[ Claire lets out another breath because that question has a larger answer than she thinks Bree is expecting. ]
Well. Jamie's father, Brian passed when Jamie was a bit younger than you are now. Actually, now that I think of it-- [ She pauses here to let her fingers run through Bree's hair for a moment. ] --The same age you were when Frank died. [ It's not a good thing to have in common, but they still know the sudden loss of their father. ] You have quite a lot of cousins and some of them with children of their own now. There's wee Jamie, Maggie, who I delivered, then Katherine, Michael, Janet and young Ian. 'Young' because Ian is named after your uncle.
[ Claire smiles fondly; she'll miss them, all of them, now that so much distance separates them. ]
When Jamie and I went to France, we took in a little boy named Fergus and essentially adopted him. He stayed with us when we went back to Scotland, he was as close to Jamie as he could be all those twenty years, and one of the last things I did before arriving here the second time was attending his wedding. So, Fergus Claudel Fraser is your brother by adoption.
[ That was the easy one. Now the harder parts. ]
Jamie doesn't know this yet, I haven't told him, and to be honest...I'm not sure that I will. He has a son, named William, Willie for short. Jamie wasn't married and Willie's mother died in childbirth, but you do have a half-brother. And you have two step-sisters. Marsali and Joan. Or...ex-stepsisters, though Fergus married Marsali, so I suppose she would be your sister-in-law now.
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Well. Jamie's father, Brian passed when Jamie was a bit younger than you are now. Actually, now that I think of it-- [ She pauses here to let her fingers run through Bree's hair for a moment. ] --The same age you were when Frank died. [ It's not a good thing to have in common, but they still know the sudden loss of their father. ] You have quite a lot of cousins and some of them with children of their own now. There's wee Jamie, Maggie, who I delivered, then Katherine, Michael, Janet and young Ian. 'Young' because Ian is named after your uncle.
[ Claire smiles fondly; she'll miss them, all of them, now that so much distance separates them. ]
When Jamie and I went to France, we took in a little boy named Fergus and essentially adopted him. He stayed with us when we went back to Scotland, he was as close to Jamie as he could be all those twenty years, and one of the last things I did before arriving here the second time was attending his wedding. So, Fergus Claudel Fraser is your brother by adoption.
[ That was the easy one. Now the harder parts. ]
Jamie doesn't know this yet, I haven't told him, and to be honest...I'm not sure that I will. He has a son, named William, Willie for short. Jamie wasn't married and Willie's mother died in childbirth, but you do have a half-brother. And you have two step-sisters. Marsali and Joan. Or...ex-stepsisters, though Fergus married Marsali, so I suppose she would be your sister-in-law now.