“See if you can make me say, ‘Don’t stop.’”
PART SIX
The Ties That Bind
THE BODY ELECTRIC
Redondo Beach, CA
December 5, 1980
IF SHE HADN’T NEEDED stamps, she wouldn’t have stopped in at the post office. She’d have clipped this batch of letters to the mailbox for the postman to collect, or posted them in the corner mailbox when she took the kids down to the beach to look for pelicans.
But she did need stamps; there were at least a dozen more niggling things to deal with: things needing notarization or photocopies or tax returns or . . .
“S-word,” she muttered, sliding out of the car. “Bloody F-wording S-word!” This was small relief to her feelings of anxiety and oppression. It really wasn’t fair. Who needed the relief of occasional bad language more than a mother of small children?
Maybe she should start using her mother’s “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” instead. Jem had incorporated that one into his own collection of expletives before he turned four and had long since taught it to Mandy; they wouldn’t be warped by hearing it.
It hadn’t been this hard, last time. Well, no, she corrected herself. It had been a lot harder, in the most important respect. But this . . . this . . . this quagmire of pettifogging details—property, bank accounts, leases, notifications . . . She flicked the sheaf of sealed envelopes in her hand against her thigh with irritation. Some days, she would have taken Jem and Mandy by their hands and run, not walked, straight into the stones with no feeling save relief at abandoning all this bloody Stuff.
She hadn’t really had much Stuff when she did it the first time. And, of course, she’d had someone to leave it with. Her heart squeezed a little, remembering the day she’d nailed down the lid on the wooden shipping crate that held her family’s modest history: the silver passed down through her father’s family, cabinet photographs of her mother’s parents, the collection of her father’s first editions, her mother’s World War II Queen Alexandra uniform cap, still with a faint but detectible odor of iodine about it. And taken such pains in writing the note to Roger to go with it: You told me once that . . . everyone needs a history. This is mine. . . .
Almost sure then that she’d never see Roger again, let alone the silverware.
She blinked hard and shoved the door of the post office open with so much force that it crashed into the wall, and everyone in the lobby turned to stare at her. Hot-faced, she grabbed the doorframe and closed it with exaggerated care, then crossed the lobby soft-footed, avoiding all eyes.
She shoved the envelopes through the collection-box slot one by one, with a certain feeling of grim satisfaction at each tedious thing disposed of. Preparing to disappear into the past, leaving all Stuff behind, was one thing; preparing to disappear while thinking that you might eventually come back and need that Stuff again—or that your children might come back twenty years later, without you . . . She swallowed. That was something else again, as her father was inclined to say. She couldn’t just dump it all on Uncle Joe; he didn’t—
She turned, glancing across the lobby automatically at her PO box, and stopped, seeing the letter. She felt the hairs rising on her forearm as she strode across the grubby linoleum and reached for the knob, even before her mind had consciously registered the fact that it didn’t look like a utility bill, a credit-card application, or any other sort of official mail.
G-H-I-D-E-I . . . the tumblers of the combination lock fell and the heavy little door swung open. And right there in the post office, she smelled heather and peat smoke and the breath of the mountains, so strongly that her eyes blurred and her own breath caught in her throat.
It was a regular white envelope, addressed to her in Joe Abernathy’s round, capable hand. She could feel something inside it, another envelope, this one with a lump on it—a seal of some kind? She made it to her rented car before ripping it open.
It wasn’t an envelope but a sheet of paper, folded and sealed with wax, blurs of black ink bleeding through the paper where a quill had scratched too deep. An eighteenth-century letter. She pressed it to her face, inhaling, but the scent of smoke and heather was gone—if it had ever been there. It smelled now only of age and brittle paper; not even the tang of the iron-gall ink was left.
There was a brief note from Uncle Joe, a slip of paper folded next to the letter.
Bree, darlin’—
Hope this catches you in time. It came from the estate agent in Scotland. He said when the new tenant at Lallybroch went to put the furniture in storage, they couldn’t get that big old desk through the door of the study. So they called an antiques guy to take the thing apart—very carefully, he assured me. And when they did, they found three Queen Victoria stamps and this.
I didn’t read it. If you haven’t left yet, let me know if you want the stamps; Lenny Jr. collects them and will give them a good home, if not.
All my love,
Uncle Joe
She folded the note carefully, pressing the creases, tucking it into her handbag. She felt as though she ought to go somewhere else to read the letter, somewhere private and quiet, so she could go to pieces without anyone noticing. The seal was sooty gray candle wax, not sealing wax, and Roger had sealed it with his thumbprint. It wasn’t necessary—she’d recognized the writing immediately—but there was no doubt of the tiny hook-shaped scar left when a scaling knife had slipped while he was cleaning a salmon he and Jem had caught in Loch Ness. She’d kissed it while the cut was healing, and a dozen times since.