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“I dinna ken,” he said at last, and lifted his head, looking out into the distance of land and sky. “No one does, Sassenach. We must just meet what comes as we can.”
“We’ve ghosts enough between us, Sassenach. If the evils of the past canna hinder us—neither then shall any fears of the future. We must just put things behind us and get on. Aye?” I laid
“Yes,” I said. And with no warning at all, tears welled up and overflowed. I knew exactly what he’d meant, and why he’d said it—and it was true. I felt as though my center had turned unexpectedly to liquid and was gushing out, not from grief, but from relief. I was still me. Fragile, battered, sore, and wary—but myself. Only when I recognized that, did I realize how much I had feared that I might not be—that I might emerge from shock and find myself irrevocably altered, some vital part forever missing.
Even the small throbbings here and there seemed pleasant, a sense of healing being quietly accomplished.
I sat in my surgery for some time after he left. Emerging slowly from shock, I had felt safe, surrounded by home and friends, by Jamie. Now I must come to grips with the fact that nothing was safe—not I, not home nor friends—and certainly not Jamie.
The house stood around me in peace. No modern background of furnace, fans, plumbing, refrigerators. No whoosh of pilot lights or hum of compressors. Just the occasional creak of beam or floorboard, and the odd muffled scrape of a wood wasp building its nest up under the eaves.
Small waves of pointless panic tended still to seize me unawares. I hadn’t had one this morning, and had rather hoped they’d gone away. Not quite yet, apparently.
