The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [601]
“He’d know his dad was musical, and his mum was bloodthirsty,” Roger said dryly. “Ouch!” He recoiled slightly as her fist came down on his thigh, then set his hands placatingly on her shoulders. “No, really. He’d know a lot about us, and not just from the bits and bobs we’d left behind, though those would help.”
“How?”
“Well . . .” Her shoulders had relaxed again; he could feel the slender edge of her shoulder blade, hard against the skin—she was too thin, he thought. “You studied history for a time, didn’t you? You know how much one can tell from homely objects like dishes and toys.”
“Mmm.” She sounded dubious, but he thought that she simply wanted to be convinced.
“And Jem would know a lot more than that about you, from your drawings,” he pointed out. And a hell of a lot more than a son ought, if he ever read your dream-book, he thought. The sudden impulse to say so, to confess that he himself had read it, trembled on his tongue, but he swallowed it. Beyond simple fear of how she might respond if she discovered his intrusion, was the greater fear that she would cease to write in it, and those small secret glimpses of her mind would be lost to him.
“I guess that’s true,” she said slowly. “I wonder if Jem will draw—or be musical.”
If Stephen Bonnet plays the flute, Roger thought cynically, but choked off that subversive notion, refusing to contemplate it.
“That’s how he’ll know the most of us,” he said instead, resuming his gentle kneading. “He’ll look at himself, aye?”
“Mmm?”
“Well, look at you,” he pointed out. “Everyone who sees you says, ‘You must be Jamie Fraser’s lass!’ And the red hair isn’t the only thing—what about the shooting? And the way you and your mother are about tomatoes . . .”
She smacked her lips reflexively, and giggled when he laughed.
“Yeah, all right, I see,” she said. “Mmm. Why did you have to mention tomatoes? I used the last of the dried ones last week, and it’ll be six months before they’re on again.”
“Sorry,” he said, and kissed the back of her neck in apology.
“I did wonder,” he said, a moment later. “When you found out about Jamie—when we began to look for him—you must have wondered what he was like.” He knew she had; he certainly had. “When you found him—how did he compare? Was he at all like you thought he’d be, from what you knew about him already? Or—from what you knew about yourself?”
That made her laugh again, a little wryly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know.”
“What d’ye mean by that?”
“Well, when you hear things about somebody before you meet them, of course the real person isn’t just like what you heard, or what you imagined. But you don’t forget what you imagined, either; that stays in your mind, and sort of merges with what you find out when you meet them. And then—” She bent her head forward, thinking. “Even if you know somebody first, and then hear things about them later—that kind of affects how you see them, doesn’t it?”
“Aye? Mmm, I suppose so. Do ye mean . . . your other dad? Frank?”
“I suppose I do.” She shifted under his hands, shrugging it away. She didn’t want to talk about Frank Randall, not just now.
“What about your parents, Roger? Do you figure that’s why the Reverend saved all their old stuff in those boxes? So later you could look through it, learn more about them, and sort of add that to your real memories of them?”
“I—yes, I suppose so,” he said uncertainly. “Not that I have any memories of my real dad in any case; he only saw me the once, and I was less than a year old then.”
“But you do remember your mother, don’t you? At least a little bit?”
She sounded slightly anxious; she wanted him to remember. He hesitated, and a thought struck him with a small shock. The truth of it was, he realized, that he never consciously tried to remember his mother. The realization gave him a sudden and unaccustomed feeling of shame.
“She died in the War, didn’t she?” Bree’s hand had taken up his suspended