Let me be enough

The whole Scene

I looked down to see Adso. I’d been look­ing for him most of yes­ter­day; typ­i­cal of him to show up at the last minute.
“So there you are,” I said, accus­ing. He looked at me with his huge calm eyes of celadon green, and licked a paw. On impulse, I scooped him up and held him against me, feel­ing the rum­ble of his purr and the soft, thick fur of his sil­very belly.
He’d be all right; I knew that. The woods were his pri­vate game pre­serve, and Amy Hig­gins liked him and had promised me to see him right for milk and a warm spot by the fire in bad weath­er. I knew that.
“Go on, then,” I said, and set him on the ground. He stood for a moment, tail wav­ing slow­ly, head raised in search of food or inter­est­ing smells, then stepped into the grass and vanished.
I bent, very slow­ly, arms crossed, and shook, weep­ing silent­ly, violently.
I cried until my throat hurt and I couldn’t breathe, then sat in the grass, curled into myself like a dried leaf, tears that I couldn’t stop drop­ping on my knees like the first fat drops of a com­ing storm. Oh, God. It was only the beginning.
I rubbed my hands hard over my eyes, smear­ing the wet­ness, try­ing to scrub away grief. A soft cloth touched my face, and I looked up, sniff­ing, to find Jamie kneel­ing in front of me, hand­ker­chief in hand.
“I’m sor­ry,” he said, very softly.
“It’s not—don’t wor­ry, I’m … He’s only a cat,” I said, and a small fresh grief tight­ened like a band round my chest.
“Aye, I know.” He moved beside me and put an arm round my shoul­ders, pulling my head to his chest, while he gen­tly wiped my face. “But ye could­na weep for the bairns. Or the house. Or your wee gar­den. Or the poor dead lass and her bairn. But if ye weep for your cheetie, ye know ye can stop.”
“How do you know that?” My voice was thick, but the band round my chest was not quite so tight.
He made a small, rue­ful sound.
“Because I can­na weep for those things, either, Sasse­nach. And I have­na got a cat.”

I snif­fled, wiped my face one last time, and blew my nose before giv­ing him back the hand­ker­chief, which he stuffed into his sporran with­out gri­mace or thought.Lord, he’d said. Let me be enough. That prayer had lodged in my heart like an arrow when I’d heard it and thought he asked for help in doing what had to be done. But that wasn’t what he’d meant at all—and the real­iza­tion of what he had meant split my heart in two.
I took his face between my hands, and wished so much that I had his own gift, the abil­i­ty to say what lay in my heart, in such a way that he would know. But I hadn’t.
“Jamie,” I said at last. “Oh, Jamie. You’re … every­thing. Always.”
An hour lat­er, we left the Ridge.

All rights for the Pic­ture go to the right­ful owner Starz
Quo­te and Excerpt by Diana Gabaldon from  “An Echo in the Bone”
I own not­hing but the editing