Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone (Outlander, #9)

by Diana Gabaldon

“No man owns his own life,” he said. “Part of you is always in someone else’s hands. All ye can do is hope it’s mostly God’s hands you’re in.”

“If the author thought it was worth his writing it down, then it’s worth my reading it. I dinna mean to miss a single word.”

“Bees are real sociable,” Myers explained, and blew one of them gently off the back of his hand. “And they’re curious, which only makes sense, them goin’ back and forth and gatherin’ news with their pollen. So you tell ’em what’s happening—if someone’s come a-visitin’, if a new babe’s been born, if anybody new was to settle or a settler depart—or die. See, if somebody leaves or dies,” he explained, brushing a bee off my shoulder, “and you don’t tell the bees, they take offense, and the whole lot of ’em will fly right off.”

Jamie was in his study, enjoying his own solitude. I’d passed by, carrying my big basin of peanuts outside, and seen him leaning back in his chair, spectacles on his nose, deeply absorbed in Green Eggs and Ham.

“Enjoying your reading?” I asked, smiling. “Aye.” He sat down beside me and picked a peanut out of the basin, cracked it, and tossed the nuts into his mouth. “Brianna says Dr. Seuss made a good many books. Have ye read them all, Sassenach?” He pronounced it “Soyce,” in correct German, and I laughed.

“Well…I think it was because it reminded me of Brianna. I made her peanut butter sandwiches so often, for her school lunches. She had a Zorro lunch box, with a little thermos in it.” Jamie’s eyebrows went up. “Zorro? A Spanish fox?” I waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll tell you about him later. You would have liked him.

“My body is out from my control,” he said softly. “She was the half of my body—the very half of my soul.”

“Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they’re deid,” she said reprovingly. “I canna suppose they stop lovin’ you, either.”

“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,” Fergus said. “Mais elle est morte.”

“You said three things,” I said at last. My voice was hoarse. “What’s the third?” He let go of my hand and opened my fingers, as I’d done for him a few moments before, but his fingertips traced the lines of my palm and rested at the base of my thumb, where the letter J had nearly faded into my skin. “Remember me,” he whispered.