Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [33]
“Where are you now—Scotland or England?” she said, then interrupted before he could answer. “No, let me see if I can guess. It’s … Scotland. You’re in Inverness.”
“That’s right.” The surprise was evident in his voice. “How did you know that?”
She stretched, scissoring her long legs slowly under the sheets.
“You roll your r’s when you’ve been talking to other Scots,” she said. “You don’t when you talk to English people. I noticed when we—went to London.” There was no more than a faint catch in her voice; it was getting easier, she thought.
“And herrrrre I was beginning to think ye were psychic,” he said, and laughed.
“I wish you were here now,” she said impulsively.
“You do?” He sounded surprised, and suddenly shy. “Oh. Well … that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Roger—why I didn’t write—”
“You’re not to trouble about it,” he said quickly. “I’ll be there in a month; we can talk, then. Bree, I—”
“Yes?”
She heard him draw breath, and had a vivid memory of the feel of his chest rising and falling as he breathed, warm and solid under her hand.
“I’m glad you said yes.”
She couldn’t go back to sleep after hanging up; restless, she swung her feet out of bed and padded out to the kitchen of the small apartment for a glass of milk. It was only after several minutes of staring blankly into the recesses of the refrigerator that she realized she wasn’t seeing ranks of ketchup bottles and half-used cans. She was seeing standing stones, black against a pale dawn sky.
She straightened up with a small exclamation of impatience, and shut the door with a slam. She shivered slightly, and rubbed her arms, chilled by the draft of the air conditioner. Impulsively, she reached up and clicked it off, then went to the window and raised the sash, letting in the warm mugginess of the rainy summer night.
She should have written. In fact, she had written—several times, all half-finished attempts thrown away in frustration.
She knew why, or thought she did. Explaining it coherently to Roger was something else.
Part of it was the simple instinct of a wounded animal; the urge to run away and hide from hurt. What had happened the year before was in no way Roger’s fault, but he was inextricably wrapped up in it.
He’d been so tender, and so kind afterward, treating her like one freshly bereaved—which she was. But such a strange bereavement! Her mother gone for good, but certainly—she hoped—not dead. And yet it was in some ways just as it had been when her father died; like believing in a blessed afterlife, ardently hoping that your loved one was safe and happy—and being forced to suffer the pangs of loss and loneliness nonetheless.
An ambulance went by, across the park, red light pulsing in the dark, its siren muted by distance.
She crossed herself from habit, and murmured “Miserere nobis” under her breath. Sister Marie Romaine had told the fifth grade that the dead and dying needed their prayers; so strongly had she inculcated the notion in her class that none of the children had ever been able to pass the scene of an emergency without sending a small silent prayer upward, to succor the souls of the imminently heaven-bound.
She prayed for them every day, her mother and her father—her fathers. That was the other part of it. Uncle Joe knew the truth of her paternity, too, but only Roger could truly understand what had happened; only Roger could hear the stones, too.
No one could pass through an experience like that and not be marked by it. Not him, not her. He’d wanted her to stay, after Claire had gone, but she couldn’t.
There were things to do here, she’d told him, things to be attended to, her schooling to finish. That was true. More importantly, she’d had to get away—get clear away from Scotland and stone circles, back to a place where she might heal, might begin to rebuild her life.
If she’d stayed with Roger, there was no way to forget what had happened, even for a moment. And that was the last part of it, the final piece in her three-sided puzzle.
He had protected her, had cherished