Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [31]
“I’ll have to go sort this out,” he told Brianna. “I’m afraid it might take a while.”
“That’s okay.” She smiled at him, blue eyes narrowing to triangles. “I should go too. Mama will be back by now; we thought we might go out to the Clava Cairns, if there was time. Thanks for the lunch.”
“My pleasure—and Fiona’s.” Roger felt a stab of regret at being unable to offer to go with her, but duty called. He glanced at the papers spread out on the desk, then scooped them up and deposited them back in the box.
“Here,” he said. “This is all your family records. You take it. Maybe your mother would be interested.”
“Really? Well, thanks, Roger. Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said, carefully laying the folder with the genealogical chart on top. “Oh, wait. Maybe not all of it.” The corner of the gray notebook stuck out from under the letter of commission; he pulled it free, and tidied the disturbed papers back into the box. “This looks like one of the Reverend’s journals. Can’t think what it’s doing in there, but I suppose I’d better put it with the others; the historical society says they want the whole lot.”
“Oh, sure.” Brianna had risen to go, clutching the box to her chest, but hesitated, looking at him. “Do you—would you like me to come back?”
Roger smiled at her. There were cobwebs in her hair, and a long streak of dirt down the bridge of her nose.
“Nothing I’d like better,” he said. “See you tomorrow, eh?”
* * *
The thought of the Reverend’s journal stayed with Roger, all during the tedious business of getting the ancient truck started, and the subsequent visit of the furniture appraiser who came to sort the valuable antiques from the rubbish, and set a value on the Reverend’s furnishings for auction.
This disposition of the Reverend’s effects gave Roger a sense of restless melancholy. It was, after all, a dismantling of his own youth, as much as the clearing away of useless bric-a-brac. By the time he sat down in the study after dinner, he could not have said whether it was curiosity about the Randalls that compelled him to pick up the journal, or simply the urge somehow to regain a tenuous connection with the man who had been his father for so many years.
The journals were kept meticulously, the even lines of ink recording all major events of the parish and the community of which the Reverend Mr. Wakefield had been a part for so many years. The feel of the plain gray notebook and the sight of its pages conjured up for Roger an immediate vision of the Reverend, bald head gleaming in the glow of his desk lamp as he industriously inscribed the day’s happenings.
“It’s a discipline,” he had explained once to Roger. “There’s a great benefit to doing regularly something that orders the mind, you know. Catholic monks have services at set times every day, priests have their breviaries. I’m afraid I haven’t the knack of such immediate devotion, but writing out the happenings of the day helps to clear my mind; then I can say my evening prayers with a calm heart.”
A calm heart. Roger wished he could manage that himself, but calmness hadn’t visited him since he’d found those clippings in the Reverend’s desk.
He opened the book at random, and slowly turned the pages, looking for a mention of the name “Randall.” The dates on the notebook’s cover were January–June, 1948. While what he had told Brianna about the historical society was true, that had not been his chief motive in keeping the book. In May of 1948, Claire Randall had returned from her mysterious disappearance. The Reverend had known the Randalls well; such an event was sure to have found mention in his journal.
Sure enough, the entry for May 7:
“Visit w. Frank Randall this evening; this business about his wife. So distressing! Saw her yesterday—so frail, but those eyes staring—made me uneasy to sit w. her, poor woman, though she talked sensibly.
Enough to unhinge anyone, what she’s been through—whatever it was. Terrible gossip about