Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [171]
“I had a father,” she said, sounding a little choked. “Daddy—Frank Randall—he was my father, and I love—loved him. It doesn’t seem right to—to go looking for something else, like he wasn’t enough, like—”
“That’s not it, then, and you know it.” He turned her round and lifted her chin with a finger.
“It’s nothing to do with Frank Randall or how you feel about him—aye, he was your father, and there’s not a thing will ever change that. But it’s natural to be curious, to want to know.”
“Did you ever want to know?” Her hand came up and brushed his away—but she clung to his fingers, holding on.
He took a deep breath, finding comfort in the whisky.
“Yeah. Yes, I did. You need to, I think.” His fingers tightened around hers, drawing her toward the table. “Come sit down; I’ll tell you.”
He knew what missing a father felt like, especially an unknown father. For a time, just after he’d started school, he’d pored obsessively over his father’s medals, carried the little velvet case about in his pocket, boasted to his friends about his father’s heroism.
“Told stories about him, all made up,” he said, looking down into the aromatic depths of his teacup. “Got bashed for being a nuisance, got smacked at school for lying.” He looked up at her, and smiled, a little painfully.
“I had to make him real, see?”
She nodded, eyes dark with understanding.
He took another deep gulp of the whisky, not bothering to savor it.
“Luckily Dad—the Reverend—he seemed to know the trouble. He began to tell me stories about my father; the real ones. Nothing special, nothing heroic—he was a hero, all right, Jerry MacKenzie, got shot down and all, but the stories Dad told were all about what he was like as a kid—how he made a martin house, but made the hole too big and a cuckoo got in; what he liked to eat when he’d come here on holiday and they’d go into town for a treat; how he filled his pockets with winkles off the rocks and forgot about them and ruined his trousers with the stink—” He broke off, and smiled at her, his throat still tight at the memory.
“He made my father real to me. And I missed him more than ever, because then I knew a bit about what I was missing—but I had to know.”
“Some people would say you can’t miss what you never had—that it’s better not to know at all.” Brianna lifted her cup, blue eyes steady over the rim.
“Some people are fools. Or cowards.”
He poured another tot of whisky into his cup, tilted the bottle toward her with a lifted brow. She held out her cup without comment, and he splashed whisky into it. She drank from it, and set it down.
“What about your mother?” she asked.
“I had a few real memories of her; I was nearly five when she died. And there are the boxes in the garage—” He tilted his head toward the window. “All her things, her letters. It’s like Dad said, ‘Everybody needs a history.’ Mine was out there; I knew if I ever needed to, I could find out more.”
He studied her for a long moment.
“You miss her a lot?” he said. “Claire?”
She glanced at him, nodded briefly, and drank, then held out her empty cup for more.
“I’m—I was—afraid to look,” she said, eyes fixed on the stream of whisky.
“It’s not just him—it’s her, too. I mean, I know his stories, Jamie Fraser’s; she told me a lot about him. A lot more than I’ll ever find in historical records,” she added with a feeble attempt at a smile. She took a deep breath.
“But Mama—at first I tried to pretend she was only gone, like on a trip. And then when I couldn’t do that anymore, I tried to believe she was dead.” Her nose was running, from emotion, whisky, or the heat of the tea. Roger reached for the tea towel hanging by the stove and shoved it across the table to her.
“She isn’t, though.” She picked up the towel and wiped angrily at her nose. “That’s the trouble! I have to miss her all the time, and know that I’ll never see her again, but she isn’t even dead! How can I mourn for her, when I think—when I hope—she’s happy where she is, when I made her go?