Page 18 of Unforgotten
“I didn’t think ye would … and I wouldn’t have blamed ye for it.” Cait drew in a whispery breath. “I never treated ye right, Ella … and I’m sorry for it.”
Ella swallowed hard. The pain in the center of her chest had now spread up to her throat. Her eyes stung as she blinked back tears.
Mother Mary, please give me strength. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected upon her return—perhaps to encounter a mother as haughty and critical as ever—but this soft, broken individual wasn’t it.
It ripped a hole in her chest to see her mother so diminished. She almost wished for a tongue-lashing. It would be easier to bear.
“It’s all in the past now, Ma,” Ella whispered. “Ye should know that I’ve been very happy at Kilbride. A nun’s life suits me well.”
“I would have liked to have done God’s work,” her mother admitted.
“But ye chose to become a wife and mother instead … that too is a good choice.”
Cait Fraser huffed, some of her old fire returning for an instant. “I thought so once, but with the years, I found myself wishing I’d made a different choice.” She broke off there, recovering her breath. It worried Ella to see that even speaking taxed her mother. “Don’t mistake me, I don’t regret having ye and yer sister,” Cait continued weakly. “It’s just that I’ve always yearned for a simple life that I could dedicate entirely to our Lord.”
“Kilbride Abbey would have certainly given ye that,” Ella replied softly. “I find myself missing its serenity already.”
Cait’s mouth curved. “Ye were so spirited once … I was sure ye wouldn’t take to such a life.” She paused then, her sunken chest rising and falling sharply under her high-necked night-rail. “I was so hard on ye, lass. I favored Innis … and always compared ye to her.”
“I know,” Ella replied, her voice still soft. “But all of that is forgotten now.”
That wasn’t entirely true, yet her mother didn’t need to hear it. Best to let a dying woman make peace with her past.
“But I was wrong to do so.” Some of the fire of old lit in Cait’s blue eyes. Her thin fingers wrapped around Ella’s, squeezing with surprising strength. “Innis was quiet and biddable, but ye had a spine. I tried to beat it out of ye, to scold it out of ye … but for a long while now, I have regretted my actions. Will ye ever forgive me, lass?”
“Aye, Ma.” Tears ran down Ella’s cheeks, but she didn’t reach up to brush them away.
Their gazes locked and held for a long instant, before Cait Fraser’s grip tightened around the crucifix she still grasped with her free hand.
“Will ye pray with me, Ella?” she asked, her voice husky.
Ella nodded, smiling through her tears. “Of course I will.”
Ella’s father was waiting for her when she left her mother’s sick room.
Stewart Fraser had gotten broader and greyer in the nearly two decades since they’d last seen each other. His face was even more careworn than Ella remembered, although his hazel eyes were just as kind.
Wordlessly, he enfolded Ella in a bear-hug, and when they drew apart, his eyes were gleaming.
“It is good to see ye, lass,” he rumbled. “The years have made ye even bonnier than I remember.”
Ella favored her father with a watery smile. “I have missed ye, Da,” Ella replied. It was the truth. She’d often railed at her father for allowing his wife to be such a shrew, yet for every harsh word that Cait had rained down upon Ella, Stewart had gifted her three gentle ones.
“Are ye happy, Ella?” he asked softly. “I’ve often wondered about ye over the years.”
“I am content, Da,” Ella replied.
A weight appeared to lift from him at her words, and Stewart loosed a sigh. “That is a relief to hear.”
Ella’s gaze roamed his rugged face. As a younger man, he’d been handsome in that rangy way of the Fraser men: tall and flame-haired. Although he lacked the arrogant bearing of his cousin, Morgan Fraser—the chieftain of the Frasers of Skye. These days his once bright hair had faded to a rusty grey.
“Ma is so frail,” Ella murmured, threading her arm through her father’s and letting him lead her away down the narrow corridor. Night had just fallen, and cressets now burned upon the pitted stone walls. “I barely recognized her.”
“Aye … she is a changed woman,” Stewart replied. “More than just physically … as I am sure ye noted.”
Ella nodded, her throat thickening. “I’ve never known her so … soft.”
Her father grunted. “Aye … it’s just a pity that it took a fatal illness for her to see clearly.”
