Part Two, Chapter Two: Tiuilip Bàn-Dhearg
You can find previous chapters here.
October 1968; Scotland. Claire.
It had taken four different floral shops and as many days, but I finally had them. The final florist found them at a distributors in Edinburgh and we had arranged for me to pick them up at his shop this afternoon.
I reflexively reached out to my hand to keep them from sliding off the passenger seat beside me as I slowed to a stop outside the gate of Lallybroch. My gaze rested on the fragile, pink blooms of the bouquet of tulips, making my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.
She would have been twenty-three this past August, a grown woman.
I had told no one about Julia, the child of my heart. Her memory was too precious, too raw to share with Mrs Graham. I certainly didn't tell Frank.
She was mine alone.
This certainly didn't keep the feeling of her presence at bay. I may not have said her name aloud in twenty years, but I thought of her everyday. I saw her in Bree’s smile, heard her in the laughter of school children.
I moved towards the small burial ground behind the stone house in a fog of memories and pain. The wind stirred the leaves on the ground beside me. It carried the sound of child’s voice with it, a single word spoken with all the tenderness a toddler poses: Mim.
I hesitated at the entrance of the sacred ground and called the visions of the past to play once more for me. I saw her auburn curls, bouncing with delight as she and Jamie spun around the master bedroom here at Lallybroch. Her blue eyes smiled at me as she giggled and threw her arms around my neck.
Being torn from Jamie was sorrow enough, but to have my child wrenched from my arms was the tipping point that catapulted me into the depths of despair. She was dying, had hours left to live. I had said goodbye on the chance she didn't survive the trip thru the stones, yet it hadn't been enough. I needed more. More time, more closure. Final thoughts and words and caresses would never be enough.
Jamie had promised me she would be laid to rest here with his parents if she could not come with me thru the stones. This knowledge kept me going when her absence made me weep. I had been alone, until Brianna came along, but Julia would never be. She slept with the protection of her grandparents and watched over me alongside her father.
Walking along the weathered stones, I read the names. Some were familiar, some foreign. I found Ellen and Brian's right where they had been when I had visited them with Jamie. My heartbeat slowed as I mentally prepared myself to see my daughter’s headstone for the first time.
It wasn't where I thought it would be.
Caitlin Maisri. Iseabaìl. Two small stones, monuments to children, but Julia was not among them. The world seemed to tip and right itself as another stone caught my eye. It was a little distance away, but still near Jamie’s parents’. I stumbled over a tuft of grass as I walked over for a closer look.
Julia Ellen. Beloved daughter of James and Claire.
My knees went out from under me and I collapsed beside her stone, reaching out with a shaking hand to trace the carved letters. The stone itself was partially sunk into the Scottish soil. Another line, presumably the dates of her birth and death, was obscured beneath the ground. I dug at the unyielding dirt with my fingers, my heart needing the confirmation that she hadn't lived long without me.
But I received none.
The more I uncovered, the more obscured the chiseled text became.
I finally stopped, resting my forehead against the cold stone, and let my tears fall with abandon.
