, that Tom’s hand on that locket meant something. That his favor from the purser was not just for a missing mother—it was for the promise they had made, standing in the cold, when the ship had been nothing but a bright idea and a dark horizon.

The gong rang again. Élodie turned toward dinner, and the night was still long ahead of them.