The emergency appendectomy was the last task of a very long day that had also included sorting out a child who had swallowed a marble, setting two broken arms and one fractured ankle, and dealing with the condescending drivel of her least favorite attending in the hospital. Every bone and muscle in Claire's own body ached, hold over adrenaline from that last surgery the only thing still propelling her forward movements as she washes up and changes her clothes before heading home. She tries to remember the last time she's left the hospital before the sun was down, the last time she'd eaten dinner across the table from her daughter, her husband. Too long, she imagines, and wonders briefly too when the last time was that she'd even eaten a full meal at all. For better or worse, she'd grown used to surviving on quick snacks managed between patients, and she can feel every rib distinctly as she slides on a clean sweater. The metal on metal clank of her locker slamming shut echoes through the empty room as she fishes in her purse for her keys.

Pulling the car into the driveway a few minutes later, Claire can see from the driver's seat that there's a slight orange glow coming from Frank's office, likely a light he forgot to turn off when all the papers were graded and stacked neatly in their folder for morning. But everything else about the house is dark and quiet. Content. It's a house that has lived a full day and settled down to sleep without her. The idea gives Claire the usual pang of quick guilt, the uneasy twist of the stomach. She shoves it down. This is her life, these were her choices, and she doesn't regret them. Not all of them anyway.

In the kitchen Frank's left her a plate of dinner, and it looks lonely in the harsh lighting of their mostly empty refrigerator. Claire kicks off her shoes and tosses her coat on a hook before sighing and melting into the sturdy wooden chair at the dining table, relieved to her very marrow to be off her feet. She picks at the cold chicken on the plate with her fingers. Wonders idly if Frank is fucking the babysitter of Bree's that cooked it. It's dry and tasteless, and she can't decide if she'd care more about the matter if the food was actually any good. It's in the middle of a particularly uncharitable thought about the woman that Claire is interrupted.

"Mama, why are you sitting here in the dark?" Brianna stands in the kitchen doorway, her long red hair in a careful braid and the sleeves of her pajamas a few inches too short, and Claire feels a twinge at that, that she hasn't had time to notice even how tall her daughter has gotten.

"Oh, don't mind me darling. The real question is, why are you not in bed?" Claire asks, directing a gentle frown in her daughter's direction. Bree shifts her weight to lean against the doorframe and holds up the piece of paper in her hand and says, "I heard you get home. And I need you to sign this for our field trip to the zoo tomorrow."

Claire pushes the dinner plate aside. "Of course I'll sign it, come here." She beckons her over with a wave of an arm. "I thought your trip wasn't until the 17th though?"

Bree hands her the permission form, shaking her head. "That's tomorrow Mama, the 17th."

Claire freezes, just for a second, and, if Brianna notices that for her mother all air has gone out of the room, she doesn't let on. Instead she continues, "Miss Murphy says we're even going to see elephants! Have you ever seen an elephant Mama?"

Claire stands abruptly, the chair scraping roughly along the kitchen floor as she does so. She doesn't look at her daughter as she takes the three steps away from the table to the junk drawer, using the search for a pen as a chance to take a deep breath and put her emotions back together. Her back to Brianna, she answers as she paws through the drawer. "Yes, I have seen an elephant actually. In Africa. I wasn't much older than you are now. Even got to ride one." She grabs a pen and makes to turn back around when she catches sight of two little white candles in the back of the drawer, left over from some school project of Bree's or some half-hearted plan of her own to decorate for a dinner party. She picks up the candles too and nudges the drawer shut with her hip.

"You really got to ride an elephant?" Bree's eyes are wide as she looks up at her mother, in awe at this latest revelation from a woman who shares so few of her secrets.

"Yes, Bree, now will you do something with me? Will you light these candles with me?" Claire moves in quick, frantic bursts as she holds up the two little white sticks before setting them on the table and reaching across to the stove for the matches. Bree is quiet at the change in subject, but slides softly into the chair beside her mother's, watching as the match brings both candles to life in a sharp flare of color and bright flame. In the darkened kitchen, they glow with an intensity greater than their size. Claire blows out the match and rests a hand on her daughter's head, smoothing her hair gently down the back of her neck. The two watch the candles burn for a while without speaking, the house so quiet and still that Claire swears she can hear her own heart beating thunderously in her chest. Eventually Bree yawns and starts to squirm just slightly in her chair.

"Mama, why are we looking at candles?"

Claire lets out a little breath of air and sits back down, turning to face Bree with a small, soft smile. The candlelight catches the tears pooled in her eyes, deep amber liquid. "Well, Smudge, your field trip tomorrow," she gestures towards the permission form, "it reminded me that today is the 16th." She pauses, rubbing at the base of the thumb where a small, faded scar in the shape of a J sits. "And I had a, well, a friend, I suppose, someone important to me, who I lost on April 16th. It was a long, long time ago, but I thought he would like very much for us both to remember him today." Brianna reaches then, wraps her fingers around her mother's on the table, and Claire notices again that her little girl is growing up, her hands those of a child now, no longer round with baby fat.

"I'm sorry you're sad Mama," Bree whispers, and it's that small statement that breaks Claire, just a bit, and she opens her arms to pull her daughter out of her chair and into a tight hug. Because she is sad, tremendously so, but to let the full weight of that sadness surface would be to surrender to it, to give up on scratching out this existence she's pieced together for herself. But she does let slip some of the tears she's been holding in, watches them disappear into Bree's red hair, before quickly wiping the rest clear with the edge of her thumb. She pulls back. "I'll be just fine Bree, really, thank you." She scribbles a distracted signature onto the paper she'd set aside. "Now here's your form, and you run up to bed. You don't want to be too tired for the elephants in the morning." She offers her another watery smile. Bree offers one back before turning to leave the room with a quiet, "I love you Mama." She's halfway up the stairs before Claire gets out a response. "I love you too," she sighs to her daughter, to the candles, to any and all old ghosts so far away.

Claire will sit a few minutes more with her thoughts, her tired head propped up on her hand. Blinking slowly, she'll watch the candles burn down into elaborate piles of melted wax on the table. She won't eat anymore of the chicken. She'll be up and out of the house the next morning and back to the halogen bulbs and frenetic energy of the hospital before either her husband or Bree are awake. It will be Frank who answers the phone, Frank who gets the call from the school a few hours later wondering why one Claire Fraser signed the permission form for Brianna Randall and is he quite sure that everything's really alright at home.