The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [211]
All right. Being a kind and honorable person—and still loving this woman—you grit your teeth, accept the situation and the oncoming child, and do your best. Your wife is doing her best, too, but it’s plain to you that she’s still in love with the child’s father—whoever that was. Being a professional historian, you have the tools and resources to at least begin to check into her story. It probably takes some time before you get up the resolve to do this, but once you do… well, there was a guy named Jamie Fraser, and the bits and pieces you can dig up about him do match what your wife told you… but do you really believe this?
Meanwhile, you have a wonderful daughter, whom you love desperately, and who adores you. You and your wife have some difficulties, but you still do love her very deeply. Losing your wife once was horrible, but you survived; losing both of them now would destroy you.
So what do you do?
IF you assume that the story isn’t true, OR that the Jamie Fraser you found is not the one Claire was involved with, then plainly there’s nothing you can or should do.
However, IF you assume that the story IS true, and that this IS the correct Jamie Fraser… well, then you have a slight moral dilemma.
Do you tell your wife (and by extension, your daughter)? If you do, either of two things may happen: 1) she promptly abandons you again and tries to return to Fraser, or 2) she stays with you, but only out of duty, while plainly longing for another man—which will ruin the fragile web of the marriage you’ve rebuilt with such pain and difficulty. You’d risk this, on the supposition that a wildly unlikely set of circumstances is true, and on small fragments of historical research? (Even if it were all true, you have no way of knowing how long Fraser lived after Culloden.)
If you tell your wife and she does leave, she may well try to take your daughter with her. You might stand your wife’s desertion; you can’t stand the thought of losing your daughter—or even of losing your daughter’s love, which might happen if she learns the truth, whether or not she goes with Claire.
If you tell your wife and she doesn’t leave, your marriage will be a hollow shell, and you may still lose your daughter’s unquestioning love and acceptance of you as her father. Again, you’d risk your entire life’s happiness, on a chancel Not bloody likely.
Taking into account only Claire’s feelings—if you think her sense of obligation will keep her with you, is it fair or kind to reveal the truth to her? She’s made her peace with the loss of the other man, and found some happiness and stability here with you and your daughter. Even if you disregard your own feelings in the matter, and assume the most honorable response from her—is it right to let her be tortured by the knowledge that Fraser survived, to let her agonize over the choice? And once more… on only the chance that you’re right in what you think you know. No.
At the same time, Frank is both a historian and an honorable man. He can’t, in all conscience, completely ignore what he knows or suspects. IF this is the Jamie Fraser who fathered Brianna, then there is a certain obligation toward Brianna. Frank values the truth; any historian must, even while realizing its limits.
When he learns (as he tells the Reverend) that he has a heart condition, he decides that he must make some gesture. There is a possibility that he might die in the relatively near future. Once he is gone, then the confusing multiplicity of possibilities is reduced. Once dead, he can’t be hurt by either Claire’s or Brianna’s choices—there can be no direct damage to him in their finding out about Jamie Fraser.
At the same time, he can’t bear the thought that Brianna might regard him with anger or loathing, once she learns the truth. She may feel this as a betrayal—which it is, but one in which he feels somewhat justified; he is Brianna’s father, as much or more than the man who sired her, and he will not give up her love for him, or tolerate the thought that she will remember him with scorn.