Claire had never met the parents before. None of her youthful flings had been serious enough. Even when she’d found out she was pregnant and she’d contemplated what kind of future she and Frank may have shared, they’d never gotten that far. In those short days, during those few, brief moments she’d imagined being introduced to his posh London parents as his pregnant girlfriend (fiancée? co-parent?), she would picture it and wait for the fear to set in. To quicken her heart and set her palms to sweating with dread at the prospect.
But it never did. Some intuition buried deep in her bones had eased her spirit. A preternatural awareness that she’d never exchange handshakes or hugs or prim cheek-kisses with the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Edward Randall.
When they parted ways for the last time, she’d been grateful for it. This is how it’s meant to be, she’d thought to herself on the journey home that day, a hand over the life she carried, still invisible to everyone but her. Just the two of us.
For a time, anyway.
That sweet girl she’d been ready to brave the world with and for sat in the backseat of the car now, intent on the screen she held in her lap. And Jamie — the one she hadn’t been looking for, who’d made her want to change two into three — grasped her hand across the center console. Claire watched him in the driver’s seat, studied his silhouette against the white-grey sky through his passenger window. Cherished each line and dip across the face she’d never tire of.
He wasn’t so focused on the road ahead that he couldn’t spare her a smirk and a wink that was barely a wink. That two-eyed squint that never failed to make her grin. Which, in turn, always prompted his coy, What’re ye laughin’ at, ye fiend?She demurred every time, since his utter ignorance to his botched winking was a major part of its charm. A laugh is an audible smile, she’d say with a twitch of her lips. Just be happy I’m happy.
And he’d answer, Aye, Sassenach. Always.
The response now made her beam bigger, biting her lips between her teeth to halfway contain it. His hand, twined with hers, squeezed, and he ran his thumb along the outside of her own, a slow swipe back and forth.
It calmed her, and she needed it. Every minute that ticked by until she met the infamous Janet Fraser Murray at long last, her stomach flipped and twirled ever faster.
Claire had never met a partner’s parents before. And, she realized with mingled heartbreak and euphoria as she cut another glance toward Jamie, she likely never would. But that same unnameable knowledge in her gut told her that this experience would be very, very close.
The warm, steady weight of the hand on her thigh woke her with a gentle squeeze. Claire’s cheek smeared against the window as she jerked upright in a daze, completely unaware of having fallen asleep in the first place. Blinking a few times to orient herself, she squinted around the interior of the car before her gaze settled on Jamie.
“Sorry to wake ye,” he said with a lopsided smile, then jutted his chin at the road ahead. “I just didna want ye to miss this.”
With a furrowed brow and bleary eyes, she followed his sightline, and slowly felt her features smooth into tenderness.
As they crossed the border into Scotland, Jamie brought her knuckles to his lips.
“Welcome home, mo chridhe.”
Claire let the word marinate for a moment. Turned it over and over in her mind like some old relic of childhood rediscovered many years later — nostalgic and familiar, yet strange, somehow, after such a long absence.
“Home,” she echoed quietly. Little by little, a smile unfurled across her face, and when she looked over at Jamie again, it bloomed into a genuine grin. “You know, I… I actually feel like it could be. Like I could belong here.”
Sumela is 1600 year old ancient
Orthodox monastery located at a 1200 meters height on the steep cliff at
Macka region of Trabzon city in Turkey.
The
monastery is constructed on rocks reached by a path through the forest.
The beautiful frescoes dating from the 18 th century on the walls of
the monastery are biblical scenes of Christ and Virgin Mary.
Tori