On their way to America, Jamie tells Jenny about William.
“I ken ye know how the war will turn,” Jenny said, keeping her voice low even though there was no one near them as they stood at the rail of the ship. “Wi’ what Claire is… I ken ye know ye’re on the right side this time. But that doesna mean somethin’ willna happen to you or her or Ian or any of us, aye?”
Jamie had made the mistake of telling Jenny that there were British forces in and around Philadelphia, which was where they were going to be arriving in just a few days’ time (God willing).
“No, she doesna ken anything so specific,” Jamie reiterated. “But dinna fash about the Red Coats bein’ there. There’s a chance I’ve a friend among them there.” Jamie didn’t know for certain but he knew John would likely find himself in a position of command and right now a significant chunk of the British command was stationed in Philadelphia.
“You? A friend among the Red Coats?” Jenny asked skeptically.
“Aye,” Jamie replied with a sharp note of defiance. “Lord John Grey—was Major Grey, though he’s like to be promoted to a colonel by now.”
“And how do ye know this Major Grey?” She wasn’t even trying to hide her disapproval.
“It doesna matter how,” Jamie insisted. “I ken he’d help me if I asked him to and he’d do the same for Claire did she need it, too.”
Jenny’s skepticism and disgust were replaced by a more genuine surprise. “Ye’d trust him wi’ Claire? I’ve never heard ye mention the man. How could he have earned so much trust from ye and you never breathe his name?”
Jamie sighed as he stared out to sea. Being able to share the truth of Claire and her origins with Ian and Jenny had been such a bittersweet relief. He regretted not having trusted them with that truth sooner—not having more time to discuss it with Ian. He didn’t want to live with other, similar regrets. Life was too short.
“Lord John Grey was governor of Ardsmuir while I was imprisoned there,” Jamie began. “He arranged my parole at Helwater. And, when I left and came back to Lallybroch… I left something… precious to me… in his charge.”
“Ye left something in his charge…?”
“My son,” Jamie confessed in barely a whisper.
Jenny’s reproach was sharp with surprise, hurt, accusation. “Ye have a son, brother? And never breathed a word?”
“I couldna claim him,” Jamie explained. “I… I dinna want to talk about his mother or how… I’ll no be talkin’ about that wi’ ye, so dinna ask. But I couldna claim him as my own and he had nae living father to raise him… so John took it in hand. He’s raised him well. He’s a good man, my son. I’ve seen him a few times since he’s grown. He’s a soldier but surrendered and safe from fighting now—or should be.”
“Does he know?” Jenny asked, the shock leaving her mostly speechless. “Does Claire know?”
“William doesna ken the truth—nor can he. It would devastate the lad. But Claire does. She’s known since… she learned about him soon after she returned to me. And she’s met him. Brianna has too. She knew but agreed no to say anything because she wanted to meet him and… that was a condition—that she wouldna tell him.”
“William?”
Jamie smiled and nodded, stepping closer to his sister and slipping an arm around her shoulders. “She didna ken what that name meant to me when she called him by it, but it was a fateful kindness to learn his mother called him that before she passed.”
To her credit and Jamie’s relief, Jenny refrained from trying to press for more information about William’s deceased mother.
“What’s he like?” she asked at last. “Tell me about my nephew.”
Frank didn’t die, but he and Claire divorced. When the Mackenzies return to the future, Jemmy gets to know his other grandfather. It makes for an interesting return to the past.
Frank stood with his arms crossed as he examined the scene before him. Jemmy was sitting at the window, staring out at the street. He was leaning forward on the windowsill, his chin resting on his arms. Rain trickled down the glass and pattered lightly against the leaves on the bush just outside.
The boy had been sitting there since Brianna and Roger had left with Mandy that morning to go to the hospital. So far there had been one call to the house from Roger informing Frank that they had arrived and that Brianna was helping keep the baby calm through pre op—and that Joe was helping to keep Brianna calm. Frank insisted that he had things under control with Jemmy and it was true—there had been no tantrums or trouble so far.
But that was part of what Frank found unsettling. It was impossible to look at the boy and not be reminded of Brianna at the same age—that hair, those eyes, even the same freckles sprinkled across their noses. But Brianna had been boisterous and never seemed to stop talking. From the way Brianna and Roger spoke about their son, Frank had the impression he usually behaved the same way.
And yet, there he sat at the window, silently watching traffic and the rain. Was it simply a combination of the novelty and concern for his sister? Or was it him?
After all, Claire might not have chosen to leave him when she had her first little adventure with the stones at Craigh na Dun but when she’d returned, she had no qualms about making sure Frank knew he was no longer her first choice… in anything. It had taken him years to give up that fight and agree to a divorce. He knew when he’d found record of Jamie Fraser alive after Culloden that it wouldn’t take Claire long to go back to him… and that he would still have Brianna to care for.
But then Brianna had followed her mother only a few years later, leaving him behind to chase after a stranger. Oh, he knew it wasn’t to do with him, really—she’d gone out of her way to make that point many times in the weeks before she went. And yet, even when Roger went to find her and bring her back, months after Brianna had hoped to return by…
They’d all stayed. They’d all chosen to live a life in a more dangerous time and place… and all he could do was search for them in his research. The only reason they’d come back at all was because of medical necessity.
“Are you hungry at all?” Frank asked the boy. “Is there anything you would like to do? I want to stay at the house for when your parents call with an update, but I can pull out some of the old board games and puzzles from when your mother was younger.”
“Grandda was ‘sposed to teach me to play chess,” Jemmy said, his tone flat, hollow. He lifted his head to look at Frank. “He was helpin’ me carve my own set of pieces and tellin’ me about what they do. He said makin’ it that way would make sure I had the patience ye need to play and when we had ‘em all, he was goin’ to show me.”
“Perhaps never having done so is the reason I’ve never had patience for chess,” Frank said with a chuckle. “I did teach your mother to play checkers when she was about your age. The board we played with is in the attic with some of her other toys and games. Would you care to come see?”
Jemmy shrugged but got up from the seat near the window and followed Frank up to the second floor and was first up the ladder to the small crawl space that served as the house’s attic.
“Do you see that box over there?” Frank asked, remaining on the ladder himself and only sticking his upper torso into the dim space. He shone a flashlight at a box. “Can you read what it says?”
“‘Bree’s Room’?” Jemmy responded with little confidence given the poor lighting and worn lettering.
“Very good. Do you think you can crawl over to it and push it towards me?”
Jemmy scrambled around, Frank guiding him with the flashlight but before he could move the box more than a few inches across the dusty floor, he spotted something of even greater interest.
“Claire!” he exclaimed. “That’s Grannie’s name!” He darted over to the smaller box and pushed that one toward Frank instead. “Can I see wha’s in here?”
It was the most animated Frank had seen the boy so he swallowed his reluctance and pulled the box down before holding the ladder steady for Jemmy to descend.
Jemmy didn’t even bother dusting himself off or carrying the box to a more convenient space. He plopped down in the middle of the hallway floor and pawed at the box to get it open. Frank set the flashlight aside and showed Jemmy the proper way to open the cardboard box, then he sat on the floor himself, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched to the other wall and watched his grandson.
Claire had taken most of her things when they divorced—her medical school texts and notebooks, the silver service set her uncle had given them as a wedding gift, random mementos picked up from a lifetime of traveling to dig sites… But she’d left a number of photographs behind. Many of them had been family shots or photos of the pair of them. Frank had been tempted to throw them away but when it came down to it, he hadn’t the heart. So instead, he’d stuffed them in a box and tucked them away in the crawl space where he didn’t have to look at them and be reminded.
“That’s you and Grannie,” Jemmy remarked, his brow furrowing with confusion and amazement.
“I suppose you’d hardly recognize her from those,” Frank mused, reaching to pick up the photos Jemmy had let fall as he moved to the next and the next.
“She… she was young,” the boy gawked. “She doesna even look so old as Mam does.”
Frank peeked. It was a photo of Claire he’d taken during one of their all-too-brief leaves together during the war. She looked both relieved and exhausted, her hair a curly mess but her smile as bright as he remembered and warmth in her eyes that was a punch to the gut.
“This is Grannie wi’ you and Mam,” Jemmy said with excitement, holding out a photo taken at a Christmas party one of his colleagues threw every year. Brianna wore a green plaid dress with a bow in her hair while Claire dazzled in white (her smile was obviously strained but Frank was pretty sure it was the result of the Dean having said about her wasting time and money pursuing her medical degree rather than anything he’d said or done) and Frank wore a red jumper with his jacket draped over his arm so it would show brightly in the photo.
“Who’s… that?” Jemmy asked, baffled.
“That… is Mickey Mouse. That was taken when we took your mother to Disneyland,” Frank explained. They’d taken the trip after he and Claire had decided that divorce was the only option left. They wanted one final family holiday for Brianna before they formally started the process and told her. Perhaps it was having acknowledged that they were giving up on the marriage, but so much of the tension he and Claire felt with one another seemed to vanish. They were able to laugh and joke and enjoy themselves with an abandon they hadn’t been able to conjure while they’d been so focused on trying to make things work between them. It was easily the happiest family vacation they had ever taken together, a lovely memory amid the sea of disquiet that gave way to a sometimes-difficult balancing act.
For it was about two months after they returned from that trip that Claire rented a house close enough to keep Brianna in the same school so she could go back and forth between them as often as necessary—Claire’s schedule frequently included overnight shifts, for which Frank was grateful.
“Mickey Mouse?!” Jemmy bounced from his bottom onto his knees in a maneuver that caused Frank’s joints to twinge in sympathy. “But we hafta go see him! Grandda asked me to pass along his regards. I didna ken Mam knew him.”
“Your other grandfather knows about Mickey Mouse?” Frank asked, the impulse to laugh rising in his chest.
“Aye. He said if I was ever to come ‘cross him I was to give him Grandda’s regards,” Jemmy repeated. “Can we go to see him? How far away is Disneyland? Can we take the vroom to get there?”
The chuckle escaped but Jemmy didn’t seem to notice. Frank wondered whether it was Claire or Brianna who had told Jamie about Disneyland and what an 18th century man made of a cartoon mouse that sang and danced and was brought to life at a theme park.
“Disneyland is all the way on the other side of the country so it would be faster to fly there than to drive,” Frank began to tell a rapt Jemmy. “We’ll need to see what your parents say after your sister is recovered, but I should very much like to take you there to meet Mickey Mouse.”
The moment when Jamie realizes that Tom Christie is in love with Claire.
Jamie tightened the shirt wrapped around his hand. He didn’t think the cut was deep but it was easier to have Claire look at it sooner rather than face her judgment and disapproval should he wait.
Malva was there with Claire, taking notes as Claire lectured her on some of the herbs in her surgery. She looked up and watched Jamie closely as he knocked awkwardly and Claire ushered him in.
He kept Malva where he could see her as Claire inspected the slice across his palm.
“Plough handle splintered when we hit a large stone,” he explained.
“Will it take long to fix?” she asked, taking a pair of tweezers and pulling at a splinter he hadn’t felt.
“No so long as other parts of it, thankfully,” he winced as she poured an alcohol solution over the wound.
There was a faint knock at the front door. Finished tucking in the ends of the bandage, Claire rose to answer it, Mrs. Bug busy out the back with Brianna, Marsali, and the children.
“Mrs. Fraser,” Jamie heard Tom Christie’s warm voice greet her. “I’ve come to collect my Malva. My son said she was here wi’ ye?”
Jamie looked to Malva who refused to look at him as she tidied her things away and prepared to head home.
“I hope she hasnae been a bother to ye,” Christie continued making small talk with Claire near the doorway.
“Absolutely not,” Claire insisted. “She’s been a tremendous help taking my notes and assisting with basic preparations for my surgery.”
Malva headed to the entrance to meet her father and Jamie followed a few steps behind.
Christie stepped aside to let Malva pass through, but stayed in the doorframe, turning back to Claire as soon as Malva was clear.
“Thank ye then, Mrs. Fraser,” he nodded, solemnly.
Claire offered him a polite smile in return and grinned as she looked past him to wave farewell to Malva.
She closed the door behind them and turned to see Jamie watching. She moved to the window to watch the pair as they left.
“I think he suspects I’ve been instructing Malva and disapproves but he’s too polite to say so to my face,” Claire mused as Jamie crossed to stand beside her. She leaned into his side and sighed as he rested his bandaged hand on her shoulder.
Jamie stayed silent, watching as Tom Christie turned back near the edge of the clearing and quickly found Claire standing in the window. He raised his hand in one last farewell and Claire did the same.
The longing smile on Christie’s face faded when he spotted Jamie and something like panic flitted across his features before full command was his once more. Christie held his head high, defiant as he met Jamie’s gaze, then continued on his way home.
Jamie had suspected before but that glance from Christie was confirmation.
Tom Christie held his tongue because he didn’t want to lose his excuses to see and speak to Claire.
I’d love to see Jemmy’s reaction to his first few days in the future.
At first he thought the noise was just from the stones but two days later, Jemmy realized that it was just loud in the future. Even Mam and Da talked about it once with a laugh.
A noisy boat took them to the mainland and they walked on dark and unusual rock until they found a long, flat building. Mam and Da said it was like an inn but he had to take their word for it having never actually stayed overnight at an inn that he could remember. He and Da and Mandy waited outside while Mam spoke to the people inside and arranged for their rooms.
Mam got in touch with someone she knew who could send them money and was coming to get them to take them to Boston where Mandy’s heart would get fixed. It would take two days for him to get there.
Jemmy didn’t leave the room. He was too afraid and there was so much to see inside the room anyway. It was really two rooms. A larger room with two beds and lamps that didn’t need candles or wicks or fire and were blindingly bright. Mam told him not to stare at it or get so close cause it would damage his sight, like staring at the sun. He spent a long time exploring the privy and playing with what Mam told him was a toilet. The noise was loud and the rush of water startled him but in an exciting way, not a scary one.
Da left for a while and came back with new clothes and some food in strange wrappers that rustled and came in strange colors. Mam went into the privy to bathe while Mandy slept on the bed, Da watching her while he and Jemmy ate the odd pastries. They weren’t hot and they were somehow both incredibly dry and incredibly sweet. He coughed until Da got him water from the special spring in the privy to drink.
After Mam emerged grinning and pink, her hair wet and wearing a clean shift made from a bright cloth, it was his turn to bathe.
He’d never been in water so hot. “I feel like a potato,” he told his mother who laughed.
“Is it cause I keep scrubbing and scrubbing you but there always seems to be more dirt to scrub off?” she asked, vigorously rubbing the washcloth behind his ears so that it tickled.
“No,” he giggled. “When ye put them in a stew. They get all hot and soft and I feel like that now.”
“Is that a good thing?” Mam asked, a funny smile on her lips.
Jemmy shrugged. “I like it right now. I hope the water’s this hot next time I have to take a bath.”
“It will be this hot every time you take a bath,” Mam told him. “And you’re gonna be washing more often than you did when we were on the Ridge with Grannie and Grandda. That’s just how things are done here.”
Jemmy sighed but conceded, “If it’s this warm I suppose that willna be so bad.”
Mam smiled and helped him finish scrubbing then got him out of the bath and dried him off.
The new clothes felt strange and they smelled strange. So did the bedclothes. He was tired but slept fitfully because of the noises outside and from someone on the other side of the wall of their room.
There were more of the pastries in the morning, the sweetness not as sharp nor the texture so dry as it seemed the night before. Mam said they were strawberry flavor but he liked the strawberries from Grannie’s garden better.
After breakfast Mam pulled out a pair of scissors and told him to sit still while she draped a towel around his shoulders and cut his hair. She’d done things to his hair before but she’d never cut so much off at once. He frowned when he looked in the mirror. His hair didn’t look like Grandda’s anymore, pulled back into a queue. Then Da sat down and let Mam do the same to him and Jemmy didn’t mind so much. “Hair can grow back,” Da whispered when Mam was busy cleaning up.
They offered to play games with him after that but he knew they needed to talk about what they were going to do after they got to Boston and Mandy’s heart got fixed. He would have said they should go back to the Ridge and Grannie and Grandda but he was afraid of the stones and even though it was scary, looking out the window and watching the future outside was beginning to make him curious.
He sat in a chair with his arms resting on the windowsill and watched. And asked his parents questions.
“Is that a real vroom?”
“Why are they dressed like that?”
“Where are they going?”
“What’s that she’s on?”
“What kind of vroom is that?”
“What’s that called?”
They made up a new game for him. He had to see how long he could watch without asking questions and Mam would time him using the automatic clock on the table between the beds. He could ask one question for every five minutes he watched quietly.
There were so many people. A few seemed to feel him staring and looked over at him. He ducked out of sight the first time. The third person smiled and waved so he waved back.
He wasn’t bored with watching but Mandy grew fussy and Mam and Da were acting funny because the person Mam knew was supposed to be getting there soon. Jemmy climbed onto the bed with Mandy to rub her belly and let her pull his finger into her mouth so Mam and Da could get ready.
Then there was a knock on the door and Mam got up to answer it. Jemmy moved closer to where Da was standing, blocking Mandy from sight and peering around Da.
“Bree?” the stranger’s voice said from the open door. “Christ, it really is you.”
“You remember Roger,” Mam said, gesturing to Da.
Da stepped forward and shook the man’s hand. Jemmy made a noise when the man looked at him and smiled but Jemmy stood his ground.
“This is our son, Jeremiah,” Mam introduced him, “and that’s wee Mandy on the bed. Jem, this is Dr. Joe Abernathy. He’s an old friend of Grannie’s.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jeremiah,” Dr. Abernathy said, reaching a hand out to Jemmy too.
Jemmy tried to remember Grannie telling stories about her friend Joe but all he could remember was that she usually stopped before she finished. She would spot him listening and stop herself saying she’d finish the story later when little ears weren’t around, then Mam, Da, and Grandda would laugh.
Looking at the offered hand for a moment, Jemmy took it and shook it the way he’d seen Da and Grandda do when men came to the Ridge with questions and requests. Dr. Abernathy smiled.
“First things first, let me give that little lady a medical examination and then we can talk.”
