Claire's nights are short. Exhaustion is the de facto reality of raising an infant, but, she's found, it's also an extraordinary numbing agent, one she's embraced in this new era of heavy limbs and heavier heart. Today the light through the curtains was just beginning to take on that soft, gauzy quality of early morning when the baby started screaming. Claire woke with a jolt at the sound, though the wisps of highland heather and rain that gave texture to her dreams followed her into consciousness, the mournful wail of bagpipes echoing through her bones in tune with her daughter's cries. Frank snored on beside her as she carefully pulled her legs free of the blankets and stood up without waking him, marveling briefly at this practiced movement of new motherhood.
The bedroom door latched shut with a soft clink behind her, Claire padded barefoot down the dark hall to the nursery where Brianna continued to fuss. This house in Boston was too big for them, Claire had thought so from the start, and even more so in these pre-dawn hours when its crisp, neat lines felt menacing in their newness, its rooms too empty of much needed ghosts. They'd moved in months ago, but when once she'd wanted nothing more than to fill a home with material objects, here she'd barely bothered to decorate. Even the nursery was sparse, a quilt sent by Mrs. Graham and hung over the back of the rocking chair in the corner the only real color in the room Claire now entered to soothe her frantic daughter.
The window, left open the night before in a joyous but careless celebration of the first signs of that stubborn New England spring, now whistled with a sharp breeze.
"Poor darling, you must be near frozen," Claire whispered as she latched the window and bent to scoop the baby from her crib. Holding her close to her chest, she sank into the rocking chair, murmuring quiet words of nonsense and comfort all the while. She ran a thumb over the soft red fuzz on her daughter's head as she rocked her. Back and forth, back and forth, the chair creaking in protest with each pass. Soon enough Bree stopped her cries and began to nurse, her small fist held lightly against her mother's breast.
Claire sat there a long time after the baby was full and sleeping soundly again, watching the sky outside turn grey and then ever brighter over the rooftops of Boston. She could hear Frank humming to himself in the shower now, could hear the announcer delivering the morning news from the radio in the living room. The predictable sounds of respectable domesticity. She closed her eyes to summon again the bagpipes of her dreams, the rush of the wind and water, unwilling to hear the rest of the world today. And she kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep, when Frank stopped briefly in the nursery doorway on the way to his morning lecture. She would not speak to him today either, would not make the effort to perform their usual small talk routine of asking politely after each other's sleep and breakfast preferences. No, not today.
Today would be hers. Hers and Brianna's alone. Frank turned off the radio before leaving, granting her the silence her mind craved. She reveled in it. Let her dreams creep back over her, let the memories seep to the surface until everything was aching and raw again, the searing pain of separation fresh. Only then did she rise to reopen the window, the rush of cool air a balm to her skin and soul both. She pulled Mrs. Graham's quilt and its greens and browns and blues from the back of the chair and wrapped it around the two of them, cocooning her daughter in the colors of the highlands, in the faint smell of woodsmoke still lingering in the fibers from Mrs. Graham's days of of stitching in the drawing room of the manse. And sitting there, still in her silky nightgown and with Bree in her arms, Claire cried. She cried with deep, rib splitting, wracking sobs, the kind she hadn't let herself cry in a year. Her tears bringing forth all the joy and pain she carried around for this little bundle in her arms that she loved so fiercely and had hated so immensely. She cried for the father her daughter would never know, for the husband she'd sacrificed to war and history and honor. For the terrible choice the fates of the universe had forced on her.
When no more tears would come, her eyes puffy and sore, Claire sang to the baby, sang all the little Gaelic tunes Jamie and the others had known, her mouth remembering the shape of the words even as their meaning escaped her. And finally, she talked. Head bent over the child in her lap she whispered to Bree of the beauty of the mountains, the lochs, and the sanctuary of Lallybroch. Of her father's, her real father's, sense of humor and strong arms. The entire story of her miracle existence, of the love and bloodshed and heartbreak that had led to her, the one thing they had wanted so desperately, arrived so tragically too late. Whispered until she found herself smiling at the slanted blue eyes gazing up at her, seemingly engrossed in the tale.
"Oh, Bree. Oh, Bree, how I wish he could meet you. How much he loved you." She bent to kiss the smooth skin of her daughter's head, her voice rough with use now and the words catching in her throat. "How much I loved him. Dear god, how much I loved him."
When Frank returned that evening, the fiery red clouds of a threatening spring storm visible outside the nursery window, it was to find his wife sound asleep still in the rocking chair, her feet tucked under her, curls wild about her face, her daughter asleep on her chest. He sighed, closed the window quietly against the coming rain, and left the room. A historian, he knew April 16th. Of course he did. He knew enough to let them be.