The Rose of Birmingham | ᴘᴇᴀᴋʏ ʙʟɪɴᴅᴇʀꜱ

One | ʀᴏꜱᴇ

The Diary of Rose MacClare

15th of May, 1925

Few things in the grand scheme of the universe are viewed as cliché as is a broken heart. It's physiologically impossible, after all. A heart cannot break. It's an organ made of soft tissue and blood vessels. A heart beats. It can speed up, slow down, clog, tighten, and even stop. But it cannot break.

So, why is it that the inside of one's chest aches in such agony when a loved one is lost?

It is a year ago today that I lost Atticus. Two weeks before our wedding, he was taken from me. Gunned down. Murdered. Because his family is Jewish.

Despite my persistence, I never did learn the names of those who committed the heinous crime. The police did not go out of their way to find the assailants. "Gangs," they said. As if that one word were both an explanation for violence in general and a viable excuse for their avoidance. "Lots of gangs around here. And lots of people hate Jews."

I don't understand that way of thinking. So limited. So ignorant. Why hate someone simply because their beliefs differ from your own? It's disgraceful. Unforgivable.

I won't insult the memory of Atticus with ugly thoughts of revenge or hatred. I will stay true to my course. No, I will never be Lady Rose Aldridge, but I will preserve the person my fiancé loved.

The day we laid Atticus to rest, I put my engagement ring on a chain around my neck. It rests beneath my clothing, against my heart. There it shall stay.

Life is short, fleeting, and precious. The pain of heartbreak reminds me that I am still alive. And as long as I continue to live, so too will his memory.

Rose

~ ~ ~

Rose closed the cover of her diary just as her cousin Daphne burst through the front door of the flat.

"Please tell me why I thought it would be a good idea to work for the local newspaper?" Daphne queried, a look of exhaustion on her fine-featured face. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes and wiggled the toes of her stockinged feet. "Do I enjoy punishment? Or perhaps simply think I deserve it?"

Rose smiled. She knew these questions were asked in rhetoric, as her ambitious cousin posed some version of them on an almost daily basis. "What horrible infraction have you committed lately?" she asked.

"It must have been something loathsome I did in a past life," Daphne said. With a dramatic sigh, she collapsed on the sofa next to Rose. "Murder, adultery, theft...one of the old favorites."

"Don't let our very Protestant mothers hear you say something so blasphemous," Rose teased. Daphne's mother, the elder sister of Rose's father, was known for being pious to an unhealthy degree.

"That's why I'm saying it to you," Daphne quipped back. "We always keep each other's secrets, don't we?"

"What is the purpose of a best friend, if not that?"

"Quite," Daphne agreed. She gave Rose's knee a reassuring squeeze. "But I'd like to add 'support' to that thought. Don't think for a moment that I've forgotten what day it is. How are you? Really?"

Of course her cousin would remember the anniversary of Atticus' death. Four years Rose's senior, Daphne was astute as she was witty, always situationally aware. One of the many reasons Rose had chosen to come live with her.

Rose looked down at the diary in her lap. "I'm alright. Feeling a bit like a ship without an anchor, truth be told." Her hands tightened around the hard cover of the volume, causing her knuckles to turn white. "I miss him, Daph," she confessed. "I miss him so very, very much. Still."