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Claire watched as the girl in the blue cardigan bounced her way along the street, just in front of her.
The girl paused and turned around, a small smile on her lips.
“Where else have you been, Mama?”
“Where else where, darling?” Claire answered as she reached her side.
“You said before that you had been to Scotland. Have you been to other places?” Brianna asked interestedly, her feet skipping from side to side as they made their way back from the library.
“I have,” Claire answered cautiously, hoping this would be enough to placate her daughter. “Many places,” she added with a smile as she turned to look at Brianna, gently placing a hand on her small shoulder, directing her out of the way of a woman with a pram who was walking quickly towards them.
Brianna paused as the pram went by, peering down into the pram to look at the small baby, smiling widely, before turning back to look at her mother now with a perplexed look on her face.
“Mama,” she said with one hand on her hip, her small blue hair ribbon blowing in the afternoon Boston breeze. “That is not an answer.”
Claire couldn’t help but smile at her daughter’s persistence. She squeezed Brianna’s shoulder and reached for her hand as the two of them turned onto Furey Street.
“So Mama, where else have you been?” Brianna asked again, turning her head to look up at her mother, her eyes sparkling.
“Disneyland,” Claire answered quickly.
Brianna sighed loudly and Claire watched as she held back a stamp of her foot.
“I have been there too, Mama. You and Daddy took me. You said you’d been to Scotland a long time ago. That means before I was born.” Brianna rationalised with a small nod of her head.
Claire smiled wistfully. She hadn’t meant to say anything about Scotland, it had been a long time since she had even let the name of the country pass her lips, let alone anything about what she had seen there.
But it is getting harder and harder to lie to Brianna, harder to lie as she grows older and little glimpses of the man who fathered her begin to break through. The curl of her hair, the stubbornness of her personality, the innate curiosity for the world around her.
Claire does not want to have to start taking distance from her daughter, to have to lie instead of just keeping secrets, but she is beginning to grow fearful that is her only hope. Her only method of surviving, when she has to do all of this without him.
Claire studied the books on the library shelf, her painted fingernails touching the roughened spines, every so often turning her head to check on Brianna who seemed to be engrossed in a pile of books at the small table in front of her. Claire reached for another book when Brianna called out to her.
“Look, Mama. What a pretty bird,” Brianna said, one small hand resting on the page in front of her.
“Let me see,” Claire answered interestedly as she stepped closer to Brianna, moving to squat beside her, placing one hand on the small of her daughter’s back, patting gently. “That is a pretty bird, isn’t it?” she answered, moving to look at the page herself.
“What kind of bird is this?” Brianna asked interestedly, turning to look up at her mother.
“That is a heron,” Claire answered, reaching down to trace her fingers along the words at the bottom of the page, meeting her daughter’s eyes.
“Have you ever seen one in real life?”
“Yes, I have,” Claire answered with a nod of her head.
“Where?”
“In Scotland,” Claire replied quickly, before she could stop herself, turning her head downwards to avoid Brianna’s questioning gaze.
“When were you in Scotland, Mama?” Brianna questioned, her small voice curious about where her mother had seen this pretty bird.
Claire smiled and turned her eyes back to Brianna, before gently tapping one finger on her daughter’s nose.
“A long time ago,” she answered as she cuddled Brianna close to her, pressing her side into her daughter’s shoulder, her hand reaching down to rest upon Brianna’s on the table, taking strength from her daughter’s presence.
The answer seemed to placate Brianna, as the small girl rose from the table to retrieve another book, leaving Claire to stare at the drawing of the heron and the rush of memories which it brought back.
They hadn’t stayed at the library much longer than that, Brianna had announced she had had enough reading for the day and that she was hungry and the two of them had left to walk the short distance home.
Brianna had been engrossed in watching a small brown dog out for his afternoon walk. But once he had turned for home, she had returned the conversation to the one from earlier at the library.
“Mama…” Brianna said with a sigh, pulling Claire from her thoughts.
“Yes, darling,” Claire answered as she rustled around in her purse for her keys.
“The places of where you have been,” Brianna responded exasperatedly, as she paused outside the house. “I would still like to know, Mama.”
Claire smiled and reached out to touch Brianna’s cheek, gently stroking the soft skin with one finger.
“Okay, well other than Disneyland,” she paused as she heard Brianna sigh loudly again. “New York, London, Paris..” Claire answered cautiously as the two of them walked up the steps to the front door. Brianna waited as Claire placed the keys into the lock and the door swung open.
Brianna raced inside, her curls bouncing on top of her shoulders as she did so.
“See Mama,” she answered with a smile, as she headed for the kitchen, jumping into one of the chairs at the table. “That wasn’t that hard, was it?”
Claire smiled softly and blinked quickly, hoping to hold back any memories that felt as if they wanted to haunt her. She placed her bag down on the counter and walked to the sink, reaching for the soap, before lathering her hands and turning on the faucet, the instant warm water washing over her hands.
“No, I guess it wasn’t,” she answered as she finished washing her hands and stepped over to the refrigerator. “Peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” She asked Brianna with a smile, looking over toward where Brianna was sitting.
Brianna beamed with excitement.
“Oh yes, Mama,” Brianna replied as she nodded her head. “Two please!” she added as she rose from her chair and came to hug Claire tightly around the middle.
Claire leaned down to kiss Brianna’s forehead.
“Make sure you go and wash your hands, darling.”
Brianna gave her mother one final squeeze, nodded her head and then skipped off towards the bathroom, humming an unrecognisable tune under her breath softly.
Hours later, the house on Furey Street was quiet. Frank had gone to a conference for the day, one that included lectures and dinner. Claire wasn’t expecting him home for a few hours yet.
Claire and Brianna had passed the rest of the afternoon and evening with their sandwiches, watching the television, Brianna colouring while Claire half read her novel, then dinner and finally Brianna’s well practiced routine of bath and bed.
Claire felt her eyelids begin to flutter closed, she blinked once and opened them. She sighed softly, she should have gone to her own bed hours ago.
But the warm solid sleeping weight of her daughter cuddled up next to her had prevented her from wanting to move. Brianna had curled up, warm and sleepy after her bath and while Claire had been reading to her, had fallen soundly asleep. Her shining red hair resting in the comfort of her mother’s lap.
Claire reached out to stroke the top of her daughter’s head, the soft curls both comforting and not so comforting, as the familiarity of such hair again struck a painful memory inside her chest. Claire gently spun a curl around her index finger as Brianna shifted slightly, before settling back down to sleep.
Claire moved her hand downwards to rest on Brianna’s shoulder as she leant closer and pressed a soft kiss to the crown of Brianna’s head.
There had been no other questions from Brianna regarding Claire’s visits to other cities. Brianna seemed to have forgotten she had even asked, once Claire had placed the two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in front of her. She had eaten both of them quickly, before moving onto her next task for the day, attempting to build a tower out of the books on the table.
It was only Claire who still had the places on her mind, if Brianna by some coincidence decided to ask Frank if he had been to the same places, he would be able to answer that he had. It was probably the reason that Claire had named those cities, they could all be easily explained.
But of course, like most things in Claire’s life, they too had a double meaning.
She had promised to never speak to Brianna of her real father, not whilst Frank walked the earth. And she had so far, despite the pain it often brought her heart, remained faithful to this promise.
She never mentioned the tall Highlander with the red hair that Brianna had inherited, the one who had given her the silver ring that she had so far never been ready to remove, would perhaps never be ready to remove. And she certainly had never mentioned Brianna’s elder sister, Faith, stillborn and lost to them in Paris.
If Brianna asked Frank about Claire’s trip to Paris, it would be easily explained, she had gone there at the end of her war, the celebrations, the parties, the sheer jubilation all over the city.
Frank would never tell Brianna of the other time Claire had been there. The months where she had tried and failed to prevent a different war, the place where she had lost so much, nearly her life included.
Frank would never mention the baby, with her elf-like ears, her almost translucent skin, her wisps of red hair.
Claire cuddled Brianna close to her, squeezing her tightly, just as she had done with Faith. That final squeeze before she handed her first perfect daughter to Louise, trying to imprint as much love as she possibly could, into one hug that would never be long enough.
They should have had all the time in the world together, Faith and her parents. But all they did have were too few moments, his face of surprise as Faith kicked his outstretched hand for the first time, his soft voice speaking to her with such love that it made Claire want to cry and Christening spoons, twelve of them, for the children that they should have had, the rooms at Lallybroch filled with the Laird’s children, her children and his.
Brianna turned her head in her sleep, curling herself towards her pillow. Claire traced the side of her delicate cheek, leading up towards her daughter’s ear.
“Your father was a wonderful man,” Claire whispered softly, as the lone tear that had been threatening to escape for hours, did. She did not brush it away, she let it run down her cheek and land with a soft plop on her chest.
Brianna smiled in her sleep, as Claire carefully slipped from Brianna’s bed and tiptoed over to the bedroom door. She paused for a moment, watching as Brianna stretched and adjusted to a new sleeping position before switching off the light.
“Good night, my love,” Claire whispered into the darkness of the room. “I love you.”
She closed her eyes, hoping that she would hear a familiar voice. The voice that could make her toes curl and sparks ignite throughout her entire body, a voice of comfort and of strength and love.
“And I you, Sassenach.”
But there was no voice, only silence.
This was Boston, 1954 and instead of him, all she heard was the ticking of the clock in the hall.
The man who said those words was lost to her, lost two hundred years ago in the past.
So Claire did the only thing she could do, she opened her eyes and shut the door.